Flight Simulator X - Radar Contact v4

Radar Contact v4

Tuesday, 03 January 2006

Page 1 of 2

1. Introduction

The accuracy and realism of aircraft and scenery add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator is undoubtedly increasing, but we are neglecting a very important part of flight: the Air Traffic Control (ATC). In real life, air traffic controllers do the hard and stressful job of ensuring safe operations of commercial and private aircraft, providing all the guidance that the pilots might need and keeping traffic from colliding with each other. They are also responsible for the safe arrivals in adverse weather conditions, the minimum delay times and the fast emergency team responses... it's impossible to imagine how aviation would be without them. Microsoft Flight Simulator features very simple ATC services: only basic guidance is given and problems with other traffic are very frequent, reducing the overall enjoyment of the flight. In fact, most of the hardcore simmers prefer to disable it in order to increase realism when flying IFR. Radar Contact has come to the market to change this.

Developed for serious simmers who are looking for more realism, Radar Contact features virtual controllers who give taxi instructions, takeoff clearances, ascent and descent clearances, vectors to active runways, clearances to land and traffic calls for any aircraft in their flight path. The issues with not-so-intelligent AI traffic are not a problem when using Radar Contact, as the controllers will move conflicting traffic before they become a threat. In this new version of Radar Contact, some exciting new features are present: interaction with traffic on the ground and in the air, accurate ATC procedures all over the world, arrival airport weather taken into consideration, realistically divided centers, realistic ground operations and more efficient arrival vectors, along with many others goodies. In this review, I'll discuss the many aspects of air traffic control and see what Radar Contact has to offer.

2. Installation and documentation

Because of its size, Radar Contact is available only in CD-ROM. Not many people are able (or would like) to download 655MB of data using their home connection and it also saves a lot of expensive bandwidth from the developers. The CD-ROM version avoids your losing the installer in case the computer crashes, too. On the other hand, it may take a while to arrive (especially for international costumers) and the shipping time can make you very anxious!

The installation is rather simple, but takes a fairly long time and can slow down the system for a while. It copies an extremely large number of files to your hard drive (over 1GB of data, causing the long installation time); in fact, this number is so large that a system defragmentation is recommended after installing Radar Contact. There is a manual process of software activation: before running Radar Contact, you must contact one of the developers and require your activation code - he should reply in less than 24 hours. After entering the code, you are finally able to run Radar Contact. I had a small problem with my FSUIPC version, which turned out to be extremely hard to spot but extremely easy to fix. The Radar Contact team did an excellent job on the costumer support, responding all my e-mails in less than 2 hours. I was honestly very satisfied with the activation and support effectiveness!

The documentation included is extensive and got me very impressed. This 294 page manual provides information not only about Radar Contact and its functions, but also includes a very complete air traffic control guide and nine flight tutorials for you to get familiarized with the different types of ATC and their functions. The developers claim that when you complete the nine tutorials (of 1 hour each), you will be ready for flying anywhere in the world - and I've learned from personal experience that it is true!

3. Visual interface and general remarks

If you read the introduction, you should already know that Radar Contact is not meant to have a beautiful interface... it's all about adding realism to the simulator. The software's interface (outside FS2004) is not the best I've seen, but it certainly does its job and is pretty much user friendly. First of all, you need to select a .pln or .apl flightplan (preferably created with FS Navigator or FSBuild) and load it into Radar Contact - it will then decodify your flightplan, detect the ATC frequencies by itself and enable you to configure the other settings. You can then select the pilot's, co-pilot's and controller's voices with an easy preview tool, modify the keyboard hotkeys and finally configure the level of realism, your aircraft's callsign, etc. There are plenty of settings you can change... maximum deviations, souls on board, AI chatter (this will be discussed later), pilot autoreply and ATC frequencies are just a few examples. After you configure all of these details, you can finally push the Start RC button and switch to the simulator.

Back in the simulator, my "user friendly" impression of the software was completely changed. At first, I noticed that a large green box containing random characters was being displayed... I thought it was something I did wrong, but other users were also reporting that problem. Ok, I close this weird window and start AdvDisp, a simple software that will display the Radar Contact visual interface in FS2004. It's a small window that contains all the ATC functions (works similarly to the default ATC window, using numbers) and that can be "docked" into the screen. To be honest, AdvDisp is not user friendly at all and it's very easy to get lost here - it will take some time until you are fully used to the software. I wish they had taken some time to develop a more user friendly (not beautiful, user friendly!) interface... I'm not sure what the simulator limitations are, but I'd surely like to see something similar to the default ATC window. One other thing that caught my attention was that the default ATC is not automatically disabled by Radar Contact - you need to disable the ATC window and reduce its sound to zero in order disable default ATC completely. With this obstacle clear, it's time to see what Radar Contact has to offer!

4. Sound quality

Before we continue to the Radar Contact features, I'd like to discuss the sound quality, which is the main point of the software. Against my personal expectations and many community comments, I have found the Radar Contact sounds exceptional! It's quite amazing what the team has done to make the sounds clear and smooth - depending on the complexity of the sentence (how many .wav files it uses), they will sound more "robotic", but for most of the communications they sound just like a real ATC... actually, they sound much more clearer than a real ATC. I have english as a second language (first language being portuguese) and haven't had a problem to understand any of the communications/AI chatter. However, you may choose to display the communications as text if you're not comfortable with the language. There are many different controller accents (over 20 voice soundsets total) and you can download other sets for free if you feel like it. There's a new controller speaking in every new frequency and there are callsigns for all major airlines. That's what I call realism!

The smoothness and clearness of the pilot's and controllers voice surely impressed me, but not more than the AI chatter. In real life, it isn't just you who is being controlled by ATC - dozens of planes are also receiving full ATC service. Radar Contact simulates that environment by not only controlling your aircraft, but also providing its accurate instructions to other AI aircraft around you. They will be able to receive all clearances and enjoy the same ATC support you do. If there is a collision threat, for example, the AI aircraft will be moved away; the issues with AI traffic are greatly reduced using Radar Contact! If you want to add a bit more of realism, enable the pre-recorded real ATC chatter to be played between the actual ATC clearances. These are pre-recorded real ATC instructions and clearances, therefore they may not be very accurate... but sure cool to listen!

Please advance to the next page now...

<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>