Have They Improved The Default ATC ?

[pracines 823]

On 4/16/2020 at 8:45 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

I doubt any of the ATC programs can actually control Ground traffic.

ProATC/x does do an ok job of ground control, but its way far from good/reliable. It does not always know logical paths and sometimes it does not know taxiway names. Its not as good/consistent as default GND ctrl but that pretty much says...ugh...something's gotta be done.😩

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

9 hours ago, pracines said:

ProATC/x does do an ok job of ground control, but its way far from good/reliable. It does not always know logical paths and sometimes it does not know taxiway names. Its not as good/consistent as default GND ctrl but that pretty much says...ugh...something's gotta be done.😩

Isn't the quality of taxi guidance down to how well the AFD is built? If there are gaps in taxiway names that would confuse anything.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

On 4/15/2020 at 8:07 PM, Clipper Ocean Spray said:

On my rig, all the departing AI are getting stuck in the "clearance" state and not pushing back (stuck at the gate).  Is anyone else seeing that?

Nope, but the gal still has a lisp, with saying; "Heavy, six nine'er TOOP"  😉

[pracines 823]

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Isn't the quality of taxi guidance down to how well the AFD is built? If there are gaps in taxiway names that would confuse anything.

No doubt quality/completeness of the scenery plays a role, but whether a default airport or Flightbeam or anything in-between its the same uncertainty, sometimes good/sometimes bad.  

[Boomer 1,619]

On 4/16/2020 at 1:50 AM, Matthew James de Bohun said:

The real innovation will be with MSFS.

Pfft, M$ lost my goodwill when they abandoned FSX.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

11 minutes ago, pracines said:

No doubt quality/completeness of the scenery plays a role, but whether a default airport or Flightbeam or anything in-between its the same uncertainty, sometimes good/sometimes bad.  

In all the time I’ve been buying 3rd party airports I can only remember one having zero faults when checking the AFD in ADE. Not all related to taxiways of course but fault-free AFDs seems to be one area that developers don’t excel on.

[pracines 823]

2 minutes ago, Boomer said:

Pfft, M$ lost my goodwill when they abandoned FSX.

I totally understand. I truly believe if FSX would have been made 64bit and fully DX10 (no preview), along with some more optimizing, all could have been MUCH better. But its water under the bridge; good to remember, but only remember to prevent such blunders/mistakes from happening again. 

A good thing would be if your goodwill toward MS can be restored. If nothing else, because of the possibility that MSFS will plainly show goodwill toward you by exceeding FSX leaps and bounds at a very fair price and wonderful (within reasonable) performance on your hardware. 

This is what I wait for. 

[pracines 823]

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

In all the time I’ve been buying 3rd party airports I can only remember one having zero faults when checking the AFD in ADE. Not all related to taxiways of course but fault-free AFDs seems to be one area that developers don’t excel on.

So a logical step would be for ATC to somehow be able to either understand the AFD limitations and work around them, or develop its own method of reading scenery and whether a taxi or runway designator is correct or not it will still prevent illogical/incorrect paths.

As it is, in ProATC/x for example, say we are at Flightbeam KMSP Gate H3 The active runways is are 35 30L 30R. The logical take off runway is 35 or if need be 30L from H3. But (if you have a current airport chart for KMSP) many times I have been taxied to 30R via taxiways D S K Y W C Q F1, when C Q F1 would suffice. Even when 30L is assigned I would get C A (unnecessarily crossing the active runway) instead of C W. Makes no sense because ProATC/x is totally aware of taxiway W. In a perfect world, 35 would just be used, like in real life, but not with ProATC/x. Yes AI traffic plays a role, and ProATC/x does read and control AI, but this is first thing at 5 am with little traffic or during rush hour, its like it has its own presumption of possible traffic confliction...this is not just at KMSP. But there are times when it does a good job. Hit and miss, simply unacceptable after all this time. 

I/we really could write a whole book on this matter... 

I guess the most problematic issue we all still have is the "opposite" or wrong runway in use. Yes this can be blamed on a number of things, but its this kind of thing that ruins everything. Surely its a "top of the list" kind of problem/issue/blunder that needs attention immediately if not sooner. Decades later and nothing done at all.

[anden145 2,285]

Has there been any word on how (and what) ATC will be like in MSFS? 🙂

(sorry for being out-of-the-loop)

Edited April 28, 2020 by anden145

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

1 hour ago, pracines said:

So a logical step would be for ATC to somehow be able to either understand the AFD limitations and work around them, or develop its own method of reading scenery and whether a taxi or runway designator is correct or not it will still prevent illogical/incorrect paths.

I/we really could write a whole book on this matter... 

I guess the most problematic issue we all still have is the "opposite" or wrong runway in use. Yes this can be blamed on a number of things, but its this kind of thing that ruins everything. Surely its a "top of the list" kind of problem/issue/blunder that needs attention immediately if not sooner. Decades later and nothing done at all.

Very difficult for any program to read anything other than the BGLs direct or the files generated by MakeRunways. We looked at taxi instructions in RC but it was so long ago I've forgotten how far we got. So the existing method of RC Ground directing you to the runway used by the Ai seemed the best option. It gives you the option of choosing another.

For example I'm currently enroute on my world tour from Jakarta to Singapore and was directed to 07L for departure. But the queue was dreadful so I opted for 07R and no queue. How did I get there? EFB by Aivlasoft shows you the taxi route from the stand to the runway. Easy peasy. Highly recommended.

Yes, I also get directed to the wrong end sometimes. Generally when the winds are light. I've just learned to accept P3D/FSX limitations and work around them.

It's exceptionally difficult to write a good ATC program which is why there are so few. RC4 is not perfect but I have workarounds for the things that don't quite work as they should.

I look forward to your book.

[pracines 823]

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Yes, I also get directed to the wrong end sometimes. Generally when the winds are light. I've just learned to accept P3D/FSX limitations and work around them.

It's exceptionally difficult to write a good ATC program which is why there are so few. RC4 is not perfect but I have workarounds for the things that don't quite work as they should.

Like I say earlier in this thread; If only the likes of PBR, VR, and even Direct X would have that "it is what it is" position from the community we would have FS5 graphics still. 

The thing is we went from no ATC to pretty good ATC with Proflight 2000 (remember that, with Ultimate Airlines?), and FS2002 started a possibility, for default ATC. Since then 3pp have tried but none have been complete. We all should have the RESOUNDING question "why"!!?, rather than accept the limitation. 

Yes its not easy, but what was easy about developing the ATC and AI in FS2002? PMDG did not have an easy time developing any of their aircraft, RC was not easy, right? "its not easy" is not a good enough excuse.

Well we all know ATC is on the Top Wishlist for MSFS - I pray, and can only trust, there is a "eureka" moment of sorts at Asobo.

[pracines 823]

3 hours ago, anden145 said:

Has there been any word on how (and what) ATC will be like in MSFS? 🙂

(sorry for being out-of-the-loop)

Nothing concrete that I know of, but from the looks of the ground operation menu options, it appears it will be familiar to P3D/FSX users.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

56 minutes ago, pracines said:

Like I say earlier in this thread; If only the likes of PBR, VR, and even Direct X would have that "it is what it is" position from the community we would have FS5 graphics still. 

The thing is we went from no ATC to pretty good ATC with Proflight 2000 (remember that, with Ultimate Airlines?), and FS2002 started a possibility, for default ATC. Since then 3pp have tried but none have been complete. We all should have the RESOUNDING question "why"!!?, rather than accept the limitation. 

Yes its not easy, but what was easy about developing the ATC and AI in FS2002? PMDG did not have an easy time developing any of their aircraft, RC was not easy, right? "its not easy" is not a good enough excuse.

Well we all know ATC is on the Top Wishlist for MSFS - I pray, and can only trust, there is a "eureka" moment of sorts at Asobo.

LM improves the elements of P3D that they think their primary customers will like. We, the flight sim community, are not their primary customers. That's why ATC remains untouched in every version of P3Dand will continue to remain untouched for the forseeable future.

Yes, I remember ProFlight2000. I also dabbled with Radar Contact when you fed it an adventure. Remember those?

What's your trigonometry like? John Decker had to rely on a British mathematician to provide him with the formulae to determine where your aircraft was in relation to:-

• the holding point for the runway
• the distance, altitude and heading to other aircraft
• the distance and heading to the FAF for your landing runway.

Given you can have a table of  50+ Ai provided to you by FSUIPC and every aircraft within a certain distance has to be checked for possible conflicts then perhaps you will appreciate that it is probably the most difficult job going to develop a program that can do all that. And it's not an excuse, it's a reason. Big difference.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Ray, I have to disagree with you about the ATC. I think that the lack of improvements in this area has more to do with the difficulty of the task, rather than the needs of the target audience. Other than online ATC (which I suspect does interest LM's primary customers along with multiplayer) and VOXATC (which has no official support), none of the other ATC add-ons come close to accurately mimicking the real world. And it's not from lack of effort on the part of the developer community. Trying to simulate ATC and also control and communicate with AI aircraft is an exceedingly complex task.  This complexity is probably why we've heard that MSFS might rely on ADS B for its traffic and also why there have not been much detail provided so far about ATC in MSFS. And forget about P3d5 for a moment. ATC in XP11 is a weak spot also. And Aerofly FS 2? 😂

Anyway, it hasn't been fixed by because it's too hard to do.

 

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

@jabloomf1230, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this. LM is a defence company who, I believe, have developed P3D from the ESP code for military purposes. Hence why you have military aircraft in the sim and only token civilian aircraft. And that explains why there has been no improvements in either ATC or Ai behaviour which could certainly be improved without too much effort. They have no need for realistic Ai behaviour.

What MFS brings to the market I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.