PFE - proflight 2000 emulator

Another First from OnCourse Software

What have we added to PFE that was not available in ProFlight 2000

A summary of what to expect

• PFE does not produce FS Adventures. It is a standalone program written in Visual Basic 6 and VB.NET
• PFE provides an all new runways database using data from FS9 or FSX
• Supports multiple flight planners (including FS9 and FSX when using the PFE flight plan converter)
• Active AI detection (both air and ground traffic) during takeoff and approach
• Transition levels can change dependant on your geographic location
• Configurable Transition Altitudes for each of the 26 ProFlight geographic regions
• Altimeter calls can also be made in Millibars as 1013 rather than 29.92
• Use ProFlight’s initial departure vectoring or choose to fly published departures (SID/DP)
• Considerable attention has been given to approach vectoring to provide smooth, realistic approaches to most airports.
• SID (DP) and STAR support
• Departure procedures (SIDs/DPs) are configurable and can be named which is then read out by ATC
• Add departure procedures (SIDs/DPs) to specific airports at runway level if required
• Let ProFlight handle all approach vectoring or choose to fly a published approach (STAR) at anytime.
• Arrival procedures (STARs) are configurable and can be named which is then read out by ATC
• Add arrival procedures to specific airports at runway level if required
• Add missed approach altitudes to specific airports at runway level if required
• Change your assigned departure runway if you wish
• Step climbs and step descents
• Configurable en-route and arrival holds
• Ability to request higher and lower altitudes
• Ability to request visual approach
• Ability to request a different arrival runway
• Active runways (departure and arrival) determined either by AI (if in use) or wind direction
• Departure runway length taken into consideration
• Arrival runway length and ILS equipment taken into consideration
• ATC handles missed approaches and vectors you back into the pattern
• Supports controlled, uncontrolled or partially controlled airports/fields
• Emergencies supported with vectors back to your departure airport or the nearest airport (your choice)
• Configurable Airway Deviation reminders
• Configurable AI detection during takeoff
• Configurable Hotkey assignments
• Automatic updates feature

• The following are new items added since PFE's initial release upto and including version 1.9.4
• A complete Tutorial showing you how to make your first flight using PFE/ProFlight
• Database refresh utility to apply any add-on scenery data to PFE's database
• AI Traffic advisories en-route
• All new approach vectoring code
• Approach vectoring options - choose between ProFlight Standard and PFE Enhanced final approach vectoring
• Integrated ATIS for all of the 1200+ equipped airports in FS9/FSX
• You can hear the full airport name announced in PFE's ATIS for all ATIS equipped FS9/FSX airports
• A complete listing of all ATIS frequencies available by ICAO code
• New call signs added for 1Time Airlines, Air Berlin, Air China, Air Europe, Air Finland, Air Malta, Airwave Transport, Atlas Air, Aurigny Air Services, BMI Baby, Cargolux, China Southern, Condor Flugdienst, Contract Transport, Cougar, EasyJet, Estonian, Euro Cypriana, Fischer Air, First Choice, Garuda Indonesia, Global Supply, GOL Transport, Jet Airways, LAN Peru, LOT Polish Airlines, LTE International Airways, LTU International, Malaysia Airlines, Malev Hungarian, Monarch, Oasis HK Airlines, Polar Air Cargo, Pulkova, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Ryanair, South African, Spanair, Thai Airways, Thomas Cook UK, Thomson Fly, Titan Airways, TNT Air Cargo, Transavia, Westjet and Wizzair plus many more in the pipeline
• ATC chatter in PFE is now based on AI Traffic, so you actually hear ATC communicating with other traffic around you. Listen to ATC as they give clearance, taxi, takeoff, landing, climb, descend, turn and hand off instructions to AI Traffic.
• AI Traffic call signs which are not (currently) available in PFE are substituted for the airlines ICAO code
• All new step climbs and descents are now fully operational in PFE
• En-route control centres and their frequencies are listed in one of the PFE output files for you to use during your flight, so you know exactly which controls you will be handed off to during your journey.
• Version 1.8.5 introduces the start of our Regional ATC calls and instructions, reflecting the subtle and sometimes not so subtle differences between FAA and CAA contollers.

• The following are new items added in version 2.0+
• Full taxi instructions to/from the runway. i.e. ATC instructs you to.... "taxi to gate 27 via taxiway delta, bravo two, alpha one, charlie three" 

• Taxi Guidance System (TGS) which includes a new (optional) panel gauge. The new gauge points to the next taxi waypoint, displays a series of LED's to indicate the distance to the next taxi waypoint. TGS also includes AUDIBLE instructions from your VCP telling you... "next left into delta.... bear right into bravo two... straight on... gate 27 on the right"

• Oceanic Procedures when flying to/from the US (over the pond) and between Gander/Shanwick controlled areas. This includes simulated HF radio transmissions using real world SELCAL sounds when ATC contact you. Your VCP will also radio through position reports at each intersection

• An additional 1,000 new airline call signs so you will actually hear the correct call sign rather than the abbreviated three letter airline icao code, but these would only be heard if using the new (optional) voice expansion pack

• Optional Voice Expansion pack offering an additional 59 newly recorded (specifically for PFE) regional voice sets. Once installed there are new PFE options that allow you to use just the new voice sets, the old ones or a combination of both. The new voice sets include a much wider vocabulary and as such some of the new version 2.0 features mentioned above will only be available when the Voice Expansion pack is installed. The new voice sets cover the following PF regions.... African, Arabian, Asian, Australian, British, Canadian, Caribbean, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latin American, Spanish and US

• 'Push and Start' request options now available

• Added additional info to traffic advisories... you will now hear the general heading of the AI aircraft plus the actual heading... as in, 'traffic at 2 o'clock, altitude 5,000, heading west two seven zero'

• Added the ATIS frequencies for your departure and destination airports to the BRF file

• Added the possibility of ATC giving you a 'no speed restriction' call, which basically lifts the maximum of 250 knots when flying below 10,000

• Added more regional based ATC phraseology

• Added the actual Gate number you're at when contacting clearance or ground. E.g. 'Clearance, Speedbird 2686 at Gate three zero, IFR, with information Mike'

• Added wind speed and direction to ATC's takeoff clearance for both you and AI traffic

• Added a new feature to PFE which will allow you to easily view and/or change any of your flight plan's waypoint altitudes rather than stepping through each one individually via PF options.

• Added a new user option so you may choose if you wish to enforce tuning to ATIS prior to obtaining clearance.

• You can now set your preference for when ATC gives you the Alt Baro reading for each of PF's 26 regions. By default these options will default to OFF so all readings will be given in hectopascals, so you will hear 29.92 rather than 1013. But now you can configure these options so you could hear different calls at your departure and destination airports if flying from one PF region to another.

• Plus many more minor enhancements, fixes and performance updates.

• Closed Caption switch added to the main PFE options page

• Added new hotkeys to allow the pilot to request specific altitude changes from ATC

• Designated Parking - This new feature (and another FIRST for PFE) allows you to 'reserve' a terminal gate or a parking area for individual airports, so PFE will always give you taxi instructions to that location upon arrival.

A closer look at some of the new additions

Taxi Guidance System

You’re going to love this and it marks a first for PFE.  With V2, you now have FULL taxi instructions from ATC, in a fashion similar to that provided by the default FS ATC.  But, as a further refinement of this feature, we’ve added a visual and audio system that will guide you from your start position (gate or hard spot) to the active runway, or from the runway to the gate (for arrivals). You will hear your VCP giving instructions like… “next left into delta… bear right into bravo two… straight on… gate two seven on the left…”, and you will also be able to see the general direction of the next taxiway waypoint by using the (optional) TGS gauge.

The installation of this optional gauge is explained fully in David Leesley’s excellent tutorial which can be found in the PFE User Manual

This is your basic TGS directional gauge.  There are a couple of important features that you should know:

1.      Use of this gauge is entirely optional!  Should you decide not to install it, it is recommended you enable the HDG BUG option, which will always indicate the direction of the holding point for the active runway.  Be aware this feature may not work with all third party add-on aircraft.

2.      The green arrow (gauge pointer) points directly towards your next taxi waypoint.  Remember you are responsible to avoid any intervening traffic or buildings!

3.      Below the gauge pointer is a number that represents the remaining taxi waypoints to be crossed before reaching your holding point for the active or gate.  This, naturally, is a descending number.  Number 1 will always be the runway holding point or gate.

4.      Down either side of the gauge pointer is 5 LED’s, which illuminate to indicate the distance to the next taxiway waypoint.  5=Greater than 100 meters to go; 4=Less than 80 meters; 3=Less than 60 meters; 2=Less than 35 meters; 1=Less than 5 meters.  If all the LED’s are dark, you will possibly hear the audio prompt for the next turn (if you’ve enabled this feature).  PFE will skip too many repetitive calls of the same instruction (turn left, turn left, turn left).

Once installed and the audio enabled via options, you will be guided accordingly.  We cannot guarantee this to be 100% accurate but would certainly like to think we get it right 99% of the time.

 Oceanic Procedures

Another first for PFE are our Oceanic Procedures when flying to/from the US (over the pond) and between Gander/Shanwick controlled areas. This includes simulated HF radio transmissions using real world SELCAL sounds when ATC contact you. Your VCP will also radio through position reports at each intersection. See section 19 for more details on these procedures and how they work in the real world.

Additional Voice Sets

PFE version 2.0 supports the optional installation of our new voice set expansion pack. Once installed there are new PFE options that allow you to use just the new voice sets, the old ones or a combination of both. The new voice sets include a much wider vocabulary and as such some of the new version 2 features will only be available when the Voice Expansion pack is installed. The new voice sets cover the following PF regions.... African, Arabian, Asian, Australian, British, Canadian, Caribbean, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latin American, Spanish and US.

New Call Signs

Approximately 1,000 New call signs have now been added to the product in version 2. These include WizzJet, Air Contracts, WestJet,  EasyJet, Monarch, TNT, etc, etc. These are additions and not replacements. So you should hear ATC using the full call sign rather than the three character airline ICAO or the first three letters only.

Please Note: If you wish to use one of these for your own call sign they are not available from the ProFlight settings page and have to be selected from PFE's own options.

Enhanced Traffic Advisories

Our existing traffic advisory service has been enhanced further... you will now hear the general heading of the AI aircraft plus the actual heading... as in, 'traffic at 2 o'clock, altitude 5,000, heading west two seven zero'

ATIS Frequencies

ATIS frequencies for your departure and destination airports are now written to the BRF file which can be found in the …\PFE\FS2000\ADV folder

No Speed Restriction

There is a possibility that ATC will now give you a 'no speed restriction' call, which basically lifts the maximum of 250 knots when flying below 10,000

Clearance Delivery

When contacting Clearance Delivery (or Ground Control) you will now hear the actual Gate number you're sitting at. E.g. 'Clearance, Speedbird 2686 at Gate three zero, IFR, with information Mike'

Takeoff Clearance

Take off clearance now includes wind speed and direction. This will be heard when ATC are talking to you and/or AI Traffic

Flight Plan Altitudes

We have added a new feature to PFE which will allow you to easily view and/or change any of your flight plan's waypoint altitudes rather than stepping through each one individually via the original PF options.

Force ATIS

A new user option has been added so you may choose if you wish to enforce tuning to ATIS prior to obtaining clearance.

Regional Alt Baro Calls

You can now set your preference for when ATC gives you the Alt Baro reading for each of PF's 26 regions. By default these options will default to OFF so all readings will be given in hectopascals, so you will hear 29.92 rather than 1013. But now you can configure these options so you could hear different calls at your departure and destination airports if flying from one PF region to another.

AI Traffic Detection

Another exciting feature we've added is AI Traffic detection. Not quite as exciting as AI Traffic interaction which is basically not fully possible and will not be so until Microsoft issue an AI Traffic SDK, which is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, AI Traffic detection is without doubt a must have for any ATC program.

So, what exactly have we achieved.

At your departure airport, once you're on the taxiway approaching the active runway PFE will start to check the taxiing aircraft around you and any aircraft on approach to your designated runway. PFE will not issue instructions for you to enter the active runway whilst there are any aircraft close by and on final approach. The exact distance is set by default to 6 miles for Jet aircraft and 3 miles for smaller, prop, type aircraft. This, along with the many other PFE options, is user configurable.

When lining up behind other aircraft on the taxi way you will be told something like this:- "...expect clearance in ten"

When next in line for takeoff you will be instructed to "Hold for traffic" if there are any aircraft actually on the runway on on finals.

When awaiting the arrival of another aircraft you will be instructed to "taxi into position and hold" as soon as it's safe to do so after the other aircraft has landed.

Once all other aircraft have left the active runway you will receive takeoff clearance.

En-route PFE will report on any aircraft within a certain user-defined distance from your aircraft and between a user-defined altitude setting of +/- nnnn'

During the approach phase of your flight PFE will prevent any other aircraft from taxiing onto the active runway and should therefore prevent any annoying go-arounds caused by such things. PFE will also attempt to handle traffic separation between you and AI aircraft on route to the same airport and runway. However, due to interactive limitations with AI traffic this feature is not very elegant so we basically only deal with traffic behind you.

SIDs and STARs

Another exciting feature we've added is the ability to fly a published departure. ProFlight 2000 always did allow you to fly a published approach, simply by using a hotkey to request a "Cleared to Finals".  Now, thanks to PFE you can select to fly a SID (DP) of your choice. You can even give it a name (Alpha-Two-Romeo for instance) which will be included in the clearance and takeoff instructions you receive.

With no SID departures in place the standard ProFlight clearance would be "Cleared for takeoff, runway nine, fly runway heading"

Using the new SID feature you would hear "Cleared for takeoff, runway nine, alpha-two-romeo at five thousand departure approved".  You would then fly whatever published departure you want, with no further ATC interaction, until you reach the altitude given in the takeoff clearence, at which point ATC would kick in again and give you any altitude instructions accordingly. Please note, SID altitudes can be set in the SID/STAR options display too, but should you choose to leave this at zero for any configured SID then PFE will work one out for you.

Transition Altitudes by Region

Yes you can now set the correct transition altitude for up to 26 different (ProFlight) geographical regions, so flying from one country to another could result in the TA changing on route.

Define Your Own Hotkeys

ProFlight 2000 is installed with several preconfigured hotkeys, most of which are supported in PFE.

We've also added a new hotkey - Ctrl+Shift+D - which can be used to toggle PFE's AI ground detection on/off. This is useful in certain circumstances where you may find yourself waiting for clearance to takeoff with no other (AI) aircraft in front of you or supposedly on finals. This is a rare occurrence but can sometimes happen dependant on your position on the taxiway and the position of AI aircraft behind you and relative to the active runway. Should you find yourself in this situation simply use this new hotkey to deactivate ground traffic monitoring, at which point you should then be cleared for takeoff. Suffice to say, you use this hotkey at your own risk.

Should you find there are some hotkeys you would never use you can deactivate them completely. This frees up any unwanted hotkey slots from the somewhat limited space available within FSUIPC for hotkey configuration, an area which is shared should you be running other add-ons that use an FSUIPC hotkey feature.

All New Approach Vectoring Patterns

Whilst being very good the standard ProFlight approach vectoring patterns have sometimes been criticised for creating approaches that were too long and wide. PFE now offers all new (completely rewritten) approach vectoring code that provides much tighter final approach patterns. But for those who prefer the original way ProFlight worked in this area you can now choose between ProFlight Standard or PFE Enhanced approach vectoring patterns.

Database Facilities

PFE is supplied with all airport information for the 24,000+ airports found in FS2004/FSX. This data was provided to update the now somewhat out-of-date information in ProFlight's own database. To ensure PFE's data is in sync with your system, should you choose to install additional scenery files at any time, there is a very simple-to-use database refresh utility which you will find on the main options screen in PFE. Full step-by-step instructions on using this utility are actually displayed on the database refresh screen... with the next step only becoming active once the current stage is complete.

If you have made extensive changes to the PFE database, in the form of adding SID\STAR data, which you really do not wish to have to re-enter, you will be asked if you want to retain this information and have it automatically applied to the new database.

PFE AI Chatter based ATC Chatter

The original ProFlight 2000 (developed before the introduction of Microsoft's AI Traffic) utilised a method known as canned chatter. Basically this was ATC chatter based on virtual flights and aircraft that simply did not exist in the FS World.

What we have done is introduced real ATC chatter based on the AI Traffic flying and manoeuvring around you. When tuned to the appropriate COM frequency you will hear ATC chatting to the AI aircraft and giving taxi, landing and takeoff instructions. En-route you will also hear other aircraft  being instructed to climb, descend and turn accordingly.

Obviously this type of functionality is far from perfect because PFE does not actually control the AI traffic but merely monitors it and emulates control by giving commands after the fact. If you sit, watch and listen to AI traffic movements you will undoubtedly witness some timing issues with regard to commands/movements, especially at very busy airports and in particular those using parallel runways and when AI Traffic is set to 100%. But used as it was designed and intended, as background ambience, it does, in our humble opinion, do a remarkable job.

We have also added an Airline ICAO feature for the PFE ATC chatter. This is for those times when we don't find a match for the AI Traffic callsign (i.e we don't have one recorded), so we use the Airline's ICAO code and flight number.

For instance, in the case of British Airways 1234 we use the callsign

'Speedbird 1234'

but if we didn't have that particular callsign we would use the British Airways ICAO and the result would be

'Bravo Alpha Whiskey one two three four'

If we still couldn't find a match to get the ICAO then we would use the first three characters of the airline name, so the result then wousd be

'Bravo Romeo India one two three four'

Step Climbs and Descents

PFE provides completely randomised stepped climbs and descents based on your flight plan profile. This ensures no two flights, using the same flight plan, are never exactly the same.

How we determine the Active Runway

ADDED some additional checks to determine the active runway on approach if, at the time of the initial checks, there is no active AI Traffic data available. New code will check periodically for several minutes and if the active runway changes due to Ai traffic usage ATC will advise you of the new runway.

Eg. 'Speedbird two six eight six... runway changed... expect vectors for....'