Pilot2ATC My Opinion After a Few Days

[Denco 48]

So after a few days of testing and getting used of the program I would like to share my opinion and some of my wis hlist which I'm well aware that the developer has the right to ignore. Still bringing them out can't hurt anyone. I also used the program in X plane but it should work with FSX and P3D.

 

In general I think the P2A is a great product even in beta and keep in mind it will only get improved. The program has many features that are very useful, but can also be problematic - more on that bellow. The ATC aspect is robust and the voice recognition is the top on the cake. Since I have a fresh installation of windows I had to teach the speech recognition of understanding  me and since I'm not a native English speaker it took a day or two of me frustratingly repeating sentences. But after a day I find that the program picks my words mostly correctly. Note that this is the fault of windows speech recognition which luckily improves the more you use it. 

 

The ATC it self works great and logical. You ask for clearance and it assigns you one with all the information you need. Afterwards it tells you to request for a taxi once you're ready. You also have the option to ask for a push back and engine start. In general you can ask and reply to the ATC everything you need to and have an immersive flight that feels like flying under a real ATC. The only thing I missed was an option to ask for an emergency and I only noticed that because my 767 experienced an engine bleed fault. Now that feature might be there but I didn't found it under the helper option. And that brings me to another good feature that the program offers. Everything you can say to the ATC is listed under the question mark button. Pressing that button opens up a menu with all the request's, reports etc. that you can and will need to say. The program also offers a sayIT button which is great if for some reason the speech recognition is trolling you , or you simply don't feel like speaking your self. What that button does is it says what the ATC requires you to say and the sentences you chose under the help option. Basically it acts as an First Officer. It would also be great if that option could be mapped to a key. But for the first few days I recommend everyone to speak as much as possible because of the points I already said above and yes by that I mean bounding with the windows speech recognition. 

 

There was a bug I experienced with the demo. When I contacted the tower I told them I was on final for the chosen runaway. The reply I got was to contact the tower on the frequency I already was. Now I noticed that the demo was 2.0.1.2 and the latest version is 2.0.1.3 which means that the the bug could have already been fixed.

 

But all is not roses with P2A. For one I find that it's essential to be packing another monitor otherwise you'll find your self constantly tabbing out from the sim which is very annoying. You can force the program to run on top of everything but that requires you to run the sim in window mode which I dislike very much. Now luckily for me I have a TV next to my computer and I can just use that, but not everyone has the option of having two monitors or having a TV next to them which they could use. Also, having a TV turned on just for that seems kind of inefficient when it comes to electricity.

 

Which also brings me to my next point. There is no in game UI. The program UI runs in the background and all the options you can fiddle with are there. It would be great if we'd have the option to open the chat screen in game that would show us the chatter between us and the ATC just like in the program. Now this is not game breaking but would in a sense make the program a bit more accessible and user friendly.

 

The observation I have is the performance. Now this is the problematic area I was talking about earlier. I notcied that the program it self uses quite amount of CPU. Around 25% to 40% which means that your CPUwill reach its peak quite quickly which can and will cause stutters. Now considering the amount of functions this program has one can't avoid getting some performance hit's. but I can't help but think that in flight tracking is causing most of those high CPU usages and if it does a simple option to allow us disable it would work. But since I'm not a programmer I can't really tell what is the cause of high CPU usage maybe it's just the way the software works. I think that people should be aware of this considering that flight sims require all of your CPU which makes those 25% to 40% matter. But also keep in mind that the program is still in beta and I'm sure the performance will get improved.

 

In short:

 

+Software has many useful features

+ATC works good apart from some minor bugs which will get fixed - beta, beta, beta

+Great to learn procedures

+Speech recongition makes communication with the ATC very immersive

+Supports FSX, P3D and X plane

-No ingame chatter area

-FPS can take a hit

 

 

Overall I believe that the software is very much worth its price and I encourage everyone to try it. I'm enjoying it immensely and can't wait to see what the future brings. So If you're on the lookout for an ATC program P2A is a worthy software. It also works in both FSX/P3D and Xplane. I'm hopping this will encourage people to test this wonderfull program.

 

P.S

 

Sorry for any grammatical errors

 

 

[joelpacheco 9]

If you own FSUIPC/FSWIDE it is very easy to run Pilot2ATC on a remote computer to share the load.

- FSUIPC can send the PTT keystroke or yoke button to the remote PC.

- You can have the headset/mic connected to your FSX computer. You will have to buy a couple of cables to send your voice via Line-in to the remote computer and to hear back ATC.

[pegruder 65]

Good review!

 

If you own FSUIPC/FSWIDE it is very easy to run Pilot2ATC on a remote computer to share the load.
- FSUIPC can send the PTT keystroke or yoke button to the remote PC.
- You can have the headset/mic connected to your FSX computer. You will have to buy a couple of cables to send your voice via Line-in to the remote computer and to hear back ATC.

 

This is actually a great idea.  I should try this with my laptop.  I've heard about being able to do this but never actually gave it a go. 

[johnbla 31]

If you own FSUIPC/FSWIDE it is very easy to run Pilot2ATC on a remote computer to share the load.

- FSUIPC can send the PTT keystroke or yoke button to the remote PC.

- You can have the headset/mic connected to your FSX computer. You will have to buy a couple of cables to send your voice via Line-in to the remote computer and to hear back ATC.

 

Thanks for this. Any chance of a dummies guide on how to do it?

 

Am considering purchasing but the CPU usage is a worry.

 

 

 

Many thanks

John

[Denco 48]

Thanks for this. Any chance of a dummies guide on how to do it?

 

Am considering purchasing but the CPU usage is a worry.

 

 

 

Many thanks

John

Don't let that terrify you. The program is still in beta plus you have a 10 day trial to test the performance impact on your pc.

[joelpacheco 9]

Thanks for this. Any chance of a dummies guide on how to do it?

 

Am considering purchasing but the CPU usage is a worry.

 

 

 

Many thanks

John

I have two desktop PCs, one running FSX and the other running Pilot2ATC, ActiveSky, AIController, etc.

In each computer I connected the Line-out jack of the soundcard to the Line-in jack of the other computer.

A USB headset/mic is connected to the FSX computer. The trick is going to "recording devices" (right click on the speaker sign on the top right corner), select the mic and in the "Listen" tab check the "Listen to this device" box and select "Speakers" on the dropdown menu below. What this does is to grab what you say and sending it over the Line-out of the FSX PC to the LIne-in of thePilot2ATC PC.

And the ATC instructions will be sent through the Line-out of the Pilot2ATC PC to the Line-in of the FSX PC.

 

Now, for this next part I used FSIUPC on the FSX PC and WIDE FS on the Pilot2ATC PC. In Pilot2ATC I selected F12 as the key for PTT. I have a yoke conected to the FSX PC and I use one of its buttons as PTT. In FSUIPC I programmed this button as follows:

- Check the "Select for FS control" box

- In the "Control sent went button pressed" dropdown select "KEYSEND 1-255 WideFS"

- "Parameter" = 1

- In the "Control sent went button released" dropdown select "KEYSEND 1-255 WideFS"

- "Parameter" = 2

And that is it, it magically sends a PTT command to the Pilot2ATC PC when you push and hold the button in the yoke to talk to ATC.

 

Hope this helps

[johnbla 31]

Many thanks joelpacheco.

 

John

[Denco 48]

I would just like to add that with the latest version I'm not seeing as high cpu usage as with version 2.0.1.2. It's at around 0.5 to 10% which is negligible.

[Claudie42 2]

Bonjour ,

 

 

The observation I have is the performance. Now this is the problematic area I was talking about earlier. I notcied that the program it self uses quite amount of CPU. Around 25% to 40% which means that your CPUwill reach its peak quite quickly which can and will cause stutters. Now considering the amount of functions this program has one can't avoid getting some performance hit's. but I can't help but think that in flight tracking is causing most of those high CPU usages and if it does a simple option to allow us disable it would work. But since I'm not a programmer I can't really tell what is the cause of high CPU usage maybe it's just the way the software works. I think that people should be aware of this considering that flight sims require all of your CPU which makes those 25% to 40% matter. But also keep in mind that the program is still in beta and I'm sure the performance will get improved.

 

When I read this it a few weeks ago, I was very worried !

4 days ago I tested Pilot2Atc with Task Manager in Control &,
P3D in v.3.3.5.

I set the affinity pilots2atc on the processor 3, P3D on 1 and 2.
other small software 4 and UT2 traffic is 4 processor.

The impact on simulator performance on my PC is Cockpit
4 fps on average.

 

And my processor is rarely 90% I have an I7 overcloquer 3.4 to 4.4, GTX 980 GPUs.

 

Cordialement,

[Denco 48]

I'm using Xplane. I honestly don't watch the cpu usage anymore, but I haven't experienced any issue cause of it. This program is pretty great even with some current bugs and also has many useful features. I can see a bright future for P2A.

[cessna172W 0]

Am considering purchasing pilot2atc could you use  a Samsung tab e instead of a laptop or tv and is it compatible with Steam edition of fsx?