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Chock

A quick fly by of Pro ATC

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Yup, your tale pretty much matches mine Jim. It is great at what it does, but it is prone to windows closing on their own whilst you are setting it up to do what it does, so like you, I have taken to just getting a start and end point set up and saved, and then gone in to edit that afterwards, saving regularly, since the random closing of windows leads to frustration otherwise, with all your work gone if you haven't saved it and a window decides to close. That aspect really does need sorting out, as it is infuriating, although I presume they will address it. In the meantime, it is possible to at least work around it though, and once the flight plan is in fact created, it is then in there for good, with further editing still possible to offer some variety.

 

So when you do get it set up, it is very good and very immersive even in spite of it not interacting with my UT AI aeroplanes. It is more like an old-style FS 'adventure' than a dynamic affair such as Radar Contact, so not unlike Pro Flight was for FS98 in some ways (which I really loved), but as you say Jim, that difference means that it won't float everyone's boat.

 

I like the co pilot in Pro ATC in particular, because sometimes I find the co-pilot in MCE to be a pain in the &@($*, for example he won't stop banging on about what flap setting I want on my PBY Catalina, which doesn't actually have flaps, but with the co pilot in Pro ATC, I could select the option for the co pilot to ignore the flaps, or the gear, or the radios or whatever, so that would not be a problem which occurred here. Don't get me wrong, I really love the way MCE lets you talk to ATC, and generally speaking I like the co pilot and other crew members it simulates too, so I do think it is a truly great add on, but that co pilot sometimes really gets on my nerves when glitches like that constant querying about the flaps shows up, so it being the case that one can cherry pick options from both MCE and Pro ATC, I could see a circumstance where combining the two would really give me what I wanted if there was not a specific FS2Crew add-on for a particular aircraft.

 

Thus I'm coming to the conclusion that when it gets patched to be a bit more stable, I will probably regard it as not a substitute for MCE, nor FS2 or Radar Contact, but rather as another choice I can go for out of all of those, depending on how the mood strikes me, and even combining the merits of more than one of them to suit what I want to do, since sometimes I want a full on hard core sim experience, and other times not.

 

Whilst there is no denying it does need some patch attention from a stability standpoint, and it is not cheap either, I suspect the particular combination of things it offers, in the way it offers them, will probably find it quite a few advocates when it has had the benefit of a bit of post-customer usage feedback applied to some patching. Even as it stands now though, you could certainly do a lot worse than to give it a try if you can justify the price.

 

Al


Alan Bradbury

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Chock,

 

Many of us use FS2Crew, so I see a conflict between the FS2Crew copilot and the Pro ATC copilot.

 

There a way they could co-exist?

 

Bill Clark


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Sounds like it is not ready for prime time. I often wonder about some releases regardless of their purpose seem to not have been adequately tested. But there is always the ones the allow the community to test it for them. I can understand to some degree this particular approach as it has become so difficult to test because there are so many configurations, addon's that it must be tested with. This leaves the developer with either a huge investment in time and money or find those with varying configurations to test their software with. This also could be a one man developer team, but maybe not. I will wait as this progresses. My MCE and RC is working pretty good now.

 

Bob

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Yup, I did regard taking a punt on Pro ATC as just that - a punt - given that we had not heard much about it beforehand. But I am reasonably confident that it will get tweaked up, and I can wait a while for that to happen because it is still usable even with the minor issues. In the meantime, it was worth giving it a shot for the benefit of advising fellow Avsimmers as to what it offered if nothing else.

 

Al


Alan Bradbury

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HMMM.. Does not interact with AI, planes taking off from intersecting runways while you are taking off, can't amend your flight plan, flying 100 miles out of the way for no reason. crashes, windows close before you are done with them

 

 

Yeah this sounds like a must buy. lol


Mike Avallone

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Agree, promising but not quite ready for prime time IMHO. At $60 it should be rock solid, full AI awareness, voice activation. I really like the new voices after so many years of the same old default ones. Ambitious add-on. I'll check back in 3-4 months to see what they have done.


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This definitely shows promise. I am sure that once the service packs and tweaks happen this will be a keeper.

 

Thanks for the vid Al.

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Many of us use FS2Crew, so I see a conflict between the FS2Crew copilot and the Pro ATC copilot. There a way they could co-exist?

 

Bill Clark

 

Yup, you can completely disable the co pilot's actions in Pro ATC if you like, and then you could just use its ATC and flight planning functions alongside FS2Crew.

 

HMMM.. Does not interact with AI, planes taking off from intersecting runways while you are taking off, can't amend your flight plan, flying 100 miles out of the way for no reason. crashes, windows close before you are done with them Yeah this sounds like a must buy. lol

 

Bit of a harsh summation there, and whilst there is truth in it, to be fair, only one of those you mention is absolutely correct: It actually does interact with the AI, just not UT's AI, so if we are being completely fair, that's an incompatibility with another product, not an incompatibility with FSX, and one presumes with a tweak it could be made to work with others; you can in fact amend your flight plan; not sure what you mean about flying 100 miles out of your way for no reason, I've not seen it do that, but if someone else has, then fair enough; crashes - yup, but only once so far on me, and let's be honest, what program has not done that?; windows close, yup that is absolutely the case, and that is a pain in the arse too, but as much as it is a pain, it is not a total show stopper, it just adds a minute or two to knocking a flight plan together. I definitely want them to sort it out though, because it is annoying.

 

So I agree that some of these things are concerns, but I would not say they preclude us from watching this product with interest, nor indeed from using it, but I certainly do think they make the price tag a bit hard to swallow in its present state, and don't exactly make you fall hopelessly in love with it at the moment, although I do really rate the co pilot function pretty highly.

 

Just had an email saying there's a patch out which fixes some issues incidentally.

 

EDIT: From a quick test, that patch seems to have fixed the window closing randomly problem.

 

Al


Alan Bradbury

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Al, from what I've been able to garner so far in this thread, this program, given its high cost, from your own quotes, is a bit of a pain in the a---, requires tweaking, has windows closing, etc. Doesn't have a lot going in its favour then to coax another $50 spend, then?

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It actually does interact with the AI, just not UT's

 

I think what is meant by interaction, does it give AI instructions and does it respond like it does to the user aircraft? Or does it just recognize an AI plane landing and just keep you out of it's way, what I would call reacting to it. This was my problem with RC4.3, it only partially interacted with it., Initial takeoff, landing clearance Freq Xfers, but not interim altitude climbs/descents. It did do this well with the user aircraft though!


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Al, from what I've been able to garner so far in this thread, this program, given its high cost, from your own quotes, is a bit of a pain in the a---, requires tweaking, has windows closing, etc. Doesn't have a lot going in its favour then to coax another $50 spend, then?

 

Yup, I think there will be a lot of simmers who will have a hard time justifying the price, although that 'random window closing issue' appears to be gone following the patch, so that's at least encouraging. So now what we have is: a fairly 'on rails' flight planner that you can tweak somewhat, but which does offer SIDs and STARs (albeit not all of them), a pretty nice co pilot add on, and an ATC system which has some plus points but also some minus points, most notably a plus in that you can fairly easily add your own voices, and a minus in its limitations with AI.

 

Thus I agree Rick, that's a pretty tough sell for 40 quid in my book, and especially to anyone who already has maybe FS2Crew or MCE and Radar Contact. But with the addition some voice control (which is supposedly on the way) and some tweaks to the flight planner as far as exporting goes, it might yet come to be worth it. I guess we'll see.

 

Al


Alan Bradbury

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A very fair appraisal, Al. With so many add-ons in the offings, being prudent is the way for me to go. Just picked up another FS2Crew add-on at 25% off which runs out today. I reckon I'll wait for this one to iron itself out.

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On the subject of offers ending very soon, if you are feeling flush and are quick, Just Flight's Battle of Britain add on (Spitfire, Hurricane and bf109) is on at 20 quid at the moment, think it ends in about an hour.

 

Back on topic, as much as I really like its co pilot in particular, if I'm honest, I would say sitting back and seeing how Pro ATC turns out might be a wise move given the price.

 

Al


Alan Bradbury

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Guest firehawk44

I like the co pilot in Pro ATC in particular

 

Totally agree with that statement. They did a very good job in this area. You can also turn off some of the functions of the co-pilot if you want.

 

Regarding AI, it's hard for me to tell whether or not the program is interacting with the AI. The AI do see me and they stay out of my way but ground or ATC in flight does not warn AI that I'm in the area. So far I have not seen any interaction between Pro-ATC and Ultimate Traffic X (you stated it does occur). I think that's going to be difficult to accomplish to everyone's satisfaction. It's not a big thing as peoples lives are not at stake here.

 

So now what we have is: a fairly 'on rails' flight planner that you can tweak somewhat, but which does offer SIDs and STARs (albeit not all of them)

 

So you are okay with the flight planner? As I mentioned above, the flight planner only provides the departure and arrival airports with waypoints in between. It does not select SID/STARS until you have activated the flightplan in FSX and once the plan has been activated, it cannot be modified whatsoever (same as any FSX flightplan. It's loaded into the program and you cannot modify it). ProATC then selects a SID and later on a STAR based on the weather at the departure and the arrival locations. So, you have to follow the route ProATC prepared. You cannot ask ATC for another SID or another STAR. At least I do not see this capability and, in one instance, the STAR Pro-ATC selected took me to a waypoint in the STAR over 100 miles north of KSFO (it was setting me up for a landing on R/W 10L or 10R, can't really recall). When I try it without weather loaded, it takes me to a waypoint in a STAR well west of KSFO. What's wrong with BSR2? With high fuel costs, you would think it would take you to the fastest route possible. So I'm stuck on the STAR that Pro-ATC selects and it is mandatory that I follow it to set up for a proper approach. I think airline pilots have the discretion to modify and select another STAR if available. I apologize for not being clearer above. You're right on with the other responses though. I am also concerned about the workability of the background ATC. As I stated above, my setup for background ATC in the US did not work (so far). I have not tried the background ATC for those areas, like the UK, that ProATC provided with the program. It may be an Administrative right issue. The developers at Pro-ATC will surely figure it out someday and an immediate fix is not really necessary. I was just interested to see how well it performs.

 

Best regards,

Jim

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