Being able to say "unable"#19

If you get directed to do an RNAV approach in a non-RNAV capable plane, or given an altitude that you just can’t achieve, you should be able to say “unable” and request an alternative.

Ideally you should be able to work collaboratively with the controller, for example:

“Lima Bravo Delta, climb to FL280”
“Unable, could we do FL220 for now? Lima Bravo Delta”
“Lima Bravo Delta, there’s an airway restriction at FL240. Could you take FL240?”
etc.

This puts control rightly into the pilot’s hands, like it should in the real world. If ATC is telling you to do something your plane can’t do, or that you aren’t comfortable with – you have all the rights to decline (provided there is a legit reason of course).

Other ATC programs force you to specific flows and follow their plan precisely. They tend to break or start freaking out if you change your mind. I think having this feature would set BATC apart and make it feel much more fluid and realistic.

This is so heavily context dependant, I don’t even know how we would implement this. Pilots saying unable would then need to present an alternative to what they’re stating they’re unable to do, which requires more contextual awareness than the program would be able to handle and frankly sounds like a nightmare to code.

Maybe something to look into after version 2. In the coming years language models will only improve in understanding context.

The issue is not the language understanding context, it’s understanding the language context within the flight context. And then further, knowing what to do with this information. “Go left” and you say “unable” we can’t just tell you to go right instead. Each permutation of saying unable will demand its own massive logic loops, and this balloons out of scope just a couple of iterations in. So unfortunately, I don’t see this being possible.

Can you at least then suggest alternatives yourself? For example, if you are given an RNAV approach and you are unable, could you then reply to the instruction with “can we have vectors to the ILS/visual instead?”. That would more or less do the job :)

Not comepletely familiar with the true procedures but when I’ve flown a bit of radios only practice on vatsim or listening to the recorded ATC in FS academy: they’d say something like “unable to fly RNAV request ILS or VOR approach”

Which I think would probably be picked up with existing request approach commands or could be an easier change and more realistic than a simple “unable”

I understand the rails and the complexity it if fans out into a tree but wouldn’t a bit more simple to just have ATC wait for a response as a request from the player. P2ATC does this.

This is a simulator after all, the player needs to be able to fix things on the fly & not be told by ATC “No!, No! No!”

E.g.
Atc: Descend flight level 180.
Player: Unable
ATC: Understood, Please say intentions.
Player: Request FL200.
Continued