Flying using BATC tonight it was the first time I got instructed to reduce speed on approach (first reduce speed to 180kts or less and then second reduce to minimum approach speed), which I'm guessing it did to increase spacing between me and the aircraft ahead. Very impressive. Gatwick was nicely populated with accurate airlines in the right terminals and gates too.

I did an IFR flight from KBKV to KEYW this morning and it's still not working for me when I ask for an approach change. It works best when I just leave it alone. I keep asking for a new approach just to see if it's going to adapt to my request. So far, I've had a better result by just waiting for instructions and doing what I'm asked to do. I've also been forgotten about. Too many times, I've had to become the controller. I hope that this is fixed before they move on to VFR.

17 hours ago, CFIJose said:

Is it me, or did they speed up their speech? 😀

I find the local voices very pleasant to listen to. They sound better to me than FSHUD's voices.

The premium voices sound great, but I'm testing with local voices until the add-on matures.

FSHud made some changes, voices are now much better!

4 minutes ago, Andreas79 said:

FSHud made some changes, voices are now much better!

I've been watching FSHUD's new videos they've been releasing.  The voice quality has improved but it's still nowhere near the fidelity of BATC voices.

15 hours ago, JYW said:

I noticed this today!    I heard some ATCs in BATC that sounded like they were being played at 2.0x normal speed! 😄

Especially the local voices are speeded up a bit (which imho is much more realistic than the premium voices, they talk more like a TV news anchor). And also: they speak according to traffic. If there's not much to do, they speak slower than when there's a busy airport (or sector). 

Edited April 8Apr 8 by Watsi

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm concerned. How can they move on to VFR (EA) when IFR still needs to be fixed?

If I can't request a decent or an approach change without the add-on cutting me off, this program is useless to me.

I'm imploring the dev team to please fix the IFR portion before moving on to VFR. We have waited a long time and patience has been our norm.

I'm really worried that this add-on will never reach its goal if they don't keep their main objective or their word.

Can someone with the latest (EV) confirm that IFR is working?

Thanks.

34 minutes ago, CFIJose said:

Can someone with the latest (EV) confirm that IFR is working?

As far as I know the only difference with experimental version right now is, that VFR is in there. 

16 hours ago, CFIJose said:

I did an IFR flight from KBKV to KEYW this morning and it's still not working for me when I ask for an approach change. It works best when I just leave it alone. I keep asking for a new approach just to see if it's going to adapt to my request. So far, I've had a better result by just waiting for instructions and doing what I'm asked to do. I've also been forgotten about. Too many times, I've had to become the controller. I hope that this is fixed before they move on to VFR.

Doing it yourself is sadly the only option.  What I do:

-Figure out my top of descent myself.  When I hit it, request descent.  BATC usually ignores this, but will at least tell you a runway.  It is here I start descenting and pick an IFR approach into the runway they gave me.  

-I fly to the initial fix on the approach myself (while still descending).  If BATC gives me any reasonable instructions, I might follow them.  I almost never get enough time to descend, but sometimes the vectors seem ok (sometimes they are basically pointing me at the same fix anyway).  

-Fly the approach and land myself.  Maybe I get handed off to tower for landing clearance, sometimes not.  If they haven't talked to you in awhile, they lost you.  Occasionally they will pick you back up, but not often.  

KEYW is a typical problem airport.  I'm guessing you're flying GA?  The STARs for Key West don't work well for low and slow GA traffic.  So BATC seems confused without the STAR.  If you can actually find a STAR to fly, it works much better.  

Edited April 8Apr 8 by kerosene31

13 minutes ago, kerosene31 said:

If you can actually find a STAR to fly, it works much better.  

Yes that is one of the remaining shortcomings. It relies too much on published approaches and often does not know what to do when there are none or if they are conditional.

For example when you fly into Stansted it will always give you the transitions after the STAR. But the charts clearly say that these transitions are only to be flown when there is no ATC available. So it should be vectors after the STAR instead.

Same at Schiphol. The Transitions are for night flights only. During the day you should get vectors after the STAR ends. But BATC will give you the transitions all the time.

Edited April 8Apr 8 by Farlis

1 hour ago, CFIJose said:

I'm imploring the dev team to please fix the IFR portion before moving on to VFR. We have waited a long time and patience has been our norm.

I'm really worried that this add-on will never reach its goal if they don't keep their main objective or their word.

It would really really help if everyone relied on the information we share through our official channels. Cap already addressed this exact concern in the first VFR video released alongside the announcement of the feature:

“It’s worth mentioning that we will split up the team for this feature set. Between the three of us, two will be moving on to VFR while the other will be firmly planted in the world of bug fixes and stability. So please do not make the erroneous assumption that our endorsement of one feature comes at the expense of the rest. That is not the case.”

Reference of the quote:

Given that, it’s really difficult to understand why there’s still an assumption that IFR has been sidelined. We’ve continued to deliver significant updates on that front, including improvements to traffic injection and management, voice recognition and voice models, and more. Whether or not every update resolves all existing issues, the ongoing work clearly demonstrates a strong commitment to that side of the software.

Suggesting that IFR development is finished or deprioritized isn’t accurate. It overlooks both the effort already invested and the substantial work that is still planned to further improve the experience.

2 hours ago, CFIJose said:

I'm really worried that this add-on will never reach its goal if they don't keep their main objective or their word.

It's the story of a lot of software these days. Early-access, Supporter features, Partners... For BATC, no subscription, which means no recurring revenu (correct?), looks a dead end with infrastructure costs, no? Extra revenu with "Supporter package" isn't even enough? Shall customers get concerned about the profitability of our ATC providers? I'm overthinking all these 😉

So, BATC has no choice than expanding (slightly?) the customer base by attracting more new early-access users. BTW, I'm part of these customers 😉 We just have to accept (actually we did by signing the User Licence Agreement and all the warnings) the rule of this game. If we were in 2000's all these software shouldn't have been released to the public. They are. We bought or subscribed them and shall enjoy, report bugs and continue.

At the end of the day, the first early-customers will start complaining when they'll see new features and even worst public mental-unfinished-stage1 features, poping up on the roadmap. And what they were expecting as core promise features, not working properly.

Even with subscription models, like Say Intentions, customers complain of unfinished core features and seeing cheery-on-the-cake new releases day after day.

And we receive the same feedback from dev teams : "Don't worry, we are still focused, it's not the same team developing these new (unfinished) but yet released features".

Don't misunderstand, I love all these energies around ATC improvement. I'm a customer of Say Intentions and (lately) Beyond ATC. I can't fly without one of the two loaded aside my MSFS.

Microsoft seems having giving up on solutioning the MSFS embedded ATC engine. Since 2 years, and Martial stating "we need to rebuild the engine", there're only very minor fixes in MSFS and the (nice name) Copilot Microsoft AI doesn't look ready to get integrated in MSFS. Imagine some millions of MSFS casual simmers listening to ATC and AI aircraft chat.

Story of our simer's life.

Edited April 8Apr 8 by vbazillio

46 minutes ago, vbazillio said:

So, BATC has no choice than expanding (slightly?) the customer base by attracting more new early-access users. BTW, I'm part of these customers 😉 

I still need to bring a clarification to this.

BeyondATC has never been driven by sales. In fact, the pricing model was specifically designed to lower the barrier to entry, so simmers can access a richer ATC experience in MSFS without a significant upfront investment. We would have made different decisions if we wanted to maximize the revenue from that project.

What we are doing today is simply following our roadmap, actually the same roadmap we introduced before early access and publicly available. The key misunderstanding is the assumption that moving on to the next step means previous steps are fully complete or in a final, release-ready state. That’s not how development works, especially in early access.

If we had chosen not to begin work on VFR, the situation wouldn’t be any better. There would simply be ongoing complaints about early access lasting “forever” along with frustration about a lack of visible progress on the roadmap. At its core, the issue isn’t the order in which features are developed or released. It’s the misconception (or misunderstanding) of what early access actually means and how the development process works, despite our best efforts to clarify these points. Normally, users only see the finished product. They don’t see the full cycle: implementation, testing, bug fixing, and stabilization, and how much time it takes because you have to go through those cycles multiple times as you implement new features. However, when you buy early access software you can’t skip the whole process.

But after nearly two years since BeyondATC became available, I would sincerely hope that anyone can see, through all the patch notes, that the team is genuinely committed to improving both the software and the overall experience, regardless of how long that process takes.

Edited April 8Apr 8 by Dialex

Just providing some constructive feedback:

I'm on the EA build, not the VFR stuff.  

The patch notes for this update specifically mention "Vectoring version 3.0", yet vectoring still doesn't seem to work well at all without a STAR.  Just being honest, it doesn't seem to have improved much at all, other than a few specific bugs.  I've done a couple flights, and none have really worked properly.  

This is the 2nd thing mentioned behind traffic sequencing (that also doesn't seem to really work at all either). I'm only flying with traffic on 5/10, and yet I've already had multiple close calls.  That's still early stages, so I'm willing to give a pass on that one.  I get that is really complex.  

The notes also mention fixes to top of descent, which again, doesn't seem to really work well.

Your discord is filled with similar reports and many others.  Too many to read through in just the past few days.  This isn't just a few of us with complaints.  

I fully get early access, and honestly, I don't regret my purchase one bit.  That said, when an update isn't improving on what it claims to be updating, that is frustrating.  

I don't expect perfection from something like this, especially in early access, but just being honest, the vectoring in this is still very disappointing.  

I am absolutely not looking to discourage you or dump on the product (as is typical on the internet), as the product is still impressive and very reasonably priced.  I don't know what the answer is, maybe backing off some claims in the patch notes would help?  

Just sharing my feelings and observations as a happy, but slightly disappointed, continued customer.  

3 hours ago, CFIJose said:

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm concerned. How can they move on to VFR (EA) when IFR still needs to be fixed?

If I can't request a decent or an approach change without the add-on cutting me off, this program is useless to me.

I'm imploring the dev team to please fix the IFR portion before moving on to VFR. We have waited a long time and patience has been our norm.

I'm really worried that this add-on will never reach its goal if they don't keep their main objective or their word.

Can someone with the latest (EV) confirm that IFR is working?

Thanks.

Way too late for that. They are committed to VFR now. 

9 minutes ago, kerosene31 said:

Just providing some constructive feedback:

I'm on the EA build, not the VFR stuff.  

The patch notes for this update specifically mention "Vectoring version 3.0", yet vectoring still doesn't seem to work well at all without a STAR.  Just being honest, it doesn't seem to have improved much at all, other than a few specific bugs.  I've done a couple flights, and none have really worked properly.  

This is the 2nd thing mentioned behind traffic sequencing (that also doesn't seem to really work at all either). I'm only flying with traffic on 5/10, and yet I've already had multiple close calls.  That's still early stages, so I'm willing to give a pass on that one.  I get that is really complex.  

The notes also mention fixes to top of descent, which again, doesn't seem to really work well.

Your discord is filled with similar reports and many others.  Too many to read through in just the past few days.  This isn't just a few of us with complaints.  

I fully get early access, and honestly, I don't regret my purchase one bit.  That said, when an update isn't improving on what it claims to be updating, that is frustrating.  

I don't expect perfection from something like this, especially in early access, but just being honest, the vectoring in this is still very disappointing.  

I am absolutely not looking to discourage you or dump on the product (as is typical on the internet), as the product is still impressive and very reasonably priced.  I don't know what the answer is, maybe backing off some claims in the patch notes would help?  

Just sharing my feelings and observations as a happy, but slightly disappointed, continued customer.  

I echo your feelings. I just want an atc addon that will actually shows an improvement with every update.