6 hours ago, fsiscool said:

think, 3rd party addons don't have access to the sims elevation data.

They don’t need it, translated to GPS, the rest is lookup.  It’s all there, just takes some processing power … maybe that’s the real reason?

11 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Had a couple flights with BATC now.  For the most part it was fun, better than I was expecting.  But then, going into Monterey, it pulled me off route onto a heading and then gave me a "descend and maintain 2,000"... While I was over terrain that topped out at 5,000ft.  Does this program really have no understanding of minimum vectoring altitudes / terrain?  That surprised me quite a bit.  It appears the program just descended me based on distance from destination with no understanding of where I actually was.

It does, it uses the terrain data from the sim. It works quite reliably (never been vectored into a mountain myself in one and a half years), but that doesn‘t mean there can‘t be bugs / errors in the calculation.
You might want to do more flights before writing it off.

Out of interest - for how long was the 5000 feet terrain extending on your path? Was there any real risk of you actually touching it when descending idle to 2000 feet on the heading?

6 hours ago, KL Oo said:

As time progresses, I'm finding it harder and harder to accept program failings because the product has "Early Access" written on it. BeyondATC has been out for almost two years if my memory is correct and the developers have shown no sign of removing the "Early Access" tag from it. To me, continuing to flag something as "Early Access" when the public have been purchasing it for the past two years is a way of excusing bugs. Maybe thats just me.

That said, I use the program because to me, its the best of the three. SayIntentions is just as bad, charging $23 USD per month for a product thats riddled with issues under the protection of the words "is still in beta". 

It‘s the other way around - by keeping the „early access“ flag on, you signal to potential customers that there will be bugs and incomplete features, so they can hold off their purchase.
Before being able to purchase, you literally need to listen to a spoken disclaimer that there can be and will be bugs and you cannot skip this „lesson“. So it‘s not like they‘re luring people into that, quite the opposite.

I‘ve used all the big ATC tools out there and communicated with the respective developers, and the BATC devs are by far the most earthed ones. What you see is what you get, no fake promises or marketing hype stuff. That‘s why I ultimately settled on BATC (and of course also because as you say from all tools it works best at least for my IFR airliner type of flying)

15 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

It does, it uses the terrain data from the sim. It works quite reliably (never been vectored into a mountain myself in one and a half years), but that doesn‘t mean there can‘t be bugs / errors in the calculation.
You might want to do more flights before writing it off.

While that may be true the original point is also true. It does not know the official MVA that is published in various charts.

7 hours ago, KL Oo said:

To me, continuing to flag something as "Early Access" when the public have been purchasing it for the past two years is a way of excusing bugs

I understand this perspective but that’s kind of the basis of EA, I start to see people eventually get disappointed with the very thing they signed up for because it didn’t meet their own internal deadlines. EA isn’t like an alpha or a beta, it’s anywhere in the process. It is buggy and not feature complete and if people don’t want that experience then please stay away.

The other option is not having BATC for the past two years. To me VoxATC was the only other contender and that’s yet to come.

BATC is by no means perfect and I have my own fair of issues, hell I didn’t even like the idea of EA before even having traffic but alas. I thought it was way too early.

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

It does, it uses the terrain data from the sim.

I'm not too sure about that.  The sim certainly knows about the coastal range just inland of Big Sur for the descent into KMRY.  I assume the GTN750 is using terrain data from the sim as well, and since I had terrain display on, colors started to appear out of about 6,000ft.  That's when I looked down through breaks in the clouds and realized I was scraping the ridges.  

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

Out of interest - for how long was the 5000 feet terrain extending on your path? Was there any real risk of you actually touching it when descending idle to 2000 feet on the heading?

Oh absolutely.  I was only descending at about 1,000fpm since I was in the Aerostar, but had I been in a pressurized jet on a level change descent, there is zero doubt I'd have impacted terrain.  I'm almost certain I would have at 1,000fpm.  It doesn't work that way anyway; you will not be cleared below the MVA for your current location. 

The puzzling thing is that my actual route took me a little further offshore, as I was planning for an approach to the east.  But BATC turned me further inland over the HIGHER terrain in order to point me almost at the airport because it insisted, no matter how many times I requested a different approach or a different runway, that I was gonna do the visual in 1800bkn and 5sm.  😁. Had it taken me offshore it could have descended me no problem.

I've only tried one more flight with it and terrain wasn't a factor so no useful testing there.  It did drop me on a 90 degree intercept to join the FAC in IMC though, so that was cool. 🙄

I'll continue to play with it occasionally.  Virtual ATC is no priority at all for me in the sim, so it's not a big deal.  A friend just convinced me to try it. I was just genuinely surprised that a utility that seems pretty polished otherwise, with a lot of extras, could be lacking something as fundamental as terrain awareness.  Based on comments here, this doesn't sound like a one-off bug?  Oh well, we'll see if it evolves.

For all you old simmers you may well have used Radar Contact. It is 20 years old!

It had one simple but effective option. NOTAMS. If either airport has high terrain in the area select that option. It usually applies to the arrival one. You will be cleared lower IF ABLE. It’s not a mandatory requirement. That turns off the vertical watchdog freeing you up to fly the approach safely.

At 8 miles out you’ll be instructed to contact Tower.

Does BeyondATC have this feature? If not, suggest it.

I found that BATC worked reliably only where the STAR spits you out onto the final approach fix, so it would basically clear you for the STAR and then the ILS, and leave you to figure out how you wanted to fly it. Any STAR that was nowhere near the FAF (as many are in the UK) would usually end in tears. 

54 minutes ago, bennyboy75 said:

Any STAR that was nowhere near the FAF (as many are in the UK) would usually end in tears. 

Like those into Manchester EGCC perhaps?

17 hours ago, Lucky38i said:

Personally I don’t see the point of ATC if you’re the only aircraft to be controlled, but that’s just me.

For sure...but I'm one who uses BATC as a form of ambience primarily and with BATC there are some pluses in going this route:

1.  Allows me to use Premium voices for my own controller which cuts down character use dramatically, and I love their various pilot voices, especially the UK male and others.

2.  Eliminates the stuttering behavior of BATC's injected traffic, and it most certainly is here.  I use FSLTL's injection and models and AI traffic animation is very smooth.

3.  I like the spacing FSLTL uses, which improves spacing and I see more planes using it over BATC.

4.  I still do enjoy interacting with BATC's ATC it adds some immersion even though it's not communicating w/ FSLTL's traffic.   Often taxiing AI aircraft will stop moving towards me so FSLTL seems to at least have awareness of the plane I'm in.

5.  Total performance impact is about 50% of what using BATC's traffic injection is.
 

I tried FSHud and while it did better w/ the ATC piece I was not fond of its voices.  I should try it again one of these days.

Edited October 27, 2025Oct 27 by Noel

13 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

 

Thanks for chiming in, I was curious on your take. 

Yeah, in terms of voice recognition and being able to interact with it naturally, I actually found it fun.  I was enjoying seeing how concise I could make my read backs, how much "plain language" I could use, and I was impressed.  (It apparently requires you to read back the word "squawk" instead of just the digits, but otherwise, pretty good!). I really tried it as kind of a novelty, and like I say it was fun so I guess I got my money's worth haha.  I was just really amazed that it's missing something as fundamental as the ability to keep you out of the rocks.

I'll probably do the same as others have said, and dip back in from time to time to see how it's doing.  

Yes it is fun for some of that stuff.  And occasionally it does a reasonable job of getting me from point A to point B hehe.

But usually not haha!

But yes the fundamentals are lacking for some reason.  Visual approaches and instrument approaches should be THE priority - everyone wants to land at their destination safely hehe.

They could definitely FOIA the MVA/MIA's at least in the USA.  That would help a lot imo. 

The only other thing that slightly annoys me is there's no way to.cancel IFR at an uncontrolled airport.  BATC says something like "no tower services available good luck" hehe.  How hard would it be to have an option to call flight service or the overlying center/tracon to simulate cancelling?

11 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

I mean, how long is this program going to be in "early access"? Early access - an excuse for sub par work. The vectoring is garbage, most of the time. 

 

Agreed. I was flying from Sicily up to Innsbruck last week, and then told to descend to 5000ft as I was approaching the Austrian alps!! 

9 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

It had one simple but effective option. NOTAMS. If either airport has high terrain in the area select that option. It usually applies to the arrival one. You will be cleared lower IF ABLE. It’s not a mandatory requirement. That turns off the vertical watchdog freeing you up to fly the approach safely.

That's not really a clearance though.  You could be given a pilot's discretion descent, but it would still honor the minimum vectoring altitude or minimum enroute altitude for your current location.  Also, not sure why they'd tie that option to the NOTAM term... That has nothing to do with the NOTAM system?

12 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

It does, it uses the terrain data from the sim. It works quite reliably (never been vectored into a mountain myself in one and a half years), but that doesn‘t mean there can‘t be bugs / errors in the calculation.
You might want to do more flights before writing it off.

Out of interest - for how long was the 5000 feet terrain extending on your path? Was there any real risk of you actually touching it when descending idle to 2000 feet on the heading?

A few weeks ago it gave me heading 330 down to 1500' vectors for the RNAV-A into Burbank from about a mile east of the airport, basically pointed me directly at May Peak (3947 ft elevation) and would've flown me directly into it. I gave it a chance to correct before having to do a terrain escape maneuver (mainly used it as an excuse to do that in the A300)

1 hour ago, Stearmandriver said:

That's not really a clearance though.  You could be given a pilot's discretion descent, but it would still honor the minimum vectoring altitude or minimum enroute altitude for your current location.  Also, not sure why they'd tie that option to the NOTAM term... That has nothing to do with the NOTAM system?

The descent clearance was to MSA. After that you followed the headings given or chose your own using the STAR.

A solution had to be found that catered for all airports close to high terrain. Two real world ATCs decided that was as good as could be achieved.

The NOTAMs option was simply to tell RC it was a difficult airport.