Two Easy Questions About ATC

1. After the last Update V, I've seen a pop-up: "Azure online text-to-voice service unavailable, " etc. I hear no ATC voices. After a while, they resume. What is this, and why? And why only after the update?!

2. Why do I hear ATC traffic having zero to do with me, but castigating other pilots -- like telling them they have failed to respond, and that ATC service is terminated, or that they have failed to ascend to their assigned altitudes? What's the point?! "Realism"?

3. Okay, I lied: Here's a third Q: In a prior unanswered post, I asked why the tower insists on landing me downwind, when my preset flight conditions include a strong breeze in the opposite direction? What's that all about?

Past flight simulators were limited to a bgl file of pre recorded voices that were triggered my a EXACT text such as atc_airline=SPEEDBIRD resulting in the sim saying "Speed Bird" etc. If you entered the wrong text, nothing.

The Azure text-to-speech does not have this limitation and will say whatever it reads.

1. After the last Update V, I've seen a pop-up: "Azure online text-to-voice service unavailable, " etc. I hear no ATC voices. After a while, they resume. What is this, and why? And why only after the update?!

I also get this, especially after 8pm UK time for some reason. It's due to the Azure servers getting overloaded at certain times because Xbox players are now playing MSFS as well. Maybe Microsoft will upgrade their Azure network to cope, who knows?

2. Why do I hear ATC traffic having zero to do with me, but castigating other pilots -- like telling them they have failed to respond, and that ATC service is terminated, or that they have failed to ascend to their assigned altitudes? What's the point?! "Realism"?

Yes, ATC communicates with AI traffic just as it did in previous sims, but it doesn't communicate with multiplayer traffic.

3. Okay, I lied: Here's a third Q: In a prior unanswered post, I asked why the tower insists on landing me downwind, when my preset flight conditions include a strong breeze in the opposite direction? What's that all about?

It's a long-winded explanation (see what I did there?) but here goes:

Unfortunately, this is a problem which has carried over from previous sims.

If you select a new weather condition during your flight planning, ATC will sometimes still use the weather setting which was in place before you selected your new weather.

A good workaround for this is to start your flight, then restart it immediately so that ATC and AI traffic will start reacting to your new weather conditions.

It's a long-winded explanation (see what I did there?) but here goes:

Unfortunately, this is a problem which has carried over from previous sims.

If you select a new weather condition during your flight planning, ATC will sometimes still use the weather setting which was in place before you selected your new weather.

A good workaround for this is to start your flight, then restart it immediately so that ATC and AI traffic will start reacting to your new weather conditions.

Thanks Tiger. I'll try that.

Still, there's no way you can go to TIST IRL and have wind from the west! (Well, it's only a simulator, after all.)