A quick fly by of Pro ATC

[Speedbird 11 2]

Some nice comments for once! Thanks to all.

 

I completely know how you feel Jim, well done for sticking at it.

 

My experiences are broadly similar, except that I have not heard a SD or STAR in full. For example, departing from London Heathrow I hear "B-P-K-6-F", not "Brookman's Park 6 Foxtrot".

 

Transition altitudes are not fixed at 18,000' but I have not been able to work out whether they differ between countries or whether they are all accurate. In the Alpine region they seem a little high compared to my charts, in the Hong Kong region they seem about right. I don't know whether this is by accident or design, but will continue looking for a pattern. There's nothing editable here for TA so far as I can tell, unlike PFE.

 

Completely agree with Jim that when used in conjunction with PMDG, FSL and GSX, it provides a lot of fun for very little effort. Other ATC programs (including the FS in-built) do some things better, but it's hard to beat the fun:effort ratio for Pro-ATC/X.

 

Best wishes,

 

Michael

[Guest firehawk44]

Does ProATC implement different transition altitudes based on countries or is it similar to the default 18000 ft everywhere ?.

 

Hi Mad Dog,

I'm not sure why you are concerned with transition altitudes but I cannot see where ProATC implements them. The following link provides the appropriate transition levels around the world - http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/topic/89631-transition-level/. As you can see they vary quite a bit. I know PFE has that option to put in the appropriate transition level and I guess this is what you are looking for. Maybe that can be implemented some day. I do know ProATC does not tell you to go to FL190 because you forgot to set the barometer at FL180 and you're 200 feet above your assigned altitude). I haven't seen it anyway during any of my flights but then I set the appropriate barometer setting when I transition. I own PFE too and have since Dave March first developed the product. I had lots of problems with it so it still sits in my hangar on another harddrive (I think the main problem I had was getting ATC chatter and just didn't have the time to go out and look for all the ATC chatter. Since I purchased Ralph Zimmerman's ATC program, I have the chatter now and maybe I'll try it out some day).

 

My experiences are broadly similar, except that I have not heard a SD or STAR in full. For example, departing from London Heathrow I hear "B-P-K-6-F", not "Brookman's Park 6 Foxtrot".

 

Hi Michael,

 

You have been a big help here too to the community and glad you're still here to provide your comments/support. To be honest, I have not heard ATC speaking the name of the SID/STAR. I just look at the text line at the top of the screen which provides the text of what ATC is stating. I see the STAR Hadly2 for KSFO and that's all I need to know to input the data into the FMC. If you want it stated and not spelled out, I believe you can do this by making your own voice sets for that airport. I have not tried it so can't say for sure. There is a lot of editing that can be accomplished with this program to adjust it to your personal preferences and maybe give it a little more realism. To get what you want, "Brookman's Park 6 Foxtrot", ProATC developers would have to rename all SID/STARS and spell them out phonically. Maybe they can fix it by allowing you to rename the SID/STAR so that ATC would pronounce it the way you want it pronounced. Being that there's thousands of these SID/STARS, that would be very difficult for a developer to accomplish. Does PFE spell it out phonically? I see this as a minor issue.

 

Speaking of minor glitches, I found another minor issue in the program and that's Departure and Arrival Gates. They don't match in most cases. For instance, at KLAX, the ProATC program shows a Gate D 1. This gate is not shown in my FSDT rendition of KLAX so, when ground asks the pilot what gate he's located at, the co-pilot responds with D1 and I assume this is done so ground can taxi you to a closer departing runway. Ground doesn't get all upset because they can't find the gate you're located. I think it's there for eyecandy only and not functional. Still, I would like to have the ability to edit the Gate section to list all the gates I know exist for an airport.

 

I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new update which should be pretty big.

 

Jim

Best regards,

[SteveW 1,792]

No D gates at KLAX in the stock scenery. Hi Jim, can I ask; do you get allocated parking on arrival?

[Speedbird 11 2]

Hi Jim,

 

Yes, I can't realistically see any ATC program mentioning all the SDs and STARs by name, even PFE only gives a phonetic rendition such as "Bravo - Papa - Kilo - 6 - Foxtrot", similar to Pro ATC/X. They say that VOX ATC is good, but I don't use it, since I don't like voice programs, so I don't know: possibly its use of text-to-speech enables it to more or less say the SD or STAR by name, but I don't regard this as a big deal or worth the effort of using speech. Actually, I have since noticed how good a job the built-in FS ATC does by pronouncing so many places in the world in full!

 

I too tend to regard the gate and taxi information as 'dummy' data or ear candy. I can't work out what the program's doing , since it's not completely random, and the taxi instructions for example do include actual marked taxiways at the airports in question.

 

The next update will be interesting, although the program will never suit all my needs, given some of the defects in the original recordings such as defective call-signs (e.g. "British Airways" instead of the more iconic "Speedbird", to name but one). It's a shame, because the simplicity and rich feature set of the program otherwiise border on genius (when it works, at any rate). Great combo with GSX, isn't it!

 

All the best,

 

Michael

 

Hi Steve,

 

ATC gives you a gate on arrival, and that's about the end of the ATC feature of the program, so you can choose a gate of your own in practice e.g. if you have a preferred one for GSX features.

 

The bit that interests me about how Ideal Flight will play with it stems from the fact that Pro ATC/X uses the GPS (and hence the flight planner) to achieve its ATC functionality.

 

Michael

[SteveW 1,792]

Thanks Michael,

 

Actually right now I'm looking at the very good Aivlasoft EFB and FS2Crew, and moving onto PROATC next, and I'm looking forward to it, should be rocking by the time I get round to it.

 

EFB is interesting because it injects a new plan once you have your STAR. The plan starts from PREVPOS your previous position and links up the waypoints of the STAR from the scenery data (can import Navigraph). Once on the route with the GPS you may get pulled off route by ATC because you need to do a turn onto certain waypoints, rather than head straight for them.

 

shhh mustn't mention IF, but there's a bit on how it goes about things over at FSN, scroll to bottom of this page other stuff there regarding planning may be of interest. IF should play well with anything the way it has been designed. If any issues do come up it's because I generally caused the problem myself. A recent update allows the injection of the new plan from EFB, but it was always supposed to allow it, I had NOTTED instead of ANDED :D

[SteveW 1,792]

...BTW I just checked and FSX does not store any approach names, instead I think you are given the IAF or Transition waypoint name in the list of available approaches.

 

Sorry Michael I sounded a bit cryptic there, but I forgot to say that IF uses the FSX .FLT and .PLN functions to program the GPS and FSX ATC at any point in the flight.

[Guest firehawk44]

No D gates at KLAX in the stock scenery. Hi Jim, can I ask; do you get allocated parking on arrival?

 

Once you land you are told to contact ground. Ground control will send you to the gate you designated in the ProATC flight plan. I skip contacting ground and use GSX for taxiing to the gate as I have found the arrival gate I preselected in my flight plan does not exist at the commercial KSFO. Like I said above, Gates are a problem right now in ProATC. I personally think the requirement to select a departure and arrival gate should be eliminated and let us handle that difficult task (pun intended).

 

Best regards,

 

Jim

[SteveW 1,792]

Thanks Jim.

 

Yes, no gates, but of course there's no requirement when departing for ATC to know your position, just the GPS.

[Glynn 405]

I'm not sure why you are concerned with transition altitudes but I cannot see where ProATC implements them.

 

Hello Jim

For a program to simulate ATC in a realistic manner at least for those of us outside of the USA and Canada modeling different transition altitudes is important, Radar Contact does this as do PFE and to an extent VoxATC.

 

Canned chatter is something that I would have to switch off after a while as it gets repetitive and does not reflect what is happening in the airspace around you.

Ai based chatter is much better as you hear ATC giving instructions to the actual aircraft that are around you with the proper call signs implemented.

I hope Mourad gets this implemented as it really adds to the atmosphere especially in busy airspace and around the airports.

[Speedbird 11 2]

Hi Steve,

 

Correct, I've never heard FSX ATC name a STAR, but some of the approaches offered are amazingly good, including the correct altitudes! Also, the number of airport names pronounced fully around the world always amazes me.

 

I have not been tempted to try Pro ATC/X with IF, since I see that they both use the GPS and planner. I am frightened of something disasterous happening as a result, so not worth the risk!

 

More generally for the benefit of others, the TA is not a big deal in Pro ATC/X, since it tends to give you brisk climb clearances, so you shoot through the TA very quickly. I should add that although it assigns you a SD and STAR, I think this is only the horizontal profile, I have not noticed any alignment with the real vertical profile, although I may just have been unlucky so far. PFE allows you to enforce the vertical profile to an extent, but even there with all the options this is not always fully possible. In real life, after many, many departures from Heathrow, I recall only once flying at the initial departure altitude of 6000' on the Brookmans Park and Dover SDs, so I do not fret unduly about this sort of thing in the buiilt-in and add-on ATC programs (especially since I am free to flly the published altitudes if I want!).

 

Best wishes,

 

Michael

[traveyb 0]

How stable is this program? Biggest problem I have is how erratic other programs are (like controllers just stop talking to you en route)

[Guest firehawk44]

Jim, I take it you are over at the Pro-ATC forums too? Did you happen to read my question about the PMDG MD11? No one has replied and I'm thinking I may need to send a message directly to MBA. Have you any clue what the problem could be; that I am having?

 

Ed,

You stated:

 

1. I create a flight in Pro-ATC, for example ZSPD to UAAA.

2. I start flight sim.

3. I load the PMDG MD-11 to the ramp, ZSPD in this example.

4. I start Pro-ATC.

5. I check weather and get clearance from Pro-ATC.

6. I open the MCDU and on the F-PLN page 1 I need to enter the DEP/ARR airport ICAO in that format. Using the example I would enter ZSPD/UAAA.

7. The DEP/ARR information needs to be entered into LSK 1R. When I attempt to enter the information FSX freezes. I can still hear Pro-ATC running in the background chatting with AI. I have waited as long as 10 minutes and FSX does not unfreeze. It only freezes if I have made a flight plane in Pro-ATC.

I am not entering a flight plan into FSX. Also I could not get this freeze to happen with the PMDG 737NGX, the QW 757, or even the FeelThere E195. Is this possibly a problem related to the AIRAC? I use the updated AIRAC from NaviGraph for the PMDG.

 

My response: From your description of this crash, it can only be pinpointed to a problem with ProATC; however, I do not think it's a ProATC problem. From my understanding of the MD-11, it requires more resources than other aircraft. Programming any FMC in FSX even requires more resources. The fact FSX did not CTD and simply froze with sound still playing in the background indicates a problem with system memory configurations. I suggest you change your virtual memory (page file) settings to 'System Managed Size' as that seems to be the proper setting for FSX. If you are overclocked, you might review those settings and check the configuration of your system memory. Wrong memory frequencies/timings and voltages will work for a while but eventually cause a problem. Make sure they are set in accordance with the CPU-Z under the SPD Tab.

 

I would take a look at your Event Viewer and see if there was an 'event' created there. Click on the Start button and then Help and Support in the Menu and, once open, type Event Viewer in the search bar. It will provide you links to your Event Viewer, how to set it up properly, and how to best use it to troubleshoot a problem. An 'event' would have been recorded at the exact date and time FSX froze. I have experienced your problem in the past and it turned out to be wrong memory settings and I have not experienced it since. If you have an Exception Code of 0xc0000005, Memory_Access_Violation, that's an indication it could be memory related. As I stated, overclocking/overheating can cause problems too as well as your CPU voltage in the BIOS is set too high or too low.

 

One other thing you can try is to make sure you right click ProATC and select Run as Administrator.

 

Best regards,

Jim

[Paul J 349]

Jim - given his statement"

FSX freezes. I can still hear Pro-ATC running in the background chatting with AI.

- do you not think that this would be a classic example of a UIAutomationCore.dll problem?

[Nigge 20]

After been reading through all 23 pages in this thread a question has come to my mind,

It seems to handle sid and stars the way it should...

 

But it seems that you have to generate the flight plan in pro atc, and then import it into fsx...

 

Is it possible to enter your own routes... for example if you want to fly real world routes that you already have printed out on a paper...

is it possible to enter that into pro atc or do you have to use the one that pro atc generates for you?

[MindYerBeak 73]

Have you any clue what the problem could be; that I am having?

 

 

Edward,

 

A way to solve half of your problems with this software or give up could be this. Read this thread through.From post #1 all the way down here. then

 

a)pay attention to how many people got this software to consistently work.I mean not just once or twice.

b)pay attention to how many people did not get this software to work.

c)this thread was started a long while ago so now pay attention to how many people (and who this people are) who* still* claim this software works.

 

This will probably help you figure out if your investment was a good one or if it was a "bendoverandsayahhh" kind of purchase.

 

 

Good luck.