Monitoring VATSIM audio without running a flight simulator

[dave austerman]

I'm sure this has been covered multiple times so please forgive me, but I have been doing searches and haven't been able to find an answer. What is the easiest way to monitor various ATC audio feeds without actually starting a flight simulator? Is this even possible? The reason I ask is that my simulator is a full size 737 cockpit with several machines and hardware boot ups that I would like to avoid starting just to listen in and learn. I have been reading about some pilot and ATC clients like Swift and VRC, etc.

Thank you for any info!!

[Alistair Thomson]

I should start by saying that I don't know! But I have connected as OBS using Euroscope (an ATC client) and listened in quite happily with absolutely no connected hardware. From that, I assume that as long as AFV has a mechanism for connecting to VATSIM (since I don't think it does that itself), you'll be able to listen in.

So Euroscope as an ATC client connects to the VATSIM network and the embedded AFV is happy. I therefore deduce (possibly wrongly!) that any pilot client once connected will either have AFV embedded or, if not, you would download and install the stand-alone then start it up manually. If that is correct, there would be no need to have any aircraft hardware connected at all. You would not need to use the PC farm you have for the sim. Therefore you can run just a pilot (or ATC) client without firing up any hardware at all, possibly even on a side PC not normally engaged in driving the flight deck.

No doubt I will be corrected in that assumption! :)

[dave austerman]

Alistair- Thanks for the information! i will d/l the software and give that solution a try. I had read a bit about Euroscope and was already curious about it. This will give me an excuse to give it a shot. I will let you know how it goes. It will be quite nice to avoid booting the entire sim if this gets me in!

[Alistair Thomson]

:) I found the Euroscope solution because I'm in the same boat (flight deck) as you. I'm building a 767 full-size flight deck and have no chance to get online right now because the sim is still a work in progress. And anyway I dislike the mouse/keyboard approach: it just isn't flying, to my mind.

Setting up Euroscope is not quite as simple as a pilot client: in order to position yourself globally you need the sector files for the airfield you want to observe, and so on, so maybe trying a copy of your FSX/X-PLANE/whatever you use for your pilot client on a separate machine/partition with a null aircraft might give you more flexibility.