Greetings everyone! With the arrival of Flight Sim 2024 just around the corner, we thought we would give a quick update as to compatibility with the new sim, the state of traffic and announce our new trailer.

BeyondATC MSFS 2024 Compatibility

Beyond ATC is fully compatible with MSFS 2024 in both the EA and Experimental versions. All ATC functions work as expected and for Supporters using the experimental build traffic control is fully functional. Being compatible means that it will work as it does in 2020, we have not yet been able to take advantage of any new features like Microsoft provided traffic models or test aircraft specific to the new simulator as they were not included in the development builds of the simulator, that will only be possible after the full MSFS 2024 release tomorrow. For traffic users, it should be noted that both FSLTL and AIG (and we expect Just Flight to be the same) have indicated that there may be model issues in the new simulator at launch, this could be sound issues, animation issues or missing components (like missing gear on the ground). These issues WILL affect the models when used with BATC too but they are not BATC issues and will require fixes either from Asobo or the respective modelling teams once they have been able to review the 2024 release. It's important to remember that Microsoft focused on only providing devs that sell products on the marketplace with access to the early builds of 2024. Freeware devs like FSLTL and AIG have not had the chance to fully review their products until the same time as the general user community.

Traffic Update

We are quickly nearing "feature complete" on our custom traffic injector. This has been the result of thousands of hours of work from different disciplines across the board. We built our injector from the ground up using a 3D engine to calculate every movement of our planes, from how they bank and pitch to taxi/airport/runway logic, traffic data sourcing and sequencing logic. We don't use any of MSFS' native injection code, but decided to take on the herculean task of rolling our own. This meant a lot more work for us up front, but was a huge benefit that we weren't bound by any of the nonsensical and often silly constraints imposed by MSFS' injector that continues to be present in FS2024 (like "doing donuts" or disappearing randomly, to name a few). As we continue to squash bugs and polish the flow to a spit shine we can look back and say this effort was well worth the investment. We expect to be moving traffic out of alpha into beta soonish, at which point we will push all traffic functionality to the standard EA build for all to use as a free update. We still won't give an exact date, but we're getting much closer with each passing day.

New Trailer

With the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 our old trailer is now extremely outdated. To show off the latest and greatest BATC has to offer we made a new, updated trailer that keeps with the original's light-hearted teasing of the state of the industry while putting all the new features front and center.

Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIHfDxwbtqA We'll see you all in Flight Sim 2024!

cool, cant wait to purchase this product when it releases.  really looking forward to it after meeting him in Las Vegas.

Is the traffic injector free to basic users?

Do you need AIG or FSLTL models to see the planes with the correct liveries? or does BATC have its own liveries?

3 minutes ago, Axis3600 said:

Do you need AIG or FSLTL models to see the planes with the correct liveries? or does BATC have its own liveries?

You may not NEED it since the sim should have its own model/livery matching with very good model matching and so so livery matching (they have licensed like 20something of the airlines last time I heard). 

So if you use it out of the box, it'll have limited coverage, but it'll work. If you want semi-full coverage, you'll likely have to install FSLTL/AIG/Just Flight.

I imagine the community will start churning out liveries for the default AI planes pretty quickly tho, assuming that it works as it always did. 

1 hour ago, Axis3600 said:

Do you need AIG or FSLTL models to see the planes with the correct liveries?

Yes

1 hour ago, Abriael said:

You may not NEED it since the sim should have its own model/livery matching with very good model matching and so so livery matching (they have licensed like 20something of the airlines last time I heard). 

So if you use it out of the box, it'll have limited coverage, but it'll work. If you want semi-full coverage, you'll likely have to install FSLTL/AIG/Just Flight.

I imagine the community will start churning out liveries for the default AI planes pretty quickly tho, assuming that it works as it always did. 

Not at launch at least.

BATC doesn’t scan for all aircraft you have installed, they just look for a known folder names in your community folder, so it would need to be updated to add whatever the folder name Asobo’s new models use.

Edited November 19, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

18 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Not at launch at least.

BATC doesn’t scan for all aircraft you have installed, they just look for a known folder names in your community folder, so it would need to be updated to add whatever the folder name Asobo’s new models use.

That seems to be a very strange implementation, especially considering that it supports aircraft from very different providers (FSLTL, AIG, Just Flight). It'd have to list all the folders for all these providers, which would be extremely inefficient as aircraft wouldn't be recognized if their providers added new ones or changed anything in the folder structure.

AI Aircraft in MSFS can be spawned simply by calling the ICAO code of the aircraft + the ICAO code of the airline or the specific registration for special liveries and specific cases. The simulator will look for that combination among the aircraft that have a bit in the files that enables them to be used for AI and spawns whatever matches it. 

If they did it differently, it's on their side. 

 

43 minutes ago, Abriael said:

That seems to be a very strange implementation, especially considering that it supports aircraft from very different providers (FSLTL, AIG, Just Flight). It'd have to list all the folders for all these providers, which would be extremely inefficient as aircraft wouldn't be recognized if their providers added new ones or changed anything in the folder structure.

AI Aircraft in MSFS can be spawned simply by calling the ICAO code of the aircraft + the ICAO code of the airline or the specific registration for special liveries and specific cases. The simulator will look for that combination among the aircraft that have a bit in the files that enables them to be used for AI and spawns whatever matches it. 

If they did it differently, it's on their side. 

 

I know that’s how they do it, because AIG is removing ‘beta’ from the folder name BATC had to update to find it again.

They don’t look for specific folder names inside the root folder, just the root folder’s name itself.

Edited November 19, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

2 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

I know that’s how they do it, because AIG is removing ‘beta’ from the folder name BATC had to update to find it again 

That's an extremely weird/inefficient implementation and I have no idea why they may have done it.

But I also have no idea why they decided not to go with dynamic real-time traffic, so eh. 

Edited November 19, 20241 yr by Abriael

5 minutes ago, Abriael said:

But I also have no idea why they decided not to go with dynamic real-time traffic, so eh. 

They explained why when they announced how they were doing traffic.

Also how can something be real time and dynamic?

Edited November 19, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

3 minutes ago, Abriael said:

That's an extremely weird implementation and I have no idea why they may have done it

I’m guessing so they don’t accidentally grab non-ai aircraft 

11 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

They explained why when they announced their traffic.

Also how can something be real time and dynamic?

I know they explained it. Doesn't mean I understand the decision (let alone agree with it). But to each their own. Unfortunately, that ruled out BATC for me and was a big disappointment. Sad panda. 

I'm not sure I understand the question though. Real-time traffic is by its very nature dynamic. The solution they used is not. It's basically an automatically-generated schedule that does not change regardless of conditions. 

9 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

I’m guessing so they don’t accidentally grab non-ai aircraft 

You literally can't because all aircraft have a bit in their files that tells the sim whether they can be used by AI or not. 

Edited November 19, 20241 yr by Abriael

6 minutes ago, Abriael said:

that does not change regardless of conditions. 

They probably could if they wanted to, AIG does it.

Not weather delays (though AIG will ‘close’ an airport if the weather is bad enough) but different types of delays like mechanical issues.

Edited November 19, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

Just now, Tuskin38 said:

They probably could if they wanted to, AIG does it.

Unless something changed since the last time I checked, AIG uses schedules. They just update them once in a while. That's still not dynamic.