Vatsim ATC Clients.

[Jeffrey Lefferts]

Hello,
I'm an airline pilot and recently started dabbling in MSFS2020. I have some friends that want to get into more realistic flying and I've been trying to introduce them to concepts and help them work up the courage to try VATsim flying. I was curious if there was an easy way to setup some kind of CO-OP thing on our end in discord using Vatsims software for radar, allowing me to play ATC with just them to let them like warm up and practice in a private setting. I wasn't sure how the ATC clients work or if its possible to like view Radar info and stuff without actually being logged into the system as a controller officially. 
Any insight is appreciated, thanks.

[Andreas Fuchs]

Hi Jeffrey,

there are some privately operated networks that use the FSD protocol, but I think it would be too complicated to get into this for you and your friends.

As alternative I would suggest you have a look at the freeware program LittleNavMap ( https://albar965.github.io/ ). It's a moving map/navigation program and you can connect directly to your SIM. I am not sure whether it is really possible to connect from outside your LAN, but give it a try: https://www.littlenavmap.org/manuals/littlenavmap/release/2.4/en/CONNECT.html

Otherwise you could just join them on their first flights through Discord's screensharing function.

[Andrew McCabe]

You could consider flying in a shared cockpit setup.   That way you could share the flying duties, and you could deal with ATC comms and let them hear and experience it in a Vatsim setting.    Your Controls cockpit sharing software works well for MSFS and the FBW A32NX.

 

Andrew

[Jeffrey Lefferts]

So I ended up setting up LittleNavMap with this program -> https://www.virtualflight.online/transmitter
I was able to simulate ATC for them pretty easily using that for radar. It was fun, and they got a good introduction. Would recommend that solution for anyone else trying to accomplish something similar with friends.