ATC upgrade in 5?

[Mace 1,902]

1 hour ago, mtr75 said:

How is it for GA IFR? I don't really care about VFR, the native ATC doesn't bother me for that. But for IFR it's useless. So basically I'm just looking for IFR in an Arrow and light twins. 

I'm currently flying around-the-world in a Piper Cherokee, and I'm doing IFR for every leg, and it's been fine.  I do notice a few times where ATC will yell at me excessively, but in that situation I simply ask for "Piper 4-zero-whiskey would like direct to..." a later waypoint in my plan and they leave me alone.   Also sometimes P2ATC will come up with a strange routing if you have it set to auto insert SIDs and STARs, but it's not too bad of an annoyance.  And again there I can ask for a direct-to.

It is not perfect but I haven't found any perfect ATC program for the sim.

[Kaiii3 1,967]

I am sure, that if we can get a good Interface in SimConnect/PDK it should be not to hard to improve the default ATC. Some developers are already designing some concepts but it is all very early to tell if it can/will work

[CFIJose 5,485]

28 minutes ago, Mace said:

I'm currently flying around-the-world in a Piper Cherokee, and I'm doing IFR for every leg, and it's been fine.  I do notice a few times where ATC will yell at me excessively, but in that situation I simply ask for "Piper 4-zero-whiskey would like direct to..." a later waypoint in my plan and they leave me alone.   Also sometimes P2ATC will come up with a strange routing if you have it set to auto insert SIDs and STARs, but it's not too bad of an annoyance.  And again there I can ask for a direct-to.

It is not perfect but I haven't found any perfect ATC program for the sim.

That's why I've stuck with the default with Editvoicepack mods.

I hope that LM looks at fixing the bugs and adding maybe some dps and stars. That would be pretty cool.

[mtr75 653]

1 hour ago, Mace said:

I'm currently flying around-the-world in a Piper Cherokee, and I'm doing IFR for every leg, and it's been fine.  I do notice a few times where ATC will yell at me excessively, but in that situation I simply ask for "Piper 4-zero-whiskey would like direct to..." a later waypoint in my plan and they leave me alone.   Also sometimes P2ATC will come up with a strange routing if you have it set to auto insert SIDs and STARs, but it's not too bad of an annoyance.  And again there I can ask for a direct-to.

It is not perfect but I haven't found any perfect ATC program for the sim.

What Cherokee you using for that? I'm a real world Cherokee owner and the a2a Cherokee is amazing. 

[regis9 3,999]

I've used almost all addons and for better or worse, I always end up coming back to P3D ATC with a heavily modified voicepack.  I know a lot of people hate ATC but for me it generally does the trick.  And if it doesn't, I can trick it into doing the trick 🙂

There's really three things that would make it significantly better:

1) SIDS and STARS.  Preferably read from navdata.  At minimum, let there be an option to notify ATC that you're flying a SID/STAR and to not vector me off it.

2) Better approach vectors: Stop telling me to turn 30 degrees back and forth rather than letting me fly in a straight line.

3) Altitude clearances more in advance and for larger changes.  If I'm cleared to 17,000, no need to wait until I'm at 16,999 just to clear me to FL190 when my cruise flight level is in the 30's.

For me, if these three changes happened, I'd be nearly completely happy with default ATC.  I would think these are possible within the current code.

[Mace 1,902]

1 hour ago, mtr75 said:

What Cherokee you using for that? I'm a real world Cherokee owner and the a2a Cherokee is amazing. 

It is amazing and that's what I'm using, fitted with the RXP GNS430,  reg. N8240W to be exact, I like the white with green paintjob (if you go to youtube with that registration there is a vid of the a/c, minus all of its spats).

Anyway, I started at KCGI way back in June 2019, went to KNEW to then pick up an eastbound route used by these guys:

https://indianairforce.nic.in/content/round-globe-expedition

...and so far I've gotten all the way to Guangzhou, China.  I'm 2/3 of the way back to the USA.  The Indian Air Force guys used a microlight, but I'm using the A2A Cherokee 180.   Is yours a 180 also?

Anyway, to be on topic, I'm using P2ATC all the way with IFR flight plans for each leg.   P2ATC has done well, even on the longest/most oceanic route I did, which was from Muscat, Oman to Gujarat, India.

[pracines 823]

4 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

VoxATC

I checked into this long ago and even recently - it has its own problems/limitations too....they all do, and its mainly because of the limits of ESP/FSX/P3D ATC and AI.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

12 minutes ago, pracines said:

I checked into this long ago and even recently - it has its own problems/limitations too....they all do, and its mainly because of the limits of ESP/FSX/P3D ATC and AI.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. VOXATC handles its own ATC and AI aircraft. It has nothing to do with the sim's ATC and AI traffic which must be disabled when you use VOXATC. When combined with fsaerodata and AIG traffic, the result is very realistic. I'm hoping that MSFS can duplicate this since nothing else presently does.

[pracines 823]

2 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. VOXATC handles its own ATC and AI aircraft. It has nothing to do with the sim's ATC and AI traffic which must be disabled when you use VOXATC. When combined with fsaerodata and AIG traffic, the result is very realistic. I'm hoping that MSFS can duplicate this since nothing else presently does.

Surely you're not suggesting that VoxATC has no limitations when compared to a very dynamic reality? 

For example, lets say I want to fly out of a farm Field VFR, direct to a class D airport under IFR. I would have zero contact with ATC except for optional flight following, but part of the plan is to go IFR the last quarter of the flight. Now IRL one could/would file a VFR IFR plan and ATC would know all about it. How would you file a VFR IFR flight plan in VoxATC? technically you can't, it has limitations. Technically you could just not start VoxATC until the last (IFR) quarter, but then technically VoxATC IS NOT handling the VFR flight following. But then the weather could clear at the destination making VoxATC useless/unnecessary for that specific example/situation. This is just one technical 😊 example of many I could give.

VoxATC is very good even with its numerous limitations. ProATC, Radar Contact, PF3 and even the default ATC all have their own strengths too.

In the grand scheme of things, they all lack so much after all this time.

[UAL4life 237]

Only reason to like default ATC over the various options is that the Default ATC controls the Ai.

[Mace 1,902]

1 hour ago, pracines said:

Surely you're not suggesting that VoxATC has no limitations when compared to a very dynamic reality? 

For example, lets say I want to fly out of a farm Field VFR, direct to a class D airport under IFR. I would have zero contact with ATC except for optional flight following, but part of the plan is to go IFR the last quarter of the flight. Now IRL one could/would file a VFR IFR plan and ATC would know all about it. How would you file a VFR IFR flight plan in VoxATC? technically you can't, it has limitations. 

Although I have never done that, I would think Pilot2ATC could do that.  You would simply go VFR the first part of the flight, then as you neared dest you could enter an IFR plan, which in your example would probably just be the final few waypoints, or even STAR waypoints or whatever you wanted.  ATC would then pick you up from there.  I'll have to try that soon.

[kevinfirth 1,392]

3 hours ago, pracines said:

For example, lets say I want to fly out of a farm Field VFR, direct to a class D airport under IFR. I would have zero contact with ATC except for optional flight following, but part of the plan is to go IFR the last quarter of the flight. Now IRL one could/would file a VFR IFR plan and ATC would know all about it. How would you file a VFR IFR flight plan in VoxATC? technically you can't, it has limitations. Technically you could just not start VoxATC until the last (IFR) quarter, but then technically VoxATC IS NOT handling the VFR flight following. But then the weather could clear at the destination making VoxATC useless/unnecessary for that specific example/situation. This is just one technical 😊 example of many I could give.

That's a very unique use case scenario, but one in which EVERY ATC app would fall flat on its face!  Can you give some examples of weaknesses of Vox which are handled better by any of the other ATC apps?

[Ricardo41 5,935]

Here we go again.....

Basic ATC in P3D is the same it's been for the past 20 years or so. The default ATC is actually quite sophisticated if you go beyond the first three options. 

IMHO, default ATC has (at the very least) three key problems that are never going to be addressed: 1. The back and forth vectoring when doing an IFR flight. 2. The inability to vector you when you're flying in mountaineous terrain - if you rely on the default ATC  you'll slam right into the side of a mountain. 3. The 3 or 4 default voices (this can be slightly mitigated by using Editvoicepack).

This is never going to get fixed, because it doesn't really impact the eye candy that all these simulators rely on to move units out the door. (I always found LM's claim that it is a simulator for "serious applications" hilarious - gimme a break, P3D is just as much an eye candy sim as are all the others).

I suspect that the average flight simmer doesn't really use the default ATC. He/she loads a plane at an airport, pushes the throttle forward, takes off, does a few turns and loop de loops, then abandons the sim. I doubt a majority of flight simmers even land their planes.....

Avsim members care about things that the average gamer couldn't care less about. 

I use the default ATC for added "ambient immersion" - works for me. 

Edited April 12, 2020 by Ricardo41

[pracines 823]

2 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

That's a very unique use case scenario, but one in which EVERY ATC app would fall flat on its face!  Can you give some examples of weaknesses of Vox which are handled better by any of the other ATC apps?

I'm saying all ATC apps, including Vox, fall way too short; unique cases or not.

Another case that is not really "unique" is visual reporting points. I know of no ATC app that utilizes these. Vox does a basic position report, but specific published VRP's are a very common procedure that should have been included in any current ATC app by now....but PBR was and remains so much more important than ATC to whoever. (?🤢?) 

[kevinfirth 1,392]

4 minutes ago, pracines said:

I'm saying all ATC apps, including Vox, fall way too short; unique cases or not.

Another case that is not really "unique" is visual reporting points. I know of no ATC app that utilizes these. Vox does a basic position report, but specific published VRP's are a very common procedure that should have been included in any current ATC app by now....but PBR was and remains so much more important than ATC to whoever. (?🤢?) 

Agree with you there, vox does have the capability to do VRPs, there are a couple hardcoded (EGGD for example), I asked the Dev to implement this in an XML format so it could be easily expanded and updated by users but it didnt make the final relevant 😞