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stratfordman10

Pro ATC X or Radar Contact

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I am currently using Pro Flight Emulator but I am looking for something a bit more realistic and I have narrowed it down to either Pro Atc X or Radar Contact.

 

I am wondering if I could have some help in being able to choose the right one.

 

I mainly fly the PMDG 737 but I am just looking for a bit more realism with good quality ATC chatter.

 

Would appreciate any input please.

 

Many thanks in anticipation.

 

Michael

 


Michael Broom

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Pro Flight Emulator has by far the best voices and ATC chatter.

RC is easier to use and just works.

Pro ATC has unrealistic ATC procedures but at least assigns Sids and stars at the correct times.

You are already using the best all round package in my opinion, but a change is nice now and then.

Buy them all

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Just a simple comment.  I have worked with the RC development team for years.  RC has many real world ATC controllers on its team.  So the procedures are correct.  What RC lacks is SID/STAR interaction.  We were working on that during the RCv5 development.  Some of us, like me, put those in our flight plans.  Others would like for the program to pick those when the runways are selected.  If we start development again this summer that is the number one objective.

 

But the statement above  is so clear, RC WORKS.  I think I am pretty good at what the real world ATC is all about and again I will say it loud, RC WORKS

 

Bob

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RC for IFR flying is fairly realistic, easy to use, good voices, pre recorded ATC improves level of immersion and you can use the voice interaction option with Multicrew experience.


X-Plane11

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Pro Flight Emulator has by far the best voices and ATC chatter.

RC is easier to use and just works.

Pro ATC has unrealistic ATC procedures but at least assigns Sids and stars at the correct times.

You are already using the best all round package in my opinion, but a change is nice now and then.

Buy them all

^^^^this. You'll be disappointed with the voices in RC and the stuff it can't do compared to PFE. Pro ATC I can't speak for, but the voices need work.

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^^^^this. You'll be disappointed with the voices in RC and the stuff it can't do compared to PFE. Pro ATC I can't speak for, but the voices need work.

Er, the real people who recorded them need to work on their own voices? What do you mean?

 

Why do people spread these silly things about RC? The voices are fine. They actually sound real because they are real, not some sythesised imitations. Yes, to economise on the huge number of separate recordings, names and numbers which change are pre-joined in the wave sequence before the whole thing is spoken, and there is an option to speed or slow those joins. I suspect most folks have them too slow, perhaps better to understand before they are used to what's coming and can therefore take it at proper speed.

 

There are a complete set of more distorted and interference-ridden voices too ("Meatwater" versions), but I think they are only relevant if you want to presend you are in a bygone age where radio reception in aircraft was pretty awful. It really isn't like that these days, expecially not in airliners and business jets.

 

Pete

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After watching several full flights on YT with PFE, I'm sticking with RC and Pete is 100% accurate with his statement. I really wish JD continues to develop v5. I need SID/STAR handling as well as VFR.


Jacek G.

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Er, the real people who recorded them need to work on their own voices? What do you mean?

 

Pete

Perhaps I should quantify my statement. There's nothing wrong with the voices in RC but compared to the breadth and variety of (again real) voices you find in PFE, I was merely pointing out that RC is a step back in terms of immersion.

 

For one, RC injects canned chatter. Whilst this sounds realistic (as it should, it's real), it is also completely out of context with your own flight and that of the AI around you as it was recorded years ago. PFE gives you dynamic chatter based on AI. So if you're a BA flight at the gate at JFK next to an Air France flight, you'll hear the (French) pilot ask the (American) controller for clearance, before you see him push back. If you then ask for clearance (with your British pilot) and follow him to the runway you'll hear him handed off to the tower and then once he's gone over to departure you'll hear him again once you are yourself handed off. The controllers would then throughout the flight become Canadian, Irish and English and finally for him, French. Whilst in flight you'll hear AI with the respective national accents talking to the controllers. RC can't come close to this, not by a long shot.

 

There are other things that RC lacks, namely the fact that it yells at you if you don't descend within 3 seconds of the instruction to do so, there is no speed control, vectoring can be torturous, no support for naming departures or arrivals - need I go on? It was a great program in its day but badly needs an update.

 

Whilst I agree with you about the fact that scratchy HF sounding FX is not realistic, some of the Radar Contact voices sound like they were recorded in my bathroom. PFE again does a better job at the difficult task of replicating the vagaries of VHF reception over long distances.

 

 

HTH.

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For one, RC injects canned chatter. Whilst this sounds realistic (as it should, it's real), it is also completely out of context with your own flight and that of the AI around you as it was recorded years ago.

I've been using RC since it started and I have NEVER once had any canned chatter. I know there's an option, but why use it when RC will talk to the AI traffic on the same frequency as you in any case?

 

PFE gives you dynamic chatter based on AI. So if you're a BA flight at the gate at JFK next to an Air France flight, you'll hear the (French) pilot ask the (American) controller for clearance, before you see him push back.

Just like RC then, except it isn't "chatter" it's real interaction bassed on the states the AI are going through. Why on Earth do you think RC doesn't do this?

 

If you then ask for clearance (with your British pilot) and follow him to the runway you'll hear him handed off to the tower and then once he's gone over to departure you'll hear him again once you are yourself handed off.

Same in RC, provided you are on the same frequency of course.

 

The controllers would then throughout the flight become Canadian, Irish and English and finally for him, French. Whilst in flight you'll hear AI with the respective national accents talking to the controllers. RC can't come close to this, not by a long shot.

Yes, I am aware that PFE has a much greater variety of voices and accents. I think that's actually its only advantage. The disadvantages are mainly in the area of setting it up and and actually using it. I did try once, but just didn't get far, it was so exasperating.

 

There are other things that RC lacks, namely the fact that it yells at you if you don't descend within 3 seconds of the instruction to do so, there is no speed control, vectoring can be torturous, no support for naming departures or arrivals - need I go on? It was a great program in its day but badly needs an update.

When was PFE last updated? It's basically an FS2000 program -- and yes, I did try it's underlying base too way back then. Or are you saying it was perfect to begin with in any case?

 

Whilst I agree with you about the fact that scratchy HF sounding FX is not realistic, some of the Radar Contact voices sound like they were recorded in my bathroom.

Which voices do that? I for one have never heard one like that.

 

Pete


Win10: 22H2 19045.2728
CPU: 9900KS at 5.5GHz
Memory: 32Gb at 3800 MHz.
GPU:  RTX 24Gb Titan
2 x 2160p projectors at 25Hz onto 200 FOV curved screen

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I have all of them but enjoy VoxATC the most by far. The voice interaction is great; you get Sid/Stars, held short for runway crossing, taxi guidance etc for Ifr and Vfr flights.

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If RC does dynamic chatter then I'm mistaken. My understanding was that it didn't, for which I apologise. PFE has however been updated many times and only uses the base FS2000-era Pro Flight program to generate the flight plan. Everything else happens in the PFE program which was last updated in 2010, which is fairly recent history in FS terms.

 

PFE does have a steep learning curve compared to RC but I find it worth the trouble. If you only tried it once then perhaps you didn't give it a fair shot. It's very quirky but once you've learnt all of its foibles then setting up a flight plan is actually rather simple. Assigning SIDS and STARS is a little more complicated, especially as you need to 'force' FS to use a particular set of runways In order to avoid potential conflicts with AI.

 

However, having extensively used RC and PFE over a number of years, I stick by my point that the latter is by far the most immersive. We could split hairs over this voice and that voice, or this feature or that. Both vendors have had my money and I've had plenty of use out of both. For my tuppence, if immersion is the aim, PFE is the one to go for.

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Both vendors have had my money and I've had plenty of use out of both. For my tuppence, if immersion is the aim, PFE is the one to go for.

Okay. Fair enough.

 

RC was of course being developed too, till JD decided to take a sabbatical a year ago. RCV5 is/was intended to have proper handling of SIDs and STARS and their transitions, as well as taxi instructions, and other improvements, like a fix to its impatience!

 

(BTW the secret to stop it complaining so fast it to do the action requested THEN acknowladge, rather than the other way around).

 

I'm watching ProATC/X with great interest, mainly because it IS being actively developed. Still a long way to go -- probably mainly because the author pretty well started with what RCV5 was/is intended to do -- SID/STAR assignments and Taxi instructions. I think the author spent too much time on the flight planner part and now has a lot of catching up to do in the area of AI control and integration, and of course voices. That's going to be the sticking point again I feel -- just not enough volunteers nor accents etc to do the thing justice.

 

Regards

Pete


Win10: 22H2 19045.2728
CPU: 9900KS at 5.5GHz
Memory: 32Gb at 3800 MHz.
GPU:  RTX 24Gb Titan
2 x 2160p projectors at 25Hz onto 200 FOV curved screen

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I'm watching ProATC/X with great interest, mainly because it IS being actively developed. Still a long way to go -- probably mainly because the author pretty well started with what RCV5 was/is intended to do -- SID/STAR assignments and Taxi instructions. I think the author spent too much time on the flight planner part and now has a lot of catching up to do in the area of AI control and integration, and of course voices. That's going to be the sticking point again I feel -- just not enough volunteers nor accents etc to do the thing justice.

 

Regards

Pete

I'm watching it too. As a real world PPL-er I think that the whole ATC aspect of flight is something sorely under-represented in the simulator community. Vatsim has its fans and rightly so but the quality of both controllers and pilots is variable and the coverage is patchy. Pilot's Edge in the USA has the right idea in that it gives you a near real-world ATC environment but if you like the big iron there's only so many times you can fly from LAX to Vegas or San Diego.

 

Pro ATC X seems to be heading in the right direction but some of its phraseology is off the pace and as I understand it the voices are of variable quality due to the fact that they rely upon volunteers to upload them. If they could find a way to bite the bullet and hire a load of talented voice actors to portray all the various accents then they'd have one hell of a product. Time will tell.

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Just a simple comment.  I have worked with the RC development team for years.  RC has many real world ATC controllers on its team.  So the procedures are correct.  What RC lacks is SID/STAR interaction.  We were working on that during the RCv5 development.  Some of us, like me, put those in our flight plans.  Others would like for the program to pick those when the runways are selected.  If we start development again this summer that is the number one objective.

 

But the statement above  is so clear, RC WORKS.  I think I am pretty good at what the real world ATC is all about and again I will say it loud, RC WORKS

 

Bob

My big issue with RC is the voices--too few and no attempt is made to coordinate the voices with the geography.  IF RC had that, they would be the best.


Dan Cole

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