I, like the rest are a little dissapointed about the ATC, however I think this was a late addition to the road-map perhaps so probably an amount of work still to be done. Didn't they mention in an update about the TTS voices being a very new addition?

I really think ATC a much tougher nut to crack than most people think. From a real-world perspective, ATC is a delicate balance of written procedure married with measured but artistic improvisation to make everything work. If Asobo is trying to program for the single player, multi-player, and AI all at once, my head starts to spin with the complexity involved to get it right. Hopefully they can take an iterative approach to fleshing out the ATC functionality and improve it over time. I would like to see recommended FAA and ICAO phraseology implemented within the appropriate region early on. TTS is going to be the key to allowing/refining this as the team learns more. The voices do sound a little robotic in the IFR video. The good news is that TTS already sounds pretty realistic in a lot of other applications. There is definitely hope that can be further refined in MSFS. I would LOVE to see voice commands as an alternative to the ATC window...maybe down the road they can leverage the engine behind Cortana to help make that feasible. (I don't even know, is Cortana any good? I don't use it on Win 10)

'We are not happy with ATC' Sums up the last 5 pages...

OK, we get it!!!!

MSFS is a lot more than ATC.. (sigh!)

Let wait for the next Discovery clip for more moans.

9 hours ago, badderjet said:

And what makes you so sure? Because I'm pretty sure we've seen what's there.

And what makes you so sure? Because I'm pretty sure we've not seen all what's there. 🙂

It was a simple, sped up flight from runway A to B. As far as I remember no detailed clearance, no ground/ramp handling, no emergency showcase, nothing on whether weather deviations are there, no demonstration of how vectors are handled and how accurate they are, no word on how ATC assigns SIDs/STARs or whether it just goes by whatever you selected in the flight plan, no input on traffic separation as in whether we will still have tons of go-arounds if offline AI is used, no information on how ATC handles your aircraft in the middle of live aircraft movements, no showcase of the ATC outside of the United States (accents, inHg vs. hPa), ...

It was a nice demo but I still have tons of questions.

14 hours ago, threegreen said:

And what makes you so sure? Because I'm pretty sure we've not seen all what's there. 🙂

It was a simple, sped up flight from runway A to B. As far as I remember no detailed clearance, no ground/ramp handling, no emergency showcase, nothing on whether weather deviations are there, no demonstration of how vectors are handled and how accurate they are, no word on how ATC assigns SIDs/STARs or whether it just goes by whatever you selected in the flight plan, no input on traffic separation as in whether we will still have tons of go-arounds if offline AI is used, no information on how ATC handles your aircraft in the middle of live aircraft movements, no showcase of the ATC outside of the United States (accents, inHg vs. hPa), ...

It was a nice demo but I still have tons of questions.

Precisely. In previous discovery episodes Asobo have been keen to show us the Wow! moments - sound, weather, airport ground traffic/personnel etc. It's the missing items in the IFR episode which lead to the many questions and doubts we're having. If these Wow! features exist why weren't we shown them?

On 6/1/2020 at 6:29 AM, Dominique_K said:

- The simulation of Air Traffic Control is  a very difficult endeavour. Artificial intelligence will allow amazing things in this department but to unlock the potential there is a need for a lot of work and intelligence (aka investment, money). I'd go as far to say that it is as massive an undertaking as the sim itself.

Asobo has chosen to  improve the existing ATC. We saw some nice things (SID/STAR, speed restrictions), and I hope the approach vectoring  will  also be better than in the old ATC and that voice recognition will be implemented. But overall Asobo's approach (pun non intended)  makes sense even if it comes short of the ideal. 

This is a great point. An extremely realistic ATC simulation really does require developers with an in-depth understanding of how air traffic control works in the real world. Radar Contact was revolutionary when it first came out for FSX (compared to default ATC), precisely because one of the developers was an individual with years of experience as a real-world controller. Even then, RC was limited in its ability to handle SIDS and STARS because of all the complexities that come with having procedures with multiple possible routes depending on which arrival or departure runway was selected. The solution they arrived at was basically to let users fly by their own navigation during a SID or STAR segment without enforcing strict heading or altitude compliance.

MSFS default ATC may well turn out to be better than the default in FSX/P3D or  X-Plane - especially with the advances in voice recognition technology - but to get an “as real as it gets” ATC simulation for MSFS is probably going to require a third-party add-on produced by developers who specialize in that area. 

ATC sucks. that's has been AVSIM a nutshell for the last 15 years.

Does anyone have knowledge of some of the most popular ATC plugins, e.g. Pilot2ATC? How does it compare to what was shown in the MSFS video.

I really don't know ATC deeply enough to have a frame of reference, but I'm interested to hear from others who have tried a few different 3rd party ATC options.

3 hours ago, nickhod said:

Does anyone have knowledge of some of the most popular ATC plugins, e.g. Pilot2ATC? How does it compare to what was shown in the MSFS video.

I don't think readers understand what they're saying here, I've tried quite a few and in 20 years no one has EVER made a functioning ATC not P3D not XP no one. The closest I've come to enjoying an ATC was RC4 which was abandon some time ago.

FS20 is the first in 20 years to have a functioning ATC that controls AI and Multiplayer with SIDS/STARS in alpha and here we are complaining about voices that sound robotic. Even with what I saw in the few minutes of IFR it's has already buried every other ATC offering in the sim industry.

11 minutes ago, FPStewy said:

FS20 is the first in 20 years to have a functioning ATC that controls AI and Multiplayer with SIDS/STARS in alpha and here we are complaining about voices that sound robotic. Even with what I saw in the few minutes of IFR it's has already buried every other ATC offering in the sim industry.

Interesting, thanks.

Speaking only about what's in the video for NDA reasons, I was pretty impressed, but I didn't know if it was due to my lack of experience with many other ATC implementations.

The voices do suck, but that's pretty easy to fix.

15 minutes ago, nickhod said:

The voices do suck, but that's pretty easy to fix.

I've watched it several times and it looks like we don't even need the voices. Also the unknown is that was this the default voice out of several.

4 hours ago, nickhod said:

Does anyone have knowledge of some of the most popular ATC plugins, e.g. Pilot2ATC? How does it compare to what was shown in the MSFS video.

I really don't know ATC deeply enough to have a frame of reference, but I'm interested to hear from others who have tried a few different 3rd party ATC options.

A day ago I went searching for vids of other implementations in action, and was not exactly blown away.......

On 5/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Captain747 said:

Of all the major improvements so far, the ATC is a major let down...its FSX all over again!(probably even worse) the voices sound robotised and very unrealistic...I was expecting a major breakthrough with a wow factor like actually as close to a human voice as possible...and I really was convinced that they would pull this off because they do have the technology (at least so I thought).

So I was prepared to be totally blown away by the new ATC...and I was blown away...only in the wrong direction.

I honestly don't understand how all other aspects of the sim are so close to reality to the point that in some aspects you can't even tell real from simulation...but when it comes to ATC its not the case.  Maybe they could have done way better in the realism department regarding atc, but it clearly is not a priority to them.

 

So...at the end of the day, I am blown away by all aspects of the sim so far...but sadly disappointed with the new act.  It simply does not do the new simulation justice. And I know that everything is still in development stage, but I very much doubt that atc will be improved on final release...as a matter of fact I know for certain that it will not be improved because clearly its not a priority to them.

 

Oh well...lets hope that in the future there is hope for this to improve with third party addons.

 

I honestly don't get it...everything else is so realistic and close to real life...why not the atc?

 

 

 

 

 

I agree with the OP. I was really hoping for voice recognition so I could talk to the sim in natural language, and I was hoping on things like the GRIPHY approach (my apologies might have that wrong...few days since I watched the video) that it would pronounce the word vs spelling it phonetically.

 

im not an IFR pilot so SIDS/STARS don’t add value for me (I know the do for folks who fly commercial jets). So doesn’t seem like a whole lot of improvement.

just my opinion!

Scott

12 hours ago, FPStewy said:

I don't think readers understand what they're saying here, I've tried quite a few and in 20 years no one has EVER made a functioning ATC not P3D not XP no one. The closest I've come to enjoying an ATC was RC4 which was abandon some time ago.

 

It's a pity John Dekker stopped development of RC - the reports of early RC5 development were interesting. I was hoping for much of the functionality of RC4 to be incorporated in MSFS ATC, as it would be far better to have this built-in, with access to full details of weather, traffic, current aircraft capabilities, etc. etc. than to require a bolt-on with only limited access via simconnect or whatever.

On 6/1/2020 at 9:32 PM, threegreen said:

And what makes you so sure? Because I'm pretty sure we've not seen all what's there. 🙂

It was a simple, sped up flight from runway A to B. As far as I remember no detailed clearance, no ground/ramp handling, no emergency showcase, nothing on whether weather deviations are there, no demonstration of how vectors are handled and how accurate they are, no word on how ATC assigns SIDs/STARs or whether it just goes by whatever you selected in the flight plan, no input on traffic separation as in whether we will still have tons of go-arounds if offline AI is used, no information on how ATC handles your aircraft in the middle of live aircraft movements, no showcase of the ATC outside of the United States (accents, inHg vs. hPa), ...

It was a nice demo but I still have tons of questions.

Ehrm, because of an IFR video that was intended to show relevant features, and nothing radical new has been shown? Because the visible ATC options equal those in FSX, down to individual menu items? Why would there be a ton of new development at this stage, with beta coming up on the horizon? With that logic I could also assume uh hey, maybe we get some full blown CPDLC, we just haven't seen it yet. Maybe we get an instructor station, maybe we can fail individual navaids down to a LOC/GS level just as we could in an FFS, maybe we get a control tower and radar module, we just weren't shown.

I'm not sure what you think a "detailed clearance" should be. A clearance mainly consists of a SID and a squawk, I don't know how much more detailed it would get, except for local differences, which were never modelled and certainly won't be. The ground services option is implemented and was visible for a moment, that's so far the only visible change over FSX. All of that is what makes me sure, to answer the question.

Edited June 3, 20206 yr by badderjet