ATCsim2: Plane meets ground
ATCsimulator2 is more simulator than game, I guess the name makes that obvious. I was getting good at controlling Albuquerque airspace, but I’ve never felt successful at Seattle-Tacoma, my goal, where I’m always running planes into the ground. There is no dramatic in-game indicator. You may or may not notice one of your flights is missing. You get a report at the end of your shift explaining your failures. Losing a plane is a major failure.
The problem I experience at SEA is getting the jets, from the south and east, down to the right landing altitude quick enough. If you try too soon you experience the jet meets Mount Rainier problem. I’ve come to realize I need to fly a much larger pattern getting them away from the mountains first.
The other problem with SEA compared to ABQ is that it has parallel runways. With ABQ I was running an eastern and western pattern merging at the runway line-up. With SEA I’ve got to keep two distinct patterns and, because of their length, control a large number of planes simultaneously.
I’ve created new parallel landing patterns separated by 2000 feet at the end when they may be within 1 mile separation. I tried a mini-test of my new patterns with only 9 planes, that’s a very low number. I received a 98% rating at the end. I wrongly tried to switch a plane to tower frequency before clearing it to land. Now the challenge is getting up to 60 or more planes. One a minute, that’s a simulation.