BeyondATC Sets Expectations for Early Access Release

BeyondATC, the upcoming air traffic control simulation product being developed by a team of the same name, has released a new video detailing out the features at early access launch.

This video is planned to be the last communication from the developer prior to their early access release, and their objective was to detail out what the product can and can’t do, so that users can have a clear picture on what they will be getting.

Early Access Functionality

• Full IFR functionality
• 250+ Premium/Basic Voices
• Voice Communications with ATC
• Realistic FAA/ICAO phraseology
• Dynamic Runway/SID/STAR selection
• Pireps, direct-tos, altitude changes, etc
• Simbrief integration
• Approach selection based on weather
• Custom user data for airport specific SOPs

Not Functional in Early Access

• Traffic Injection
• VFR Flights
• Emergency Procedures
• Oceanic Procedures
• VR Interface

Additionally, they noted that some users may encounter some bugs while flying BeyondATC, due to data issues within Microsoft Flight Simulator. The program pulls data from the sim about the relevant airports to your filed flight plan, and may get incomplete/incorrect info from the sim. This error has been found to occur primarily at default airports, but can happen at 3rd party scenery if the developer didn’t set the scenery up properly – it should be noted that the vast majority of airports seem to be fine though. When there is a data error – the program will warn the user prior to launching the flight plan. This issue could theoretically have been resolved through using Navigraph data, but a decision was made not to do this as it would require every user to have a Navigraph subscription. While in Early Access, BeyondATC is looking at resolving this problem

Is BeyondATC Artificially Intelligent?

The video also spent a few minutes on the topic of if BeyondATC is Artificially Intelligent. The answer is yes. BeyondATC uses AI to process the users voice, determine a command to give to the user, and then generate the ATC voice to respond back. This AI is somewhat on rails though, but this is rationalized as ATC being a procedure based system. With that in mind, BeyondATC will not respond well to open ended questions that go beyond the bounds of standard ATC procedures.

BeyondATC made a deliberate choice to not utilize a Large Language Model AI to power the program (like ChatGPT). They found that this choice would lead to a significant increase in product cost. Additionally, LLM AI systems do have the possibility to ‘hallucinate’ and make an error when giving an ATC command.

If you’d like to learn more, you can read the post on the BeyondATC Discord. For more information, visit BeyondATC’s website at www.beyondatc.net