On an IFR flight today, ATC kept handing me off to other control, back and forth, every now and then. I would be passed from control "A" to control, "B" then control "B" would shuffle me back to control "A". A minute, or less, later, control "A" would again hand me off to control "B"...and so on. The frequencies didn't change for each control station so.

It appears that the ATC routine in Prepar3d uses very rigid demarcations of where one control station ends and another begins so, if you are flying a route that sort of follows those borders a bit, some confusion over just who should be providing control happens.

One thing I thought of was that there MIGHT be a way to introduce some sort of leeway. That way, one control station won't pass you  to another until you are a good distance within the new control station's area of operation. That COULD reduce or eliminate the back and forth.

Anyone know of such a thing?

Or, a good replacement for Prepar3d's ATC that will handle both VFR and IFR.

It has been like this since the release of FSX. LM didn’t do anything about it, unfortunately. Was this your first IFR flight with default ATC...? It is known for vectoring you all over the bloody place and indeed handing you over to another station al the time.

The ONLY solution is to get an ATC addon. I would suggest ProATC: once you know how it works it is very easy to use without hardly any input of the user needed. Unlike other ATC addons. It is the closest you’ll get to the ease of default ATC but it makes things seriously more realistic: it assigns SIDS and STARs all by itself depending on the situation and weather, it doesn’t vector you all over the place and voice are decent. (Though the voices of default ATC are still the best.) 

For VFR however default ATC isn’t that bad. In fact, I prefer default for VFR.

IIRC this is also related to altitude. If you cruise along right at the height of the control zone the sim can't decide to which controller you should be talking. You may be able to get out of the loop by requesting a higher or lower cruise alt, but I'm not 100% sure of that..

Best regards

When this happens I usually just accept the hand off, then wait a bit before contacting the next controller.

I used to have this problem too for my default IFR ATC flights until I got Fsaerodata that completely transform the airspace to the real world counterpart with real sector boundaries and frequencies. I never have this problem anymore. What I do get however is this silly vectoring back and forth to different headings.

The option is to get a third party ATC addon, and believe me, I have tried them all. What you loose doing so is the fantastic AI traffic handling that default ATC actually does. With some real world airlines its truely amazing. Unfortunstely no addon but VoxATC controls AI and honestly VoxATC is not doing the best job at that, its more headace than its worth in my opinion,

So my recommendation is default ATC for you VFR flights and enjoy spectacular AI handling from ATC and ProATC for your IFR flights with AI turned down to zero. Since it does not control AI it will be an unsafe experience with aircraft running in to you. Ironic in a way since this is what ATC is there for in the first place :) 

What we really need is the ultimate IFR/VFR ATC addon either from LM improving the old code going back to the FS9 heydays or from a third party that actually can control your AI traffic.

mike

On ‎11‎/‎18‎/‎2017 at 0:13 AM, J van E said:

It has been like this since the release of FSX.

It's been this way since ATC was first introduced before FSX. There has been little to no improvement to the ATC dlls since their creation.

As mentioned above, there are pros and cons to using default ATC versus an add-on ATC program. I agree that the default ATC is still the best when using AI traffic and makes it worthwhile to consider some small changes in how you use ATC to avoid the annoyances.

The simplest avoidance of switching back and forth between controllers is to delay the switch. Similarly, the easiest way to avoid ATC constantly revectoring you for a crosswind is to ignore the vector and compensate for the crosswind.

Get a real ATC program like Pro ATC X and stop using  ATC that seems like it is being run by a three year old, and I hate to insult three year olds. 

Bruce, in a PA28 without GPS it is impossible to fly IFR transition FAF approaches and vectors would be the only alternative unfortunately like in real Life unless the airport has NDB or VOR approaches I guess.   

I’ve bought all of the atc addons and always end up going back to default.  It has issues, but at least I can manipulate it to do what I want and it generally sounds very good.

Proatcx is better for sids and stars but vector based departures and arrivals are still a bit suspect and I find it’s absolutely immersion-breaking to not have proper calligns used.  I use edit voicepack so I rarely have a missing call sign with default ATC.

All in all, P3D is still missing that “perfect” ATC package.

2 minutes ago, regis9 said:

I’ve bought all of the atc addons and always end up going back to default.  It has issues, but at least I can manipulate it to do what I want and it generally sounds very good.

Proatcx is better for sids and stars but vector based departures and arrivals are still a bit suspect and I find it’s absolutely immersion-breaking to not have proper calligns used.  I use edit voicepack so I rarely have a missing call sign with default ATC.

All in all, P3D is still missing that “perfect” ATC package.

So you don't see anything wrong with ATC telling you to fly 2 miles. make a 70 degree turn to the left, 5 more miles a 60 degree turn to the right, 4 miles more, a 55 degree turn to the left, etc. etc........

Get PF3. Problem solved!

37 minutes ago, vololiberista said:

Get PF3. Problem solved!

 

It was a good idea from AVSIM to force the members to post their Beta testing companies in the signature. makes such a profound statement a bit more reliable 

That is funny :)

PF3 like the rest of the suspects do not control AI so it kind of defeats the purpose of ATC in first place: what do you need it for if you are all alone in sky or for that matter have a bunch of AI aircraft that may very well run right through your aircraft. No the ultimate solution is not on the market yet. Hopefully one day!

2 hours ago, guenseli said:

 

It was a good idea from AVSIM to force the members to post their Beta testing companies in the signature. makes such a profound statement a bit more reliable 

I'm not aware that PF3 is in beta! That was a looooooooooooooooooooong time ago. And I'm also not aware of having to, having been forced as you say to include the signature. The beta test team is always active as we test new ideas and suggest corrections to the main programme. Thus making sure that PF3 is never behind. PF3 itself as I said is not beta.

19 minutes ago, mikced76 said:

That is funny :)

PF3 like the rest of the suspects do not control AI so it kind of defeats the purpose of ATC in first place: what do you need it for if you are all alone in sky or for that matter have a bunch of AI aircraft that may very well run right through your aircraft. No the ultimate solution is not on the market yet. Hopefully one day!

Until the AI engine is completely rebuilt what you wish for is extremely difficult to achieve witn consistency.