• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Any P3D_ATC Experts?

falcon409

falcon409

Moderator
Staff member
I don't use the built in ATC for any serious flying. . .I discovered a long time ago that it was rudimentary at best. However, in lieu of true ATC it'll do in a pinch. My question is this, is there a way to allow contact with an airport by filtering out smaller airports in a congested area like major hubs? Specifically the DFW area that has thousands of airports large and small. Flying into NAS Ft Worth, I can't contact them until I'm almost on top of the airport because of ATC having to display all the smaller airports around it first. Just wondering.

Also, a quick observation. . .I was flying with real world weather (FSGlobal RW Weather program). As I contacted Navy Tower for landing (I had clear skies with just a few clouds around) I was told the airport was IFR, request denied. . .HUH? As is my usual MO, I continued in the pattern on final for landing, lol. As I was about to touch down, probably no more than 20 feet in the air, the ground disappeared into a thick fog (so much for P3D showing realistic fog effects) and so as I touched down I was fully expecting to hear the tower say. . ."Air Force 43960 you are not cleared to land. . .clear the runway". . . .instead I got nothing. When I ran the replay to view the landing from the tower view I was unable to ever see my airplane, even after I had taxied off the active, lol. Seems unlikely I know, but it would appear that since they couldn't see the airplane, they had no idea I had landed, lol. . . .I've never had that happen before. Chalk one up to falcon409 sneaking onto a Military Installation, lol!!
 
I use the FSX/P3D ATC from time to time. Yes it's quite basic and unrealistic, but it's nice to have it nevertheless.

Concerning your questions:

- No, there's no way to filter the airports. However, a good workaround would be to fly right above the airport before your landing. When you're right above it, or very near, then it will appear first in the list of "nearest airpors" in the ATC window. Else, you can also create a small IFR flight plan, with direct GPS route, and follow the ATC instruction to get a complete guidance to the destination airport, with all the frequency changes etc...

- Yes, I also had a few dissappointments with the rendering of fog in P3D. Basically, it renders the fog quite well... but only if that fog is global. If it's a localized fog, and you were coming from a "clear" area, then you will get a brutal change of visibility a la FSX. And yes, that sucks. And once again, a good way to avoid the "airport is currently IFR" is to go for an IFR flight plan. This way, even with zero visibility, the airport will allow you to land. Good way to practise the ILS, for example :)
 
I´ve had the exact same experience (acces denied, sudden fog etc.)
In general, I´ve stopped using default ATC, because I basically know what they will say before I contact them. I only use it, if I land on a big airport with a ton of taxiways and I feel like parking in a gate. Then the yellow arrows can be convenient.

Is there a ATC addon that is recomendable?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top