I just did a few circuits at Christchurch NZ and FSX ATC created so many conflicts it ruined the experience. I know this can be avoided by winding down the traffic but it would nice to experience a busy airport with a bit more realistic traffic control. Has anyone got any tips or do I have to practice circuits in a field?

One you need AISmooth, you can get it in the library. That will help with go arounds. The problem though is not ATC, but the AI system. That's why the 3rd party ATC apps Radar Contact and PFE won't help here. What I use is UT2 for AI and AISmooth. Which works about 90-95% of the time. For the times it don't I use UT2 clear approach option which clears all AI in your way and that allows me to land without go arounds. You have to remember MS/Aces never intended the AI system to handle the amount of traffic we throw at it. The fact it does as well as it does is a testament to their efforts. Take a look at Traffic Explorer, at 100% traffic, there are points the system is handling close to 400 aircraft within a 120nm radius.

Thanks for that and I accept your point about the large numbers thrown at a 6yr old AI "engine". I'll check out AISmooth. I already use RC4 for IFR which does a pretty good job.

Lockheed Martin have foreshadowed an update to the AI system in one of their updates to Prepar3D. I'm looking forward to that.

Default ATC does not vector anyone away from conflicts or do any spacing at all.

The latest version of AISmooth seems to be 1.2 although sources on the net indicate that a version 2 was in the making as far back as 2007, did this ever happen????

I'd say that FSX's ATC is actually fairly incredible - There still isn't a default flight sim that matches it's scope and general effectiveness all these years later.

sources on the net indicate that a version 2 was in the making as far back as 2007, did this ever happen????

 

No. Version 1.2 still works great with FSX.

 

Best regards,

Jim

I'd say that FSX's ATC is actually fairly incredible - There still isn't a default flight sim that matches it's scope and general effectiveness all these years later.

 

Agreed. It has many issues, but given the scope of what it's able to do, it's still amazing. Plus the spoken voices sound far more natural than any 3rd party addon I've heard, especially the text-to-speech ones.

I agree ... FSX ATC is solid considering that it was included in this 70$ software package.

Yes the FS ATC is basic and has some irritations, but is way ahead of any of it's competitors.

This is partly due to the way AI, runways and taxiways were implemented.

These have also enabled some 3rd party ATC addons to fill the gap.

I've used RC4 in the past but I'm really into VoxATC 6 right now, and it's wasn't until I started using in earnest that I realised how excellent it is.

 

Amazing? Its amazingly bad! Its not even capable of maintaining separation between two aircraft, which was the reason why ATC was created in the first place. I'd say its a totally useless gimmick in FSX

Lockheed Martin have foreshadowed an update to the AI system in one of their updates to Prepar3D. I'm looking forward to that.

 

That would make me switch as long as current 3rd party stuff was still supported.

Its amazingly bad!

I think that it's like most of the rest of the stock FSX system (scenery, aircraft, etc). The difference is that there was no SDK for ATC and the simConnect controls for AI were quite limited (in the sense that you had to disconnect an AI from the ATC system to control it).

 

FSX also lacks the deep hacker community that many other big game communities have - hex edits, dll hooks, etc, that could resolve this sort of problem. My theory here is that we've been spoilt by Pete Dowson/Adam Szofran who achieved 80% of what a community like that would achieve in one nice compact program.

 

All that said, I'm hopeful that Prepar3D will give us a neat set of hooks in their next update to simConnect. I've requested this on their forum. Specifically, I asked for a hook to control the landing and departing runway assignments for individual aircraft. I think this alone would make the whole ATC system flow quite a bit better. (And yes - in the spirit of my implicit complaint above, I've gone so far as putting a debugger over FSX to find the offsets that control this, but I just don't have the assembly knowledge to really understand it enough).

 

Bryn.

 

I personally use Super Traffic Board to handle the misbehaving FSX AI. It's not free like AIsmooth which I used until STB but it is much more powerful if you are willing to pay for it. In fact I haven't had a go around in quite some time, I think once within my last ~500 flight hours. It really isn't an issue anymore for me. Also, using edit voice pack to speed things up a bit helps a lot.