ATC Needs Complete Overhaul

[b1bmsgt 206]

On 1/31/2021 at 4:43 PM, sd_flyer said:

ATC in MSFS is inherited from old FSX and have a lot of known problems. However,  you should understand MSFS is not FAA certified ATC ICAO sim. If you don't have enough ATC in real life, you can fly online services like Plot Edge. I haven't see any FAA certified ADT, BDT that would meet your ATC expectations, so I'm clueless why do expect it from MSFS?

I don't think the OP, or any of us expect an FAA certified ATC. What we would like is an ATC system that doesn't do and say stupid s%$t!

 

Just sayin'...

[Manny 1,293]

Eye candy only? is totally worth it IMO. The rest are just bonus. 🙂

I remember Mathias of Aerosoft had to pay a lot of money for the Lukla Area, Mt Everest and its immediate vicinity.

I have never enjoyed flying in the Himalayas  between Katmandu and VIDP and Paro etc. With such amazing Terrain.

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by Manny

[Noel 4,496]

3 hours ago, sd_flyer said:

More voices for sure. Correct phraseology depending on part of the world for example:"radar contact" in US, and "identified" in Europe. Biggest problem with ATC right now is incorrecassignmentnt of runway vs wind direction. Unless I preprogap my landing ATC 96% assign runway with tail wind LOL

This does not sound difficult!  Nor does having ATC direct descent by evaluating your IFR plan and chosen approach for whatever runway.  The logic can look at the highest point in the route and keep you above a mimimum clearance etc.  I don't really care if it's perfect at but the glaring defects like this and the silly directing you into downwind runways need to be fixed--they aren't deficiencies, they are outright defects.  I think they just quit on it and I think it's likely they will go back and fix these glaring defects.  It would be nice if you could request a short final and a few other actions but I will be okay w/ just fixing the glaring defects.  It would be fabulous if some driven developer wanted to create an ATC add-on that was seemless and looked at your active flight plan just like the default ATC does mostly.  And it would be beyond fabulous if all of the phrases were recorded w/ minimal seemless concatenation required, like old FSX's ATC.

[Manny 1,293]

OK ... approach to Katmandu, ATC gave me good and reasonable step down through the valley until the last descend altitude, I went down quickly with the speed brakes and almost got me killed and my passengers. OK ATC could do with some work. LOL 🙂I need do this approach again and bide by the rules, the last 1000 feet need to be between 500-1000 feet/min descend right? Maybe that's why I almost hit the mountain.. Hmmmmmmmm. In any case, that's why we the PIC are paid the big bucks to take control and save the day like I just did. 🙂

Edited February 2, 2021 by Manny

[sd_flyer 6,039]

20 minutes ago, Noel said:

This does not sound difficult!  Nor does having ATC direct descent by evaluating your IFR plan and chosen approach for whatever runway.  The logic can look at the highest point in the route and keep you above a mimimum clearance etc.  I don't really care if it's perfect at but the glaring defects like this and the silly directing you into downwind runways need to be fixed--they aren't deficiencies, they are outright defects.  I think they just quit on it and I think it's likely they will go back and fix these glaring defects.  It would be nice if you could request a short final and a few other actions but I will be okay w/ just fixing the glaring defects.  It would be fabulous if some driven developer wanted to create an ATC add-on that was seemless and looked at your active flight plan just like the default ATC does mostly.  And it would be beyond fabulous if all of the phrases were recorded w/ minimal seemless concatenation required, like old FSX's ATC.

If  AI ATC follow published routes and do not drop you below MEA , MSA OROCA that would be helpful

[Manny 1,293]

1 hour ago, sd_flyer said:

If  AI ATC follow published routes and do not drop you below MEA , MSA OROCA that would be helpful

For the most part it does.  The occasional, climb to 16K when you are near approach at 5K, is not that common. But it does happen. In my experience 8 out of 10 flights, default MSFS ATC is just fine, that does not happen. IMO, Its acceptable for me and Its much ado about nothing. I am the PIC and I want to say "unable" (I mumble that to myself), ASOBO or MS can send me me an e-mail asking me to give them a call when I do that. Ha Ha!  As a PIC, I need to be assertive to establish my ultimate prerogative to the ATC.  Remember, when the Pilot is wrong, the Pilot dies. when the ATC is wrong the Pilot dies. So the the FAA has given the ultimate authority to the PIC not to the ATC.  🙂 PIC may have to give a written explanation after he/she lands  but these decisions are theirs to make. Not the ATC while on the air. Use your Authority. There have been some severe accidents when some Latin American pilots have not been assertive and blindly obeyed NY ATC and gotten passengers killed. I believe they were intimidated by the sound of the NY approach.   (Another discussion topic about culture and perceived power of "authority" )

Try flying to Katmandu VNKT from Paro VQPR using approach RNAV 02 to VNKT. See how good the MSFS default ATC handles this dangerous approach? Katmandu is a valley, more like inside a volcano surrounded by Mountains to the North, East, West and the South. Except the South has a pass which this approach expects you to go through. Fly the A320 Neo. Follow the IFR Rule, as and when the ATC gives you the Step Down altitude, and the last few are like 1000 feet, descend from 6,200 to 5,200 feet etc.. as per IFR Rules, you cannot descend faster than 1000 feet per min. I suggest 500-750FPM descend rate. Keep the terrain map on your aircraft  just for safety. DANFE is the IAF thence, its stepdown through the valley, follow the default ATC directive. 🙂 I flew this approach from VIDP to VNKT on the 787 and after I landed, I was in awe of the amazing job MS/ASOBO team has done. Yes. I was in awe of the default ATC in MSFS. Not kidding. In spite of its minor flaws here and there.

you may want to install the amassing VNKT Freeware airport for good measure.

After your fly that approach and the amazing work in the MSFS Default ATC directive, tell me with a straight face, the default ATC Sucks!

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Manny

[Phantoms 800]

3 hours ago, environmental_ice said:

 It was a hassle clicking around for things and 2 monitors are a must if you wont use voice otherwise its not to pleasant of an experience.

The thing I hate about 2 monitors being a must for anything you have to interact with regularly (such as ATC) is it takes focus away from MSFS on the main monitor. That means that you will have to click once when the mouse is back over MSFS on it's monitor and then again to do what you want.

I don't fully understand why it's this way as the items on your second screen don't require clicking twice to do something on them when moving over from MSFS, Only MSFS does this when moving over to it after having clicked something on another screen (or window).

[MadDog 353]

On 2/1/2021 at 2:44 PM, RandallR said:

A controller out of the southeast USA by the name of Marc Schrier developed an ATC script for Fly!II called Cleared 4 Takeoff.

Hey, that's me!  How are you doing Randall?  It's been a while!  Thanks for mentioning Cleared 4 Takeoff... I thought nobody remembered it except me.  Unfortunately after Richard passed away (may he rest in peace... what a great guy!), development of my script and FLY! in general also faded away quickly.

Oddly enough, I started writing a new and more comprehensive version of C4TO about 3 years ago... but this time for X-Plane using Lua/SASL.  I intend to eventually release the app commercially; but I plan to add a few more features and still need more voice sets (only have 2 at the moment).  Since Microsoft has recently "stolen all of X-Plane's thunder" 🙂, I'm also looking at options for porting my app over to MSFS.  Since FSUIPC supports Lua, that may be possible in the future; but I don't think the current versions of simconnect/fsuipc provide all of the callbacks and functionality that I would need (I still need to do more research).

If anyone is interested, I uploaded a demo video of C4TO very recently.  The first part mainly focuses on the interface and getting a clearance; but I'll try to upload a second video with more in-flight features soon.  I won't provide a link since I believe Avsim frowns on developers openly promoting products in the forums; but you should be able to find it by searching for "Cleared 4 Takeoff Demo" on Youtube.

[Tuskin38 6,469]

On 2/1/2021 at 1:47 AM, Adamski_NZ said:

This makes ATC pretty well 100% unusable, IMHO - and puts MSFS 2020 firmly into the "game" genre, as opposed to "Sim".

So I guess FSX and P3D are also games? It's the same ATC system, mostly. The MSFS does give transitions instead of just telling you keep turning certain directions on approach.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tuskin38

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

What you chaps need to do is badger Asobo to complete the SDK. Then John and Pete Dowson can finalise MakeRwys and FSUIPC so Radar Contact v4 can operate as it does now in P3D and FSX.

Yes, it’s not perfect but it gets the important bits right and won’t issue ridiculous instructions.

[Kilo60 660]

On 2/1/2021 at 6:47 PM, Noel said:

This does not sound difficult!  Nor does having ATC direct descent by evaluating your IFR plan and chosen approach for whatever runway.  The logic can look at the highest point in the route and keep you above a mimimum clearance etc.  I don't really care if it's perfect at but the glaring defects like this and the silly directing you into downwind runways need to be fixed--they aren't deficiencies, they are outright defects.  I think they just quit on it and I think it's likely they will go back and fix these glaring defects.  It would be nice if you could request a short final and a few other actions but I will be okay w/ just fixing the glaring defects.  It would be fabulous if some driven developer wanted to create an ATC add-on that was seemless and looked at your active flight plan just like the default ATC does mostly.  And it would be beyond fabulous if all of the phrases were recorded w/ minimal seemless concatenation required, like old FSX's ATC.

Agreed!

 

Enough with the World Updates for now and get to work on ATC!

 

(I know there are separate teams, but still... Very Frustrating!!!)

[Kilo60 660]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

What you chaps need to do is badger Asobo to complete the SDK. Then John and Pete Dowson can finalise MakeRwys and FSUIPC so Radar Contact v4 can operate as it does now in P3D and FSX.

Yes, it’s not perfect but it gets the important bits right and won’t issue ridiculous instructions.

 

RADAR CONTACT is not an Option for me for these documented reasons...:

 

• The manual is out of date in places. Version 4.3 is new and perhaps an update is in progress. The developer is working on version 5 already. Hopefully the manual is part of that.

• RC does not issue specific taxiway routing instructions. It’s more like, “Taxi to and hold short of runway nn.” Have an airport diagram handy.

• There is no longer any progressive taxi assistance available.

• The voice messages are more rough, choppy and patched than those of FS ATC. It’s obvious in both programs that the messages are created by linking audio files of the individual elements, however RC’s are not as smooth as the MS ones. On the positive side, the number of voices and the variety and content of the messages is far beyond what we’ve been used to. In no case are the messages garbled or difficult to understand.

• At a field where there were some Air Force types in the queue ahead of me, ATC referred to some as “Air Force (number)” and to others as “Alpha India Romeo Foxtrot Oscar Romeo Charlie Echo (number)”. I’ve heard similar things enroute with certain airline names with ATC spelling out the name phonetically.

• If communication with AI is in progress and you switch frequencies, the in-progress message plays out to the end rather than being cut off. Ditto when pausing.

• You cannot use the 1 and 2 suffixes for pushback to turn the AC left or right. The numeric key-presses are intercepted as RC menu selections. This may apply to other things that use the number keys as well. (doors, engine selections?)
  ADDENDUM- It turns out that on the initial RC screen there's a button labelled "Keyboard". It's a utility that allows you to re-map most of the keys used by RC to something else. The suggestion I saw on the RC commercial support forum on AVSIM suggests re-mapping "1" and "2" to Ctrl-Shft 1 and Ctrl-Shft 2 respectively. RC's menu would recognize those and that would leave 1 and 2 free to be used by the MS commands that expect them. That's one problem put to bed!

• AI chatter is sometimes very staccato without any hint of a delay between the ATC voice and the AC voice or vice versa. Separating them with a short pause and a microphone “pop” would improve them.

• There doesn’t seem to be any allowance for “pop-up” clearances filed in the air. If so I haven’t found it.

• Some company call signs do not seem to be in the RC vocabulary, e.g. I heard flights referred to as “Mike (number)”. When I looked up the number in the T2005 traffic editor, they were “Merican”. A capability to add and index your own WAV files for this would be good, though matching the voices and accents would be problematic.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Kilo60

[Drumcode 1,893]

AI and ATC have always been the neglected children of MSFS and P3D going back to 1997 when I first got involved in simming. It is my hope that this will change once Asobo get their stuff together with all the bugs. 

[environmental_ice 238]

4 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

 

RADAR CONTACT is not an Option for me for these documented reasons...:

 

I tend to agree with most however I would still take Radar Contact right now over default ATC and I am not holding my breath ASOBO will ever put any attention to it. People that play XBOX arent into the immersion reality of aviation like us. Only a real aviation nerd is going to fork over 1000+ for a gaming computer to run MSFS. Also Do you need realistic taxi instructions at airports with fake taxi names anyways courtesy of ASOBO?

 

Its not going to happen but what we really need is PRO ATC-X for MSFS....

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

1 hour ago, Kilo60 said:

RADAR CONTACT is not an Option for me for these documented reasons...:

I notice in your longish list of reasons none included not getting you to your destination. Surely that’s the primary reason for investing in a ATC program.

The enunciation of “Mike” for Merican is because that airline didn’t exist back in 2006. Too many years have passed for those to be added and a few of those who recorded voice sets have died.

Taxi instructions were being worked on when JD pulled out and with the source code not available what you have now is all that is available.

Many people remain happy with RC4 despite its shortcomings. The reason there are so few ATC programs available is because the skills required to integrate the mathematics into the program is very complex and only a few have those skills.