anilcougar

Early Access for 2 years. Ok I'm impressed! Brother @Dialex the problem is, people actually not complaining about early access stuff. So I would suggest you to hold your horses there. The biggest problem that people are talking about the fundamentals. Let me ask you some some minor questions. 1. What about vectoring? 2. What about APP forgetting to hand off to TWR 3. What about APP/DEP forgetting about you when you go around? 4. What about again APP/DEP giving you the same initial climb altitude everytime? I can make this list like 20 items. Anyways... I don't wanna be a bad user because I love BATC in my sim. But like I told in here before. BATC is the reason that's why we're building ACE of ATCs /Anil

Did you see simpassengers? It's not doing exactly what you ask but gives a good immersion to your flights https://simpassengers.com

To be honest, I am a BATC user too. I am also developing a brand-new ATC experience called ACE of ATCs, so yes, I understand that my opinion may sound biased. But in reality, we are all in the same boat here. BATC is one of the products that proved people really want a better ATC experience in MSFS, and I genuinely like it. That being said, if we are going to talk about how the system works, some parts of BATC feel very constrained to me. Let me give a few examples. 1. If I ask for a shortcut, I would expect the ATC system to evaluate the route, traffic situation, sector constraints, and then either issue a direct routing or say unable. Instead, it often asks me for the fix name, then asks me to confirm the same fix again. To me, that feels more like a slot-based interaction than true context-aware ATC decision making. 2. If I ask for an updated METAR, the interaction can fall out of the expected flow. Sometimes the system does not really handle it naturally, or it reacts as if I did not answer the previous expected prompt. That breaks the immersion. 3. The LLM side feels very tightly constrained by retrieval and predefined flows. I understand why that is done from a product safety and reliability perspective, but it can make the experience feel less alive when the conversation moves outside the expected path. 4. After a few flights, the user can start to predict what the ATC will say next. For example, if your OFP says your cruise altitude is FL360, you can often guess what the next climb instruction will be when you contact Departure. That is not necessarily wrong, but it makes the system feel predictable rather than reactive. 5. Vectoring is one of the biggest issues for me. I do not want to be unfair, because vectoring is very hard to get right. But real-world vectoring is not just pathfinding from point A to point B. It needs traffic awareness, sequencing logic, local procedures, terrain, MSA, approach geometry, runway configuration, spacing, and controller intent. 6. For approaches, it is not enough to just get the aircraft to the runway. The system needs to understand what is written in the IAP, how the chart is structured, what the MSA is, what the aircraft can realistically do, and what kind of approach style makes sense in that specific situation. And one final note about CPDLC. Compared to sequencing, vectoring, procedure interpretation, aircraft behavior, and real-time traffic planning, CPDLC transport itself is one of the more straightforward parts. It is mostly structured messages, request/response handling, message correlation, and session state. The difficult part is not sending a CPDLC message. The difficult part is making the system behind that message understand why that clearance should be issued in the first place. Again, I like BATC. I use it, and in a strange way, BATC is one of the reasons we decided to build ACE of ATCs. It showed that people really want this kind of experience. But I also believe the hard part is not just making an ATC talk. The hard part is making it think, plan, vector, sequence, and react like an ATC system. /Anil

In this context I meant Instrument Approach Procedure, as in published approach procedures. No worries, I should have written it out instead of using the acronym.

OMG man (: No worries Kevin, I think we may be using the word "brain" differently. I did not mean an AI should invent rules or ignore published procedures. Quite the opposite. The rules, procedures and aircraft state still need to be the source of truth. What I meant is that the system needs a decision layer that can choose and apply the correct ruleset for the current situation, instead of every part of the software making its own assumptions. So yes, I fully agree with you that realism depends on respecting the rules. My point was more about state ownership and deciding which rule applies when the situation changes. And again, best of luck with the project. I know how hard this kind of software is to build.

And one final thing, forget about setting rulesets. You need a brain that sets the rulesets. That's what we're doing with ACE of ATCs

IAP IAP IAP IAP That's the key! Kevin if you wanna create a software that acts as a real thing, you need to set a source of truth and always depend on it. This is your baseline.

Hi Anders, Thank you very much for the kind words. You are right about the speed and altitude announcements. We noticed that as well, and it is on our list. Some values are being read too literally at the moment, so we need to make that part sound more natural. And your IFE flight status page idea is not off topic at all. Actually, we had already experimented with something similar internally. SimPassengers already has a lot of flight data behind the scenes, such as route, phase, altitude, speed, ETA, origin, destination and aircraft position. So a passenger-facing flight status window with a moving map would fit very naturally with what we are trying to build. I also remember that kind of map feeling from older addons, and I agree, it adds a lot to the immersion. It is exactly the kind of feature that can make the aircraft feel more alive from the passenger side, not just from the cockpit. I cannot promise a date for it yet, because we are still focusing on stability and the core flight experience first, but this is definitely something we want to explore for a future update. Thanks again for the suggestion and for taking the time to watch the video. And this is not off-topic, this is really on-topic. But one final note, we're just limited with what the aircraft developers are giving us. So anyways... We'll look into this! <3 With love and Blue skies, /Anil

Yes we're c00king (:

Thank you very much, really appreciated. And yes, just to clarify: SimPassengers is not a subscription. The “payment plan” wording on the website may be a bit confusing, so we’ll take a look at that and make it clearer. So actually you pay it once, and own it forever. Aircraft-specific announcements are a very good point. This is exactly the kind of detail we want to improve over time, because some messages only make sense for specific aircraft types or configurations. And I just doubled checked the development pipeline, it's already there but not much this kind of detailed. Same for airline alliances. Adding things like Star Alliance, SkyTeam or oneworld references to airline-specific announcement profiles would definitely add a nice layer of immersion. And wowww! This is a very good idea. Let me see what we can do about this. Thanks again for the kind words and the useful feedback.

Hi Captains, v1.1.6 was released yesterday. To be honest, the last build had a few issues for some users. SimPassengers communicates with MSFS and a few companion components in the background, and that connection can be sensitive depending on each system setup, security software, firewall rules, and other local conditions. Thanks to the logs you sent us, we were able to identify the problems and prepare a fixed build. The updated v1.1.6 is now ready for download, and the release notes have been sent to your inboxes. If you still run into anything with the new version, please DM us here or email us at [email protected]. We will take care of it. One final note: since we are getting close to releasing our freeware SceneryManager and, later on, ACE of ATCs, we are also preparing a single ACE Solutions Discord server for all of our products. We will announce it soon. As always, with love and blue skies. /Anil

SimPassengers v1.1.5 is live: fixes and World Cup event Hi everyone, We just released SimPassengers v1.1.5 for MSFS 2024. This update includes a few important fixes based directly on user reports, so thank you for sending them in. Please keep reporting issues when you see them. It really helps us decide what needs to be fixed first. Voice packs now stay in your custom folder Some users reported that voice packs moved to a custom folder were coming back to the default folder after restarting the app. This is fixed now. If you move a voice pack to your custom folder, it should stay there. The voice picker and the in-app Test voice button also now recognize voice packs from your selected custom folder correctly. Sign-in issue after reinstall or Windows format fixed Some users who reformatted their PC or reinstalled Windows were seeing: "This license is bound to another computer" This is fixed as well. You should be able to sign in again and the license will re-bind automatically. You do not need to email support for this anymore. This part was fixed server-side, so it is already live for everyone. New World Cup 2026 event is now live. The new World Cup event is now active. Complete 30 flights across the host nations, United States, Canada, and Mexico, and unlock an exclusive achievement. Flights count if they are to, from, or within any of those countries. Domestic flights count too. The event runs until 19 July, and your flights are already counting. As always, feedback is welcome here on AVSIM, or by email at [email protected], or on Discord: discord.gg/M7CC5mrsJ Thank you again for the reports and support.

I just went back and read my first post again, and I honestly could not find a single clue of what you are claiming I was doing. Interesting... I have not changed my tone either. What I said was: “We are planning to show you what we have in our minds in the upcoming days.” And that is exactly what happened. But do you know what happened after that? Some people started doing detective work about my company, some started saying this could not be done, and some brought negative assumptions just because I told AVSIM that “something different is coming.” Anyway, I am not here to talk about people’s behaviour. I am here to share the work we are trying to build. As I said earlier, if you are here to give feedback about the project we are about to finish, you are welcome. If not, please do not hijack this thread. You can always keep those comments to yourself, because there are a lot of people here who are actually trying to help this project with their posts, comments and technical feedback. As always, with love.

Let me be very clear. No, there is no public ATC / voice video in this thread yet. But calling this “9 pages of marketing 101” (actually it's 11 pages not 9) while also saying you did not read the thread is not fair, and frankly it is lazy. If you did not read the thread, did not watch what was posted, and are not interested in the WIP process, then there is not much for me to answer. There are multiple WIP videos here showing aircraft movement, runway interaction, crosswind behaviour, radar / traffic work, and a lot of technical discussion with input from pilots and other simmers. You may not personally care about those parts, and that is completely fine. But pretending nothing has been shown because you chose not to follow the thread is not criticism. For me, ATC is not just a voice clip playing on top of the simulator. Voice is the last thing people hear. What matters is what sits underneath it: aircraft that are actually controlled, traffic that waits for clearance, taxi routes that make sense, runway authority, sequencing, route intent, and a system that knows why an aircraft is doing what it is doing. That is why I have shown the foundation first. If the only thing you are looking for is a finished ATC / voice demo, then this thread is simply not for you right now. Please wait until I post that video instead of dropping dismissive comments into a WIP discussion you openly admit you did not follow. Fair technical criticism is welcome. Questions are welcome. Doubt is welcome too. But drive-by comments like “marketing 101” are not useful, and I am not going to shape this project, or this thread, around impatience. And to be honest, once a discussion starts from that kind of dismissive tone, I am not interested in continuing it further. I will gladly answer good-faith technical questions, but not from a place where the work already shown here is brushed off without even being followed. So again: no public ATC / voice video yet. But this thread is not empty, it is not marketing boilerplate, and the ATC / voice part will be shown when I decide it is ready to be shown. With love... /Anil

Fair is better than nice, absolutely. That is the kind of feedback I prefer as well. About the calculation: I hope you understand that I can’t go into the internal implementation details. This is one of the areas where we are doing a lot of our own work, and I would rather not publish the recipe in a public thread. What I can say is that it is not a canned animation or a simple random visual effect. It is driven by wind, runway, aircraft state and some aircraft-specific limits. We are still tuning it, and feedback like yours is exactly why I keep posting WIP stuff. So yes, I agree there is still a way to go. But the foundation is mathematical, not cosmetic. Math always wins 🙂 With best. /Anil