First Impressions and a few suggestions

[regis9 4,014]

After moving most of my sim time from P3D to X-Plane, I decided to try the P2A demo as using the built in X-Plane ATC is a no-go.  Before trying it I was a bit concerned about the need to use voice control (so I thought), the size of the display on a single monitor, the use of TTS voices etc.  However, I have to say after a few flights all of those concerns are a distant memory and now I’m kicking myself for not trying this sooner!

In short, the interface and setup is well thought out and not time intensive to get a flight going, the actual ATC controlling is excellent, with enough user options to make it configurable to my needs, and with a few TTS voices installed it’s not immersion breaking, though I will probably add additional voices in the future (hopefully with some sales as they aren’t cheap!).  I did notice that some voices say my callsign and some spell it out.  The integration with X-ATC-Chatter is great (I’m a volunteer contributor to that project), and I was glad to read in this forum that assigning ATC chatter by region is a planned feature, to me that would be the icing on the cake.  Perhaps a future evolution of that could even get down to the airport/province/state level for chatter.

A few other suggestions:

-I could be wrong, but i think vectors are usually given in multiples of 5 degrees?  I’ve noticed this is not the case in P2A.

- Would it be possible when departing without a SID to have the controller (when appropriate after take off) clear you direct to your first waypoint rather than providing vectors to intercept on the ground?  (maybe this could be a selectable option or something done randomly).  Listening to real world ATC departures at non SID airports (and even some SID airports) I frequently hear “cleared direct to XXXXX on course”.

- When flying a SID/STAR, it would be nice if the controller sometimes randomly granted a direct-to in order to shorten up the procedure (again maybe a selectable option).

Again, this is a really wonderful program and is now my ATC go to for X-Plane (and P3D whenever I get around to flying in that program again).