A downloadable game for Windows

Flights on time. All of them. Can you do it?

In this simulation game you take the position of an air traffic controller in the control tower of Budapest Airport to make sure all flights get to their destination safely and on time.

Key features:

AIRPORT ALIVE

To play this game is like playing model railway with aircraft, while making sure all flights arrive to their destination safely. (Almost) everything is on the move.


HASSLE-FREE

If you don’t want to bother pronuncing tongue twister air traffic control instructions for the speech recognition system, then this is your game. You’re always just a click or two away from issuing an instruction.

IMMERSION

If you like aviation and airports, you will find yourself sitting down for a short half hour stint, and getting up one and a half or two hours later.

EASY TO PLAY

Features like fire-and-forget one-click instructions, instruction queuing, hotkeys, and path highlighting will make your seat as comfortable as possible.


SETTING IT UP

Customization is easy. Do you want the busiest time of the day or just chill? You can get both by choosing a scenario.

REALISTIC RADIO VOICES

You won’t hear any painfully slow robotic voices answering to your instructions in this game. Listening to many hours of real-life ATC recordings during development makes sure the game sounds as realistic as possible.

NO VIOLENCE

In this game you don’t get any points for killing people.

EVOLVING

Development will continue. The game will get more features and content added in the future.

NO HIDDEN PAYMENTS

That's right.

STATS

The game records all your achievements, including the number of flights, passengers, cargo delivered inbound or out.

The plot:

You will take the seat of several different air traffic controllers in one person. You control the approach, designing a steady and well-separated inbound and outgoing air traffic flow. You take tower control position as well, to clear landing and take-off. Also, you take the position of ground control to let aircraft taxi between runways and gates, as well as pushback. Sounds too much? Fear not. The game design will help a lot with features like fire-and-forget one-click instructions, instruction queuing, hotkeys, path highlighting, and many more.

This game is a simulation of Budapest Ferihegy Airport at its 2006 state, using the summer timetable of that year. That was the time when the architecture of the airport was still at an organic, elegant state, before temporary buildings were added to hide its beauty (and handle more passengers). Also that was the time when a lot of now-defunct regional airlines had their flights and bases there, displaying a very colorful apron. Expect several historic aircraft!

Why free?

London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schipol, Chicago O’Hare, Tokyo Haneda, Sydney Kingsford Smith, Beijing Capital, Dubai International, Johannesburg are all great airports, but not included in this game (yet).

Development resources have been concentrated on quality, not quantity.

Currently this is an early access version of the game. Further development will go on.

Tutorial

A full tutorial is available about handling a busy mixed approach and departure situation:

A full tutorial is available about handling complex approach situation:

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Minimum:

Windows 7 SP1+, x64 CPU, GT710 GPU, mouse, keyboard.

Recommended:

Windows 10, x64 CPU, GTX1650 GPU, mouse, keyboard, fullHD screen.

A WORD ON EARLY ACCESS

Although the game already offers a fully enjoyable experience, it is still in early access. There are a lot more features to be added in future versions. A quick peek into the development pipeline: many-many more animations, more aircraft types, more airlines, baggage loading, refueling, catering, lavatory service, external power, frame rate optimization, optional instrument approach phraseology, and many more...

v1.3 key features:

  • Single runway mode (Temporarily closed runway)
  • More options to choose alternative taxiway path
  • New incident type: near miss
  • Realistic aircraft movements: completely rewritten taxiing engine
  • Possible to choose no voice for the controller at game setup
  • Bugfix: planes sometimes couldn't crash on runway
  • Minor visual bugfixes

v1.2 key features:

  • New aircraft type: B737-500
  • New aircraft type: F-28 Fellowship
  • New airlines according to real-life timetable
  • Believable horizon
  • Tire smoke at landing
  • New job for follow me: place and collect cones. Pushback handles pushback tow bar.
  • Revised ground vehicle traffic
  • Lavatory service car
  • Fresh water service car
  • Light/strobe visuals enhancement
  • Complete rework of all sounds
  • New traffic signs
  • Improved hangars area
  • Improved frame rates

v1.1 key features:

  • Completely new 737 models for better visuals, animations, and better frame rates
  • New aircraft animations including takeoff flaps, landing flaps, spoilers, thrust reversers, doors (left and right), cargo/luggage doors, landing gear (737-300, 737-400, F70)
  • Ground power unit delivery
  • New buildings, fire hydrants, ILS, and vehicles
  • Radio and radar screen uses real life navigational points
  • More realistic radio phraseology
  • Screen size settings, including possible windowed screen choice
  • Graphics quality settings
  • Improved frame rates

Updated 3 days ago
StatusIn development
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
AuthorATC Sim & Magic
GenreSimulation
Tags3D, airport, air-traffic-control, Flying, Indie, tower

Download

Download
ATC Setup v1.2 (old) 92 MB
Download
ATC Setup v1.3 92 MB

Install instructions

1. Unzip ATCSetup.zip to your computer

2. Double click setup.exe

3. Follow the on screen instructions.

Click allow changes if prompted.

Development log

View all posts

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Thanks for the new version 1.3. Now I can practice with more realism the ATC phraseology  and  speech recognition with third part apps.

The taxiing is more realistic also.

What will be on next release?

(1 edit)

Yes, there will be more releases. The content will be cool, and there will be devlogs to showcase them.

Thanks for the kind words!

Very realistic all point of view exclusively from tower.

Huge developers assumes that all people have the last CPU/GPU in their systems, but You with Your good performance work,   save GPU cycles, putting up on background a town picture.

Is Unity the future on simulators programming?.

Waiting for next release and go ahead with this project.

Thanks for the kind words!

Some companies create simulators for profit. This one is not for that :)

About realism: in the next release there will be an improvement on realism as well. Stay tuned!

NO VIOLENCE. Yes. It's the right way. I'm tired of so much violence around the World. All my life I only played civilian sims.

True words!

Will You include  keyboard entry for call signs to select flights like short cuts of the rest pilot instructions in next release?. Thanks

Currently no plan like that but maybe in the future. Happy landings :)

I've really been enjoying this game. But 1 thing that bugs me quite  a bit is that when you tell an aircraft to Turn (0 - 360) for avoiding other aircraft. I cannot then get the aircraft to be cleared to land.

Can you please fix this in an update or tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks!

After instructing a turn, the aircraft should join the final parts of the landing pattern, i.e. proceed to final or base so that they can actually execute the landing pattern. In order to be able to give the Proceed to base or Proceed to final instructions you need to position the aircraft to a point where the turn to base/final is possible (outer side, down on the pattern).

I´m  enthusiastic with this develop. There are very few tower simulators on the non professional market. Your project is that  I came to find, because takes few cycles from my weekend laptop integrated GPU.

I think that the things on  the ground runs a bit quick. Maybe reducing at least 20%, can it gain the exact realism, including the aircraft taxiing. The stop of the aircrafts is perfect, but not the start wich is quick.

Thanks in advance!

Yeah, revision of taxiing is high on the list :)

Can you tell your laptop GPU type?

Intel HD Graphics 5500 with  i3-5005U-2Ghz.

From now, Your project runs decently smooth for the realistic transition between day/night.

Will You include changing weather option?.

Thanks!

Thanks.

Some weather changes are planned in the future.

(1 edit)

Hello:

Can You include an option to switch off the ATC voice?. I want to use my own voice to practice ATC phraseology to add more realism.

A slide bar to manage the traffic intensity is necessary. At rush hours it´s impossible to manage approach, tower,  ground and departure traffic.

It would be so nice, to select only ground or only tower to manage.

Thanks in advance!

Hello,

Appreciating the feedback! Your ideas have been added to the wish list.

About difficulty: if you have a difficult time to manage everything during rush hours, tutorials may help a little.

Happy to inform you that a new option to turn off ATC voice has been added in upcoming releases!

Handy links for the tutorials: v1.1 and v1.0

After releasing Version v1.1 development is still moving forward with new features like better visualssmoke effect and rearranged jobs around the aircraft. Expect more in the near future!

Version v1.1 has been released! Make sure you download it!

Created a new tutorial about handling complex arrivals situation. Please check it out! 

(1 edit)

Further development is going on: see fully animated Fokker-70! (currently not available in the downloadable version). Consider subscribing to ATC development channel for getting the most up-to-date info about fresh releases and future development features!

Currently working hard on better frame rates.