BeyondATC official poll - release now or later?

[LosGenero 12]

47 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I really don't get this community at times.

First they rightly change the developers mind a year ago, that making a program that doesn't actually controll traffic is no use.

But then a year later when that part is still in production, they want the program released prematurely in exactly the state that they said it should not be in a year ago.

Just on the promise that actual traffic control will be added later.

Yep, spot on. And then they begin whining and complaining with all the bugs and features that are missing.

[b1bmsgt 207]

2 hours ago, tup61 said:

BATC says 'resume own navigation'. Is that better?

Yup. That's what they're supposed to say!

If they just HAD to use a non-standard callout, at least they could have said "continue as FILED".

How hard would that have been?

Most of the other ATC programs do this to some extent as well. Maybe it's picky of me, but to me it shows that the devs of these programs weren't totally paying attention. It wouldn't have taken much effort to get it right and they didn't. Even something as simple as "climb and maintain" instead of "climb to" for instance. (I'm just talking US controllers BTW. I really don't fly anywhere else so I have no idea how silly the ICAO stuff might be...)

If BATC has put in this extra effort, I will love them forever!

(...or at least for another 10-15 years. I'm 72...)

 

OK, rant over. Thanks for listening.

 

Russ

[abrams_tank 7,445]

4 hours ago, Farlis said:

I really don't get this community at times.

First they rightly change the developers mind a year ago, that making a program that doesn't actually controll traffic is no use.

But then a year later when that part is still in production, they want the program released prematurely in exactly the state that they said it should not be in a year ago.

Just on the promise that actual traffic control will be added later.

To be fair, a year ago, some of us assumed the price of it would be a little more expensive. Does anybody remember when they originally announced a price of $60?

A year later, they announced that the price has been reduced to $30 USD, with basic voices free now (rather than paid like it was before). So for $30 USD, I am comfortable with no AI traffic feature yet, and it's something I can wait for.

For $60 USD, then I may prefer that it come with the AI traffic feature. But it's not $60 anymore.

Edited April 5 by abrams_tank

[Farlis 2,300]

Just now, abrams_tank said:

Does anybody when they originally announced a price of $60?

In December or January as far as I recall. And they changed it 1 month later.

So no, when the community said they want actual ATC with injection, pricing was still months away.

[abrams_tank 7,445]

Just now, Farlis said:

In December or January as far as I recall. And they changed it 1 month later.

So no, when the community said they want actual ATC with injection, pricing was still months away.

Okay.

Well, anyways, for me, that's  my thinking on it. $30 without AI traffic, but AI traffic is coming later, that's an immediate buy for me (assuming there is nothing like BeyondATC that comes for free for MSFS 2024). $60 without AI traffic, I would have to think twice about it.

[tup61 1,613]

1 hour ago, b1bmsgt said:

If BATC has put in this extra effort, I will love them forever!

Well, they have. Both for FAA and ICAO. Of course there will always be little differences compared to real world operations (due also to real world local differences) but they surely are doing the best they can. Quite a bunch of real world controllers (FAA and ICAO) are on the beta, giving a lot of input every day!

[Farlis 2,300]

What is going to be interesting is whether they will include different operations depending on the airport.

For example: At Rotterdam you ask for Clearance after you have started to taxi out and on first contact you are supposed to just name your stand, callsign, REGISTRATION, and requested flightlevel.

At some airports you have the airport authorty control ground movement on the apron, which is different from ground. On some climbouts you are supposed to contact departure on your own without handoff, on some departures you are supposed to check in with your callsign only, on others you even tell them what SID you are on.

 

This is all information that you can get from the charts, but so far we had no program that respects those little differences.

[tup61 1,613]

10 minutes ago, Farlis said:

What is going to be interesting is whether they will include different operations depending on the airport.

For example: At Rotterdam you ask for Clearance after you have started to taxi out and on first contact you are supposed to just name your stand, callsign, REGISTRATION, and requested flightlevel.

At some airports you have the airport authorty control ground movement on the apron, which is different from ground. On some climbouts you are supposed to contact departure on your own without handoff, on some departures you are supposed to check in with your callsign only, on others you even tell them what SID you are on.

 

This is all information that you can get from the charts, but so far we had no program that respects those little differences.

Hm... I think BATC will offer one kind of ICAO workflow that will offer the best possible experience on a global level. BATC will (or is able to) use local information for regular runways in use for take off and landing (also for low wind) but that's about it, I think. This information (for runways) is being/can be added one by one by users in a specific database. 

Perhaps a similar database can be added in the future for other things.

EDIT Of course BATC also has a full FAA flow. FAA and ICAO are used automatically depending on where you fly.

Edited April 5 by tup61

[Andrew2448 206]

It appears this thing is not as close to release as the poll might have made you think. From discord. A good number of weeks to go at minimum.

 

"Hi everyone, just a little update. Beta is moving ahead by leaps and bounds. We're currently working to identify and fix large showstopper bugs that once addressed will help with the overall stability and quality of the BATC experience. Once these bugs are fixed, we'll enter into a "lockdown" state where we will stop adding any new features and take a couple weeks to finish fixing any bugs that arise. Keep in mind with a product of this immense complexity, there's no way to ever address all bugs or issues, but we will work to make sure as many as we can are fixed before launching. No time frame is yet to be announced, as we do not want to be beholden to a date that can force us to release a product that isn't as ready as it can be. We'll have more information as it comes!"

[techman 174]

They all run into the same problems. Traffic is almost unmanageable, and computing vectors seems to be a challenge, while voice recongnition and speech creation seems to be solved.

 

[tup61 1,613]

8 hours ago, Andrew2448 said:

It appears this thing is not as close to release as the poll might have made you think.

Not surprising. At the time of the poll some of the basics weren't even implemented (or working properly). As I've said in the past already: people should manage their expectations a little. I also really wonder (read: doubt) if they will manage to add the traffic part within a few months (as promised) after the initial release.

1 hour ago, techman said:

while voice recongnition and speech creation seems to be solved

Seems. You said it right. During my last beta testing days (three days ago) even voice recognition had a little nasty problem.

Creating an ATC addon is one of the hardest things to do and the dev of BATC also learned that by now.

Edited April 24 by tup61

[RALF9636 1,984]

1 hour ago, tup61 said:

Not surprising. At the time of the poll some of the basics weren't even implemented (or working properly). As I've said in the past already: people should manage their expectations a little. I also really wonder (read: doubt) if they will manage to add the traffic part within a few months (as promised) after the initial release.

Seems. You said it right. During my last beta testing days (three days ago) even voice recognition had a little nasty problem.

Creating an ATC addon is one of the hardest things to do and the dev of BATC also learned that by now.

Yes, when it comes to the development of AI traffic control BATC seem to be rather years than months behind the already available FSHud, which has made some significant progress in the recent weeks. SayIntentions seems to make some nice progress as well and hopefully soon will get to developing AI traffic control too (they have to find a solution for their pricing issue of course...)

Hopefully BATC has enough resources to keep going until they can come up with something competitive and won't be forced to release something half-baked to generate some cash-flow.

 

Edited April 24 by RALF9636

[tup61 1,613]

2 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

Hopefully BATC has enough resourced to keep going until they can come up with something competitive and won't be forced to release something half-baked to generate some cash-flow.

Well, actually, the upcoming (sooner or later) initial release without traffic is of course already a sort of half(-baked) version to generate cash-flow: they are leaving the traffic out! I also think MSFS 2024 is some sort of threat because no one knows if it will come with ATC improvements or not. If they wait too long with releasing at least something they may not be able to turn all their hard work into cash at all.

The fact that they don't release anything NOW is a good thing though: that shows they do try to release something that's at least sort of working okay in most situations. (On Discord they are already starting to temper expectations by for instance saying that BATC will not work with all airports.)

Edited April 24 by tup61

[abrams_tank 7,445]

1 hour ago, tup61 said:

. During my last beta testing days (three days ago) even voice recognition had a little nasty problem.

Did you mean you are in the BATC beta?

[tup61 1,613]

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

Did you mean you are in the BATC beta?

I was, yes, up to last Sunday.