Pointsoft Pro-ATC/SR

[Shomron 251]

1 hour ago, psolk said:

Out of all the new ATC Add-ons I still prefer PFE.  I personally found PF3/E to be the best of the bunch, far preferable to RC4 plus it's still available, the developer still works on it, it's cross platform and the developer is open to feedback for improvements. I haven't seen anything in FSHUD or PointSoft that surpass it and in some cases it actually seems like a step back.  Out of the original ATC Add-ons only one is still actively developed.  

PFE still has the limitations in terms of you need to enter your desired FP altitudes but handles just about everything else remarkably well.  One of those largely unknown gems in the FS world that people perceive as being too complicated when it's actually a couple of click process to set up a flight. But sadly if it requires any end user interaction at all it is too much for some LOL. 

That's my 2nd priority after RC4.

My 2 main issues with PF3 are - 

1. Vectoring is not as good as in RC4
2. You have to set the STAR in advance, although you could get a different runway depending on weather changes. It is then there is a conflict in the flight plan

 

[Shomron 251]

16 hours ago, ggerolamo said:

Ray,why did I expect no other comment from you 😉 

In the meantime, everyone knows how much you are in love with RC4 (why ever...)

You should take off your rose-tinted RC4 glasses - and be open for new things!

I've personally tried PF3 & Pro-ATC so I can compare 🙂

The rest are voice recognition based so less relevant for me

[psolk 3,040]

1 hour ago, Shomron said:

That's my 2nd priority after RC4.

My 2 main issues with PF3 are - 

1. Vectoring is not as good as in RC4
2. You have to set the STAR in advance, although you could get a different runway depending on weather changes. It is then there is a conflict in the flight plan

 

Yep, I assign myself the STAR in advance but PF3 allows you to now set a point where the STAR begins and you "follow" the STAR so if I am using Real Time Weather and it has changed I set a point for PF3 to hand me off to the STAR and give me the clearance to fly it and worst case if it assigns me a runway that is not in that STAR I can reprogram the FMC/CDU and PF3 still lets me get to the correct runway.  If you are using historical weather which is a big reason for some to stick with P3D it's a non-issue as you already know the weather... 

Vectoring has never been an issue for me personally but that's because I ensure I tweak my flightplan when I think it could cause an issue (terrain limits, very close waypoints etc)

I also love the voice sets, taxi guidance, oceanic procedures etc so for me it's still the winner with RC4 a close second and sadly none of the "newer" programs have given me a reason to switch...  (Yet)

Edited August 13, 2022 by psolk

[Rogen 1,087]

14 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The source code is not available. Maybe if some clever person can reverse engineer the VB executable it could be looked at. That would require the developer’s permission of course.

Unfortunately without the source code it would be not practically possible.

It's probably also not coded in a modular way.

Be nice thought though.

Cheers

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,944]

1 hour ago, Rogen said:

Unfortunately without the source code it would be not practically possible.

It's probably also not coded in a modular way.

I cannot fathom why John Dekker would destroy the source code. It makes no sense. He had lost interest anyway. Just make it available to whoever asked to take it a stage further. Ho hum.

It functioned perfectly satisfactorily so I don’t know why you would say that.

[Rogen 1,087]

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I cannot fathom why John Dekker would destroy the source code. It makes no sense. He had lost interest anyway. Just make it available to whoever asked to take it a stage further. Ho hum.

It functioned perfectly satisfactorily so I don’t know why you would say that.

So the source code has been lost / destroyed ?

Or it exists but because interest is lost it won't be packaged for distribution ? 

Anyway my meaning of probably not coded in a modular way, is it's most likely spaghettified, as in tangled as a big ball of spaghetti where in essence you'd have to spend ages following the strands and untangling to understand function in order to make reliable changes.

Not all code is but a significant amount of older VB code won't follow modular coding techniques for various reasons.

I know my own software devs took 5 years to untangle and replace VB code with c# .net code, where along the way managed to introduce a significant number of bugs that we're still working towards resolutions for.

Such changes never come easily.

Cheers

Edited August 14, 2022 by Rogen

[Ray Proudfoot 8,944]

5 hours ago, Rogen said:

So the source code has been lost / destroyed ?

Not lost. Deleted deliberately. I don’t know any more than that.

5 hours ago, Rogen said:

Not all code is but a significant amount of older VB code won't follow modular coding techniques for various reasons.

Unlike code for P3D or FSX code for any ATC program doesn’t require absolute speed. VB was fine. I cannot comment further on something I’m not qualified to speak about. I never saw the code.

[neilhewitt 493]

21 hours ago, Rogen said:

So the source code has been lost / destroyed ?

Or it exists but because interest is lost it won't be packaged for distribution ? 

It's not completely impossible to decompile a VB6 executable if that's all you have, though it depends on how it was built. There are some tools out there that can get back to something approximating the original source code, minus variable names etc. It would be a major job to turn that into useful code and then port it to something modern, as you mention.

But ultimately, you couldn't do anything with it without permission from the owner of the code, and from what I can gather, he's not about to give it.

[Skywolf 992]

Hey guys,

 

On their website it shows the list of airplanes, so does that mean PMDG 747 is not compatible? Can anyone confirm will PMDG 747 work with it?

 

They should also fix the spelling on the home page (hmm, maybe someone is thinking something else 🙃 )

 

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Skywolf

[d.tsakiris 418]

I also switched from RC4 to PFE and then PF3. It has it's quirks and needs some practice to be set up correctly, but it has good functionality, is compatible with MCE (as is RC4, IIRC), and it's being actively developed. But nothing is perfect, so I always keep an eye open for better alternatives...

[joepoway 241]

My two cents. I’ve tried them all and I stuck with Pilot2ATC it works with P3D and MSFS2020 and has by far the best support I have every seen. Yes every one of them has limitations but P2ATC meets my needs.

Joe