124TH ATC V2

[wain 879]

I came across this Freeware / donationware program over the weekend. Like most sims the ATC in Xplane is not very good and usually we look for some kind of addon or if you have time you may fly online. This has been in developement for a few years and it is still ongoing with a published roadmap. The current developer is active on Xplane Forum and is open to suggestions and working on bugs that are reported.

 

It is a very small download and is then put into your Plugin folder, easy to use and setup with a nicely written 30 odd page manual. The program is easily accessed via the top bar  where you can switch it on / off and go into the options, there is an important thing to do in options and that is to set your rate of descent for your particular aircraft, this is so the TOD can be calculated more acturately. I also have it set to Autostart so I only need to set the descent rate if I change aircraft.

 

To try it out I decided to do a return flight from Zurich to Innsbruck in a small Cessna, this would let me see if the program was able to route me around the high mountains and down into the valley to capture the ILS. It worked seamlessly, getting me on my route, up to my cruise and then around and dwn into the valley to capture the ILS.

 

You turn your power on and you can contact ATC for the usual requests, submit a Flightplan, permission to start engines, ATIS, Pushback etc...you get full instruction and get told to proceed to your holding point where a box appears, you click this initiate contact and get permission to takeoff, all very straight forward I found..handoffs are also simple and clicking the box will also change the frequncy for you.

 

I was told to climb to a specific intial height and head in a paricular direction, then after a while assigned to my cruise level. I had only put in 2 waypoints and ATC directed me on a heading to the first then the second. Now this is where we have a slight issue if you are GA, it assumes you are an airliner and will put you on a long route to line up for the ILS etc, this is because currently it is based on how an Airliner would fly, it may route you 20nm out to capture an inbound course, idea for A320 etc not so good for a little Cessna. This means a short hope of 70nm could end up being 110nm, developer is working on this. Also it's only IFR.

 

Overall though I was impressed but feel I need to test some more and also try with A320/A330 etc to see how that works with their FMS.

 

Below I have added a few pictures, you can assign keys or swicthes if you have something like a TPM to access the speech box, ATC box (tower, center etc) and the box in the bottom left corner, I haven't done this yet as I wanted to try this out.

 

I have read from other users that things like the Missed Approach etc are very good but I have yet to try that. I will try the other options on airports that are in a more open enviroment.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by wain
wrong picture in original post

[mutley 4,487]

 Thanks for the heads up Wayne, keep us up to date with how it is going.

[brett 2,284]

+1   Is XP doing anything to improve in this area or do they rely on addons for improvements?

 

A good ATC is integral to the flight simming experience. I hope that you can see the "calls" better than I can from your image, otherwise you might go blind. I always wished the Ace's crew had more time to improve FSX's ATC. Anyone know if P3D has done anything in that area? (yes or no is good as I wouldn't want to hijack this thread)

[wain 879]

cheers guys, ATC in XP11 is better than 10 but still has a few issues....however I have found them all to have issues whichever sim you use...as good as FSX is, even with its faults it always annoys when they turn you left, then right, then left, then right.........I dont get on with speech recognition ones so I like them to have an option to press a button or click on something....