BeyondATC Voice Tier

[Fiorentoni 4,353]

29 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

Did AI write all that? 😆

It‘s more likely Virtuali itself has been an AI all the time 😄

[orchestra_nl 957]

12 hours ago, bendead said:

I could be wrong, but I think that if we received so little update and news about improved ATC from MS/Asobo for 2020, is maybe because they are preparing something big for 2024 with Copilot AI owned by Microsoft and more.

Lack of news most of the time just means there is nothing new. I am hoping that ATC will be overhauled for MSFS2024 but I am trying not to set myself up for disappointment.

[Bond 128]

Those voice samples are really good...

Edited February 21 by Bond

[michdb8 46]

msfs in 3 years didn't care about ai traffic behavior the only thing they focus was in injection by models in last update but ai traffic still the same dumb as FSX and in all devs Q&A  they always talk about improve model matching never about behaviors so I'm really dub in msfs we going to get  any improve in this area so expect the same dumb go around all the time with default traffic 

Edited February 21 by michdb8

[threexgreen 3,156]

Not sure what the issue is. Premium AI services were always going to be an extra cost, they've been open about that from the start. AI also isn't cheap. The community made it clear they didn't want a subscription, and the developer has listened to that. The premium voices still need to be financed however, so they have to come up with something else.

The way it works now is you pay only for what you actually use, which is hands down better than a monthly fee regardless of how you actually use it. You also have a choice in how much you want to invest, if at all.

If you don't want to shell out for premium voices, you get everything else for only the initial price which is admittedly high. But even in offline mode you get AI and the program is still objectively much better than other ATC programs such as P2ATC or PF3, as even the offline voices are a vast improvement over everything we have and it actually handles traffic rather than just talk to it (or not even that in case of P2ATC). The only competitors are FSHud and VoxATC. The former works but still has issues and is very heavy on performance. The jury is still out on the latter, like BATC, although VoxATC doesn't utilize AI from what I know.

How well it works remains to be seen, but if it does as well as promised I see it as the main ATC application even in offline mode. In that light, the premium stuff is an extra goodie you can opt into or not.

Edited February 21 by threexgreen

[Redge 245]

2 hours ago, Bond said:

Those voice samples are really good...

The quality of the speech and sound is very good, and they sound like real people, but my beef with every BATC demo that I've seen so far, is that the ATC voices just don't sound like real air traffic controllers. The intonation is more like a conversation with someone in a cafe, than the short, sharp instruction over the radio from a controller trying to get a point across in as few words as possible (same for other aircraft around you) I think I must be in the minority with this viewpoint though, because I haven't seen many other people mention it since BATC was announced.

Last week, Brian of SayIntentions was discussing voice quality on discord, and mentioned the fact above, that it's very hard to train the voices to sound like actual ATC. He's done an admirable job on his tool (they sound a lot more authentic to me), but when discussing other accents, he played an early prototype of one, which everyone responded very positively to. His reaction was along the lines of, "Wow! You guys have really low standards... This doesn't sound anything like ATC yet".

[jon b 2,054]

1 hour ago, Redge said:

The quality of the speech and sound is very good, and they sound like real people, but my beef with every BATC demo that I've seen so far, is that the ATC voices just don't sound like real air traffic controllers

 

1 hour ago, Redge said:

Last week, Brian of SayIntentions was discussing voice quality on discord, and mentioned the fact above, that it's very hard to train the voices to sound like actual ATC. He's done an admirable job on his tool (they sound a lot more authentic to me

Yes, I’d have to agree with this entirely.

Regardless of the quality of the voices, vectoring and interactions with other traffic this is still beyondATC’s fly in the ointment, it’s just quite sounding like ATC really sounds, I hope it can be sorted somehow in the future.

Sayintentions isn’t perfect, I’ve been told to contact ground while still on approach for example , it’s only in beta so can’t criticise too much, but I have to say, the flow of words and articulation in the radio transmissions are pretty much spot on to real life ATC radio.

Edited February 21 by jon b

[Ricardo41 5,959]

Sorry to say this, but all three voice options sound robotic and lifeless. 

[Kaboki 437]

8 hours ago, F737MAX said:

Did AI write all that? 😆

 

Plus, AI doesn't always do what you want it to. Apparently, SayIntentions.ai can get lost in a ChatGPT style conversation, which is exactly what you don't want for an ATC product.

If you want it to stray off you can do that, but if you stick too your flightplan and talk the lingo it does what its supposed in a much more belivable way than any previous ATC program I ever tried in a flightsim, and I tried them all trough the years. This new way feels much more like talking to a real ATC because it actually understand what your saying, without you have to mimic a robot yourself too get the speech recognition to work out.

So for me this is exactly what I want in my ATC product, is it perfect no, but 1000x better than what I had before:).

The expence of it I dont mind because it has gotten my intrest up in flightsim 10 times. So its just an investment for me in my hobby, I just subscribed to navigraph too because of this new ATC:). Also we as pioner customers can bring prices down later for all others sitting on the fence:)

Edited February 21 by Kaboki

[Drumcode 1,907]

5 hours ago, orchestra_nl said:

Lack of news most of the time just means there is nothing new. I am hoping that ATC will be overhauled for MSFS2024 but I am trying not to set myself up for disappointment.

You'll be disappointed 100%.

[Drumcode 1,907]

1 hour ago, Ricardo41 said:

Sorry to say this, but all three voice options sound robotic and lifeless. 

I agree with you in a lot of your posts, but not on this one. All of the products out there are phonetically stitched up garbage and this one sounds as fluid as I've heard so far. It's by no means perfect, but it does sound the best out of all of the products out there. Fluid speech in the ATC has always been a pet peeve of mine ever since I started simming in 96 and this one finally comes close to the real deal for offline flying. 

[Bond 128]

From the samples we can see that the premium voices are faster than the others.

[eslader 1,814]

1 hour ago, Drumcode said:

I agree with you in a lot of your posts, but not on this one. All of the products out there are phonetically stitched up garbage and this one sounds as fluid as I've heard so far. It's by no means perfect, but it does sound the best out of all of the products out there. Fluid speech in the ATC has always been a pet peeve of mine ever since I started simming in 96 and this one finally comes close to the real deal for offline flying. 

I think the important thing here is not what the voices sound like. That's not why we all hate the default ATC. We hate the built-in one because it's a digital moron. Land at an airport that's anywhere but dead flat terrain for a 70 mile radius and it climbs and descends you over and over... and over again until you get mad and turn the radio off. And that's just one of the less egregious stupids we all encounter on a daily basis with default ATC -- or at least, we would encounter it if most of us hadn't given up on that dumpster fire long ago.

 

What I'm looking forward to with BATC is a much smarter ATC experience, and preferably one that can understand what you say to it better than older products like P2ATC/etc. If it can deliver that, I'll pay the $60 without blinking. I don't need the voice subscriptions and I think it's great that the devs listened to the feedback and came up with an option where we don't have to pay for them.

 

[antic81 57]

I was quite impressed with the Premium voices that are sampled on their site. The standard ones were ok, the free ones were what I would expect, better than a few years back, but not something that I will use. 

I do like the idea of switching during the flight as well. A few years back a started a thread with offering my thoughts on what I would love to see available as far as traffic and ATC for MSFS. I would say that this appears to tick all the boxes. But...proof will be in the pudding. I am old enough and wise (ish) enough to never fully jump into something until I see some honest reviews after a new product is released. 

[Bobsk8 12,845]

42 minutes ago, eslader said:

I think the important thing here is not what the voices sound like. That's not why we all hate the default ATC. We hate the built-in one because it's a digital moron. Land at an airport that's anywhere but dead flat terrain for a 70 mile radius and it climbs and descends you over and over... and over again until you get mad and turn the radio off. And that's just one of the less egregious stupids we all encounter on a daily basis with default ATC -- or at least, we would encounter it if most of us hadn't given up on that dumpster fire long ago.

 

What I'm looking forward to with BATC is a much smarter ATC experience, and preferably one that can understand what you say to it better than older products like P2ATC/etc. If it can deliver that, I'll pay the $60 without blinking. I don't need the voice subscriptions and I think it's great that the devs listened to the feedback and came up with an option where we don't have to pay for them.

 

PF3 has been working correctly for years. No roller coaster approaches.