5 hours ago, Speedbird 217 said:

Did a flight CYVR-RJAA last night and it was great. Of course there’s tiny little things here and there - it’s a simulation at the end of the day.

Arrival into Narita was a cool experience - I had all traffic sliders at 10 and it kept everyone separate. Was great hearing so many voices and accents on the radio and people being properly sequenced via speed instructions. I had to fly 190kts for the last 15 minutes as I was on the STAR behind a Hawaiian A330 and there were dozens of arrivals all merging together at the FAF in near perfect harmony. The traffic map looked crazy with aircraft sequenced properly and the spaghettis all coming together from the different STARs and departures going out.

Tower was clearing aircraft for take off in between the landing ones on 16R and told them to hurry up due to arriving traffic on final. The Hawaiian landed about 3 miles ahead of me and exited promptly but it was quite an experience not getting my landing clearance until he had fully vacated and I was maybe at 500ft. Big improvement versus before, where I constantly got cleared before even turning final.

The new local voice model is great - adds such immersion and the Japanese accent was authentic but actually understandable, unlike the old basic voices. 
Is it perfect - of course not! But it’s come a long way and the latest update is a great step forward. I hope we’ll get vectors/shortcuts on transitions and holdings soon. 

Did overall amount of departing traffic movement even at Level10 increased?

1 hour ago, RobJC said:

Ended my experiment with P2ATC. It didn’t go too well. Version 2 was better than 3 for me, but just had a lot of speech recognition issues. Might be my mic setup, but yelling at the ATC at 2am was a nonstarter. 

BTW, GSX Pro was pretty cool but I was experiencing issues with MSFS 2024 and the Fenix A320, and it just became a crapshoot as to if i could ever complete a flight. Back to BATC.  

Me too. I used v2 for a long time and loved it. Experimented with other solutions and always came back to it. Then v3 came out and it has been a disaster for me since it did. I thought about going back to v2, but just decided to move on from the product altogether.

So far, BATC is working well as a replacement. Nothing is perfect, but I find it to be working well enough and more enjoyable than flying without it.

I also sometimes use it's traffic feature and sometimes use PSXT instead.

7 hours ago, mmcmah said:

Me too. I used v2 for a long time and loved it. Experimented with other solutions and always came back to it. Then v3 came out and it has been a disaster for me since it did. I thought about going back to v2, but just decided to move on from the product altogether.

So far, BATC is working well as a replacement. Nothing is perfect, but I find it to be working well enough and more enjoyable than flying without it.

I also sometimes use it's traffic feature and sometimes use PSXT instead.

Yeah, nothing is perfect. Right now BATC is the best option I have found, until I get my butt over to VATSIM. 

17 hours ago, G-YMML1 said:

Did overall amount of departing traffic movement even at Level10 increased?

I’ve always had departing and parked at 10, I used to limit arrivals to 5 as the engine pre update couldn’t cope sequencing it and it became a mess. Now arrivals at 10 works great.

I didn’t really notice much difference for departing at 10 vs pre-update, but my airports have always been busy. I flew back from RJAA to CYVR last night and the radio was alive with frequent pushbacks and taxi instructions for traffic. I didn’t have a massively long taxi to the departure runway but I had 2 aircraft ahead of me and had to hold behind an ANA 787 when I got to the runway that was waiting for an arrival to land. When I had lined up, a JAL 737 was already at the holding point behind me and there were at least half a dozen or so aircraft taxing around to the runway (it was night, so was easy to spot them with their lights on).

Overall, departure and arrival volumes feel quite realistic now. Haven’t flown into EGLL yet, that’ll be the true test!

From their Discord. So maybe we should all give the new vectoring system another try!

**Minor Patch 1.8.1.Experimental**
```🐞 Captain's Mistake
* I forgot to flip a 0 to a 1 and almost all of the new Vectoring functionality was gated out of the last patch. Our testing process missed this because the resulting output was close enough analytically that it appeared to be working, even though it silently failed. Whoops! Sorry about that.
* The Bad News: is that this entire time the new vectoring system was only half working (no wind compensation, too many vector instructions due to the refactored system never initializing correctly, etc)
* The Good News: I swapped out that nasty 0 for the 1. All the new functionality is actually working now! The new vectoring system should now be fully operational.
* As this is still WIP issues may still be present but the hope is now all the claims made in the previous patch notes will function.

✈️ Sequencing
* Continued work on the sequencer based on user feedback.
* Planes should be spaced better when arriving at airports (spacing based on min speeds/airframe/traffic conditions)

🛫 Traffic
* Fixes to some traffic departure time issues
* Further blocked traffic fixes - crossings and takeoffs
*  Better management of player pushing back into path of traffic
Safe guard to slow traffic down if they taxi to close to aircraft in front

⚙️ Improvements
*  Map voices to tail number prefixes by country for GA / Bizjets (or any aircraft without a airline based callsign)
* Further voice parsing fixes
* Updated Airline and AIRAC data

🛬 Ops Updates 
KATL, GVAC, KMDW, VTSG, ESMT

Edited March 8Mar 8 by stefanwa

9 minutes ago, stefanwa said:

* I forgot to flip a 0 to a 1 and almost all of the new Vectoring functionality was gated out of the last patch. Our testing process missed this because the resulting output was close enough analytically that it appeared to be working, even though it silently failed. Whoops! Sorry about that.

It took me one flight to figure out that nothing had changed. So funny how placebo effect/confirmation bias led to this getting pushed through initial testing. 

Sequencing of AI did really improve and I’m impressed. Vectoring is still the same, with huge micromanagement with instruction to turn by 5-10 degreees for 90 degree full turn. 

About a month ago or so when I asked on Discord if BATC was aware of the plane's altitude because it behaves like it doesn't, and the answer was an unequivocal NO.   And the rationale was:  the pilot knows where the plane is supposed to be so there is, apparently, no need for ATC to know.   This must be why BATC directs me to 'Descend to 5,000 feet', then doesn't say another word.  My problem is I never know if BATC is going to tell me, soon, to descend to 3,000 feet or what have you.  And this often leaves me coming in too high.   I can happily follow my own navigation just dandy but the problem comes when BATC directs the descent then suddenly stops directing.  How do others deal with this?  

Timeline for release?

12 minutes ago, Noel said:

About a month ago or so when I asked on Discord if BATC was aware of the plane's altitude because it behaves like it doesn't, and the answer was an unequivocal NO.   And the rationale was:  the pilot knows where the plane is supposed to be so there is, apparently, no need for ATC to know.   This must be why BATC directs me to 'Descend to 5,000 feet', then doesn't say another word.  My problem is I never know if BATC is going to tell me, soon, to descend to 3,000 feet or what have you.  And this often leaves me coming in too high.   I can happily follow my own navigation just dandy but the problem comes when BATC directs the descent then suddenly stops directing.  How do others deal with this?  

I have noticed this too and it is a good question.  I have never flown an airplane so I like to rely on BATC announcements.  Sometimes I get them and sometimes I don't.  Is that how it is IRL?  I would think ATC would have to announce to avoid collisions, especially in IFR flying.  Because of this, I tend to follow the flight levels identified in the flight plan to ensure I don't come in too high. 

I don't rely on their vectoring (at least with the latest official build, I don't have access to the betas).  I select an approach and fly it myself with those altitudes.  

The thing is, it works sometimes.  I've had visual vectors to final with a nice angle for an easy landing.  On the flip side, I've had them keep me way too high and put me at a weird angle that would never work without circling the airport multiple times.  

The ATC never seems to care that you ignore their instructions.  

1 hour ago, CFIJose said:

Timeline for release?

I recall they said on Discord that the current experimental version would be made available for all users within a number of weeks (four to six?) if they don't discover any serious issues.

-

57 minutes ago, knich said:

I have noticed this too and it is a good question.  I have never flown an airplane so I like to rely on BATC announcements.  Sometimes I get them and sometimes I don't.  Is that how it is IRL?  I would think ATC would have to announce to avoid collisions, especially in IFR flying.

Generally, yes. The whole reason for ATC to exist is, after all, to keep airplanes apart. Two caveats:

• Real-world controllers, in addition to keeping planes separated, will at the same time generally strive to be as efficient as they can. BeyondATC doesn't always provide the same level of service, shall we say.
• The level of separation that ATC provides depends on the class of airspace that you're in. In class E airspace, for example, ATC does not separate IFR traffic from VFR traffic. IFR traffic therefore needs to keep a lookout for VFR traffic and apply see-and-avoid.

I would like it if they softened this screaming attitude:

YOU ARE NOWHERES NEAR THE ACTIVE RUNWAY !!

to something along the line:  if you need assistance I suggest you consult your charts.

and... the word "Aviate" sounds like of a bird's usage

 

Edited March 8Mar 8 by John-Allen

4 hours ago, Noel said:

About a month ago or so when I asked on Discord if BATC was aware of the plane's altitude because it behaves like it doesn't, and the answer was an unequivocal NO.   And the rationale was:  the pilot knows where the plane is supposed to be so there is, apparently, no need for ATC to know.  

offensive initials not allowed? If that is really how it went down someone should talk some sense into the developer. Of course ATC knows and has to know the altitude of the aircraft.

 

Edit:

The avsim "we are a family board" filter is about to trigger another rant from me, how flightsimmers are on average above 49 and not below age 13, and that I strongly dislike this "baptist nanny attitude" of the filter....

Edited March 8Mar 8 by Farlis