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So almost a year ago I got a new 7x14 foot trailer to house my simpit in. My simpit is 4x8 feet and is on wheels so I can wheel it in and out of the ramp door on the trailer. I didnt have time to build out the hangar when I got it and so I finally had the time and extra money to finish the build. I added all new walls ceiling and floor. Track lighting that remote controlled offering 5 different temps ranging from gold warm to blue white and is dimmable. A complete revamp of what I call the weather wall which offers light boards showing current weather of both the NY and LA sectionals as well as 7 individual different airports of SBA, MRY, SBP, VNY, SMO, CRQ and my home airport of ACK. One other light board of the western 3rd of the US as well. I use these for both my own flying and for my running of dispatch AI pilots on OnAir. I still have to hook up some of the new electronics which will be a tablet showing garmin Pilot, my ADS-B module that will show live traffic in the area, both marine and aviation radios as so I can listen to various channels (I work at a marina and keep the trailer near it so this allows me to hear and talk to employees when I'm over in the hangar which is also kind my office). I'll do a complete walk through once its all done but feel like now that the epoxy floor has dried enough to walk on it, I can show off what it looks like so far. Still lots of details and cleaning up to be done. Once I have the sim back in the hangar and the hangar back where I keep it, I will paint the back wall (ramp door) white and add some vintage signs to it. This is what it looked like prior to the new build out.

Agreed. There's absolutely no reason to compare a product against a similar one to try and show which is better. If a product is good it will be so because of the product. I've been busy redoing my hangar that my simpit lives in so I havent been flying for the past week but look to get back into the pilot seat by this weekend. So I have very little expectations on SI traffic during the Alpha phase, however, I am very happy for them in reaching this milestone and the benefits that come to the community with it.

They're living their best life, good for them.

I keep my XPlane up to date but sadly havent taken any planes out for a spin in it for a long time. I really want to see Laminar continue to build a strong sim and this coming release looks like a like of welcoming new features.

Yeah those are some great improvements. Of all non-human ATC options, I really look forward to the day when holds are used to avoid go-arounds. I would much rather hold and be sequenced in then having to go around. It would just be new/different and it keeps you in line as opposed to having to start all the way at the back of the line.

Certainly room for improvement but its also not a complete stickler for making sure every little j is dotted and every x is crossed. I used KSNA for my destination as it has a few different names and wanted to try all four (Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, John Wayne and Orange County). For ATIS November was current. Seeing that its not a complete stickler I'm going to leave this feature enabled. I dont like that it assumes certain things like the freq that I deliberately read back wrong but speech to texted it as correct. Honestly thats the really only thing that bothered me that wasnt caught. However, no one should try and provide the wrong readback so this was an extreme example. I know Simbrief gives runways so it probably reads that and then determines that while I filed that, its not the current active.

I'll do it at lunch and post the results. Kinda interested myself.

No this is just a normal flight for me. I just called her Betsy because she sounded like a Betsy. I've requested that the dispatch be less ATC and more just someone to receive info. However, with it tied to OnAir, I can ask Ops how much fuel is at the airport I am going to, if theres a repair shop there etc and it will provide that info. Thanks for taking the time to watch the video, I tried to make it as short as possible. The two big take a way's is what you pointed out, how it demonstrates SI trying its best to interpret what the user is saying and best trying to accommodate and that on an overall standing, to me, the flights are getting a passing grade now where it used to not be like that at all. It is still hit or miss but with a few extra radio calls a bad or wrong instruction can be saved.

So heres an 8 minute video showing an IFR flight from KSBP to KSBA. This was a return leg as I just landed in SBP and doing a quick turn. I start off showing the voice to text (what SI thinks I say written in text) and then how it does a great job making out what I meant to say. Theres a short blank screen and then I used my Garmin Pilot replay to show the flight profile and top down view as then I try to best put in the audio where the readio calls actually happened since the speed of the replay is fast while the audio clips are played in real time. It only records when the plane is above 40 kts so no taxi footage. Then at the end, I was just having fun with AI and Betsy in our Ops center as SI can be tied to OnAir so you dial in a company freq (you have 3 choices to pick and I use 118.34). I like to call airborne and sometimes will call when I'm pulling up on the ramp. OnAir wants to do more with SI so hopefully in the future we get more options in this area. So a couple of things about the flight. SBP doesnt have a CLR_DEL freq so you have to use Ground. I called up GND for my IFR Clearance by calling them ground and not sure if that caught them off guard or not because at first they give me taxi instructions to rwy 29 but then when I state I was looking for my clearance, they gave that to me and changed the runway from 29 to 25. Not sure if they did that because MQO VOR was better in line with runway 25 or not. Also since it was a quick turn I first stated that I wanted to pick up my IFR clearance to SBP (which I was at and just landed at) and then corrected myself for SBA. SI caught that and asked for clarification. A first for me so I was happy to see that it wanted to be clear on my call. I was parked at the red star Air San Luis and my taxi was to rwy 25 via A, B X-rwy 11, M, J to rwy 25. Which was a good route as rwy 29 was active so it did keep me away from cutting that active in half on my taxi route. Once airborne I had serval targets on my radar screen and Departure called out a Skyhawk that was at my 12 o'clock. So yes while SI doesnt do traffic yet, it does see traffic and understands what that means. Si will give you a good heads up on what to expect for the approach and I like how they do it out of all the options. I have a feeling they dont have the AI quit smart enough to mimic a pro human controller so they error on the side that is more user friendly. On the ground, that means no hold shorts of actives (fitting bc at the moment, SI doesnt have traffic so in a way the airport is free of conflicts) and in the air, I starting to see being cleared for an approach kinda early than late and less vectoring and more to an established fix. For this flight, I was told to expect the ILS Rwy 7. Now my flight plan was MQO to GVO and GVO is an IAF for the rwy 7 ILS. SO I was interested to see what it would do. Vector me like we are all used to default ATC doing with setting us up on a 30 degree intercept or what. I know if at any point I can request the published approach from GVO and for now ATC will clear me for that so since SBA was IFR at the time I couldnt cancel and go V so I would have the request as my fallback. I actually got a cleared for the approach fly direct GOYED (I thought they were trying to say GAVIOTA which is the name of the GVO VOR I was flying to) and to descend and maintain 2700. I had to get over the mountain ridge so I just stuck with the full approach from GVO. Then once on the ground I cleared to the right of rwy 7 as SBA recent renamed all their taxiways and and Atlantic has moved from the green dot (as still seen in the addon scenery I use) to the Yellow Dot. So when I asked for taxi to Atlantic, it did give me the proper taxi route. Heres the video: SO to grade this flight Clearance A, Taxi A, Tower A, Departure C (I had to ask for climb for higher but not sure if thats bc it was waiting for me to report the traffic), Cruise A, Approach C, Landing handoff A (was right when I was established on the ILS) taxi in A, overall B. There was no real show stoppers and my radio work certainly wasnt ideal overall. This is more or less the kinds of flights I am seeing on SI consistently but that use to not be the case.

I dont know..it should be there in the experimental tab. Theres also another setting for standard or professional where it removes the text so you have to listen as there are no "cheats" with providing text to confirm what they say. You will have to ask them to repeat if you dont understand it.

Thank you for this post. One thing that bothered me was the whole clearance readback issue with it green lighting you after saying something completely different. I read your post this morning since you quoted me on it, but wanted to test it out myself. After I did a flight where I experience the exact same thing of complete wrong readback and yet ATC says readback correct, I went to the discord to seek help. Its actually working perfectly BUT hear me out because its not what you might think. To just get it out there quickly, there is a settings in the last tab of the UI called experimental of which the default setting is to not hold your feet to the fire to repeat everything exactly. If you check that box, you will have to repeat back instructions correctly or be corrected. Personally, I feel both having the option to enforce proper readback and having the setting set to default to not enable that feature is 100% the correct way to do it. When I read my flight logs of my personal voice to text, I am baffled at how it will determine what I said based off of what it sometimes thinks I said. So under a normal condition, the user is going to try and repeat back the exact clearance but with so many different peoples voices, I would prefer that for now ATC thinks I said what they said then it thinking it hears something wrong when I said it right but it just doesnt hear it the way I do, then to spend 3 or 5 radio calls attempting to say it to where it hears it correctly. Funny short story, I was in Italy (first time abroad at 20 back in 1990) and my drink of choice was Vodka and I was from Florida. I would say it as va-ka and Flor-da. Basically skipping saying the D in vodka and skipping the I in Florida. They would hear macca the way I would say vodka which means cow and when I was saying this to the chef (worked on a private yacht who was from Baltimore) about having to learn how to say Flor-e-da for locals to better understand me, he looked at me with this look and was like, Lucky you, I have to pronounce where I am from as Marry-Land (instead of how we all say as Mare-line)!! Ha! Anyway, SI does question calls that are confusing to it but if you want to avoid having to readback correctly or be corrected, just leave that feature disabled. Being a Premium member, personally I use the Flightline option to get my clearance texted to me while I am setting up the plane. Open OnAir, load the flight, use the link to open SimBrief, create the FP, Import the FP back into OnAIr and then text FlightLine to pick up my clearance. So, I dont have to copy down the clearance as its right there on my phone. I think its a great feature they offer and can be used to a phone or whatsapp number. I had the day off yesterday and got rather vocal in a manner that seems to be that I am all pro SI. Well I am supportive of it because PilotEdge coverage is limited and I do want ATC without using a keyboard or mouse. So when I see what SI offers, yeah I will support it. I see the value it gives and am happy to know for others who dont, there are a few other great options. As I support BATC because I think they have a good thing going and highly recommend it for anyone who fly's Airliners and/or wants the option of not having to speak to ATC. I feel I have seen enough from both BATC and SI to know they are both under development and improving at a fast pace. I will skip FSHud because personally I feel BATC and FSHud are more closer aligned with being geared towards airliners and IFR. So since I already have BATC, I'm currently not in a hurry to shop for yet another ATC addon.

Thats how I read it. Thinking there will be keystroke command to do it and remove all covers and chalks etc.

First of, a big kudos to the Asobo team for what seems to be a huge list of bug fixes, improvements and new features. They certainly have been hard at work. I personally, don't have any major issues and since I only fly to addon airports and with addon planes, really only noticed about five items that I might notice being different after this update. However, when you combine the list of SU1 and SU2 and all the fixes, I can certainly see why there are so many users having issues. So hopefully, with this update, it will put a major hit in fixing the items that users where having problems with so they can better enjoy the sim. My short list of items that I am hoping they get to at some point is: Airport ground lights being too bright and visible from far away No Airport Beacon light ( or at least one that can been seen from miles away) Unable to properly configure hardware controllers to feather a twin engine prop Looking forward to this new Update once its all stable and ready for release.

To be factual I was comparing the free version of Si to the paid version of BATC.

Absolutely not. And I know I'm heavily coming off as some kind of SI word not allowed, which I am not. Its just hit a nerve with me when established members of the forum keep bringing up cost. To me thats a personal manner. It should be about value. A Bentley does the same thing as my car does but if I were to say I would never pay that, I would only hear that as either its out of my price range or its not worth the value to me. Either way, it doesnt reflect the quality of the car.