I have a handful of flights on VATSIM, which naturally makes me an expert on this topic.
VATSIM is an Air Traffic Control (ATC) simulator that allows folks on most of the major flight sims to fly with live Air Traffic Control. Obviously, not FAA-ATC, but a reasonable facsimile. It’s real people guiding you around the skies. The learning curve for pilots is very high. It’s one thing to control your plane while you are YOLOing around on your own, but when you are in a multiplayer environment, where ATC expects you do what they say, when they say, and failure to comply with their actions really, really, fucks things up for a lot of people.
My flight today was a sample of most early online flights. Short hop from Victoria, BC to Vancouver — about 30 min flight. This short flight was part of my problem. You basically just take off and land, There really isn’t a cruise section of the flight. I didn’t set myself up properly for the landing before I took off. I wasn’t 100% sure the route I was going to take, or misheard (and mis-read back ATC), but I didn’t have the waypoint he wanted in my system. By the time I got that sorted out, I was already handed off to the controller for the landing where it turned out I was on the wrong approach all together. He then told me to turn left to a heading, but the Airbus went “nah, it’s quicker to turn right” and at that point I just disconnected in frustration since I wasn’t doing anyone any favors. The ATC was fab. This was all on me.
For anyone who has played an MMO, VATSIM feels a lot like raid night. Everyone has to do their part of the dance correctly for things to go well. I can see where a lot of practice this could yield some fun. Especially when flying along with friends. There are some VATSIM events where it’s packed, a lot happening, and it really feels like you are flying an airliner in a busy area.
But, for reasons not worth getting into, there are multiple injectors of stress in my life right now. Nothing critical, just there is a lot going on. Getting comfortable with VATSIM just adds to that stress. Additionally, I spend most of my day hooked up to a headset. Other than a casual game night with friends, I really don’t want to have the headset on.
The rub, though, is the in-game ATC is not very good. It barely can control traffic, won’t give you vectors, and really you are just along on a scripted event. I use FSLTL to inject traffic. As I get used to its limitations I find it adds a level of immersion when coupled with a live traffic injector. None of the other ATC programs for MSFS solve the problem in a manner for me that is worth the money. Too many of them have other issues with how they handle traffic so I end up just using the built-in ATC since it’s free. They are saying that ATC might get fixed in the next version of MSFS due out next year, so we will see.
I like the multiplayer aspect of VATSIM, and it is something I will likely keep working on. It is fun to see what other folks are flying. I just need to make sure I am in a good space to accept that stress and accept I may be tagging along on a lot of flights offline instead of via VATSIM.
Mark Crump 