FS-ATC-Chatter Feedback

[markcellis]

Now that FS-ATC-Chatter 1.0.0 is out of beta I wanted to start a thread where users could provide us feedback on ways we can make it better. I'm also interested this for X-ATC-Chatter too. That player is due to be rewritten using a more modern UI technology on X-Plane and I would like to have it match the FS-ATC-Chatter player capability as best I can.

Please leave a reply with any suggestions for improvement. Here are a few ideas we have heard:

• Automatic selection of regions based on your location
• Combine the nearest facility window with the control panel window in some form
• Have FS-ATC-Chatter use text to speech to tell you to tune to the next center frequency as you are getting close to being out of range
• Possibly add a pilot to pilot voice capability for group flights
  • We don't want to replace VatSim, PilotEdge, or POSCON with this but something that is a little lighter
  • Mostly makes sense for FS2020 where you can already see other player's planes
  • There are some solutions out there now using Discord but we are not sure how good they are
  • Feedback and thoughts on this idea would be very useful

I'm looking forward to the discussion.

Mark

 

[Silicus]

I understand you work with LiveATC.net? If so why not tune to a live feed of the current location, if it is available, if not, tune to canned audio? For me that would be the ultimate ATC-Chatter and I would pay good money for it.

I am doing that now tuning 'by hand' meaning loading the appropriate feed on liveatc while flying.

Keep up the good work!

Just my 2 cents (Canadian).

[markcellis]

@Silicus

I had discussed this idea with the owner of LiveATC.net a year ago but he was reluctant to allow that and I did not want to press him on the issue. You can see at the bottom of the LiveATC.net page that using streams in 3rd party products is not allowed.

I'm not sure why, possibly it would drive up bandwidth on his site or possibly might affect add revenue he gets. I will ask ask him again next year.

Mark

Edited November 25, 2020 by markcellis

[Burge]

working ok with MSFS & PILOT2atc I am not flying yet the patch has broken a lot of Things in MSFS2020

[F737MAX]

Love the program.
I usually use LiveATC.net for ATC in the sim, but real world traffic levels are down for obvious reasons and sometimes I sim at times when there are low traffic volumes (late night in Oceania or very early west coast USA).
This fills the gap very nicely.

A couple of ideas:

• Split the chatter by country, not just region.
  It's bizarre to hear an Irish accent (EIDW) when in Sweden, a Dutch accent (EHAM) when in Italy, or a Japenese accent when in India.
  Obviously that requires dozens more sound files, but this should be the end goal.
  
  For countries where ATC is unavailable, the closest language alternative should be used. For instance, the UK could use Irish ATC (there are so many Ryanair flights in UK airspace that it wouldn't be that unrealistic 🙂), Germany could use northern Swiss ATC, Spain could use Portuguese ATC, and so on...
  No means perfect, but a half-decent workaround, IMO.
   
• Phase of flight specific ATC commands.
  When the user is pushing back, lining-up, taking-off, receiving landing clearance, an audio file is triggered specific to the type of ATC instruction that matches the user action. The file comes from the same voice set that has been already been selected. However, there is no readback response from a flight crew inlcuded since the user should (in theory) be the aircraft responding.
  
  E.g. In file CA-AJP49311017G006.mp3 between timestamps of 00:07 - 00:11, there's a taxi instruction with the callsign left out and only ATC speaking. This is the basis for what I imagine the taxi specific transmission to the user to sound like for ground ATC in Canada.
  
  The user (having already selected a country/region) clicks on a specific box or selects from a drop-down in your app to trigger the appropriate sound file for the desired ATC instruction.

Personally, I wouldn't like the inclusion of TTS into the app. Part of what makes ATC sound so different is the speed and clipped nature of speech over the airwaves. IMO, TTS can't manage that.
TTS works better in a flight crew and cabin crew announcements add-on that I'm also using.

Keep up the excellent work!

[markcellis]

@F737NG

Thanks for the ideas. The good news is the vast majority of the mp3 files have mp3 tag data that indicate the four letter ICAO code of the facility so it is feasible that the clip play back could be prioritized to those facilities that are closest to you hopefully getting the language accent right. The challenge is that we still don't have enough clips in Europe to make this work very well. Possibly if we added the capability it might attract more volunteers to help collect clips in the countries where we are missing a good clips set.

Your idea of having some clips that just have the ATC part of the communication minus the aircraft callsign that you can activate at certain phases of you flight is an interesting one. It would take some effort to go through all the clips to build up a set of these that could be used but I do like the idea. On that same note I do think that the SAPI voices sound good if you have them installed. I have a bunch of Ivona voices I bought back when I was using VoxATC and they do sound very realistic.

Mark

[F737MAX]

1 hour ago, markcellis said:

The challenge is that we still don't have enough clips in Europe to make this work very well. Possibly if we added the capability it might attract more volunteers to help collect clips in the countries where we are missing a good clips set.

My post was already long enough that I didn't want to add any more to it.
However, I also wanted to say that I realise that some projects require effort from the FS community to assist with expanding an app's capabilities.

I've already downloaded Audacity and will devote some time to create a set of transmissions for submission and review later next month.

[markcellis]

2 hours ago, F737NG said:

My post was already long enough that I didn't want to add any more to it.
However, I also wanted to say that I realise that some projects require effort from the FS community to assist with expanding an app's capabilities.

I've already downloaded Audacity and will devote some time to create a set of transmissions for submission and review later next month.

Great. By the way if you get ambitions and want to contribute to the overall collection we do have a nominal reward program for that.

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/x-atc-chatter-project/

Mark

[Beardyman]

Hello Mark,

https://photos.app.goo.gl/aTBmNSddCuZgTDtQA

There are Center coverage gaps in the middle of Europe which is not likely in reality ( as u can see i am still within Greece borders )

Another issue is with sound - when i mute P3D sound then can hear chatter, but when unmute chatters are totally drowned by engine noise.

 

Art

[markcellis]

@Beardyman

Concerning the coverage gaps did you try using an updated COM database from P3D. Per the User Guide you can create one using the free Open Source NavDataReader tool. Here is a tutorial showing you how to do it.

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/fs-atc-chatter-tutorials/

On the sound level I assume you have the volume turned up on FS-ATC-Chatter, that is the green slider on the FS-ATC-Chatter control panel window. If you do and you are running both the sim and FS-ATC-Chatter through the same audio device then you may need to go into the P3D sound settings and drop the volume down a bit for the engine noise.

I often fly on networks like Pilot Edge so I ended up investing in the Turtle Beach TAC mixer. I love it but it was a bit expensive. It looks like two audio devices so you can have the sim sounds go to one and FS-ATC-Chatter go the other. You can then adjust the volume for each individually before it goes to your headset. The main reason I went with the TAC is I wanted Mic Monitoring. You may also be able to do something similar with Voice Meter which is a much cheaper solution.

https://www.turtlebeach.com/products/elite-pro-tac

https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/

Mark

 

[Beardyman]

Mark, regarding sound - i have disabled voice in P3D sound settings and now it is ok.

Regarding radio gaps - yes, i have created database with Navdata Reader.

 

Art

[markcellis]

@Beardyman If you are using the com database from NavDataReader and you have verified in the log file that FS-ATC-Chatter is indeed using it and you are still seeing gaps can you please tell me where you were flying and what frequency you thought you should be tuned to.

Mark

[Beardyman]

Mark, i was flying from Greece to Egypt ( please open link with screen shot where u can see my position )

https://photos.app.goo.gl/aTBmNSddCuZgTDtQA

Which frequency i should be tuned in if no any station was reported ?

 

Art

[markcellis]

A screen shot of what you were seeing in the nearby facility window when you are that position would also be very useful. What I'm interested in knowing is were there any center facilities within 100 NM of your position.

Were you using P3D's ATC? Did it tell you to turn to a specific center frequency?

Mark

[Beardyman]

In general i do not use default ATC so cannot answer, will monitor situation during my next flight and report.

 

Art