VATATIS - A modern ATIS Maker for Euroscope

[Alex Dent]

Long overdue, but I'm happy to publicly advertise VATATIS to the wider VATSIM and Euroscope community!

https://www.vatatis.nz

VATATIS (Virtual Air Traffic Automated Terminal Information System) is my take on a modern ATIS Maker aimed originally at Euroscope with potential plans for more supported clients in the future.

VATATIS has been around for a number of years now. I originally built it to service the VATNZ division, my home division, hence the .nz domain, but it's expanded far beyond that now.
The service currently supports NZZC, CZEG, CZQM, ENOR and HSSS FIRs with a number more in active development and testing.

The only reason I've never posted here before or gone harder on the public advertising of the system was the time and effect it took for me to get a new region set up.
However that is now changing! In the next month or two I expect to have full self-service capabilities up and running for regions to get themselves set up in the system with all the configs they need to have a fully working ATIS exactly to their specifications.

The system is fully configured for the best output possible from the AFV Text2Speech system and I'm aiming to go deeper with the VATSIM integration in the future.
There are also some other cool features of the system such as automatic ATIS letter rollover 24/7, detection of online ATC positions to incorporate into the ATIS and more...

To get you even more interested here are a few sample outputs.
 

Quote

Wellington Information Alpha issued at 0200 Zulu .. expect ILS DME approach RWY 34 .. runway condition dry .. for delivery ground and tower contact Approach 119.3 .. surface wind 150 degrees 17 knots .. visibility more than 10 kilometers .. Cloud few 2900 FT .. TMP 15 DP 7 .. QNH 1011 .. forecast 2000 foot wind 160 degrees 19 knots .. on first contact with Wellington ATC notify receipt of Alpha.

Quote

This is Oslo Gardermoen Information Alpha .. time 2320 .. expect ILS approach Runways 19L and 19R .. Departure runway 19L in use .. Transition level 85 .. Met Report .. wind 190 degrees 3 knots .. Visibility 700 meters .. RVR Runway 19R 800 meters no change .. Runway 01R 1000 meters increasing .. Runway 19L 1100 meters decreasing .. Runway 01L 700 meters increasing .. Aerodrome partially covered by fog .. vertical visibility 200 FT .. TMP -1 DP -1 .. QNH 1007 .. Acknowledge information Alpha on first contact.

Quote

Calgary International Airport Information Alpha .. weather at 2300 Zulu .. wind 040 at 6 .. Visibility 14 in showers of snow .. Ceiling 1200 TCU .. TMP -13 DP -15 .. Altimeter 2974 .. IFR approach ILS or RNAV Yankee or RNAV Zulu or Visual RWY 35L and 35R .. Pilots shall inform ATC of requested approach on initial contact .. Departure runways 35L and 35R .. Simultaneous parallel runway operations are in use .. Inform ATC on initial contact that you have information Alpha.

From these 3 examples you can see just how diverse the outputs can be.
So, if you are region staff for a region running Euroscope, please come check us out. If not, come check us out anyway and recommend the system to your region staff!
We also have a handy little METAR page that allows you to pull and decode any METAR on VATSIM, and it automatically updates it as well 🙂

Alex
1340277
VATATIS Developer
https://www.vatatis.nz

[Martin Loxbo]

It looks good, however, I find the text outputs rather lengthy. In Sweden, we have adapted UniATIS to use common abbreviations, so the text ATIS looks like the text you would get if requesting ATIS via ACARS for example. See this example for ESSA:

ARLANDA ATIS LIMA TIME 1220 ILS APCH RWY 01L TRL 75 DEP RWY 08 MET REPORT
WIND 330 DEG 15 KT VIS 10 KM CLD BKN 900 FT T -1 DP -2 QNH 972 HPA TREND
BECMG CLD BKN 1000 FT ARLANDA ATIS LIMA

I would prefer it to say ESSA in the text instead of ARLANDA, but as far as I know the text to speech doesn't support reading airport names from ICAO codes.

Would it be possible to have a similar option with VATATIS? I guess the problem is the text to speech, as we would need to make sure that every abbreviation used is correctly interpreted.

Does VATATIS handle the new GRF format for reporting runway conditions? This one is difficult since METARs no longer include any runway conditions, so you would need another way to source or emulate this information.

[Alex Dent]

6 hours ago, Martin Loxbo said:

It looks good, however, I find the text outputs rather lengthy. In Sweden, we have adapted UniATIS to use common abbreviations, so the text ATIS looks like the text you would get if requesting ATIS via ACARS for example. See this example for ESSA:

ARLANDA ATIS LIMA TIME 1220 ILS APCH RWY 01L TRL 75 DEP RWY 08 MET REPORT
WIND 330 DEG 15 KT VIS 10 KM CLD BKN 900 FT T -1 DP -2 QNH 972 HPA TREND
BECMG CLD BKN 1000 FT ARLANDA ATIS LIMA

I would prefer it to say ESSA in the text instead of ARLANDA, but as far as I know the text to speech doesn't support reading airport names from ICAO codes.

Would it be possible to have a similar option with VATATIS? I guess the problem is the text to speech, as we would need to make sure that every abbreviation used is correctly interpreted.

Does VATATIS handle the new GRF format for reporting runway conditions? This one is difficult since METARs no longer include any runway conditions, so you would need another way to source or emulate this information.

I agree about the length, but it's the best I can do at this stage. I've found that there are not many abbreviations that the AFV Text2Speech actually supports well.
I've been trying to get in contact with the AFV team for over a year to try and improve that but I've yet to get any replies.

As for the GRF, from what I understand that is the new Snowtams system? ENOR have also discussed that with me and there are two blockers.
1 - We cannot find a location that my system could pull these from automatically

2 - They are too long to include in the ATIS Maker URL in Euroscope to pass manually.

If you know of a location we can pull them from to fix blocker 1 please let me know. Otherwise blocker 2 will be fixed in a few months once the controller portal is built on the website, allowing extra ATIS configuration beyond just the URL parameters.

[Martin Loxbo]

The AFV team is getting more active now so I suggest trying to get in touch again. I managed to have BR/mist added a few weeks ago. 🙂

GRF is indeed the new Global Reporting Format for runway conditions. It includes a new SNOWTAM format and the new concept of runway surface condition codes (RWYCC). Unfortunately it also means that runway conditions are no longer included in METARs. SNOWTAMs are essentially just a type of NOTAM, but unfortunately they don't seem to be distributed the same way so I don't think there's a way to pull worldwide SNOWTAMs automatically.

A workaround could be to emulate the conditions, e.g. if the METAR has RA, include RWYCC 5 and WET in the ATIS, or if it's +SN make it RWYCC 3. I'm not sure if it's worth the effort though, since we can't simulate runway conditions accurately anyway, and the result would be far from perfect.

[Alex Dent]

Just now, Martin Loxbo said:

The AFV team is getting more active now so I suggest trying to get in touch again. I managed to have BR/mist added a few weeks ago. 🙂

GRF is indeed the new Global Reporting Format for runway conditions. It includes a new SNOWTAM format and the new concept of runway surface condition codes (RWYCC). Unfortunately it also means that runway conditions are no longer included in METARs. SNOWTAMs are essentially just a type of NOTAM, but unfortunately they don't seem to be distributed the same way so I don't think there's a way to pull worldwide SNOWTAMs automatically.

A workaround could be to emulate the conditions, e.g. if the METAR has RA, include RWYCC 5 and WET in the ATIS, or if it's +SN make it RWYCC 3. I'm not sure if it's worth the effort though, since we can't simulate runway conditions accurately anyway, and the result would be far from perfect.

Ill try and email them again then.

The system already does runway conditions in various formats based on the weather. Although it currently just does dry/damp/wet it would be fairly easy to expand to other things and to reformat that output to match the GRF output.

[Bernardo Reis]

In Portugal we share the same view of the abbreviated output emulating that of D-ATIS. Knowing about the project for a while, it's the reason I haven't gone further to ask for a customization for us.

 

Like Martin said, an easy way to "simulate" GRF would be to convert from "Dry" to code 6, "wet/damp" to code 5 and 90% of the times, it would be ok.

[Jonas Kuster]

As long ATIS have recently been noticed by the Board of Governors (because the text-to-speech engine costs per character) and the intention is to avoid any unnecessary information in ATIS, I would be careful about what to include.

To make a decision whether it is useful, you can simply ask yourself whether these conditions can be replicated in a simulator environment. If they cannot, I see no point in including such information in an ATIS. And honestly, RCR and RWYCC are of such detail and even unprecise in RL, I do not expect that they can be replicated correctly in a simulator environmnet. And even then, each simulator will take its own decision. So there is absolutely no added benefit in including such information in an ATIS for VATSIM.

[Martin Loxbo]

Hmm, well surely if it's a cost issue the best would be to get rid of voice ATIS altogether as it's not very realistic with the current solution anyway, with the same ATIS voice eveywhere. Or we could revert to pre-recorded sound clips as opposed to text-to-speech, which would be the best solution in my opinion.

As for what's relevant in an ATIS, I think you'll get as many answers as there are pilots (both RW and simulated!). A lot of the info makes diddly squat difference to the simulation (for example RVRs, I don't know of any sim that can simulate RVR as opposed to just general visibility), but it's there to add to the sense of realism and immersion.

[Bernardo Reis]

I recently fly X-Plane 11 a lot and the runway conditions do get impaired on certain situations. I don't remember if P3D or MSFS have similar features, but I think P3D does.

 

What would be the difference of cost between text2speech vs pre-recorded audio files?

 

Also, is text2speech is billed by the character, surely we should encourage vACCs to change the format to the abbreviated one and update the recognized abreviations?

[Alex Dent]

12 hours ago, Jonas Kuster said:

As long ATIS have recently been noticed by the Board of Governors (because the text-to-speech engine costs per character) and the intention is to avoid any unnecessary information in ATIS, I would be careful about what to include.

This is part of the reason I've been trying to get in touch with the AFV team. I would love the ability to run the Text2Speech myself from my application and offload some of their costs to me. Especially since I get 4 million characters a month for free. And If I can get the ability to do that, then I can also give regions the option of running their own pre-recorded voice files like Euroscope used to do.

11 hours ago, Martin Loxbo said:

Hmm, well surely if it's a cost issue the best would be to get rid of voice ATIS altogether as it's not very realistic with the current solution anyway, with the same ATIS voice eveywhere. Or we could revert to pre-recorded sound clips as opposed to text-to-speech, which would be the best solution in my opinion.

I've actually noticed that the ATIS voice does change in some different locations.

11 hours ago, Martin Loxbo said:

As for what's relevant in an ATIS, I think you'll get as many answers as there are pilots (both RW and simulated!). A lot of the info makes diddly squat difference to the simulation (for example RVRs, I don't know of any sim that can simulate RVR as opposed to just general visibility), but it's there to add to the sense of realism and immersion.

As a pilot on the network I love having RVRs in the ATIS, regardless of if my sim fully simulates it with the weather. It's a major factor on my choice of approach type or even if I need to divert to a different aerodrome.

37 minutes ago, Bernardo Reis said:

What would be the difference of cost between text2speech vs pre-recorded audio files?

I'm not sure exactly which system AFV uses, I think it's Amazon Polly. In which case it's $4 per million characters, or $16 per million if they are using the more advanced voices.
I plan on using the Google version where I get 4 million characters free a month forever, then the same pricing as above. I don't expect to hit the 4 million a month any time soon either.
Pre-recorded files would knock the cost of generating the audio off completely. It would then just be the cost of the voice transmissions on the network, which is the same for both options.

44 minutes ago, Bernardo Reis said:

Also, is text2speech is billed by the character, surely we should encourage vACCs to change the format to the abbreviated one and update the recognized abreviations?

It's not as simple as that. To make the abbreviations work (I.E. have the Text2Speech engine know what to say) you have to use special formatting which actually ADDs to the character count. The only way to reduce the character count is to remove items from the ATIS completely.
As an example to have RVR read out as Runway Visual Range you need to do 

Quote

<sub alias="Runway Visual Range">RVR</sub>

Which is WAY more characters.

[Adrian Bjerke]

The issue with pre-recorded voice files is that its a hassle to set it up from scratch with every possible wording and once it is setup its is often a hassle to chance the format you are already using as that requires new voice files. If those files was recorded by an person, who then has disappered a year later then its too bad. You either are gonna stick with multiple voices or going to redo all the voice files. If its recorded voice files, then you gotta make sure you are allowed to distribute saved files of them and make sure that the software used to generate them always stays available for later additions.

As a sectorfile developer, it was also a hassle to maintain these files as every now and then it resulted in errors due missing files (or ATIS being formatted for example as [Clouds broken] instead of [Clouds][Broken]).

So while some people are prefering to maintain a bunch of voice files themselves, I prefer for my country to use TTS to its full potential. As our area uses VATATIS, it would also be benefitial to use Alex's offer of doing the TTS on VATATIS'es side. I believe that maybe vATIS already does this, where it feeds its own audio?

However this discussion seems unrelated to the original topic of this thread, perhaps it would be better to discuss it in a seperate thread.

Edited February 20, 2022 at 12:07 AM by Adrian Bjerke

[Martin Loxbo]

36 minutes ago, Alex Dent said:

This is part of the reason I've been trying to get in touch with the AFV team. I would love the ability to run the Text2Speech myself from my application and offload some of their costs to me. Especially since I get 4 million characters a month for free. And If I can get the ability to do that, then I can also give regions the option of running their own pre-recorded voice files like Euroscope used to do.

That sounds very interesting indeed!