Considering the length of the changelog, I felt this deserved its own topic.

Key points to highlight:

• Completely new vectoring logic
• Completely new sequencing logic kicking in 100nm out, now including dynamic sequencing and speed instructions (can't wait to try arrival traffic level 10 now...)
• Local Voice model now features accents
• Better ground and taxi handling, including extended thresholds (hopefully that fixes the broken line up point at the ini EGLL on 09R)
• Backtracking fixes
• New logic to avoid a C/L/R stand having aircraft parked in all 3, so it only parks on L/R or C

I had the feeling they were cooking up something good, considering how quiet it has been on the update front but this exceeds my expectations. I can't wait to try this update. Looks like the v1.0 release is getting closer and they're teasing a VFR demo video in the near future! For me they're one of the top tier developers out there, great job!

Quote

Major Version 1.8.0 Experimental
⚙️ Core Refactors and Stability

* New feature: Complete rewrite of the arrival sequencer. It is a new system that uses a “compression inversion” algorithm to model non-deterministic conversion points along flight tracks. In simple terms this will sequence aircraft from over 100+ miles out to ensure they arrive nicely spaced out. The player and traffic will now receive speed instructions if the the system detects a collision based on airframe chrematistics and stage of flight. This is still a work in progress, but represents a massive step up from the previous system.

* New feature: Complete rebuild of the vectoring system (v3). This is the most advanced and complex vector system yet - taking wind, terrain, drift and reaction time into consideration to produce minimal commanded accurate vector instructions. Paths can rebuild themselves in real time to match changing situations.

* Complete rework of the Comms platform with an emphasis on stability.

* Complete rework of speech recognition; added semantic cognate token matching for much more accurate readback handling.

* Added layered fallback handling for bad microphone transcriptions - automatically grant readbacks when it’s detected the transcription was corrupted.

* Complete rework for runway queue handling; improved queuing from planes coming from multiple directions onto the same runway

* Full rework of the taxi pathing algorithm, should be much faster, more stable and produce far better results.

* Rework for taxi path phrasing, long repetitive readbacks should be much shorter now.

* Full rework for traffic data functions with a focus on stability and performance.

* Runway data completely rewritten to use mid points and non-sim data for length and extended thresholds, giving much more reliable runway positioning and allowing aircraft to take off from any entry point in an extended threshold.

* Takeoff queue handling significantly reworked - you'll be handed to tower as soon as you're in the queue, and can end up deep in the queue on busy days without issues.

🗣️ Local Voice Model

* New feature: Local voice accents added! The model is still being trained but you have the same breadth of accents now that premium voices have all locally, with no cloud features or downtime and lightning fast generation time with minimal performance overhead.

* The local voice model no longer relies on an external exe which should lead to more stability.

* UK voice mapping updated to balance male/female ratio and better segment English, Irish, and Scottish accents in line with premium voices.

* Standardized speech speeds across US, UK, and accent models with additional pauses, particularly for ATIS.

* VC++ redistributable added to the installer process for local voice support (silent install if needed).

🛫 Departure, Gate and Runway Handling

* Improved SID altitude handling [#11394807]

* Tower/Ground will no longer constantly tell you to start and stop taxi when in a queue or heading in the same direction as the aircraft in front — only triggers when converging from different taxiway directions.

* When crossing a completely inactive runway (no departures or arrivals either end), hold short instructions are removed and the crossing is included in the taxi instruction.

* Fixed backtrack runway departures being triggered when landing aircraft are on short final, with longer clearance windows for backtrack departures.

* Backtracking aircraft are now always cleared for takeoff once the backtrack is complete rather than being told to hold short.

* Departure runway selection improved based on taxi route and busyness.

🛬 Arrival and Sequencing

* Reduced approach aircraft distances that block takeoffs for better flow with faster runway clearing.

* Resume speed releases at/before IAF/IF

* Braking force after landing now scales based on proximity of following approaches so a longer runout when nothing is behind.

✈️ CPDLC

* Multiple CPDLC API reliability improvements and fixes.

🅿️ Gate and Parking

* Gate designators (empty, C, L, R) now treated as a group — prevents parking on empty/C while also using L or R, but allows L and R together.

⚙️ General Improvements

* Reworked how ground speed of traffic is calculated, using wind values at the player aircraft rather than unreliable sim data, with improved TAS calculation at higher altitudes.

* Allow scenery that only exposes one start on a runway to work (Flightbeam KDEN 25 for example).

* On departure a runway change request will be granted to any active departure runway even if our logic says it is too short for the player aircraft.

* Ensure a runway is always available that suits the player's aircraft size.

* Latest AIRAC and airline data.

🐞 Bug Fixes

* Large number of fixes for stuck traffic in taxi, on runways, and during pushback

* Finally fully fix the vectors after altitude change bug

* Fixed clearance being given when an aircraft is on very short final

* Fix AI ATC repeating calls [#22278488]

* Fix historic METAR not loading over weekends [#44165420]

* Fix traffic receiving the same instruction repeatedly [#82442706]

* Fix departure runway changes not being possible at airports without a clearance frequency

* Fix "Request departure" display hanging or not responding

* Fix aircraft sometimes being deleted because they can’t find a runway exit even though one exists.

* Fix DECTalk ATIS saying "period" after runways when arrival/departure runway set are the same

* Fix LLM query for next waypoint sometimes returning the previous waypoint

* Fix fatal crash in enroute traffic data generation

* Fix tug spline fatal crash

* Fixed altitude readbacks being rejected even when spoken correctly (FL100, FL200, FL300, FL400)

* Fixed taxi readbacks being rejected when route has separate number and letter taxiways (e.g., "2, C")

* Fixed frequency readback failing when speech recognition fuses digits with callsign

🛬 Airport Ops Updates

* Improvements for: EBCI, EFHK, ESMT, KBZN, KDBL, KDFW, KOSH, KSAT, KSDF, LFKJ, LICJ, LOWI, OMDB, RCTP, RPLL

Representing many ongoing months of stability fixes started from before the new year, we finally have the system to a place we are happy with. We will continue to iterate on these changes alongside VFR internally, which is coming along very nicely (look out for a demo video soon!). We remain committed to our goal of getting BATC into as stable a state as possible for our 1.0 release coming out of early access. This patch represents a large step forward towards that goal.

These changes will remain in Experimental for a few weeks, when we verify that they are stable, will will take all the core changes above and move them into the EA branch, replacing this branch with the new VFR (Stage 1) features. 

The program should now be much more stable than before and have many awesome new features. Thanks for your patience while we got all these new features in, we think you'll enjoy them!

For sequencing, vector and local voice accent issues encountered please log them in this forum: ⁠feedback-forum

We will be posting issues we are aware of in this build in the upcoming days to: ⁠known-issues
 

 

I was hoping that they were busy cooking up VFR, guess we'll just have to wait a bit longer for that one.

1 minute ago, Amon1973 said:

I was hoping that they were busy cooking up VFR, guess we'll just have to wait a bit longer for that one.

Sounds like it’s not miles away (few weeks of stability testing).

I’m actually very happy they’re trying to get the core engine into a polished state before adding more features.

My main gripe with this in the past has been poor and unrealistic approach vectoring (I’m UK based).  Might give it a go as it’s been a while.

Wow! 😍

The difference in traffic is very noticeable.

The traffic section of the software was my biggest grippe. Only a couple of flights, but very please by what I have seen so far.

In the States anyway, not sure how could it is in Europe.

If they ever add VFR, it would be amazing.

 

 

 

This sounds very promising.

Would be interested to hear more feedback from others on improvements to the arrival and approach phase -- to me, this has been by far the weakest point of BATC so far.

8 minutes ago, Ron Lefebvre said:

If they ever add VFR, it would be amazing.

That's the next step that is currently being worked on in the background. Once it's done and implemented I guess the moment is come for the program to exit Early Access and be considered the first full release. 

 

"New vectoring logic"

Ok, that could be good.  Previously it's been terrible.

I will give this a try today. Sounds promising! 

Nope.  Still sucks.

I did a short test flight.  KEAU to KCWA (both towered airports).  In the TBM - about 80 miles total.

Taxi and departure were ok.   I climbed to 11,000.  Then I asked for a new altitude of 9000 (filed 11,000).  I got the descent, but then it gave me a 180 degree turn opposite of where I was going.  Then it also assigned me back to 11,000 lol.

I'm still flying west back to EAU lmao...  

Maybe I'll update it next month and it will be better.  

 

 

27 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Nope.  Still sucks.

I did a short test flight.  KEAU to KCWA (both towered airports).  In the TBM - about 80 miles total.

Taxi and departure were ok.   I climbed to 11,000.  Then I asked for a new altitude of 9000 (filed 11,000).  I got the descent, but then it gave me a 180 degree turn opposite of where I was going.  Then it also assigned me back to 11,000 lol.

I'm still flying west back to EAU lmao...  

Maybe I'll update it next month and it will be better.  

 

 

You still on V1.7.7.7 EA. The new experimental version should be Major Version 1.8.0 Experimental. I ran BATC but it did not download the newer version.

I guess it is not release yet.

 

So I went into BATC account settings and was able to select "experimental" version. Early access was the one currently selected.

 

Edited February 27Feb 27 by Samaritano

36 minutes ago, Samaritano said:

You still on V1.7.7.7 EA. The new experimental version should be Major Version 1.8.0 Experimental. I ran BATC but it did not download the newer version.

I guess it is not release yet.

Oh it did download a large update.... Maybe it's not out then.

I'll try the same flight when it's out

edit: I don't even see experimental... probably have to pay more for that... no thanks after 1.5 years of a broken program.

Edited February 27Feb 27 by ryanbatc

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

Oh it did download a large update.... Maybe it's not out then.

Are you even in the experimental branch? It looks like you are just in the normal early access branch.

 

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

edit: I don't even see experimental... probably have to pay more for that... no thanks after 1.5 years of a broken program.

So you jumped the gun with your previous post and complained about the absence of improvement, even though the thread title clearly says "Experimental", which is not a public release.

 

3 hours ago, Speedbird 217 said:

Considering the length of the changelog, I felt this deserved its own topic.

 

Considering the above, I'm not even sure it was the best idea to start this thread in the first place. It seems to only invite confusion since the nature of the "Experimental" branch not being public doesn't seem to register with everybody.

So while giving a heads up on development news is welcomed, but considering that only those who paid the early adopters fee, will get it at this point and those will likely just be aware of it anyway, since they pay more attention to updates they actually paid an advance access fee for, I'm not sure it will not create more confusion than benefit to the layman user of BATC.

 

I would have waited until this update is in public branch, before making a post about it.

Edited February 27Feb 27 by Farlis

Looking forward to the update.