[HN Gopher] VATSIM: The International Online Aviation Network
___________________________________________________________________
VATSIM: The International Online Aviation Network
Author : skibz
Score : 117 points
Date : 2024-02-28 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vatsim.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (vatsim.net)
| snide wrote:
| Vatsim is one of those communities that reminds me a lot of the
| early Internet. You have this smallish community of hobbyists
| that are all volunteering differing amounts of time and skills to
| come together over a shared goal that seems impossible when you
| write it out as a sentence.
|
| > What if you could fly flight simulators with real ATC, talking
| to real humans?
|
| It's a super friendly place and the barrier to entry for learning
| these types of skills is typically extremely high in real life.
| After COVID grounded me during my pilot's training I moved to VR
| and a virtual cockpit with Vatsim. Little did I realize I could
| "fly" at home at such a level of fidelity with other people. I
| ended up realizing I was getting my license only because I was
| interested in learning the systems. I could do that safely (I
| have kids, and was a bit worried) at home. It's not the same, but
| it's close.
| scrapcode wrote:
| Flipped the other way around, I researched what aircraft my
| local flight school had and started using sims with VATSIM
| before pursuing my PPL. My CFI was impressed with my radio
| acumen when I started and I imagine it saved me a good deal of
| money in some regard (less training needing to be spent there).
|
| Nothing replaces getting in the air, but using a sim certainly
| can make those (expensive) hours up in the air more enjoyable.
| squigz wrote:
| > Vatsim is one of those communities that reminds me a lot of
| the early Internet.
|
| Which really just shows that whatever made "the early Internet"
| special didn't die, despite what people have been saying for...
| oh, 30 years?
| exitb wrote:
| It was much easier to stumble upon that kind of geekery
| though.
| jcutrell wrote:
| When I was earning my instrument license, Vatsim was a huge part
| of my practice (for better or for worse). PilotEdge is best to
| get the fundamentals, but the cool thing about Vatsim is that
| your local area is very likely covered, which made it a different
| kind of applicable.
| reactordev wrote:
| 30 years ago we did a thing. Happens to still be a thing.
|
| Honestly, vatsim has its issues with governance but it's a
| shining model of how to run a hobby organization. I'll be on
| scope if you need me.
| mvkel wrote:
| Real ATC has issues with governance, too :)
| thecosmicfrog wrote:
| As a virtual pilot on the network, "Over to UNICOM. Thanks for
| the ATC. SEEYUH!"
| reactordev wrote:
| "Frequency change approved, monitor Unicom for traffic, have
| a good day."
|
| Just to clarify, I'm not involved in vatsim other than
| donating my time like so many others.
| shostack wrote:
| Vatsim may not be the most accurate in terms of teaching you what
| to say, but it will get you comfortable saying it live.
|
| I've had some truly amazing experiences, including the night
| before my first discovery flight at KPAO when KPAO was
| miraculously towered in vatsim (it almost never is compared to
| the major airports in the Bay).
|
| I logged in and started flying the pattern with a very friendly
| controller. Somehow we ended up with a full pattern which I've
| never seen at a GA field in the sim.
|
| Eventually we all started chatting, and turns out the controller
| used to fly out of KPAO IRL, and another local pilot was in the
| pattern. I got a bunch of great tips on sight maps for the
| pattern there, airport procedures and best practices, etc.
|
| It sounds cheesy but it was one of those magical Internet moments
| of connection with other people that sticks with you forever.
|
| Nailed everything during my discovery flight the next day.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| > Vatsim may not be the most accurate in terms of teaching you
| what to say, but it will get you comfortable saying it live.
|
| What are some of the inaccuracies? I enjoy flight sims, but I'm
| not sure I want to actually get a license. My understanding was
| that it tried to use accurate communication, so I'm curious
| about the differences!
| Albatross9237 wrote:
| In my (limited) experience, the inaccuracies are just due to
| amateur pilots/ATC not getting phraseology spot on and being
| more forgiving than the real world. Obviously, VATSIM doesn't
| have the users to populate the server with true to life
| Traffic and ATC at all locations. This lets you make your
| callouts slower than what you would see in real life.
| ryandrake wrote:
| ATC in real life can be surprisingly forgiving, too,
| depending on a lot of things (weather, their workload, if
| there's a lot of local flight training, and so on). There
| are a lot of things they will of course insist on though,
| like reading back hold short instructions and assigned
| runways. If you call up for routine VFR flight following on
| a not-busy day and accidentally forget some bit of info
| like your altitude, they'll just ask for it no big deal.
| rlu wrote:
| > I enjoy flight sims, but I'm not sure I want to actually
| get a license.
|
| This was me in late 2021 / early 2022.
|
| I urge you to get a discovery flight! I did, and now I'm
| almost finished with my instrument rating. One of the best
| decisions I've ever made in my life. I love flying so much -
| more than I ever could have imagined.
|
| Your wallet won't like it though.
|
| If you use reddit I'd recommend lurking r/flying. Great
| community of pilots ranging from students to hobby pilots to
| 747 captains.
| dreamnid wrote:
| I'm planning to staff PAO/SQL when I get my tower rating
| (hopefully) soon as I also fly out of them IRL. Hopefully can
| get a full pattern going again! Say hi if you see me on
|
| Curious do you remember the tips for the sight maps for the
| pattern/best practices? They sound cool to share for pilots
| unfamiliar with the field
| tbfrench wrote:
| Please do! As a fellow KSQL pilot irl, this sounds awesome.
| DenverSWE wrote:
| It's such a welcoming community. When I first started
| exploring, I was on a laptop that couldn't run FS so ventured
| into the ATC side as the software can run on essentially
| anything. I joined a session that had an active ATC and he ATC
| on-call kept walking me through everything that was happening
| during low moments.
|
| During my first flight I added a comment to the flight plan
| that I was new and the ATC walked me through how to startup the
| plane when running into some issues with the guide as they had
| been an instructor on the exact plane in a real world setting.
|
| If you are curious about it, just dig right in and someone will
| help you along the way.
|
| As a side note, here is a VATSIM map of current flights:
| https://simaware.ca/
| Idiot211 wrote:
| Been a VATSIM member for many a year, both on the scopes and in
| the sim.
|
| It's a fantastic hobby organisation, one filled with village
| politics and annoyances more than it needs to be.
|
| But if you focus in on the sim and the scope, my opinion is
| there's no better hobby org focused on excellence in a
| collective.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Now if only there was a comfortable on-boarding to VATSIM because
| it's great _if you know how to talk to ATC already_ , not so much
| if you don't.
| dbrueck wrote:
| There are plenty of great free resources, and the official one
| should always be something you're at least somewhat familiar
| with:
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html...
|
| But if you're willing to spend a little money for some
| organized material, this is a good reference:
|
| https://pilotworkshop.com/products/vfr-communication/
|
| If you're not ready for VATSIM:
|
| https://arsim.ai/
|
| A good progression could be something like: -
| study FAR/AIM and the above Pilot Workshops books for some
| specific scenarios - sit in a chair and pretend you're
| doing radio comms for those same scenarios, and just practice
| saying out loud your parts as if you were really in that
| situation - run through the scenarios with ARSim (this
| helps you get used to parsing the incoming info) -
| https://www.liveatc.net/ - listen to real world conversations,
| and try to anticipate what info will be given and what
| responses will be expected - VATSIM and/or
| https://www.pilotedge.net/ - get up in the air and talk
| to real ATC
|
| If you do the above steps, by the time you get to the last one,
| you might fumble it a little at first but otherwise you'll do
| ok, and you'll be head and shoulders over many, many other
| pilots out there.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| arsim is definitely one to keep an eye on, it's fairly new
| but a great example of what generative AI might be good at
| (given the limited number of words used during ATC
| interaction)
| martopix wrote:
| I'm neither a pilot nor even a player of flight simulators,
| however I have a deep geeky fascination for ATC and radio
| communication. I would have liked to get into vatsim, but the
| process seems a bit daunting. For what I could tell, not sure if
| it changed, you have to contact a local organization, many don't
| really explain how, etc. I ended up not putting the effort.
| kqr wrote:
| To control, yes. To fly, you just have to connect.
| geocrasher wrote:
| In the very, very early 1990's, I was on Prodigy, then later AOL.
| We were teens with lots of free time and being completely
| obsessed with Flight Simulator and aviation in general. One kid,
| Geoff, decided it would be fun to start a make believe airline.
| So, he was the "CEO" or whatever, and as I had extensive
| experiencing fiddling with aircraft "designs" in flight sim, I
| became the official aircraft designer. I think there were 3 or 4
| of us, on the entire online community, doing this stuff at the
| time.
|
| It quickly spread and got gained members, and eventually split
| into two over the usual online quibbles.
|
| I am still amazed at the online virtual airline community and
| what's grown around it such as vatsim. It's one of the few things
| that I can say "I was there at the beginning!", and I'm super
| proud of it.
| Macha wrote:
| Did they ever fix the audio quality? It was poor even compared to
| real world ATC audio.
| gburdell3 wrote:
| Yes, they updated the audio codec a few years ago. Now it
| sounds great. They also updated the live position syncing
| system so that other planes move much more smoothly across your
| screen
| davely wrote:
| Due to the higher fidelity scenery in newer flight sims (like
| MSFS 2020), I like to fly VFR (visual flight rules -- not relying
| on instruments for navigation, good weather, basically what you
| see when a typical Cessna 172 flies over your house).
|
| In general, it seems VATSIM is more focused on IFR and people
| flying routes in airliners from Point A to Point B using various
| navigation waypoints.
|
| That said, I still wanted to try it out and was really nervous. I
| watched a bunch of YouTube videos, got everything setup, loaded
| up on a ramp KBOS with VATSIM coverage in my trusty Cessna 152
| and sat there listening to the ridiculous amount of radio
| traffic. It was pretty awesome.
|
| Finally, I got the courage to make my first radio call and it was
| insanely nerve-racking! (I recorded a video of my first call,
| happens at 1:55. Apologies for the bouncy video, was using some
| head tracking software) [1]:
|
| Me: "Boston Tower, November 112 Charlie Delta, requesting radio
| check."
|
| Tower: "November 112 Charlie Delta, Boston Tower, you're 5x5, how
| me?"
|
| Hahaha! That was pretty damn cool!
|
| It felt good to talk to and listen to other people via voice chat
| in an Internet game without being called some slur, music
| blasting in the background, or people yelling at their mom to get
| them Cheetohs.
|
| EDIT: There was a guy awhile back who would stream his VATSIM
| controller sessions out of KBOS. I haven't seen him online in
| ages. But I think he was the controller I was talking to. Here is
| a 10 hour (!) stream of one of his sessions. The dude was
| amazing. [2]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/-JTmCG0zeOM?t=95
|
| [2]
| https://www.twitch.tv/sh3ed/clip/DoubtfulVenomousKittenHumbl...
| bombcar wrote:
| Does VATSIM offer flight following? It's kind of like VFR but
| with some flight plans and similar from IFR, including
| controller hand-off.
| davely wrote:
| Yeah! I've requested flight following on a subsequent flight.
| Providing there is overlapping coverage, you can get a hand-
| off.
|
| Here is a current map of VATSIM flights and coverage. (Toggle
| pilot rings off to see controller coverage) [1]
|
| [1] https://afv-map.vatsim.net/
| kcg wrote:
| The controller you're referring to is still very active in the
| Boston area, he's just "retired" from streaming.
| davely wrote:
| Ah! Cool. He's a good dude and I think was instrumental in
| getting me (and many others, I'm sure) interested in VATSIM.
| rlu wrote:
| Totally fair point. I think VATSIM shines in IFR yet MSFS
| arguably shines at lower altitudes / in a more VFR way where
| you can sort of do whatever you want (i.e. don't have to fly an
| assigned heading or route).
|
| I think flying VFR in an unrealistic way (ignoring airspace,
| altitude restrictions etc.) is plenty fun.
|
| But, if you want to fly "realistic" VFR you could consider
| PilotEdge. It's like vatsim but more heavy on GA and commonly
| used by real life student pilots that want to practice
| procedures and ATC comms as close as possible to real life.
|
| Just sharing in case you're interested :)
| remir wrote:
| Discovered VATSIM by chance watching a Youtube video about MS
| FlightSimulator and was impressed by the dedication of the
| various participants. This is the kind of stuff that make the
| internet awesome.
| blinky88 wrote:
| VATSIM has traditionally been more US-centric. IVAO[1] is the
| european "counterpart"
|
| [1] https://www.ivao.aero
| cporios wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time flying on VATSIM/IVAO, and some time
| controlling. I also eventually got my real-world Private Pilot
| License.
|
| VATSIM is an amazing community and the quality of the ATC service
| offered is incredibly high. It definitely helped a lot with
| becoming more comfortable with using the radio as a real world
| student pilot. I also expect that it will help me with my
| instrument license once I decide to do it.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Just wanted to mention PilotEdge which is a more realistic but
| paid option. Been using it for years including getting my
| instrument rating last year.
| kcg wrote:
| For anybody looking into VATSIM and alternatives, the pros of
| PilotEdge are that there is guaranteed ATC staffing with paid
| ATC (not volunteers like on VATSIM), controllers are likely
| higher quality on average, and you will be making all of the
| radio frequency changes you would in the real world (although
| often talking to the same controller just on a different
| frequency). The pros of VATSIM are much wider ATC coverage
| (PilotEdge is western US only, VATSIM is global) and much
| higher pilot volume (PilotEdge has 16 pilots online right now).
| rlu wrote:
| I got my PPL irl last summer. IMO PilotEdge is fantastic for
| real pilots/student pilots that want to practice realistic
| VFR and/or IFR procedures.
|
| But if you want to just "have fun" VATSIM is the way to go,
| at least for me.
|
| Like PilotEdge I always use with a Cessna 172 and pair the
| sim up with ForeFlight. I'll expand my planes on it as I
| expand the planes I fly in real life. But the goal is to
| mimic real training as close as I can.
|
| VATSIM I will always play with jets and fly IFR.
| sssilver wrote:
| How does a complete beginner who doesn't know how to fly get into
| flight simulators and VATSIM?
|
| Any tips?
| kqr wrote:
| I recommend reading Dencker's _See How It Flies_ [1] and trying
| to get a feeling for what he discusses in the simulator. It
| will take some hours to become really comfortable with an
| airplane, and only after that should you consider VATSIM.
|
| [1]: http://av8n.com/how/
| rlu wrote:
| Step 1: Have an interest for it. It sounds like you might!
|
| Once you know you want to, I think YouTube is a really
| fantastic resource. Also an active community on reddit
| (r/flightsim, r/MicrosoftFLightSim etc).
|
| I recommend Microsoft Flight Simulator for most people just
| because it visually looks the best. People will say other sims
| have better flight dynamics but I'd argue that doesn't matter
| for 99.9% of people.
|
| You need a pretty good PC to run MSFS though. There's also an
| Xbox version but it is less extensible. For example, you can't
| do VATSIM on Xbox.
| sssilver wrote:
| Awesome.
|
| I got a high performance gaming PC and access to YouTube.
|
| Any channels you recommend that follow a particularly
| effective curriculum?
| jjwiseman wrote:
| I've never used VATSIM, but I do enjoy watching streams of the
| yearly "Cross The Pond" event, where thousands of pilots fly
| across the Atlantic on VATSIM[1].
|
| I have used PilotEdge quite a bit though, and having virtual ATC
| really adds a lot to the experience of flightsimming-it forces me
| to plan my flights in detail, taking into account all the air
| spaces, writing down frequencies ahead of time, checking weather,
| briefing the various phases ahead of time.
|
| I think there's also something interesting and different about
| VATSIM and PilotEdge, in that they don't really care what game
| you're using (as long as it's supported by their network), but
| all the players are still in the same world--which is a close
| digital twin to the real world, at least in all the respects that
| aviation cares about. It's like if WoW players and EverQuest
| players were in the same world and could interact with one
| another. Are there any other "games" or layers over games that do
| that sort of thing?
|
| BTW, PilotEdge does offer a 5 hour free trial, and they have an
| excellent tutorial series, the Communication and Airspace
| Training (CAT) program[2] which starts out easy (on the first
| flight you don't even have to talk to a controller) and gently
| progresses though increasingly complex situations: Non-towered to
| Non-towered then non-towered to class D, then class D to class D,
| until by the end you're flying in and out of class B. On each
| flight you get a pass/no-pass. And they have a similar series for
| IFR, the I-ratings. Every rating has a nice writeup and youtube
| video.
|
| 1.
| https://twitter.com/intheflightdeck/status/17183155241601561...
| 2. https://www.pilotedge.net/pages/cat-ratings
| lawrenceduk wrote:
| VATSIM's pretty neat, really enjoyed flying in sim using it
| before I got my actual license.
|
| I'm not sure how much it helped though, the real challenge (at
| first) is making your brain handle "fly the aeroplane" and "talk
| to people" at the same time.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-28 23:00 UTC)