X-ATC-Chatter 1.6.

3
User’s Guide

8/22/2019
Stick and Rudder Studios

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Table of Contents
Change Log .................................................................................................................................................... 3
Release Notes ............................................................................................................................................... 6
1.6.3 .......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Important Upgrade Instructions ........................................................................................................... 6
1.6.2 .......................................................................................................................................................... 6
1.6.1 .......................................................................................................................................................... 7
Volume Dataref ..................................................................................................................................... 7
Assert Errors.......................................................................................................................................... 7
X-Plane 11.3 ATC Voice Integration ...................................................................................................... 7
Separate OpenAL Context ..................................................................................................................... 7
OSX Yosemite ........................................................................................................................................ 7
Window Placement Bugs ...................................................................................................................... 7
1.6 ............................................................................................................................................................. 8
OpenAL Errors ....................................................................................................................................... 8
Duplicate Tower and Unicom Facilities................................................................................................. 8
Using Checkboxes for Nearby Facility List............................................................................................. 8
Transmitters .......................................................................................................................................... 8
VR Support ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Pop-Out Windows ................................................................................................................................. 9
Filtering and Range for Nearby Facilities .............................................................................................. 9
Multiple Active Regions ........................................................................................................................ 9
Center Override on COM2 .................................................................................................................... 9
Audio Output ...................................................................................................................................... 10
Controller Ordering ............................................................................................................................. 10
Pause on External View....................................................................................................................... 10
Additional Clips ................................................................................................................................... 10
1.5.3 ........................................................................................................................................................ 10
X-Life Integration ................................................................................................................................ 10
Facility Refresh .................................................................................................................................... 10
Playback .............................................................................................................................................. 10
External Integration ............................................................................................................................ 11

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 COM Selection..................................................................................................................................... 11
Center Override .................................................................................................................................. 11
1.5 ........................................................................................................................................................... 11
1.1 ........................................................................................................................................................... 11
1.0 ........................................................................................................................................................... 11
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 12
Licensing...................................................................................................................................................... 12
Installation .................................................................................................................................................. 12
Install the Stand-Alone X-Plane Player ................................................................................................... 13
Install for Pilot2ATC ................................................................................................................................ 13
Configuring Pilot2ATC ................................................................................................................................. 15
Platform Support ........................................................................................................................................ 15
Using the Stand-Alone Player ..................................................................................................................... 15
Requirements.......................................................................................................................................... 15
General Operation .................................................................................................................................. 16
Custom Region .................................................................................................................................... 16
Refresh Cache on Start........................................................................................................................ 17
Use X-Plane ATC .................................................................................................................................. 17
Play Chatter Checkbox ........................................................................................................................ 17
External Integrations ........................................................................................................................... 17
Solid Windows Checkbox .................................................................................................................... 18
Automatic Controllers Checkbox ........................................................................................................ 18
Enable Center Override When Tuned to 123.275............................................................................... 18
Radio Power Checkbox ....................................................................................................................... 18
Use COM1 / COM2 .............................................................................................................................. 19
Interior Sound Only ............................................................................................................................. 19
Volume Sliders .................................................................................................................................... 19
Audio Devices ...................................................................................................................................... 19
Pop Out ............................................................................................................................................... 19
Notes ................................................................................................................................................... 20
Show Nearby Facilities ............................................................................................................................ 20

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 Commands .............................................................................................................................................. 21
Notes: .................................................................................................................................................. 21
VR ............................................................................................................................................................ 21
Known Problems ......................................................................................................................................... 21
Limitations .................................................................................................................................................. 22
External Integrations................................................................................................................................... 23
Playback Control ..................................................................................................................................... 23
Chatter Volume Control .......................................................................................................................... 23
X-Life Integration .................................................................................................................................... 23
Future Development ................................................................................................................................... 24
Volunteer Program ..................................................................................................................................... 24
Support ....................................................................................................................................................... 25

Change Log

Version Changes
1.6.3  Added full support for 8.33 KHz spacing
 Improved the stand-alone player so that it supports both wav and mp3 formats
 Added a Custom region where users can put their private clips
 Added thousands of new clips
1.6.2  Fixed a problem where the X-Plane 10 binaries would not load on OSX Yosemite
 Added a significant number of new clips to Asia and Oceania regions
 Adjusted to zip file packaging so that the clips are spread out over multiple zip
files reducing the chance for a download failure due to the size of a single
archive
1.6.1  Added a float dataref that can be used with FlyWithLua to change the volume
level of the chatter.
 Corrected a problem on Windows where the stand alone player could create
ASSERT errors when used with a non-English character set.
 Added an integration for the X-Plane 11.3 improved ATC voice system
 Created a separate OpenAL context even when working with the X-Plane
OpenAL device in an attempt to cut down on the interference from other
plugins sharing the same X-Plane context.
 Corrected code signing for OSX binaries for X-Plane 11 so they will work with
Yosemite
 Corrected some problems with window placement in X-Plane 11 when multiple
monitors or scaling was being used. Added code to prevent resizing of popped
out windows

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  New clips added to all regions
1.6  Added an integration for the X-Plane 11.3 improved ATC voice system
 Created a separate OpenAL context even when working with the X-Plane
OpenAL device in an attempt to cut down on the interference from other
plugins sharing the same X-Plane context.
 Corrected code signing for OSX binaries for X-Plane 11 so they will work with
Yosemite
 Corrected some problems with window placement in X-Plane 11 when multiple
monitors or scaling was being used. Added code to prevent resizing of popped
out windows
1.5.3  Cleared any OpenAL errors before calling any OpenAL API’s
 Changed facility frequency tuning to checkboxes for better visibility
 Removed duplication of tower and Unicom at the same airport when both were
assigned to the same frequency. In that case only the tower will displayed.
 Added support for VR on X-Plane 11.2
 Added Canadian center transmitters
 Added generic center transmitters for the rest of the world
 Added support for pop-out windows for X-Plane 11
 Added filtering of facilities for the Nearby Facility UI
 Increased the radius of nearby facilities UI to 75 NM
 Upgraded to the newest X-Plane SDK
 Added support to select multiple regions for chatter. This will allow you to easily
combine similar regions like the U.S. and Canada to increase the clip count and
reduce repeats.
 Added support to monitor COM2 for Center Override when using X_Plane ATC
outside the U.S. where we do not have good Center tuning detection.
 Fixed a bug where X-ATC-Chatter would attempt to play non-wave files that
were inadvertently placed in the controller directories. Prior to this fix X-ATC-
Chatter would crash X-Plane when it attempted to play these non-wave files.
 Added support for clips to go to a separate audio device on Windows and Linux
 Rearranged controller order so that it was in the logical order of an IFR flight
 Added commands to select next and previous IFR controller when not using
automatic controllers
 Added an option to pause chatter when the camera view is external
 Added more clips to Canada and the U.S.
1.5.2  Fixed a crash on X-Plane start caused by X-ATC-Chatter not properly handling all
apt.dat formats.
 Added support for X-Life integration
 Changed facility database to read X-Plane custom scenery on start
 Recoded the player to play chatter files in the main X-Plane thread. The prior
multi-threaded approach was causing erroneous errors being reported in the
log file
 Added the ability for external plugins to integrate with X-ATC-Chatter
 Chatter will pause when the simulator is paused
 Added the ability to select Com1 or Com2 for automatic controller selection
 Added a center override when tuned to 123.27

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  Fixed some extraneous errors messages in the log file
1.5.1  Fixed an X-Plane crash that would occur if you exited X-Plane prior to starting
the flight.
1.5  Fixed a bug that prevented you from being able to change delays settings
1.1  Added a player for X-Plane for those people who don’t use Pilot2ATC
 Added new files
1.0  New files in the U.S., Canada, and Europe
 Initial Release
Table 1

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Release Notes

1.6.3

 Added a Custom region where users can place their own ATC clips
 Improved the stand-alone player so that it supports both wav and mp3 file formats.
 Added full support for 8.33 KHz spacing
 Added thousands of new clips

Important Upgrade Instructions

If you are upgrading from a previous version of X-ATC-Chatter it is important that you remove any
existing chatter clips that are in .WAV file formats as the clips in 1.6.3 are now .MP3 format. Failure to
do this will result in two versions of the same clip being played resulting in clips being duplicated during
playback.

Updating X-Plane 11 Stand-Alone Player

1. Make a backup copy of your current X-Plane\Resources\plugins\X-ATC-Chatter folder.

2. Do not delete the existing X-ATC-Chatter folder in your plugins folder. This will preserve your
existing X-ATC-Chatter settings.
3. Delete the Regions folder from your current installation, X-Plane\Resources\plugins\X-ATC-
Chatter\Regions. This will remove all the .WAV clips
4. Follow the installation instructions for a full install including merging any of the additional
Regions. Just make sure as you do this you allow your copy utility to merge / over-write any of
the existing files in your X-Plane\Resources\plugins\X-ATC-Chatter folder. This will update the
binary plugin files and the documentation while installing the new .MP3 clips and preserving any
settings you have in the X-ATC-Chatter.ini file.

Updating Pilot2ATC

1. Note: Your root folder for Pilot2ATC may have a different name other than Pilot2ATC200
2. Make a backup copy of Pilot2ATC200\Sounds\ATC_Chatter\Controllers
3. Delete the Pilot2ATC200\Sounds\ATC_Chatter\Controllers folder
4. Follow the instructions in this manual for installing the clips in Pilot2ATC

1.6.2

Fixed a problem where the X-Plane 10 binaries would not load if you were running OSX Yosemite.

A significant number of new clips have been added to the Asia and Oceania regions.

The distribution of X-ATC-Chatter has been broken up into three separate zip files:

 X-ATC-Chatter.zip

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  Europe-Africa-South_America.zip
 Asia-Oceania.zip

X-ATC-Chatter.zip contains the stand-alone X-Plane player plugin, documentation, and the clips for the
United States and Canada. The other two zip files contain the clips for their respected regions.

Having three separate zip files reduces the chance of a download failure one single large archive. Note
that the installation procedures are different with these three archives. Refer to the Installation section
of this user guide.

1.6.1
Volume Dataref

A new float dataref has been added that will allow you to modify the chatter volume. The dataref will
take values between 0 and 1.0. Higher values represent louder the chatter volume.

"SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/chatter_volume"

Assert Errors

Some users have encounter ASSERTS with X-ATC-Chatter when starting X-Plane and using a non-English
character set. Beta 2 is a Release build of X-ATC-Chatter which should these random ASSERTS.

X-Plane 11.3 ATC Voice Integration

X-ATC-Chatter now has an optional integration to the X-Plane 11.3 new ATC voice system. When
enabled this integration will select the controller assigned by ATC and it will pause chatter playback
when the radio is use.

Separate OpenAL Context

It was possible to have interference issues when using the X-Plane audio device due to the use of a
shared OpenAL contect. X-ATC-Chatter now creates its own context when using the X-Plane audio
device.

OSX Yosemite

Users running OSX Yosemite would get errors loading the X-ATC-Chatter binary for X-Plane 11.

Window Placement Bugs

Occasionally there would be window placement problems in X-Plane 11 when multiple monitors were
being used and/or UI scaling was enabled. Code has also been added to prevent resizing of popped out
windows.

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1.6
OpenAL Errors

Some X-Plane plugins were not checking for audio errors after calls to OpenAL. This could causes left
over errors in OpenAL that would get erroneously reported as X-ATC-Chatter sound errors.

X-ATC-Chatter will now clear any existing OpenAL errors prior to calling any audio API’s

Duplicate Tower and Unicom Facilities

Some airport scenery has both Unicom/CTAF and Tower assigned to the same frequency. Although this
maybe a common use of a single frequency at airports where the tower is not staffed 24/7, X-ATC-
Chatter has no way of knowing what the Tower’s hours of operation are.

In this situation X-ATC-Chatter will not display or select Unicom chatter and will display and select tower
chatter when both Unicom and Tower are assigned to the same frequency at an airport.

Note: A facility cache refresh will be required to remove the duplicates. This can be enabled in the
control panel.

Using Checkboxes for Nearby Facility List

Prior to 1.6 X-ATC-Chatter used a push button in the nearby facility dialog to tune to a facility. Often the
frequency displayed in the button was hard to read. Pushbuttons also do not show state so there was no
visual indication as to which facility you were currently tuned to.

Beta 6 now uses a checkbox for this. They should be easier to read and they will also show what facility
you are currently tuned to.

Transmitters

Transmitter locations for Canadian airspace have been added. The locations are not perfect as the
source of the data may have missing information.

Generic center transmitters have been added to the rest of the world. Although this is not very realistic
as the same frequency would not be used for an entire airspace, this approach is likely to be more
realistic then using the center override feature.

VR Support

Added support for VR in X-Plane 11.2. The control panel and facility dialog will now open in the VR
environment if you have it active. Note: Both the control panel and the facility dialog must be closed
when you start VR as it is the act of opening them when in VR mode that will move them to the VR
environment.

I don’t have a VR headset so the testing on this has been very limited. Please report any problems you
run into with VR.

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Pop-Out Windows

X-Plane 11 supports the ability to pop-out plugin widgets to a top level OS window that can be moved to
a different monitor than X-Plane. 1.6 Beta 3 now supports this for the control panel and the nearby
facility UI.

Note: There are some odd problems with this particularly when you are running in a windowed
simulator and the current simulator window size is too small to fully show the X-ATC-Chatter UI
element. Please refer to the known problem section of this guide.

Filtering and Range for Nearby Facilities

The nearby facility UI has been enhanced to support a better layout and the ability to filter and refresh
the facility list. The range has also been increased to include facilities up to 75 NM from your current
plane’s location.

Note: The UI will only show the nearest 40 facilities that meet the filter criteria and are within 75 NM.

Multiple Active Regions

With Beta 2 you can now select multiple regions for chatter. This gives you the ability to increase the clip
count and may be useful for combining similar regions like the U.S. and Canada.

Center Override on COM2

When using X-Plane ATC to automatically tune COM1 it will often select a center frequency that is not
found by X-ATC-Chatter. This is particularly problematic outside the U.S. where X-ATC-Chatter does not
have knowledge of the Center Transmitter locations. In this case X-ATC-Chatter will not find a center
facility in range.

To get around this X-ATC-Chatter will first look to see if you have the “Center Override” option set. If it is
set it will then look to see if the COM2 audio panel selector is ON and check if COM2 is tuned to 123.27.
If all those conditions are met Center Override chatter will be played regardless of what you have COM1
tuned to.

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Audio Output

You can now select the audio device you want the chatter to play on for Windows and Linux.
Unfortunately there is a bug in Apple’s OpenAL implementation that prevents the audio devices from
being listed. Possibly Apple will correct this in a future OSX update.

Controller Ordering

The controllers are now listed in the control panel in the logical order for an IFR flight. We have also
added commands to select the next and previous IFR controller if you are not using Automatic
Controllers.

Pause on External View

You now have the option to pause chatter playback of the X-Plane view is changed to an external
camera.

Additional Clips

More clips have been added to Canada and the U.S.

1.5.3
X-Life Integration

Added support for X-Life integration. You must have external integrations enabled for this to work and
you must be running X-Life Version 2.1 or higher:

http://jardesign.org/x-life/www/

Facility Refresh

X-ATC-Chatter will now update the facility database on X-Plane start. This will ensure that the
frequencies shown in the Nearby Facilities list will accurately reflect what is in your installed scenery.

Note that this change may slow down your X-Plane load by a few seconds depending on the speed of
your computer, your disk drive, and the amount of custom scenery you have installed. Once X-ATC-
Chatter has created the file FacilityCache.csv you can use the option in the control panel to disable the
refresh on subsequent X-Plane starts. We recommend that you allow X-ATC-Chatter to refresh the
database on each start if you are not experiencing a significant delay on start.

Playback

The playback has been rewritten to play clips in the main X-Plane thread. The prior version of X-ATC-
Chatter was reporting erroneous errors due to calling OpenAL error check functions from a different
thread.

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External Integration

We have also added an ability for 3rd party ATC / Traffic plugins to integrate with X-ATC-Chatter allowing
them to control chatter pauses and which controller clips should be played. See the section on External
Integrations for how this works.

COM Selection

There is now an ability to select which COM radio to monitor when automatic controller selection is
enabled.

Center Override

When Center Override is enabled and X-ATC-Chatter sees that you are tuned to 123.27 it will
automatically select Center as the controller. This is maybe useful when flying outside the U.S. where we
have limited data for the center facilities.

1.5

This version of X-ATC-Chatter includes a stand-alone player for X-Plane for those users who do not use
Pilot2ATC.

Part of creating the new player meant that we had to switch between using MP3 files to WAV files. If
you had been using previous versions of X-ATC-Chatter with Pilot2ATC you will need to delete the
contents of the Pilot2ATC: Pilot2ATC200\Sounds\ATC_Chatter\Controllers folder before you copy any of
the new region controllers from X-ATC-Chatter 1.5. Failure to remove the prior contents of that folder
will result in duplicate chatter files, one with and extension of .MP3 and the new one with an extension
of .WAV.

1.1

Added additional clips to the U.S., Canada, and Europe

1.0

This is the initial release

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Introduction

X-ATC-Chatter is a set of air traffic control audio chatter files that either a stand-alone X-Plane player or
Pilot2ATC can play back. The clips have been edited so that each one contains a single exchange
between a pilot and an ATC facility. When necessary the audio has been edited to remove any glaring
location specific phrases so that the clips can be played back for a general region of the world regardless
of the departure / destination airports and which ARTCC centers are used. As an example the exchange
“Boston Tower, United 6626, clear of active” would be changed to “Tower, United 6626, clear of active”.
No attempt was made to change references to SIDS, STARS, runways, taxiways, and specific waypoints.

The clips are organized by world region and then by controller type. The directory structure below the
region folders matches what Pilot2ATC needs to playback controller specific audio.

Licensing

The audio clips in X-ATC-Chatter are copyrighted material. They were derived from LiveATC.net archives
and are being distributed under a licensing agreement between Stick and Rudder Studios, LLC. and
LiveATC.net.

 You have the right to use these files for personal, non-commercial use in a flight simulator on a
single PC.
 You may not redistribute them or the included stand-alone player in any way including
o Posting them on the internet
o Embedding them in another product
o Transmitting or sharing the files with a third party in any way
 You may not make any derivative audio files from the included clips
 You may make a backup copy of the files for archival purposes

Installation

The distribution of X-ATC-Chatter has been broken up into three separate zip files:

 X-ATC-Chatter.zip
 Europe-Africa-South_America.zip
 Asia-Oceania.zip

X-ATC-Chatter.zip contains the stand-alone X-Plane player plugin, documentation, and the clips for the
United States and Canada. The other two zip files contain the clips for their respected regions. Having
three separate zip files reduces the chance of a download failure one single large archive.

After downloading the zip files simply use your favorite zip utility to extract each archive to a separate
temporary directory. The resulting Region folders in the Europe-Africa-South_America.zip and the Asia-
Oceania.zip files will need to be copied into the X-ATC-Chatter folder that was extracted from X-ATC-
Chatter.zip

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This tutorial YouTube video shows you how to merge these Region folders:

https://youtu.be/S1xfm552Yb0

This tutorial YouTube video shows you how to install and use the X-Plane stand-alone player:

https://youtu.be/9mTRnv5wzew

This tutorial YouTube video shows you how to install the clips for Pilot2ATC and has a demo flight:

https://youtu.be/t8gJPcFxPSg

Install the Stand-Alone X-Plane Player

If you plan to use the stand-alone player copy the resulting merged X-ATC-Chatter folder to your X-Plane
10 or X-Plane 11 plugins folder. Example:

X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\X-ATC-Chatter

Under the Regions folder will be the seven region folders, United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, South
America, Africa, and Oceania.

Install for Pilot2ATC

If you plan to use the chatter files with Pilot2ATC there is no need to copy the merged X-ATC-Chatter
folder to your X-Plane plugins folder. Rather, you will just pick the region you want to use with Pilot2ATC
and copy the Controllers directory to the Pilot2ATC Sounds\ATC_Chatter folder. Note: your Pilot2ATC
folder name may be different depending on the version of Pilot2ATC that you are running. The final
structure should look like this:

Pilot2ATC200\Sounds\ATC_Chatter\Controllers

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 Figure 1

The files in each region have a two letter prefix on them that denotes the region they were recorded
from. You can merge Controller directories from multiple regions to the Pilot2ATC Sounds structure.
Merging the U.S. and Canada regions will give you a considerable number clips per controller reducing
the chance of hearing clips repeated during a single flight.

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Configuring Pilot2ATC

You will want to configure Pilot2ATC to play chatter files based on a controller file structure. See the
following figure:

Figure 2

Set the Sound Source radio button to “Controller Folders” and make sure the Root Folder is set to the
Pilot2ATC Sounds directory. Set the desired “Pause Between File Playback” time. Note, the pause time
will not be fixed at that value; rather, it is a random number up to the max value specified here. Finally,
check the “Play Chatter” check box.

Platform Support

The stand-alone player will work on X-Plane 10 and 11, all versions and all platforms.

Using the Stand-Alone Player

Requirements

The stand-alone player will operate on X-Plane 10 32 and 64 bit and X-Plane 11 64 bit.

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General Operation

The stand-alone player for X-Plane 10 and 11 will play back chatter files from the various regions and
controllers based on manual input from the X-ATC-Chatter control panel which can be accessed via the
X-Plane plugins menu. See figure below.

The control panel shows the total number of clips in each region and when a region is selected the
numbers next to the controllers show the total clips for that controller in in the currently selected
region. You can select more than one region at a time which will increase the total clip count for chatter.
This may make the most sense for combining similar regions like the U.S. and Canada where ATC chatter
and phraseology are similar although you can select any combination of regions.

To start chatter playback select a region and a controller that has at least one clip in it and click on the
Play Chatter checkbox. Chatter should start playing with a pause between each clip that is controlled by
the min and max delay parameters. To alter the min and max play parameters adjust the settings in the
text boxes and press the Set Delay button. Use the Save button to save your settings so the next time X-
Plane loads X-ATC-Chatter will start with those settings.

Custom Region

The stand-alone player supports a Custom region where you can place and of your personal chatter
clips. In order to use this simply place mp3 or wav files in the various controller folders under X-ATC-
Chatter\Regions\Custom\Controllers.

One use case for the Custom folder is to allow you to collect facility specific chatter for a particular flight.
You can go to LiveATC.net and download ground, tower, approach, and departure clips for a specific
flight between airports where LiveATC.net has coverage. Since it may be difficult to capture an accurate

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sequence of en-route center chatter you could populate the Custom\Controllers\ctr folder with a copy
of the center clips from another region while having airport and approach and departure specific clips in
the other Custom controller folders.

Refresh Cache on Start

X-ATC-Chatter maintains a list of frequencies and locations of all the ATC facilities defined in your
scenery in the file 833-FacilityCache.csv. It also maintains a list of ARTCC center transmitters stored in
the file freq.csv.

By default X-ATC-Chatter will refresh FacilityCache.csv on each X-Plane start by scanning all your scenery
apt.dat files. The time required to do this will depend on your CPU, disk drive, speed, and amount of
custom scenery installed and can take from 1-2 seconds to half a minute. The actually time required will
be written to the X-Plane log.txt file.

X-ATC-Chatter: Updated Facility Cache with 23092 ATC Facilities in 13 Seconds

X-ATC-Chatter: Initialization complete for version 1.6.3

You can use this option to disable refreshing 833-FacilityCache.csv on each X-Plane start if you find that
the load time is too long. Note: you will need to re-enable this option if you install new custom scenery
or get updated scenery as part of an X-Plane update.

We recommend leaving this option enabled if the impact on your load time is minimal.

Use X-Plane ATC

X-Plane 11.3 beta 5 or higher has an improved ATC voice system which X-ATC-Chatter is integrated with.
When this option is enabled X-ATC-Chatter will automatically select the controller type based on which
facility the X-Plane ATC has you tuned to. X-ATC-Chatter will pause chatter playback if you, an ATC
controller, or an AI aircraft’s pilot is transmitting on the selected radio.

Play Chatter Checkbox

This is the master playback control. It must be checked for any chatter to play

External Integrations

X-ATC-Chatter offers an interface via an exposed dataref that allows 3rd party ATC or Traffic Plugins to
control chatter playback. X-Life version 2.1 beta 7 is the first 3rd party plugin to take advantage of this
integration.

We are currently working with a number of other authors to get these integrations completed and we
will announce them as they are made available.

That said, you will need to check this option to allow X-Life and any 3rd party plugin to control X-ATC-
Chatter.

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Solid Windows Checkbox

When this option is selected X-ATC-Chatter will display the background of the control panel and nearby
facility windows using a solid white texture. When unchecked these windows will be translucent. When
you change this option you will need to save the settings and restart X-Plane to get the window change
to take effect.

Automatic Controllers Checkbox

When this option is enabled X-ATC-Chatter will monitor the com frequency dialed into the COM1 /
COM2 radio. The frequency is checked against a database of ATC facilities that are within 100 NM of
your current aircraft position. The closest matching frequency will determine the type of controller that
will be selected. The matching ATC facility will be displayed in the lower left corner of the control panel.

Ground, Tower, and CTAF/Unicom facilities that are within 10 NM of the origin airport will select the
departure airport Ground, Tower, or Unicom controllers. If your plane is more than 10 NM from the
origin airport X-ATC-Chatter will select the destination Ground, Tower, and Unicom controllers.

If it finds a match against an ATIS/AWOS station X-ATC-Chatter will temporarily pause chatter playback
so you can listen to the X-Plane generated ATIS information.

Enable Center Override When Tuned to 123.275

When this option is set along with the Automatic Controllers, X-ATC-Chatter will force the selection of
ATC Center chatter. This is useful when flying outside the U.S. where X-ATC-Chatter may not have
accurate Center Facility information.

As of X-ATC-Chatter 1.6 we have added better data for the Canadian airspace and we have added
generic center transmitters for the rest of the world. Hopefully with these additions the need to use
Center Override will be reduced.

Note: 123.275 conflicts with the Tower at EGNF. If you are flying to or from EGNF you may want to
temporarily disable Override so that tower chatter will be selected when the EGNF tower is within
range.

When using X-Plane ATC to automatically tune COM1 it will often select a center frequency that is not
found by X-ATC-Chatter.

To get around this X-ATC-Chatter will first look to see if you have the “Center Override” option set. If it is
set it will then look to see if the COM2 audio panel selector is ON and check if COM2 is tuned to
123.275. If all those conditions are met Center Override chatter will be played regardless of what you
have COM1 tuned to.

You will need to tune COM2 to any frequency other than 123.275 or deselect COM2 on the radio audio
panel in the cockpit when you want to have chatter selected by what you have COM1 tuned to.

Radio Power Checkbox

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The radio power checkbox controls chatter playback based on when power to one of the two com radios
is on. With this option set chatter will play under these conditions:

 The Play Chatter checkbox must be selected

 There must be voltage on the plane’s power bus
 The avionics switch must be on
 One or both COM1 / COM2 radio power switches must be turned on

Use COM1 / COM2

These options determine which COM radio to monitor for detecting the tuned facility which determines
which controller type will be selected for chatter playback when Automatic Controllers is enabled. Your
aircraft must maintain the following two datarefs for Automatic Controllers to work properly:

sim/cockpit2/radios/actuators/com1_frequency_hz
sim/cockpit2/radios/actuators/com2_frequency_hz

Interior Sound Only

When enabled X-ATC-Chatter will pause chatter playback if you change your X-Plane view to an external
camera. When disabled, chatter will play regardless of the view type selected.

Volume Sliders

The control panel has two volume control sliders. The one on the left controls the volume of the chatter
playback and the right volume slider will control the X-Plane engine sound volume. Some planes have
very loud engines even when in the cockpit and it can make it difficult to hear the chatter. Use these
volume controls to adjust chatter environment to your liking. Please note that not all planes will respond
to adjustments on the engine volume slider. Some of these aircraft have their own sound environments
and they usually offer a way for you to adjust that volume.

Audio Devices

This button will bring up a dialog that lists all the available audio playback devices on Windows and
Linux. You can choose the device you want chatter to play on. X-Plane Audio will play audio using the X-
Plane OpenAL context and audio device.

This feature will only list the X-Plane Audio device on OSX due to a bug in Apple’s implementation of
OpenAL. Hopefully Apple will correct this problem in a future update to OSX.

Pop Out

This only shows up on X-Plane 11. When you check this box the control panel will pop out into a top
level OS window which can be placed on a separate monitor. If you save your settings while popped out
X-ATC-Chatter will remember that this is preferred mode when X-Plane is restarted.

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Notes

 Not all planes will model radio power switches so your radios may be on as soon as the plane
has some form of power and the avionics switch is on.

Show Nearby Facilities

There is a menu item and a command that can be used to open a window that will show up to 40 nearby
ATC facilities that are within a 75 NM range of your aircraft.

The window will show you the facility frequency displayed in a checkbox that when clicked will set your
COM1 or COM2 active frequency to the frequency shown. A checked checkbox also indicates which
facility you are tuned to and has been selected for chatter. If you select a station further away from you
but there is one on the same frequency that is closer, the closer one will be selected.

The window also displays the icao code of the facility, its distance from your aircraft at the time the
window was opened or refreshed and the facility name.

There are a set of filter checkboxes toward the bottom of the display that will allow you to filter the list
by facility type.

Note: Due to some inaccuracies in scenery files some CTAF facilities are classified as towers. If you are
trying to find a CTAF frequency it might be a good idea to also check the tower filter.

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Like the control panel, you can use the pop out checkbox on X-Plane 11 to pop the facility list into a top
level OS window which can be placed on a separate monitor from X-Plane.

Commands

X-ATC-Chatter defines a number of plugin commands that you can map to keyboard keys or joystick
buttons using X-Plane’s command mapping feature. The following X-ATC-Chatter commands are
available:

 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Toggle_Control_Panel
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Toggle_Playback
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Stop_Playback
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Start_Playback
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_App_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Clr_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Ctr_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dep_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dep_Gnd_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dep_Twr_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dep_Unicon_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dest_Gnd_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dest_Twr_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Dest_Unicon_Chatter
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Toggle_Nearby_Facilities
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Next_Logical_Controller
 SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/Select_Previous_Logical_Controller

Notes:

The select next and previous logical controller commands only work when you do not have “Automatic
Controllers” enabled.

VR

If you are using a VR headset the control panel and nearby facility windows will show up in the VR
environment when it is active. Note: it is the act of opening these windows when VR is active that causes
them to be positioned in the VR world. Make sure you start VR with both the control panel and the
nearby facility windows closed.

These are the only two windows at the moment that will show in VR so you will need to do things like
changing your audio devices from the desktop.

Known Problems

We believe that the problems mentioned in following paragraphs have been corrected with 1.6 Patch A
and above. If you still experience problems with window placement please let us know.

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There are some issues in the X-Plane SDK related to using pop out windows with the widget library. The
issues arise when the widget does not fit properly in a windowed simulator if you made the window too
small. When you pop out a widget that is not fitting properly the popped out window will be too small
to hold the widget.

The same is true if you try to pop in a popped out widget when the simulator window is too small to
hold the widget. In some cases the popped in widget will disappear and you will need to restart X-Plane
to get it back.

Generally if you are running in a full screen simulator or have a reasonably larger simulator window you
will not run into these problems.

We hope to get some of these issues worked out with Laminar in the future.

Limitations

 Some other add-ons will also play chatter at the same time and can conflict with X-ATC-Chatter.
PassengersFX is one such add-on that has the ability to play a limited amount of ATC chatter.
 There is a bug in Apple’s OpenAL implementation that prevents X-ATC-Chatter from obtaining a
list of audio devices. X-ATC-Chatter can only play chatter on the default OSX audio device.

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External Integrations

Playback Control

X-ATC-Chatter exposes a writable integer dataref that can be used to control chatter playback if the
“External Integrations” option is checked in the control panel:

SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/integration/mode

The following values can be written to the dataref:

Value Operation
0 External Integration is off
1 Pause Chatter Playback
2 Play Approach Chatter
3 Play Clearance Chatter
4 Play Center Chatter
5 Play Departure Chatter
6 Play Departure Airport Ground Chatter
7 Play Departure Airport Tower Chatter
8 Play Departure Airport Unicom/CTAF Chatter
9 Play Destination Airport Ground Chatter
10 Play Destination Airport Tower Chatter
11 Play Destination Airport Unicom/CTAF Chatter

All other values are ignored

Chatter Volume Control

A float dataref is available that will allow you to modify the chatter volume. The dataref will take values
between 0 and 1.0. Higher values represent louder the chatter volume.

"SRS/X-ATC-Chatter/chatter_volume"

X-Life Integration

X-Life version 2.1 and above is now integrated with X-ATC-Chatter. You can get the X-Life open beta
here:

http://jardesign.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=19234#p19234

When the Enable External Integrations option is enabled X-Life will begin controlling X-ATC-Chatter once
X-Life traffic is enabled. X-Life will pause chatter when its ATC function wants to talk to you. The current
delay is set to one half second for each word X-Life wants to say.

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As you interact with X-Life ATC the controller in X-ATC-Chatter will change based on the controller you
are interacting with.

This integration is intended to be used with X-Life ATC. If you are flying VFR or are only using the X-Life
traffic facility then disable the External Integrations option so that X-ATC-Chatter will select the
controllers based on the facility you are tuned to in COM1 / COM2.

Future Development

Here are some potential enhancements we are considering.

 Potentially integrations with other ATC or Traffic programs

As you use this player please don’t hesitate to give us suggestions on improvements either at our Q&A
forum

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/answers/?question_type=all&search=

or the X-ATC-Chatter demo download on X-Plane.org

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/40543-x-atc-chatter-demo/

Volunteer Program

Creating the content for X-ATC-Chatter can be a bit time consuming. In order to keep the cost low we
are encouraging users to volunteer to help add more high quality clips to the collection.

As a volunteer we will give you a free license to X-ATC-Chatter after you have submitted 100 high quality
clips. There are also additional rewards for existing customers who contribute to the collection.

If you are interested in being a volunteer review the material at the link below and follow the sign-up
instructions.

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/x-atc-chatter-project/

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Support

Support can be obtained by interacting with us on our X-Plane.org forums:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/forum/401-x-atc-chatter/

You can also obtain support for X-ATC-Chatter by visiting our Q&A page:

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/answers/?question_type=all&search=

You can also contact us using the contact form:

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/contact-us/

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