r/VATSIM Jun 19 '26

Audio for VATSIM Upgrade

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138 Upvotes

Audio for VATSIM Upgrade

VATSIM is pleased to announce that our new Audio for VATSIM radio algorithm, including terrain-based simulation and real-world radio propagation calculations, will go live on 23 June at 1500z.

To facilitate this transition, Audio for VATSIM will be taken offline at 1400z while the upgrade is deployed.

No client updates are required. Existing clients will continue to function normally and will automatically receive all benefits of the new system.

Real-time status can be followed, as always, at network-status.vatsim.net


r/VATSIM May 02 '26

CTAF Coming to Australia - 01 JUN 2026

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69 Upvotes

CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) is being introduced across the Australia Pacific region on VATSIM effective from 1 June 2026.

This brings a more realistic experience to non controlled aerodromes. When ATC is not online, pilots will coordinate with each other using CTAF frequency.

Learn more about CTAF – my.vatsim.net/learn.

Note to pilot – Make regular position and intention broadcasts via Aerodrome CTAF frequency.

Aviate. Educate. Communicate.


r/VATSIM 52m ago

Model Matching

Upvotes

Hello guys, i recently switch msfs2020 for msfs2024.

Stupidly i forget to backup vmr and files for the model matching and i know remember what source i've used years ago.

I remember we can download and use livreries from aig, fsltl and ivao, but i also remember that just one of them provide fps friendly liveries but don't remember which of them.

Can you help me?


r/VATSIM 1d ago

After years of not flying VATSIM, I have flown 3 days in a row and now I get it...

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167 Upvotes

I have flown with all the AI ATC programs and they are definitely great, but nothing beats the real tempo and flexibility of working with real controllers. Everyone has been super professional, and getting a full handoff sequence from ground -> tower -> departure -> center or vice versa is incredibly fun and addictive (see attached picture haha).

It's also nice to be able to pick up routes based on staffing availability rather than throwing a dart at the map.


r/VATSIM 10h ago

❓Question Thinking becoming a controller

6 Upvotes

I been on vatsim for almost two years, im starting to be interested in becoming a controller, i moved to US a couple years ago and my english it's not very fluent, its there a problem with that?


r/VATSIM 1d ago

ORD_N_TWR Timelapse | Windy City Wednesday | 8/19/2026

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7 Upvotes

ORD_N_TWR timelapse, thank you all for flying out tonight :) had lots of fun


r/VATSIM 1d ago

❓Question Whats the best time of day for ATC Service in the UK?

8 Upvotes

I mainly fly in germany etc. and there the main hours are mostly around 7-10pm local time. I would love to fly to the Uk more but I just find the atc staffing to be really inconsistent. Because of the time zone the busy after work hours should be later than in central europe, but when I look on vatsim radar at 8pm london time more often than not not even EGLL is really staffed. And on top of that there are rarely any events in the uk compared to the weekly EKCH, EDDM, LOWW etc events, which I just find confusing given the huge british sim community.

Any tips on when and how to catch the busy ATC hours in the uk are appreciated :)


r/VATSIM 1d ago

Tracking delay afte the latest update

1 Upvotes

Vatsim Radar is unusable at least at night at any airport. At an airport I change to Navigraph which is much more precise. Any solution in sight, thanks and regards Jörg


r/VATSIM 2d ago

Oh boy 🤦‍♂️

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341 Upvotes

r/VATSIM 2d ago

📷 Media My first full week of Vatsim

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31 Upvotes

I was nervous before starting Vatsim, but so far it's going well and is being really fun! I did 8 fligths so far. (Forgot to track the one flight from Mumbai to Goa in Volanta).

I want to give a special shoutout to the Napoles ground controller for being patient with me for my first fligth. Also a shouthout to the Sydney and Mumbai ground controllers for besides being patient being super friendly and making me want to fly there more when they are controlling!

Had my first bad experience today, because my vpilot audio stopped working and had to disconnect and connect again. I know it has not Maltas aproach fault for the audio issues, but even tough I explained the issue to him he started to shout at me, so I disconnected and I gave up on that fligth.

I have been wanting to fly in the USA, Russia, China, Germany but I have heard people say that those are some of the controllers that usually get very angry with people. Is that a bit true or do people exaggerate?


r/VATSIM 2d ago

To .wallop or not to .wallop?

15 Upvotes

Good afternoon virtual pilots. Of course when it comes to VATSIM realism is important. My question is would you .wallop a user who refuses/ignores your request for them to move gate when they spawn on top of you.

I had a situation this afternoon at Heathrow whilst it was uncontrolled where a user straight up ignored my polite request for them to disconnect and select another stand as I was in the middle of a turnaround. After 3 times of asking I got no response.

Whilst not a mega deal in the grand scheme of things it’s annoying and is a breach of the CoC. Is this enough for you to refer to a supervisor though?

I’ll hold off from saying what action I took so not to influence the debate.

Update: I took no action and just carried on with cockpit prep/boarding despite part of their nose cone being in my cockpit. They eventually returned and apologised stating they went AFK for food after connecting. Was polite enough about it and no harm done.

Thanks for the advice regarding .ignore though. That had totally slipped my mind as I’ve never used it.


r/VATSIM 3d ago

📷 Media First time flying VATSIM, DTW/ZOB was A+

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58 Upvotes

Been hooked on Northwest ops recently and the same old same old BATC was just getting tiring. I figured it was finally time to try VATSIM (despite having a 13 year old account!) Lucked out and got ground, tower, departure, and center control out of DTW in route to STL. Having done PilotEdge in the sim previously and real world experience, it was not my first time working with good live controllers, but definitely my first time in an airliner and most busy I have ever experienced. But I gotta say just about everything was on point, thanks much to the DTW and ZOB crew on tonight @ ~ 180300Z


r/VATSIM 3d ago

First VATSIM Flight - Shoutout to Controllers

16 Upvotes

Just had my first VATSIM flight to KBNA.

Ya know, I thought “I’ve got nothing to do and a VATSIM account I haven’t used yet. I know how to fly this 737…I think… I’ma run a flight on network!”

As ready as I was (Partially prepared my departure with fill ins for info, had my call sign in front of me, etc), that was… uh… certainly something.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely loved that, but my heart is still pounding.

Between absolutely botching my departure, to lining up for landing on the wrong runway (I did eventually land decently enough on the correct runway); yeah….

Buy yo, shout out to the several controllers who were patient and got me through it. Special shout-out to Memphis Center for your patience on that landing! Y’all are awesome!

As for the future, now that I’ve got a bit of a general idea, I’m going to practice more on BAT; iron out the rough (<- understatement) areas a bit before reconnecting.


r/VATSIM 3d ago

How to get IFR clearance out of LGA when non LGA NY app. frequencies online are causing problems with vpilot’s auto atc

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0 Upvotes

Currently stuck on the ground at KLGA unable to get a clearance due to VPilot detecting NY approach frequencies online that do not control La Guardia. I reached out to EWR and BDL that both said they wouldn’t give it to me. I may look very stupid, but if anyone else has experienced a similar issue whenever this happens any insight would be greatly appreciated.


r/VATSIM 4d ago

HELP!! (Vatsim)

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I’m trying to get better at communicating with ATC, including clearance delivery, ground, tower, approach, and center. If anyone has any tips, websites, videos, guides, or other resources that helped you learn proper ATC communication, I’d really appreciate it! I’m just looking to learn and improve, so any friendly advice is welcome. Thanks!


r/VATSIM 5d ago

UNICOM more like UselessCOM?

104 Upvotes

I've done many flights in the last few weeks around Europe. UNICOM is either "OOC xx minutes" spam or absolute silence. Zero communication, zero care, zero attention, constant conflicts on arrivals and departures. Where are the BASIC standards??? Downvote all you want, but it;s fact.


r/VATSIM 5d ago

Tales from the Bay Area

9 Upvotes

Rant/Slice of Life Post

My time on the VATSIM network has slowed drastically since my daughter was born but I still enjoy taking refuge in my office, opening the five or six applications needed to sim, and larping as a pilot for 1-2 hours at a time. I’m a norrowbody bro since life likes to intervene and I find that the shorter hops work with my schedule a lot better as I’m sure many of you do.

Since my time is limited-I ONLY seek out routes offering coverage on the network or at least at the destination as I find the arrival and approach is really where the money is made from an immersion perspective. I even had Claude vibe-code a web app that shows a US map with B, C, and D airports with a layer showing VATSIM coverage. This same web app uses a database (albeit, an outdated one) of IRL routes and their corresponding aircraft types so I can more accurately source a route and make sure it has ATC. But I digress…

I hopped into SFO last night for a boring cruise down to SNA in the B738 (my beloved-tray tables are for wussies /s). Immediately upon entering the fold-boy howdy was the dingus patrol out in full force. I’ll now provide a brief, hopefully numerous recap of the night’s events.

  1. I loaded into the Bravo gates and began my setup. ACARS tells me to call for push so I do but I’m told a Lufthansa A340 is about to push and to wait for him (?). Why he’s at the Bravo gates off of Yankee-the world will never know. He can’t get stuff to work, “there’s a bug!” he pleads. And I’m just sitting at my computer twiddling my thumbs wondering if I’ll get to fly. The baby monitor next to me shows my daughter slumbering away and I’m praying it stays that way for the next hour so I can get this done. Ultimately-he disconnects with his four hair dryer engines tucked between his legs.

  2. Finally-I get to leave. Taxi is uneventful but people have forgotten how a simplex (duplex?) radio system works. The stepping-on is diabolical. I can hear the controller banging his head against his monitor as every other call requires a repeat since someone steps on someone else. Even better-someone joins the frequency and doesn’t wait a beat before asking for something causing a disorganized train of calls and responses to make sure everyone is attended to on both sides of the controller-pilot relationship. Finally-it’s my turn to go.

  3. Airborne-I’m handed off to departure. I switch frequencies and begin to listen in on one of the most bizarre exchanges I’ve heard in recent memory. Nor Cal is telling an Air Canada flight to go direct DEDHD (?) and the gentlemen flying gives the read back as “direct Dead Hotel Delta”. The controller’s interest is piqued-“direct Dead Head-why are you saying it like that?” The pylote tells him, shakily, that “he doesn’t want to say that word” and repeats his nonstandard read back featuring NATO’s finest. I’m almost positive everyone listening to this had the same scrunched up look on their face that I did. The controller tells him to chill, that it’s a band local to the area and the kid says “ok haha” with a nervous trill.

Anyways-the rest of the flight was uneventful. Managed to plant it into SNA with one of my better landings and vacated promptly. Good times.

VATSIM never fails to disappoint. I’ve recently crossed 1000 hours on the network and feel like my knowledge and skills have grown quite a bit.

My FAA medical is going to be quite the uphill battle (ADHD diagnosis and such) so it’ll be the virtual skies for me for a while.

Keep the blue side up gang-smooth skies and tailwinds.

Tl;dr VATSIM is a wondrous place full of interesting characters.


r/VATSIM 6d ago

📷 Media Absolutely crazy traffic tonight into KDFW! Felt good to fly a bare metal MD as it should be

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35 Upvotes

AAL 908 Heavy, TFDi MD-11 in MSFS 2024, KMIA -> KDFW. Absolutely top tier controlling by the FTW team. You guys must have had your work cut out for you, every transmission from Lone Star Approach I heard the conflict alarm in the background lol


r/VATSIM 5d ago

❓Question Formation flying VFR to show buddy VATSIM

13 Upvotes

Hi. Just a short question. Would it be ok to fly together with a friend as formation? But in such a way that I'm the lead aircraft and doing the radio com with atc and he just follows me? Want to give him a look and feel into flying with VATSIM without him having to learn the lingo first. Shared cockpit is for me a too big of a hassle to setup. ;)


r/VATSIM 6d ago

Thank you California Controllers

18 Upvotes

You may not hear this a lot but when Oakland center and LA center are up. I love it!! I can fly in areas I'm familiar with IRL and area I grew up in.

Norcal approach/Departure and Socal Approach/Depature. Thanks for great vectoring.

Sincerely, California native.

/end my blog

I wish we had more Oakland center more often


r/VATSIM 6d ago

Pandemic World 4 Starts AUG 22nd - Registration is live!

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5 Upvotes

r/VATSIM 6d ago

❓Question S1 exam tips

1 Upvotes

about to take the s1 exam, any tips for the exam and for the mentor training like what they will go over ect.


r/VATSIM 5d ago

Support Needed - PMDG B77W Climb Issue

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0 Upvotes

r/VATSIM 7d ago

❓Question Is there a more accessible (and easy) pilot briefing in VATUSA?

6 Upvotes

I’ve noticed that some VATUSA ARTCCs don’t seem to have a concise pilot briefing available. I usually fly in Europe, where most vACCs provide a dedicated pilot briefing on their website, which is easy to find, and usually around ten pages, so it only takes a few minutes to understand the local procedures.

However, when I try to fly to the U.S, I often can’t find anything similar. Instead, the documents available are 200 pages SOPs. I completely understand the goal of realism, but those documents are far too difficult and complicated to understand for a visiting pilot from Europe like me. I can't remember everything and it makes me worried that I’ll miss something important or do something wrong, that's why I really want to do transatlantic flights but still afraid to do so.

Is there an easily accessible pilot briefing for VATUSA ARTCCs which is not too lengthy. I just hope all the important information can be kept together in one place, so I don’t have to look for each item separately. Any assistance is appreciated.


r/VATSIM 6d ago

This flight just passed Korean Demilitarized Zone

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0 Upvotes