Third party ATC programs (using AI technology)

    As many know AFS4 does not include any ATC ...

    Recently other sims have had third party ATC programs (using AI technology) come to the market providing their respective sims with this functionality.

    From what I can tell, this new functionality is utilised from an application outside of the sim. I was quite surprised to find this technology has also been adapted from MSFS for XP12.

    My question to the developers is, if this is possible with the other sims, does AFS4 have the same functionality to enable such an app?

    Could we get a third party to convert their product to run alongside/with AFS4? to enable this missing feature?

    I was thinking exactly the same. By the way, I am super happy with Aerofly FS4 and truly believe it is a new generation flight simulator. In my PC (I7 14gen - RTX4070), VR works incredible well, in my opinion the better sim for VR right know.

    Keep the good work! and I hope we can have some third party ATC in the future, if this is not added natively to the sim.

    Best regards, Juan

    Most ATC clients must have the following information:

    1. Your position - obviously
    2. Your COM settings (to know if you are tuned to the right frequency)
    3. Your transponder settings

    Obviously it also needs some way to send and receive audio.

    Somewhat problematic could be for ATC to rely on your simulation to have the real world weather. Also interaction with other aircraft surrounding you could be difficult.

    I remember back for Aerofly FS2 there was a ATC client, but I never tried it.

    AI ATC seems to be a game changer. But even some sort of VATSIM connector could be a great addition, and could help feeling less lonely on your flight.

    The UDP server in Aerofly FS4 is already able to broadcast the position to any local application. If the missing information from the list above could also somehow be pried from the simulator, someone could come up with a client to connect to ATC.

    Ah, I found it: there has been a plugin for Aerofly FS 2 which in turn allowed interaction with the (free) Radar Contact ATC Client.

    But there is no information on compatibility with AFS4, and last reports from DLL integrators seem to indicate that DLLs for AFS2 are not straightforward to run with AFS4.

    Hi Armitage , I noticed the plugin page was updated on November, maybe there it is some hope :)

    It is up to Ipacs to open a little more the platform so other developers could try doing more integrations.

    For example, I have been using a lot https://airplane.team/ Flight Shirley AI assistant. The team behind them are very nice people and maybe they would consider integrating their system to FS4. It is really nice to have someone (the voice AI) to talk in the flights and ask questions.

    Best regards, Juan

    HI,

    That would be great news indeed but according to Jan, this is not the current state of mind of aerofly.
    Nevertheless as advised by Jan, I recently tested the FS2 plugin API with FS4 but without success even when trying to rename some functions.

    Another wish would also be to have this plugin API on all 3 platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) as other cross-platform simulators offer.
    That would be really great for home cockpit integration, third-party product integration like ATCs, and budding developers like me.

    Long live Santa Claus ;)

    Regards

    Quote from Jugac64

    add more parameters to the UDP stream

    This would also be my take. It allows for possible plattform / OS independent applications and could also utilise solutions over a local network. Jugac64 already build an app showcasing this idea.

    The only downside could be that the communication is only possible in one direction, and may not be the most performant idea. But it may be more than enough for ATC or a Virtual Airline client.

    For all developers interested into the UDP idea:

    It would be helpful to invent a fourth message, containing the COM and XPDR settings.