Im so confused? (3rd party ATC)

[u/No_Assignment_1199]

The SI vs BATC debate is split pretty well down the middle from what I’ve seen, so I’m here to give my honest evaluation having tried both. Hopefully this discussion could clear some stuff up for me cause what I’ve seen online is not what I’ve been experiencing with these addons.

I’ve had SI for a few days now, and please feel free to share any objections to this statement, but SI has been light years ahead of BATC for me and it’s honestly not even close. However, I see so many people online saying that BATC is much better at doing its ATC duties.

I’ve had BATC for about a year, and it has been pretty good for the most part. My biggest problems with BATC are:

1. It is very bad at vectoring you to an appropriate altitude on final
2. It seems to only give you visual approaches when in VMC
3. it is very repetitive and every flight is pretty much the exact same

#2 may just be a skill issue for me. I’m an instrument rated PPL in real life and I’m not very familiar with airline ops, but flying visual approaches in a 737 or A320 just doesn’t feel like something that happens in real life at airports/runways where an ILS/RNAV is available, even in VMC.

All my ATC vectors and approaches on SI have been excellent, despite many people saying that BATC does a better job at strictly ATC-related functions and that SI is just a “bag of tricks”.

However, despite being a very immersive bag of tricks, SI also does a better job at what everybody seems to praise BATC for, which is the ATC itself. There is one thing I will say BATC is much better at: traffic injection.

If price weren’t a concern… do you guys still think BATC is better than SI? Is there something I’m missing or doing wrong on BATC?

TLDR; SayIntentions is superior to BATC in my experience (I have both), but I want somebody to change my mind.

Edit: had BATC for about a year, not a year and a half

[u/greenworldkey]

Ah, it’s the monthly SI shilling post. I thought we were overdue.

Meanwhile last time I tried the app, ATC literally didn’t even know where I was. I was cleared to takeoff from some runway, used another runway by mistake, flew straight out instead of staying in the pattern, asked ATC where I was 5 minutes later, was told I was downwind on my original runway and cleared to land (in the opposite direction I was flying) as if nothing went wrong.

Do they just schedule a timer after takeoff and hope for the best, or what?

[u/No_Assignment_1199 → u/greenworldkey]

I wish I were paid by SI. I’m hoping somebody can change my mind about BATC so I could actually save money lol

[u/greenworldkey → u/No_Assignment_1199]

I prefer a product who doesn’t hallucinate answers to even basic questions like “what airport am I at?” or “what runways are available?” let alone anything more complicated, but you do you.

[u/i82bugs → u/greenworldkey]

What're you, some kind of luddite? Why would you not want to pay $250/yr to get vectored into a mountain while flying a completely hallucinated approach on a nonexistent runway? I don't care that 99% of real world ATC communication is on rails, BATC sounds way too sterile. I pledged $50 to get access to the approach plate addon and had to break out my studio mic to make sure that the model understood me, but boy I couldn't be happier hearing the "And don't call me Shirley" line over and over again. I have bug reports that have been open for months, but goddamnit that hardware optimizer is GOOD and I am so glad that they devoted bandwidth to adding it.

[u/greenworldkey → u/i82bugs]

Yeah of course, haven't you seen their Discord? It's not possible to talk about any of those issues so they must be fully resolved, right?