Truer words have never been spoken.
If every IF pilot properly used STARS and SIDS, traffic wouldn’t be as much of an issue. But that is not the case, since most pilots don’t even know what those are, and there is no option to directly include them in flight plans. On the other end, I doubt there are many IFATC that understand the different types of SIDS and where it is appropriate, for example, to provide appropriate service for them such as radar vectors to a fix.
Great topic. My perspective is the workload on an IFATC vs real-life is probably 10 fold per flight.
There are three additional barriers I see to the realism being discussed.
a) No real time terrain. Take off at night from Kathmandu (VNSM), and you will french kiss a mountain if you don’t know the area.
b) No FL airway routing.
c) The airport maps do not include taxis or apron markers.
If you do not have some of those elements it is hard to try to have an uber realistic standard. This is NOT a knock on the quality of the great software. This is an attempt to articulate that the level of realism has to be commensurate with other aspect available. Terrain and Flight Levels existed however got disabled because of overhead ad performance issues (so say the forums).
Is there something simple that could be done that could increase the realism notwithstanding the aforementioned? Uggh . sorry for sounding like a lawyer.
Don’t worry, I have to listen to @Danman every day, so I’m used to it. (I kid, of course 😝). I feel like better integration with the forum would help a lot, it would give those who don’t know about the forum a greater door into the tutorials and such that help a lot of people in understanding the procedures you mentioned.
While this is all good and dandy I see countless times that it is not because of traffic but purely because of ATC lacking the skill to do easy tasks. Case in point was KORD a week ago. RWY22L would have speed up tremendously the line at 28C but instead ATC only kept the parallels open. If IFATC cant handle anything but parallel runways than frankly they need to be retrained. I and others have seen a real decline in IFATC’s ability to manage an airport. Standards need to be raised because to a lot of the regular fliers on IF we can see that IFATC just isnt that golden standard it once was. Not all of the IFATC are like that but a lot of the ones are . I can count on my hands the IFATC that do a good job day in and day out but everyone else just really shouldnt even be handling the busy class B airspaces.
Did you message the controller after landing as to why those runways were in use at that time? Input or feedback from pilots is appreciated.
I put the feedback on the ATC schedule for the time actually. This was under multiple controllers from when I flew in and than later when I set up to fly out but decided otherwise because of how poorly manage the airport was. I do this sometimes when I can see that things just dont look like they are gong smoothly at the controlled airport.
Do it everytime, and message one of the controllers. Doesn’t matter which one, word travels. :)
And also, ATC quality is being enforced to a greater extent now, and people are being held accountable for the quality of service they are providing from greater Moderator intervention.
Reason being is that we don’t know we stink until we find out but if pilots don’t feel happy with the service provided then that’s a major problem. :)
What are simulators meant to emulate again? You guys always say the same thing about not having 3D buildings. Just because those don’t exist in the game, does that mean we have to completely disregard the procedures in place to avoid these? i.e. LCY 27 departure with Canary Wharf towers directly in the takeoff path.
I’d say the traffic in IF pretty much matches the times in the US/EU. Most airports being controlled late at night are pretty dead though. The majority of the community are from the EU/US so usually when it is late/early in both regions, traffic isn’t that busy.
Good point. Think it’s time to begin educating pilots for the expert server then (it is for serious pilots). I’ve been saying this for a while. The expert server needs to be held up a higher standard in terms of pilotage. It’s not very good at the moment especially as of late. There are far too many reports of pilots acting idiotic and completely ignoring the rules when a controller leaves his/her station at an airport.
But many don’t use IF as a simulator i.e. those who quickly plan a flight before going to work/school without researching the airport procedures in depth.
That’s an understated opinion, I believe that there are way more pilots who fly realistically than don’t. Even if, why cater to those who wish to not act/fly professionally? That’s flawed thinking imo.
That makes me happy. Hopefully that will also mean less leeway with errors on at controlled airports by the pilots too. I know that could make a huge difference with having those that know the operations for the airport also that dont require as much ATC direction freeing up more valuable time for the ATC to keep ATIS up to date and liberate ATC to do more than just the parallel runways because not every airport has parallel runways and runway utilization is essential for smooth operations.
I can understand your argument here. That’s what makes Infinite Flight so great. You can plan a flight and end up in the air within 10 minutes all in the palm of your hands. Though, if we do ever get the ability to input chart data directly into our flight plans, this won’t be an issue anymore.
This is mostly seen on other servers though. I’ve seen a lot of pilots on the expert server take the simulator more seriously thanks to third-party apps like SimBrief, FPLtoIF, IF-A, etc. They file accurate and realistic flights plans, even if they’re just doing one of those quick takeoff-to-cruise flights. There are still some users out there though, who simply input their destination and fly direct. We can’t do anything about it but educate 'em to use realistic charts and the like. This is why the community exists! :)
Yes, that is true. Those who treat it as a game and ruin the experience for others with their trolling. It’s sad, but that can change. Something has got to give in order to improve the expert server a lot. There are lots of pilots acting like fools, as I mentioned earlier. I think the expert server is too easily accessible nowadays.
Haha no, just IFATC.
We appreciate and welcome ATC feedback. You are welcome to PM the controller after your session and/or get moderators involved if something needs addressed. Tyler works hard on training and can bring up items that may need refreshing.
We understand that quality may fall when a controller logs off and we are working on ways to improve the pilot experience.
If you feel strongly about ATC procedures we could always use more people to man frequencies. As air spaces get busier we need more bodies to split the frequencies to make a quality experience for the pilots.
https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/infinite-flight-atc-recruiting/217147
I do agree with everyone’s opinion.
Currently, the ATC in IF is not only unrealistic but also lack services. At a decent international airport, having just ATIS, tower and ground is not enough, but frequencies like delivery are essential. The main reason that causes ATC so chaotic is cause there are no departure/ arrival routes used in the real world. And most of the time, there is ONLY tower/ground/ ATIS opening for service. Yes, the traffic is not that much, but how could we, as pilots, land a plane with ONLY ATIS instructions, which is also way too simple?
Even worse, there are not enough waypoints in IF!! For so many times I tried to use Jeppesen charts to guide myself into the final approach and usually, I can only pick up barely one or two or none waypoints. This is absurdly ridiculous. The ATC is not realistic when active and lacking waypoints is making people struggled to land sometimes refer to air charts.
This MUST be changed. For the reputation of a flight simulator, which is realism first.
I meant with ghosting being more frequent. I see too many second and third chances at controlled airports that really bog down the controller than. If there were to be added a recommended for Training server report button alongside the ghosting option that may help out a lot more. Ghost the serious offenders but have a recommendation option that would recommend a pilot stay on training from IFATC. No ghost or violation just a message before they log into a flight on expert the next time that an IFATC controller believes they should remain on training. The help tutorials tries to do this but people think just because they read the tutorial they are good to go back to expert and not training. But that is a different subject from the thread subject.
Currently it’s very difficult to control on the expert server due to a decline in the quality of the pilot’s and how they interact with ATC, but rest assured that service from controllers can be improved internally as @BluePanda900 said.
This “excuse” you call it, I believe is perfectly valid. With the current lack of IFC and IF integration for pilot education, IFATC is constantly expected to be performing at it’s top-tier best, while the pilots are frequently below par in terms of quality. The reason why certain procedures might turn into “disasters” in IF is that many (but not all) pilots don’t know how to behave themselves properly, with or without ATC. IFATC controllers do the best they can with what they’re given.