Replay of tonight's chat with Brian from SayIntentions. We spoke about AI traffic injection, PocketSky, Skynet and what's coming next over the next couple of months as SI continues to develop at a rapid pace.

It’s a cool product, but they’re charging way too much… for me. 

1 minute ago, Virtual-Chris said:

It’s a cool product, but they’re charging way too much… for me. 

Their compute cost probably still hasn't meaningfully come down. Few years yet, unless the LLM bubble pops first.

For all the $ I've spent on hardware and software since 2008 SI's cost is not unreasonable for what it delivers.

After trying it many times I still think they will never fully own the market if they don't change their voice server/provider. Voices sound dated, some of them frankly robotic. BATC free voices sound a lot better and are incredibly more immersive (accents, radio deg, etc).

I still have to try their AI living world to see how FPS compares to BATC. But since I dont care about tour guides, fire missions, etc. Don't see anything that makes me want to change ship anytime soon.

Can anyone summarize this? I’m a sales person. I’m not going to listen to an hour long sales pitch from this guy. He lays it on a little too thick for my taste.

3 hours ago, mspencer said:

Can anyone summarize this? I’m a sales person. I’m not going to listen to an hour long sales pitch from this guy. He lays it on a little too thick for my taste.

That's his shtick. Overpromising and underdelivering all the time so far.

 

And yes, I tried the program for a month in June, so I know the current state it is in.

Lots of fluff but the core, the actual ATC interaction and the reliability and accuracy is simply not up to standards.

Edited July 26, 2025Jul 26 by Farlis

4 hours ago, Juan LLobera said:

Voices sound dated, some of them frankly robotic. BATC free voices sound a lot better and are incredibly more immersive (accents, radio deg, etc).

I have to completely disagree, SI's voices sound a lot more realistic than BATCs

9 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

I have to completely disagree, SI's voices sound a lot more realistic than BATCs

Just tried BATC again yesterday. After about 5 of these interactions I went back to SI. 

“N757DT turn right heading 130”
”Turn right heading 130, 7DT”
”NEGATIVE! Turn right heading 130”
“Turn right heading 130, 7DT”
”NEGATIVE! Turn right heading 130”

OK. I’m out

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

That's his shtick. Overpromising and underdelivering all the time so far.

Sounds like another bunch in the sim world I know of… 😅

Edited July 26, 2025Jul 26 by Ianrivaldosmith

Say Intentions doesn't let me down.  Met the guys at Lelystad and they were wonderful (well of course they would be for $20 a month or whatever it is).  

But, I've got choc full airports with very little performance decrease, and I've got believable AI and ATC that guides me down and vectors me to finals pretty much every single time.  And with the other competitor products I simply don't get all those things consistently.  

6 hours ago, vp49p3 said:

For all the $ I've spent on hardware and software since 2008 SI's cost is not unreasonable for what it delivers.

Right but had you been using SI since 2008 ( I used PF3, some used RC) but if you were using their pricing model  for as long as you have been simming then your cumulative cost of SI would be north of $3,400...

I looked at it for the same lifecycle as MSFS, factored 8 years and I think SI was $1,700 for ATC...  For a full 10 years it was $2,000 

Unfortunately for my personal tastes it's the long term indeterminate costs that put me off... 

Just my opinion though.  

2 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

I have to completely disagree, SI's voices sound a lot more realistic than BATCs

Yeah, I have to agree with Tuskin38 here, I find the voices of SI far more realistic than BATC.

I have no dog in the hunt at all. I just this month subscribed to SI as I wanted to trial their traffic injection, and I own BATC (and buy premium characters) and FSHud. I also have Pilot2ATC that has been retired for some time now.

Each addon has its pros and cons and I'm sure each user will place a different weight, and have a different view, on the importance of various parts of the software. 

For me, I find the ATC voices of SI the best. I also love the fact that I can hear other players who are live on the same frequency. This is a feature you can turn on/off, but I found it quite interesting listening to. So far I have also found the actual aircraft control and engagement with the controller far better with SI. As an example, last week I had the Fenix in cruise on the way to somewhere, went downstairs, ate dinner and completly overshot my destination (didnt have pause at ToD on!). Anyway, I get back to the sim and simply ask ATC for vectors to the ILS approach for runway whatever it was, and sure enough, and ATC comes back and gives me a appropriate vectors and descent instructions.  It was like talking to a real human. I was impressed. 

That said, the traffic side of SI needs work - however they freely admit that. For me the biggest issue is not actually the sequencing etc, its the way they are implementing the taxi/parking/airport mapping. Whilst Brian has spoken at length about how they have crowd sourced the job of ensuring they have "TaxiTuned" airports that are accurate, the reality is that they are doing that for default Asobo airports and not permitting it to be done for 3rd party airports. I raised this as an issue on their Discord but it doesn't seem to get any traction. The result is that if you've got third party airports, the AI parking will be aligned to whats on Navigraph charts which may or may not line up with your third party scenery exactly (i.e. airplanes parked well off centerlines, slightly in buildings etc).

I had planned to do a proper write up of the pros/cons will videos and photos however in fairness to SI I'll give it another month or so to evolve as they are clearly calling it beta. That said, BATC has been in "Early Access" for well over a year now too....

 

 

SI has its frustrations but I find it works pretty well most of the time. Biggest annoyance I’ve run into is when it won’t allow you to land on a runway it deems as ‘unavailable’, so if it assigns you a runway with a massive tailwind then you’re stuck with it. 

2 hours ago, bennyboy75 said:

SI has its frustrations but I find it works pretty well most of the time. Biggest annoyance I’ve run into is when it won’t allow you to land on a runway it deems as ‘unavailable’, so if it assigns you a runway with a massive tailwind then you’re stuck with it. 

People complain the same on the BATC discord sometimes, the answer however is: It‘s correct behaviour (at least for BATC). Many airports in the world do preferential runway operations (be it for mountains on one side, noise abatement for urban areas, shorter taxi routes etc.), i.e. they let aircraft land in tailwinds. Not sure what you mean by „Massive tailwind“, but 5kts of tailwind is generally what most airports with preferential runways use, some even up to 10kts of tailwind. When the runway is long enough, this does not lead to any performance problems for aircraft taking off / landing.
I don‘t know if SI also has these preferential operations in a database (like BATC does), but if they do, what I said above is also true for SI.