@Fiorentoni, thanks for your post. To give you some background I was involved in the development and testing of Radar Contact 20 years ago. On the team we had two real-world ATCs who were experts in FAA and ICAO procedures plus a trig expert and Pete Dowson.

The most testing element of the programming was giving realistic instructions in difficult terrain. To that end we provided the option at 40nm out for the pilot to accept vectors or to fly their own approach using the STAR. That option is for every flight, not just the tricky ones.

It kept the purist and beginner happy as then could choose which option they wanted.

If BATC has a similar choice around 40nm out all well and good. If it doesn’t then it’s a tricky problem to resolve.

Another airport that could be tricky is GCTS Tenerife South with a 12,000ft mountain to the west but ocean to the right.

Could BATC give vectors taking that into account?

15 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

Mind my signature - but that said, I've never ever been vectored into a mountain by BATC. In the past 7 months or so it was maybe 2 or 3 times that it was too close for comfort, but I would have never crashed.

Me either,  and I fly a great deal in mountainous areas. 😉

Im starting to favor that BATC in its current form is just an AI Traffic addon with some ATC CLR_DEL, GND and TWR added in. Until they get their APP ATC working correctly, it would be nice if they allowed the option to pick a STAR and Approach in the flight setup and just followed that. I flew a short hop from Eagle to Denver where the end point of the SID was the start fix of the STAR. I got to the last fix of the SID and it gave me vectors for direct to DEN. While it was a shortcut for not having to fly the STAR it then screwed up my whole approach horribly.

SI also struggles with approaches but I feel like they have a higher success rate with it over BATC at the time for small piston planes. The big difference between BATC and SI in this area is that in SI one can cancel IFR and continue the flight VFR. It will be nice when BATC gets VFR for this reason.

52 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Fiorentoni, thanks for your post. To give you some background I was involved in the development and testing of Radar Contact 20 years ago. On the team we had two real-world ATCs who were experts in FAA and ICAO procedures plus a trig expert and Pete Dowson.

The most testing element of the programming was giving realistic instructions in difficult terrain. To that end we provided the option at 40nm out for the pilot to accept vectors or to fly their own approach using the STAR. That option is for every flight, not just the tricky ones.

It kept the purist and beginner happy as then could choose which option they wanted.

If BATC has a similar choice around 40nm out all well and good. If it doesn’t then it’s a tricky problem to resolve.

Another airport that could be tricky is GCTS Tenerife South with a 12,000ft mountain to the west but ocean to the right.

Could BATC give vectors taking that into account?

Yes GCTS is no problem, BATC can easily find vectors around the mountain. It's just much more difficult when there's mountains nearly to every side, like at LOWI. You can't also just find *some* route, because people don't like to be flying circles and back and forth until they can intercept final. So vectors have to be short and direct as much as possible. This combined with terrain creates a big challenge for any algorithm, as you correctly pointed out.

But for all that it works very well for me, as I said above. I'm not seeing some things with BATC at all that others seem to encounter regularly and I feel it has to do with the way I'm navigating. E.g. I try to follow real life procedures as much as possible, so e.g. I try to do a continuous descent (using V/S on vectors), always check the remaining distance vs the altitude to lose, adjust descent rate etc., while many others probably just pull open descent / push FLCH when ATC says "descent to 3000 feet". This might lead to me being comfortably above any terrain on the vectoring path while those others might be flying level at 3000 for 10 minutes and get much closer to terrain.
I think from the reports on Discord I see a pattern with real life pilots (like Bob) having much less problems with BATC than non-pilots because of the way they control their aircraft. That would be an explanation at least for the different kind experiences with BATC.

@Fiorentoni, thanks for that. It does help to have an understanding of how ATC operates and how to handle your aircraft during descent. Everyone can take off but it requires skill and knowledge to land.

BATC hopefully has some tutorials to assist newbies. Radar Contact does and it does help both the user and support.

37 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

But for all that it works very well for me, as I said above. I'm not seeing some things with BATC at all that others seem to encounter regularly and I feel it has to do with the way I'm navigating. E.g. I try to follow real life procedures as much as possible, so e.g. I try to do a continuous descent (using V/S on vectors), always check the remaining distance vs the altitude to lose, adjust descent rate etc., while many others probably just pull open descent / push FLCH when ATC says "descent to 3000 feet". This might lead to me being comfortably above any terrain on the vectoring path while those others might be flying level at 3000 for 10 minutes and get much closer to terrain.

This may be true - but a real controller, certainly, when issuing a descent, needs to assume that the crew may descend in an idle descent (open descent in Airbus nomenclature) and needs to make sure that the aircraft will still remain at or above the MRVA in this case. BATC should ideally do the same.

6 minutes ago, martinboehme said:

This may be true - but a real controller, certainly, when issuing a descent, needs to assume that the crew may descend in an idle descent (open descent in Airbus nomenclature) and needs to make sure that the aircraft will still remain at or above the MRVA in this case. BATC should ideally do the same.

Of course, I'm not saying BATC is working perfectly here, just trying to explain why for some people BATC seems to work perfectly while for others not. I can also confirm that the BATC devs are not targeting real pilots as their only target group 😉 There are many many many users over at Discord that are like brand new to flight simming in general, let alone ATC, so the devs are aware of that are want to make BATC as accessible as possible.

40 minutes ago, martinboehme said:

This may be true - but a real controller, certainly, when issuing a descent, needs to assume that the crew may descend in an idle descent (open descent in Airbus nomenclature) and needs to make sure that the aircraft will still remain at or above the MRVA in this case. BATC should ideally do the same.

That's not how ATC works. A controller gives you instructions based on the realities of the airspace, speed, separation, sequencing, etc. A controller is not concerned how you get to where you were commanded to be so he is not making any assumptions on your idle decent, whether you need to use spoilers, need to add throttle, or anything else that may upset your well laid plans on the flight deck. There is no ATC controller in the world that is concerned that the instruction given will cause you not to decent at idle decent. 

Mike T.

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Mike T

4 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’m struggling to understand your reply. I asked “Has BATC nothing to tell it an airport has high terrain and special procedures need to be applied?

Classic example would be Innsbruck - LOWI.”

You didn’t give me an answer. Plan a flight from Munich to Innsbruck (EDDM-LOWI) and see if you see any options in the arrival airport for telling BATC is in a mountainous area.

Huh?  What are you talking about?  'See if I see any options in the arrival airport?  What I can say is I live in the Colorado Rockies and frequently fly in and out of mountainous terrain and have never heard anything from anywhere re "telling BATC is in a mountainous area".  I guess you are saying it's not going to happen.

23 minutes ago, Mike T said:

That's not how ATC works. A controller gives you instructions based on the realities of the airspace, speed, separation, sequencing, etc. A controller is not concerned how you get to where you were commanded to be so he is not making any assumptions on your idle decent, whether you need to use spoilers, need to add throttle, or anything else that may upset your well laid plans on the flight deck. There is no ATC controller in the world that is concerned that the instruction given will cause you not to decent at idle decent. 

Mike T.

That's correct, but a controller would also make you step down and not give you a descent to 3000 feet and just hope that you don't descent too quickly and crash into terrain. Or he would see you're closing on terrain and adjust your descent rate accordingly etc.

5 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

So far I think FSHud is the winner in terms of the ATC instructions.

I agree thus far in my use of both FSHud and BATC.  And bonus AI traffic totally smooth always in FSHud.  And BATC clears me yesterday from cruise altitude to 4000' when the arrival airport is at 4021'?  And thru somewhat mountainous terrain?  Yes, I have no trouble getting anywhere "as PIC" using my own navigation but I thought ATC plays a bigger role than that.  Part of my issue is I really don't fully appreciate how and what ATC is supposed to be doing. 

14 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

hat's correct, but a controller would also make you step down and not give you a descent to 3000 feet and just hope that you don't descent too quickly and crash into terrain.

I'm not real aware yet of how ATC is supposed to work.  With this statement you made, doesn't this seem very 'wrong' for BATC to be instructing?  Or...is the role of ATC more focused on simply avoiding traffic interactions, instead of looking at terrain issues etc?

9 minutes ago, Noel said:

And BATC clears me yesterday from cruise altitude to 4000' when the arrival airport is at 4021'?  And thru somewhat mountainous terrain?

 

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Noel

23 minutes ago, Noel said:

Huh?  What are you talking about?  'See if I see any options in the arrival airport?  What I can say is I live in the Colorado Rockies and frequently fly in and out of mountainous terrain and have never heard anything from anywhere re "telling BATC is in a mountainous area".  I guess you are saying it's not going to happen.

Ray is referring to options in Radar Contact you could configure before each flight to tell it how you wished to fly the departure and approach. There is no equivalent in BATC.

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by flyingscampi

5 hours ago, ConstVoid said:

bug

Critical error you mean?

49 minutes ago, flyingscampi said:

Ray is referring to options in Radar Contact you could configure before each flight to tell it how you wished to fly the departure and approach. There is no equivalent in BATC.

Thank you! @Noel, please take note.