Hi,
 

As someone who used BATC for a month, then subscribed to Say Intentions for 1 year, then recently started using the current iteration of Beyond ATC, I thought I'd give my views in terms of a comparison between the two main FS ATC competitors.

Let's get the elephant out of the room straight away. My departure from the SI subscriber base wasn't exactly run of the mill!   I posted on AVSIM to advise other SI users about the service being down. In that post I vented my frustration with SI and made a remark about wanting to cancel my subscription. Brian, the CEO of SI was sent a copy of my post and refunded all payments I had paid, cancelled my subscription and marked my account "Adminstrative block" – preventing me from re-subscribing and effectively banning me from the service.

If you feel you can't trust me to make any valid comparisons which can leave that matter aside, best move on now.  I will aim to focus on actual experience with both services, although clearly I will be expressing opinions.

SI uses AI to a high degree. It is an 'open channel' and you can ask ATC almost anything and (usually) get a cognitive reply. (On finals I once asked Tower to put the kettle on and was politely asked to focus on the task of landing). The negative side of such as open AI channel is that there is less consistency and SI could often behave irrationally.

BATC feels more scripted towards the standard phases of an IFR flight. The downside of that is that the ATC experience can feel more repetitive, from flight to flight. The positive is that BATC sticks to the expected and the relevant. It's more focussed on the task but your communication has to be what is expected by the program, for your given flight phase.

Both programs have traffic injection. SI's traffic injection is more customisable; in that you can select only airliner traffic, only GA traffic, or both. BATC simply has 'traffic' settings, that will inject both types of traffic. In SI, the ground and apron is filled with AI aircraft. However, in my experience, the vast majority of this traffic doesn't actually go anywhere. Even with traffic set to max, take offs and landing seemed low in number.  BATC injects a good range of realistic traffic and there seems to be much more activity; they make more calls to ATC and generally head off somewhere. I found the ground behaviour of the BATC injected traffic superior to that of SI.  In SI, there was often aircraft taking off on the non-active runway – often while you were taking off on the correct runway!  AI aircraft would often taxi in the opposite direction to your taxi clearance, and would happily just drive straight through your aircraft.  An update was made a few months ago so that if you're user aircraft gets too close to an AI aircraft, the latter will disappear. In effect, this is jarring and detracts from the immersion. Again, I did prefer that in SI you can select only GA aircraft, whereas in BATC it's either traffic or no traffic.  In all other areas I found the BATC traffic more stable and predictable in its behaviour and frequency.

Suitability for new vs experienced simmers;  SI has videos on YouTube. The actual SI videos are dull but there are videos from other content creators that are better and will get you to the basics.  This applies for BATC too, but additionally, BATC has an integrated 'Tutorials' feature, that can be used without connection to MSFS.  It's aimed at very new users and can drag on but it is good enough to get anyone using the product, through the basic flight phases.

IFR vs VFR – this is an easy one. BATC does not provide VFR ATC at this point (although it's on the road map). SI provides excellent VFR ATC in the US, but the quality really diminishes if you fly in the UK, the rest of Europe or the other continents of the world. There are lots of limitations and frustrations with SI if you're flying VFR outside of the US. Most procedures just use the US system but with some 'replaced' vocabulary.  In areas where 'flight following' doesn't exist, you can still ask for flight following and it will use that vocabulary back to you, which isn't realistic. However, as SI does provide VFR and BATC doesn't yet, this area is a clear win for SI.

Voices – in terms of pure AI voice quality, I'd say both products are comparable. Both offer good, convincing voices.  One irritating issue with SI is that voices will randomly change. You ask ground for clearance and hear a certain voice with an appropriate accent.  An AI (or multiplayer user) will immediately ask for their clearance and a different voice - often with a completely random accent - responds. Then it's back to the original voice! Also, with SI the regionalisation system is not stable.  You can be in France hearing convincing French accents and then out of nowhere you'll get the ever-common US accent on, say, Tower.  Flying in the UK, the number of British-accented controllers was very narrow.  Around 50% of the controllers would have one of the US accents.  This could be quite the immersion breaker.  I've never in my IRL flying heard a North American accent on UK ATC. According to SI, there are dozens of them, along with a few strongly-accented Gujurati gentleman. In BATC the stability of regionalisation is much better. Some of the basic (non-premium) voices in BATC will mispronounce certain words. "identifeed" being one example as pronounced by the German controllers. SI suffers the same issue but less commonly. It would drive me mad in SI when a controller with a perfect Manchester accent just could not pronounce 'radar' (he'd say 'rada'), and 'ident' became 'eedent'.

Features – both packages offer a decent depiction of ATC. The difference is that BATC contains only the core ATC and traffic injection.  Over the last year, SI has been bloated severely with all sorts of gimmicks; being Santa's F/O, having TwoToneMurphy as your Co-pilot, having a Cabin crew lead who does nothing but tell jokes... the list is endless. In most cases, you could 'turn off' or not use these features, but in other areas they were thrown at you. One example was when checking in with a controller, they'd sometimes be way too informal and over-friendly. Me: "Centre, Speedbird 101 is with you", SI controller "Hiya, how's it going?".  😕 

Vectoring – ok I'm not going to beat about the bush here. In my experience, BATC is far superior to SI in this area.  SI would give you a departure clearance with "Radar vectors"... but never give you any vectors!  You take off on runway heading and wait for a further vector. Nothing comes so you ask for a vector and AI responds "You're already on vectors" and will not give you an actual vector.  This issue has improved a little in the last few month.  SI's ILS vectors used to be excellent.  In the last few months – in the UK at least – you will now never get an intercept vector for the ILS.  What you get instead is "Speedbird 101, proceed direct to CF02, cleared ILS approach".  The issue is that fixes like "CF02" are FMS-generated fixes. DTOs are never given to a "CF" fix by ATC, because ATC cannot even see them.  This was raised on the Discord and the only response was to "file a bug report" in the SI UI each time it happens. That would be almost every IFR flight with an ILS approach then.   I've found Departure vectors much better in BATC, and it actually feels far less 'scripted' and formulaic that in SI.  In SI, you may depart with vectors and at a very predictable point will be told to go direct to your first fix.   In BATC this evening, I took off from Luebeck in Germany, bound for Westerland.  I was vectored for around my first 30 miles. When I asked for a Direct (something SI almost always predictably says yes to), I was told "Remain on vectors for the time being, due to traffic".  As I was by this point adjacent to the first fix, ATC then intelligently gave me a direct to the second waypoint.  Very impressive and all feels more realistic, immersive and less clunky and 'tacked on' than SI's vectors.  I've touched on another issue with SI; it will almost always say 'yes' to anything you ask for.  Ask for any DTO on your flight plan, and the answer is yes.  Ask for any altitude and it's a yes.  

Settings – SI used to have a simple UI but, as more and more non-core features have been added, they have just had to move almost all settings to  their web portal.  This means, if you want to change your cabin crew, call sign or almost any other setting, you need to click a button on the UI that launches their website, log in and then make the changes in your account! I've seen me going through this process 5 or 6 times in some flights – a real immersion breaker. SI now has 'profiles' but they are entirely linked to the ICAO aircraft code. So if you fly a "B738" with a range of airlines, your B738 profile will need to be accessed every time, to change your call sign etc.  It's become a huge faff. The BATC UI isn't particularly attractive and feels a little 'dumbed down'.  But making changes to settings is infinitely quicker and easier to do. There are of course, far fewer settings, as BATC sticks only to the core ATC function.

Cost – BATC comes with a one-off cost of $29.99. It is a remarkably good value price, for ATC and traffic injection. This one-off cost provides 'basic' voices (and 50,000 included credits for premium voices) but they're really not too far away from the Premium voice. Additional 'credits' can be bought, if you want to use Premium voices.  The Premium voices sound a little more natural than SI's voices, but it's a close call. Both are good.

SI costs $18.95 per month. The cost difference is therefore dramatic. They say that a typical software lifespan is 3 years. In other words, you'll get 3 years on average before paid upgrades or newer version typically apply.

The cost comparison over that 3 years is therefore:-

SI          $682.20

BATC    $29.95

At the beginning of my SI subscription period, I was happy to pay the cost. Over time, as I became more frustrated with instability and the direction towards gimmicks, I became more aware of how much I was paying for the service  in the long term.  

When I bought BATC, I really wasn't expecting much. A one-off cost of $29.99, versus a recurring cost of $18.95 per month ..... surely it can't be very good? Well, in truth, I have been blown away by BATC in the short time I've started using it.  It is more 'scripted', but if ATC is only one small part of your overall flight sim session, it offers so much for so little.  I find BATC 'lower maintenance' to take care of during the flight. You can have your F/O take over the ATC with one quick click on the UI.  In SI, you would first need to set up a F/O character on the intercom settings, then apply this to your profile!  I will say that BATC is not perfect. There are issues and areas that aren't so realistic yet. But I haven't found anything wildly frustrating. 

So there we are. If you made it to the end, you're a better man than me! I hope this provided some interesting comparisons. I would like to thank Brian from SI, for funding my purchase of BATC. 🙂

Edited January 13Jan 13 by JYW

very similar to my experiences with the two. i exclusively use batc now. i am not a rw pilot, i dont rage if ATC gives me a wonky instruction and shout 'this isnt realistic enough'! batc does what i need, traffic injection is pretty good, voices are fine, keeps improving. has a good UI too. i am glad you tried the latest iteration of batc and hope it does what you need. 

I actually bought BATC on a bit of a whim this past weekend.  Was having more and more trouble with default ATC (along with the usual).  I have never used SI, and honestly, the sub price point is kind of a non-starter for me.  I just don't get the time to fly as much as I'd like, so a subscription model doesn't work great for me.  Not that I can't do it, but I'm not using it as much.

Anyway I only have limited time in BATC, but I was really impressed.  Setup was simple and I really like how you can set up everything to auto.  The traffic injection seemed to work really well, although I made the mistake of flying the Bonanza into KSAN and running into too much traffic, but that's probably realistic.

I did fly into KPSP (Palm Springs) which has mountains all around.  I got told to go around (due to a small issue of a 737 right in front of me), but that's where things went sideways.  I was told to climb to 11,700, not impossible with the Bonanza, but I'm not a jet.  From there, the vectors back for approach seemed to want to fly me into a mountain.  I just kind of did my own thing and landed and the ATC just ignored me.

Another question I had, it vectored me in for a visual approach, but I was nowhere near lined up with the field.  Not sure if it expected me to fly a normal traffic pattern, or if it just didn't line me up properly for the straight in.  I think I will just ask for an IFR approach even if I can see.  One thing I notice is that it can speak slowly and clearly, but I think it can easily get backed up and be late with things.  

Either way, as a sim only pilot, it is a huge upgrade and I'm impressed.  KPSP was probably a poor airport to test as it is busy and lots of terrain around.  

Again, I'm new with this so still learning how to use things.  For the price I was impressed, and I am planning on dropping another $30 to get the higher quality voices.  

Edited January 13Jan 13 by kerosene31

I would mention FSHud as a major competitor for ATC programs as well.

I have flown with BATC and FSHud. I prefer FSHud. 

5 minutes ago, Aristoteles said:

I have flown with BATC and FSHud. I prefer FSHud. 

Does FSHud do voice interaction?  Ie. can you speak to it?  It's a program I've never checked out yet but a lot of people say good things about it (especially around the traffic injection).

   

19 minutes ago, qqwertz said:

I would mention FSHud as a major competitor for ATC programs as well.

I would agree, but I've never used FSHud.  I was only comparing the two major ATC programs that I've used.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 13Jan 13 by JYW

Good comparison. I like both BATC and FsHUD and use both as the mood strikes. Since they are both one time purchases, it’s not a big deal to keep one sitting on my drive for months while I use the other. 
 

I tried SayIntentions for a couple months but it never felt like a cohesive experience. It’s just random .. if it was cheaper and improving, I could see giving it a shot. But it’s very expensive, and seems to constantly get worse. Still, if you like it, and it makes sense to you spend $200 or more a year .. I guess you have a use case that makes it worth it? 

5 minutes ago, JYW said:

Does FSHud do voice interaction?  Ie. can you speak to it?  It's a program I've never checked out yet but a lot of people say good things about it (especially around the traffic injection).

Sure, there is voice interaction , it is a very convincing ATC experience IMHO. The traffic injection works better than BATC too.   BATC wins in the UI department, with a more polished interface, but FSHud has a great taxiing guidance window both for arrivals and take offs. 

Edited January 13Jan 13 by Aristoteles

3 minutes ago, JYW said:

Does FSHud do voice interaction?  Ie. can you speak to it?  It's a program I've never checked out yet but a lot of people say good things about it (especially around the traffic injection).

Oh yeah, it’s very similar to BATC in functionality. The ATC functions are arguably better, the voices are not as good. But again, BATC ATC is fine and fshud voices are fine. I think both programs will converge towards each other - BATC will improve its ATC and traffic handling, FShud will get better voices .. 

Just buy it and try it out. It’s a great program. 

I have both, BATC and FSHUD-2.0 Beta, now with Airport Config Manager.    IMO, FSUD in terms of Take-off Vectoring and Landing Sequencing with busy Air Traffic, FSHUD is the clear winner here.  BATC has the better AI ATC voices that sound natural and clear even with the Basic Voices. However, their traffic control/vectoring leaves a lot to be desired.  But I think it is improving along as BATC is still in Early Access where FSHUD has been in development longer before BATC.   

Can't say the vectoring of FSHud is particularly convincing compared to BATC. 

It has a huge tendency to micromanage and the having to correct itself constantly. 

BATC is better in just getting you on final in 3-4 steps. 

FSHUD here.  Got BATC & FSHUD.

Happy Landings

 

Granted BATC give lots of warning about it being an Alpha product. Bought it purely from the many great reviews from reputable sim channels.
Biggest waste of money on a sim product ever. I've uninstalled it for now. I am hopeful for the future, as the product has so much potential. But the way it is now? It really isn't great. They need to get back to basics instead of focusing on traffic injection and the other gimmicks.

Also their discord is probably the least helpful FlightSim related discord there is.
I've never tried SI and don't intend to. I think the only viable future for AI ATC is for Microsoft/Asobo to actually spend some time and resources on it. Not some 3rd Party outfit.

Between BATC and FSHud (I don't own 2024 version), which one has the most extensive amount of traffic?

12 minutes ago, G-YMML1 said:

Between BATC and FSHud (I don't own 2024 version), which one has the most extensive amount of traffic?

FSHUD does not come with its own traffic. It either uses the live traffic, or it can use any AIG Package you have installed to populate the skies.