For all the controllers out there you'll be delighted to know that Blind pilots, we often fly on the network with the callsign vision, have within our community developed a software to allow us to read taxiway data and use an auditory system to guide us through airports. Many of you may remember the frequent request to reposition to the runway as we were unable to taxi, by majority those should now be gone. Admittedly taxing with auditory cues only can be a little slower, and the software isn't perfect, occasionally we take a wrong turn, but who doesn't. We would ask for a little more feedback, especially if it seems as though we're heading the wrong way or when in large cues of other aircraft, as this can help with our situational awareness. However on the whole this is something we're now able to do pretty well. This is really revolutionary for Blind sim pilots especially in those large events where the repositioning could often be difficult to arrange. See here if you want to know more https://github.com/oasis1701/msfs-blind-assist

Hi, I'm fairly new to vatsim and I wanted to try flying from a larger airport, and I decided on EBBR. However I'm having trouble figuring out which of the lines is the one marked on the charts. The charts appear to show three lines, all marked under one number and im not sure which one I would have to hold at if told to hold at, for example, B3. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Hey pilots and controllers

Before I say anything, I dont want to make this seem like a rant post or like im trying to coherse you into playing in a certain way, fly however you want

That said, im genuinely curious, why does everyone ALWAYS fly within Europe or North America

I rarely fly out of South America since im based there, and have always noticed that the skies above these 2 continents are almost always empty or scarcely populated, without even getting into controller staffing

Is this just a me thing? Like, why do you fly where you fly? Is it cause of your airline or cause you're based there or are the weather/airports easier, cause people never seem to get tired of flying in and out of the same airports, Every. Single. Time.

Thus creating a feedback loop where no one wants to tower the airports in south america and africa cause the traffic is too little, causing people to not fly into these areas cause they're never staffed, and so on and so forth as the events start to dry up and nobody wants to bother becoming a controller for these areas

Again, no hate to anyone flying in Europe or North America, I would just like to see people leaving their comfort zone every once in a while to make the traffic distribution more even, and hey you can discover some beautiful destinations while you're at it!

Anyways what do you think?

I've been on this network long enough ( 10 years ) to see the pattern. VATSIM isnt a "realistic simulation community" anymore. Its a playground for bitter old timers who get off on gatekeeping, a dumping ground for trolls that supervisors refuse to deal with, and a place where "standards" only apply to newcomers while the old guard does whatever they want.

The hypocrisy is honestly laughable. An ex ATM admits they had a live event with 40 drunk people and mishaps happened? "Loosen up, its a game."

A newbie asks a simple question? "You dont have the commitment, the network isnt for you."

A pilot meows on frequency and screams "Im being raped" for a laugh? Nothing happens.

Someone tries to provide facts and technical arguments about how the network could evolve? Downvoted into oblivion.

Controllers are quitting because they cant deal with the disrespect anymore. "Most of us dont deal with it. Thats why so many of us are former vatsim controllers."

Meanwhile, supervisors are useless. "A wallop is pointless these days. Supervisors are not going to do anything."

But the hardcore defenders will still type: "But we have standards." Yeah? What standards? The standard where you can be a condescending prick and get 20 upvotes? The standard where you gatekeep beginners while the network slowly dies from lack of new blood?

And IMO the best part is that these same people who scream about "quality control" and "maintaining standards" are the ones who downvote anyone with a new idea, treat the network like their personal little kingdom, talk to newcomers like theyre absolute garbage, then turn around and say "were so welcoming here."

No. Youre not welcoming. You're a circlejerk of bitter middle aged guys who get a power trip from pretending to be an air traffic controller in a video game.

A real life private pilot said they were scared to push the PTT button because of the "roasting" on Reddit posts. And you know what the response was? Not "we should be more welcoming." No. It was: "Good. VATSIM isnt meant for beginners."

Youre literally proud of scaring away people who are genuinely trying to learn.

So here is the reality check.

This network is going to die. Not because of "MSFS kids" or "trolls." Its going to die because the community has become so toxic and elitist that good controllers quit from burnout, new pilots are too scared to join, innovation and new ideas get shot down by gatekeepers, supervisors dont enforce rules, and "standards" are just a tool to exclude people the old guard doesnt like.

You want to save the network? Stop jerking yourselves off about how "realistic" and "professional" you are while treating people like garbage.

Downvote this all you want. Its easier than actually looking in the mirror.

I'm in the USA. I dont mean where you can get trained the fastest, but for someone that wants to be a controller, isnt a real life controller, has passing knowledge of airplanes and such. Understands what different roles are, is willing to study and practice, but needs a "teacher" more than a test giver. Are there better artccs that tend to have better teachers that are willing to invest the time and effort into someone that is willing to learn, but doesnt know what they dont know?? :D I know you are supposed to join where you want to control, but joined (never started training) at a place and the people just didnt seem to really care unless you knew what you were doing.. Just curious if they are all like that or some are really built around teaching new controllers.

Came across GateStaticInjector 0.3 Beta Preview, a tool for MSFS 2024 that fills unused stands with realistic cold-and-dark static aircraft, while keeping live VATSIM traffic as the priority.

What makes it interesting is that it doesn’t just place random aircraft. The spawn logic is based on real historical traffic data, including different hours of the day, days of the week, and operating periods, so airports can feel a lot more believable.

It also includes:
Airport Profile Editor
custom stand, airline and aircraft-type rules
shareable airport profiles
compatibility with AIG and FSLTL
From what I’ve seen, the beta preview is free for now.
https://flightsim.to/addon/108678/gatestaticinjector-for-vatsim

So i started using navigraph(the free version) that does not have the latest airacs, and i plan to jump on vatsim pretty soon. My question is can i use vatsim without the latest airac, i am under the impression that the atc on vatsim usually gives you the final vectors so it should be fine flying with outdated stars, or i should pay the premium for navigraph?

Was on ORD TWR a lot for the past 2 days of the Ini ORD release, 9 hours on release day, and 3 on the second day (yes, i have no life lol). Just wanted to say thank you to all of the pilots who flew in or out for the release, probably the most fun ive had on VATSIM in a while. Hope you all continue to fly out of such a great airport :)

Just flew with Auckland Radio active, successfully performed selcal check, but all I get to hear is a tone on the Vatsim client, is that all the indication we get ?

As multiple people are flying I am getting the same chime sound again and again. How to differentiate between other selcal check and my selcal check ?

Or if radio calls me in selcal.

I was flying pmdg 739ER, no indication on that Aircraft as well.

Any suggestions would be helpful thank you.

Great work from the 5 or 6 pilots that were in a belt-fed trail of aircraft heading in to Manchester from all directions tonight around 23:45. Nice and tight deconfliction. Great stuff that makes VATSIM good to be part of, I like it! ! A tired VIR 86!!

SwAFv Airbus A330-200 shown with the USNv F18S/A Super Hornet.

This may be stupid question but I was flying out of Gatwick yesterday afternoon with only London South online. I eventually found space to get in and request clearance.

My question is, if only centre is online, can I send a PDC request too their CPDLC code or do only the local airport ATC send PDCs via CPDLC? Hope this makes sense.

Hello everyone. I am new to vatsim and an aspiring atc controller.

I have passed the new orientation test and have chosen VATSEA. I created a support ticket on VATSEA HQ for vACC Hong kong, submitting my resident controller application asking to be admitted for s1 training.

My question is

1: How long does it take for my ticket to get aprroved.

2: is Hong Kong a good vACC to start my training.

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

As we all know Vatsim has grown quite a bit over the last years. Delivery has never been a popular position and many will argue its rarely necessary. For small Airports this is totally fine and really just needed in events.

But we are at a point where large Airports like Frankfurt can easily have 30 planes on the ground the whole afternoon/evening without any event.

Here comes the problem i observed in Frankfurt and similar sized fields. The Airport is on Unicom, everything is working and rolling and people are communicating.

Now one single ATC joins...but he joins as Tower or Departure controller...even ground can cause issues at this point.

In this moment the Airport goes in to a full Stop. All the 30 people on the ground are trying to get their clearance while the Tower guy is trying to get the already moving traffic under his control.
The frequency gets a mess, the people get more and more angry and talk over each other. Everything gets delayed and its just a pain to listen to for the next 20-30 minutes.

This gets aggravated by most pilots still not being capable to use PDC or similar ways to get their clearance and to few airports enforcing it.

So please if you join an Airport as the first ATC and there is a lot of traffic online join as Delivery and switch to ground/twr once you got your backlog managed. Don't be the guy that brings an airport to a full stop and makes the next 30 minutes a pain for everyone because "Delivery is boring".

Hello, community!

A mate and I are currently working on a project for VatSim and IVAO.
The project consists of a circuit board with LEDs and a microcontroller, which can then be hung on the wall or placed on a desk.
The colours of the LEDs are designed to show in real time whether and where an ATC is online.
At the moment, we’re limiting ourselves to Germany; we’re currently covering the 13 largest airports and the three centres: Langen, Munich and Bremen.
The four LEDs per airport indicate whether DEL, GND, TWR or APP is online.
This means you can easily see at a glance whether the ATC responsible for you is online.
We’re using the VatSim or IVAO API for this, so the display is always live.
We’re currently expecting a release at the end of the year.

What do you think of the project?
How do you like the design?
Please feel free to send us your feedback here or by email.

[email protected]

We know it’s a bit nerdy 🤣 but we love it

Any chance we could get vpilot inside the marketplace? It would be great for xbox users but also for those that use nvidia geforcenow. The price could be a donation to the vatsim network. Anyways something to consider.

Cleveland Live is this Saturday from 1800-2200z. Our friendly controllers will be providing full services live and in-person from Cleveland. Make sure to come fly and enjoy the great service!

FlightBoard 2.0.0 is now live.

If you're not already familiar, FlightBoard is a browser-based flight information display system for VATSIM. It recreates real airport departure and arrival boards from live network data, authentic themes for the major hubs, automatic status logic, live ATC and METAR, stand assignments, with a live map alongside. Type an ICAO and the board loads. Still no installation, no account, free.

This release is almost entirely about the map.

After months of work, the live map now resolves every filed flight plan against official Navigraph navigation data and draws it as a real route with named waypoints. Filed airways are expanded into their constituent fixes, so UL607 traces the actual airway rather than a straight line between entry and exit. Departures follow the runway centreline before turning toward the first fix, using the active runway from ATIS. Procedure names are matched against the navdata with ARINC 424 compression and cycle drift handled, so CINDY8S resolves rather than silently failing.

That's available to everyone, drawn from an older AIRAC cycle. Connecting a Navigraph account with an FMS Data subscription adds SID/STAR expansion, altitude and speed constraints on the waypoints, instrument approach rendering down to the threshold, and the current cycle.

Also in this release:

SIGMET overlay — worldwide significant weather as colour-coded polygons: thunderstorms, severe turbulence, icing, volcanic ash, tropical cyclones. Hover for hazard type, validity window, altitude band and the raw report. Sourced from NOAA AWC.

Network-wide tracking — a callsign search in the map header finds and tracks any aircraft on VATSIM, anywhere. Previously tracking was limited to the selected airport's traffic.

Decoded ATIS — active runways, wind, visibility, QNH and transition level summarised in the flight panel, with the raw broadcast one click away.

Plus smoother data tag interpolation between position reports, hardened conflict detection, and fixes for Safari/retina tile seams.

App: https://flightboard.simfixr.com Full changelog and screenshots: blog

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome