16 minutes ago, mikealpha said:

With roughly 200 Addon Airports I would certainly not move to a P3Dv6 then. 

Same for me. The fixes I wish from a P3D6 will not be done anyway but they may introduce another eye candy which is nice but not really important to me, when trying to simulate a flight from one airport to another.

I gave up hope they improve the FSX introduced ATC, UI or file management.

1 hour ago, blaunarwal said:

Same for me. The fixes I wish from a P3D6 will not be done anyway but they may introduce another eye candy which is nice but not really important to me, when trying to simulate a flight from one airport to another.

I gave up hope they improve the FSX introduced ATC, UI or file management.

I'll tell you this though: if they found a way to give us an imbedded ATC that had regional voices and SID/STAR support, that alone would be worth the $200 upgrade price for v6 for me. I agree that the probability is low though. 

I know of the ATC add-ons that support SIDs/STARs and one that has regional voices, but it's too much of a hassle getting those things set up outside the sim for each flight. I only ever have a couple hours here and there to sit in front of P3D, and I don't want to spend half of it flight planning. That's why I keep coming back to the default ATC.

That certainly is something to look forward to, I guess. ATC has really always been the thing holding us back in terms of realism. 

2 hours ago, DChockey08 said:

I'll tell you this though: if they found a way to give us an imbedded ATC that had regional voices and SID/STAR support, that alone would be worth the $200 upgrade price for v6 for me. I agree that the probability is low though.

Agreed, but as you say the probability is very low. It would be a first in flightsim history. No flightsim (FSX, P3D, XPL. MSFS) and no Addon developer has made it yet : Comprehensive ATC with FAA AND ICAO phraeseology, which would make it useful almost over the entire planet. And not to forget including AI !

Mike

Edited August 20, 20214 yr by mikealpha

1 hour ago, DChockey08 said:

I only ever have a couple hours here and there to sit in front of P3D, and I don't want to spend half of it flight planning. That's why I keep coming back to the default ATC.

Have you never tried Radar Contact? It’s free and very reliable when it comes to instructions which surely is the most important aspect of ATC. Perfect for IFR flights but it also handles VFR.

Yes, you have to work out your taxi routing at the start and end of your flight but with the donation-ware Little Navmap or the payware Aivlasoft EFB it’s hardly difficult.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/547732-radar-contact-and-jdtllc-in-transition/

You even get support from me!

1 hour ago, mikealpha said:

No flightsim (FSX, P3D, XPL. MSFS) and no Addon developer has made it yet : Comprehensive ATC with FAA AND IVAO phraeseology, which would make it useful almost over the entire planet. And not to forget including AI !

If it hasn’t happened by now it never will. Radar Contact ticks most boxes even though it’s now over 10 years old. The trigonometry skills required are huge which is why so few products are available.

But when you approach New Delhi airport and RC instructs you to contact “New Delhi control” you’re pretty close to what you desire. It communicates with other airlines too, not just you. The worst thing is an unknown airline will be addressed as “alpha” rather than “Air Whatever”. Hardly a show stopper. 😉

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If it hasn’t happened by now it never will. Radar Contact ticks most boxes even though it’s now over 10 years old. The trigonometry skills required are huge which is why so few products are available.

that's true, but it doesn't know anything about European, or better ICAO phraseology.

 

15 minutes ago, mikealpha said:

that's true, but it doesn't know anything about European, or better ICAO phraseology.

Er, yes it does. A former ATC based at Swanwick ensured that.

I tried recently again Pro ATC x and PF3 and find them unreliable in the decend and vector commands.

Always go back to RC4... too bad RC5 was cancelled it could have been great

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Er, yes it does. A former ATC based at Swanwick ensured that.

Oh, OK, I was not aware of that, haven't used it since quite some time.

I agree with all your comments for default ATC functionality but its just a wish that LM would do something here. Not sure anything will truly transpire but it has been sorely neglected.

Anyway, I thought there was a new "kid on the block" in terms of potential/future ATC solution, but as of today each of the ATC packages available has their pros and cons.

According to the previous post about this in this forum, the developer was pretty active in bringing this to fruition. Not exactly sure when though.

https://www.fshud.com/#/site/overview

 

One of the things that has put me off purchasing a 3rd party addon ATC package is they seem to have a fairly steep learning curve for all the functionality they provide plus the price in some cases is not cheap- yes I know RC is free now! 

When I looked at this recently, based on the effort required to set up, I elected to re-join IVAO, install their latest online pilot client after a long time of not using it became quite enthusiastic about it.

I thought it might be instructive for those using the default ATC to see how Radar Contact v4 vectors you on approach. Approach takes over 40nm out from your destination airport and at that point you have two options:-

1) Take radar vectors or

2) Fly the approach yourself using the relevant STAR.

I invariably choose radar vectors and on a flight from Christchurch, NZ up to Auckland today this was the routing given me by RC controllers. My aircraft path is the dotted line. At 40nm out I'm given a heading direct to the airport and around 18nm out I'm instructed to turn right onto the downwind leg.

After descending to the altitude for my final approach I'm instructed to turn onto base. Finally around 13nm out I'm given vectors to intercept the localiser. You don't receive any instruction on when to turn to intercept it - that's what your instruments are for.

Thereafter the only instructions from RC are 1) contact Tower; 2) cleared to land from Twr and 3) after landing and exiting the runway to contact ground. You're then instructed by ground to taxi to your stand.

Looking at the approach flown compared to the waypoints in the STAR there really isn't that much different.

 

32 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I thought it might be instructive for those using the default ATC to see how Radar Contact v4 vectors you on approach. Approach takes over 40nm out from your destination airport and at that point you have two options:-

1) Take radar vectors or

2) Fly the approach yourself using the relevant STAR.

I invariably choose radar vectors and on a flight from Christchurch, NZ up to Auckland today this was the routing given me by RC controllers. My aircraft path is the dotted line. At 40nm out I'm given a heading direct to the airport and around 18nm out I'm instructed to turn right onto the downwind leg.

After descending to the altitude for my final approach I'm instructed to turn onto base. Finally around 13nm out I'm given vectors to intercept the localiser. You don't receive any instruction on when to turn to intercept it - that's what your instruments are for.

Thereafter the only instructions from RC are 1) contact Tower; 2) cleared to land from Twr and 3) after landing and exiting the runway to contact ground. You're then instructed by ground to taxi to your stand.

Looking at the approach flown compared to the waypoints in the STAR there really isn't that much different.

It's amazing how other developers did not crack the vectoring logic up until now....

Edited August 20, 20214 yr by Ray Proudfoot
Image removed

10 minutes ago, Shomron said:

It's amazing how other developers did not crack the vectoring logic up until now....

Surely they must have otherwise the product couldn’t really call itself an ATC program. But as I’ve said before the mathematical skills required are considerable.

Bear in mind too that RC will warn you of other aircraft close to you that TCAS considers a threat. So not only trig for your aircraft but for many others too. It remains a programming masterpiece.

If someone forget notice - updated PMDG 777

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Surely they must have otherwise the product couldn’t really call itself an ATC program. But as I’ve said before the mathematical skills required are considerable.

Bear in mind too that RC will warn you of other aircraft close to you that TCAS considers a threat. So not only trig for your aircraft but for many others too. It remains a programming masterpiece.

It still amazes me how many different ATC programs I've tried in the last 10 years, and I still always end up going back to Radar Contact v4.  It has a few quirks, but it's really good procedurally, its menu-driven interface doesn't have the nagging issues of missed or incorrect inputs due to the limitations of speech recognition, and with the Meatwater edits to the voice files, it sounds pretty natural--much more so than any of the options I've tried that use computer text-to-speech generators.  SInce it uses the standard FSUIPC interface, it has transcended ESP-based FS versions from FS2000 thru FSX and all the variations of P3D, both 32 and 64-bit.  And now, it's free...can't beat that.

Some like to knock P3D because of the limitations it has carried through successive generations due to a long tradition of maintaining backwards compatibility, but this is one great example of where shiny and new does not translate to "better" or even "close."