Learn ATC / In development

Your traffic, seen from the tower

August 6, 2026 · In development · Microsoft Flight Simulator

WHAT THIS IS

We are building a bridge between ProjectATC and Microsoft Flight Simulator. The aircraft you are controlling in the browser appear inside the simulator, on the real airport, so you can work Clearance, Ground and Tower while looking out of an actual window.
It runs today. It is not finished, there is no date, and nothing is on sale.

Working an aerodrome position is mostly a visual job. You look out of the window, you see who is where, and you build the picture. ProjectATC gives you the decisions and the phraseology, but it gives them to you on a dark 2D scope — which is honest for radar, and a poor imitation of a tower cab.

So we tried something. ProjectATC keeps running in your browser and stays in charge of everything: the traffic, the clearances, the taxi routes, the conflicts, the grading. A small program on your PC then draws that same traffic inside Microsoft Flight Simulator, ten times a second. The simulator only draws it — ProjectATC still decides everything.

What already works

These are results, not intentions:

A full ProjectATC session is mirrored into MSFS — every aircraft, updated ten times a second, moving as your instructions tell it to.
Aircraft park at the real stands, taxi along the painted centrelines and turn where the pavement turns. Our airport geometry and the simulator's line up.
Traffic is created inside your own copy of MSFS, so the scenery, the weather and the time of day are the ones you already own and have set up.

Along the way it found bugs we could not see in two dimensions. A handful of parked aircraft were facing the wrong way — invisible as a fifteen-pixel symbol on a scope, obvious as a 737 with its nose against a jet bridge. That fix is already live for everyone, whether or not you ever open a flight simulator.

What is not solved

An honest list, because this is a development note and not an announcement:

The tower camera. Placing your viewpoint in the tower is not something MSFS 2024 makes straightforward, and we do not have a clean answer yet.
Aircraft models. Traffic currently borrows the aircraft you are sitting in, so a whole airport can look like one aeroplane. Matching real types and airlines means leaning on a model library such as FSLTL.

This is a development note. There is no release date, no price and no waiting list, and nothing here changes ProjectATC in your browser: it stays a complete simulator on its own, with San Diego free. If the bridge turns out to be worth shipping it will be a separate, optional add-on — not something you need to buy to keep playing.

Why we are telling you now

Because the ideas we tried and dropped are usually more useful to read about than the polished result, and because the people already flying sessions here are the ones whose opinion should shape it. If you fly MSFS and control on a network, we would like to know what would actually make this useful to you rather than merely impressive — write to help@projectatc.com.

The simulator you can use today

None of this is needed to practise. San Diego and all five controller positions are free in the browser, with spoken readbacks, live weather and a graded debrief.

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