George_M

Chad:Once you join VATSIM, you can have access to a website which answers many of your questions. Although its geared toward the pilot side of things, it does answer a lot your questions. Its called the VATSIM Pilot Resource Center (PRC) and you can join it by going to:http://vatsim.net/prcYou must use your VATSIM issued ID. However, don't use your VATSIM password to join the PRC. Make up a different password.To answer your question in short, there are two sides to VATSIM, pilot and ATC. On the Pilot side, you use a program called SquawkBox along with Flight Simulator. On the ATC side, you use a program called ASRC (Advanced Simulated Radar Client) which is used by itself. These two programs connect to the VATSIM network and allow pilot's to hear ATC (or see their text messages) and ATC to see and control aircraft on ASRC's radar screen.What separates VATSIM from Flight Simulator's built in ATC is that you are dealing with real people from all over the world in real time. It works remarkably well. I disagree with the above post that says the voice system is broken sometimes. All of the clients used to connect to VATSIM are very stable and work well. Any problems typically reside on the end user's computer. However, there are plenty of people to ask for help should you run into any problems and the vast majority of those are solved.Welcome to VATSIM. Its a great community which will educate you and add a whole new experience to flight simulation.George S. MarinakisVATSIM6/VATGOV8

Wilson:AVC Tuner is OK. Its been submitted to and approved for use on VATSIM. You can see the complete list of approved software (as far as VATSIM is concerned) by going to the main VATSIM website at:http://vatsim.netclicking on Member Services in the left frame and selecting Document Library and Approved Software. You'll find AVC Tuner and all other approved programs listed there.

The Boeing ad immediately caught my attention. Congratulations to AVSIM for being recognized by Boeing as an outlet for advertising their product. I have always wondered why mainstream aviation did not make better use of the Flight Simulation Community. It is a built in market for them filled with avid aviation fans which they can tap into and promote their product.As far as an affiliation between Boeing and Microsoft, I imagine one already exists because you see Boeing products in existing versions of Flight Simulator. Microsoft has a history of basing performance of its FS aircraft to a certain extent on the real world versions (its not 100% accurate but its not a complete miss either). I would, however, be very surprised if Microsoft took them up on an offer to detail a default aircraft on a level comparable to PIC or PMDG. The vast majority of purchasers of Flight Simulator simply don't want that level of simulation and aren't willing to invest the time it takes to learn how to properly fly airplanes such as the B763, 737NG and the 7E7. I think Microsoft concentrates on more fully recreating GA aircraft (such as the Cessna and Baron) and relies on more simplified versions for the larger, commercial aircraft.I agree that the people who read this forum (myself included) would run and buy such a product were it ever offered but I don't know if there would ever be enough people to make such a project worth the while of a company the size of Boeing. If they ever were to entertain such an idea, I think that Boeing would likely have to turn to smaller scale developers. I've heard it too often from real world pilots how realistic PIC is to the real bird (in the 90%+ range) so given the data, talented individuals (such as the PIC team and PMDG) can do wonderful things that I think the manufacturers would be proud to endorse.Despite my doubts of it ever happening, such an affiliation would be way cool. :)

Stephen:1. Membership usually gets this done in a few days (assuming your account was suspended due to inactivity). If you haven't heard anything by tomorrow, go ahead and write them directly at:http://vatsim.net/mememail.php2. In order to avoid having your account marked as inactive, you must "maintain your membership". In order to maintain your membership, you must log on and use the VATSIM.net network as a pilot and/or a controller at least once during the previous calendar quarter. So as long as you log onto the network at least once every three months, your account won't be marked as inactive.I hope this helps.