Posting here for those who don't use Discord. This was posted by the dev on Discord today:

This week we're working to give you more control over your experience. We've not yet officially announced our pricing model as we want to make sure we get it totally right before we say anything publicly. But most likely, BeyondATC will have a base cost - this gives you the program itself and a good amount of Voice Time. Voice Time is a currency that allows you to use Standard and Premium model voices. Every time BeyondATC generates a voice, this costs money, and as such each request will subtract a bit of value from your total Voice Time. Standard uses up a little where as Premium uses up more than Standard.

This caused a lot of colorful discussion in the main channel - some people don't care at all about voice quality and wanted a free voice option. Many cared a lot about voice quality, but the community seemed divided. Many asked us if we can include Windows SAPI voices as a free alternative to our AI-based high quality voices. To us, this was a step backwards. We feel flight sim has moved past these very low quality voices and we simply need something more. But this left the lingering question - how can we provide a free-cost voice to users that simply don't care about voices and just want to experience the program.

Well, after a lot of searching, we are very excited to announce we will be offering an offline voice option. This voice is generated offline, locally on the user's machine, meaning it incurs zero cost. As expected, this voice is of much lower quality than the neural-based AI voices, but it is a huge step above MS David.

Ultimately, this means if you do not want to use AI voices (besides the free amount that comes with the program) you will never have to pay another cent for BeyondATC beyond the initial price! Here's a video of all three voice tiers in action. Please bear in mind offline voices (Basic) are limited to US and UK accents.

 

 

Based on that example, I actually prefer the Basic (no cost) version the most and Premium (higher cost) the least. 😅

Glad there are a few options now.

Huge win. This was going to be a likely skip for me after announcing it would be essentially a subscription but that free voice is perfectly acceptable for me and now back to a very likely buy.

Glad we have those lower options, I do not care about hearing voices that much to pay a subscription for an addon.

This is great!

the basic free one doesnt sound that bad for a test voice. The premium sounds more like the voice you hear riding a train between terminals at the airport

Will be able to use ivona voices if se have them installed on pc?

First feedback is that I’m really not the biggest fan of the model « credits per voice used ». Have the feeling that I’ll hear coins falling everytime ATC or other traffics will talk. If BATC has my choice later, my first impression today is that I’ll go for the basic option which looks « OK ».

Overall, I appreciate the devs give us options. 
 

PS: thank @Alvega for copy/posting here at AVSIM

Edited December 12, 20232 yr by vbazillio

Is it just me or is the premium voice clearly the worst sounding of the three? And yes, I'll go for the free voice.

The basic one sounds so much better, at first it sounded like an actual guy just sitting there with his headset microphone talking. The others sound too 'professionally processed' I feel. 

Not at all sure why some of you think the first one sounds better, a few words were hardly annunciated and 15,000 sounded like the computer was having a stroke. However, I'm glad they are doing this because their subscription credits idea put this in the "never going on my hard drive no matter how amazing it is" box.

All these subscriptions are putting so many things out of peoples reach these days. It feels you can't watch or do anything without a subscription anymore. One used to be able to go without for a while and save to buy something. Subscriptions take even that option away so credit to them for providing an alternative.

I thought the standard (2nd) voice sounded best but that may be because of the "timbre" of the voice.
It is good that they have a free option since I think lots of people would be skipping this promising addon otherwise.

Are these online AI voices subscription based or can we purchase an amount of credits up front? Will ATC automatically revert to the basic voices once those credits are gone?

It will be much more interesting to hear what the voices sound like over the radio.

Great decision, I wasn't going to look at it anymore if I had to pay 10 dollars for a couple of hours of ATC just for the voices alone. Now it's back on my list, definitely.

1 hour ago, Jazz said:

All these subscriptions are putting so many things out of peoples reach these days. It feels you can't watch or do anything without a subscription anymore. One used to be able to go without for a while and save to buy something. Subscriptions take even that option away so credit to them for providing an alternative.

Agree, I absolutely loathe subscriptions in general with a passion. It's not about being able to afford it but there's something mentally draining about the idea of a subscription, another step further away from owning something. Feeling 'on the clock' about having to use the product while the subscription is active, feeling bad if you haven't used enough to justify what you paid and knowing it's something you need to be aware of, something you need to cancel and manage if you decide to not play. 

All that gets significantly worse when you move from important stuff in your life, to hobby level or occasionally used items that require a subscription. I flat out refuse to partake. 

But at least they do away with that by using a credit system, which I commend, that removes a few of those anxieties. 

Edited December 12, 20232 yr by Sethos

Absolutely the right decision, the idea of a compulsory ongoing cost had definitely put me off.

Great to see they listened.

 

G