Options Reference

Every checkbox explained

The main controls, grouped by section. Open with Plugins -> NextATC -> Options.

This page is a reference. For "how to" use the topic FAQ pages instead.

The small language button under the Assign keys in X-Plane note cycles the menus and options language. It applies to Options, Traffic Options and the full NextATC plugin menu, and the selected language is saved.

Update#

Automatic update checks — check for a new release at startup.
Release channel — Stable receives stable releases only; Beta also receives stable releases; Alpha receives alpha, beta and stable releases. If no preference exists, an alpha or beta build selects its matching channel once and reports the choice. Alpha requires a connected Patreon account with supporter access; without it the channel returns to Beta.
Patreon Alpha access — Connect Patreon signs in with Patreon in the browser for supporter benefits and Alpha builds; Disconnect removes the connection; My Bug & Feature Reports opens your reports on the website. The status line shows Logged in as followed by your name and access. Beta and Stable updates need no Patreon connection.
Navigraph Navdata Downloader — connects the Navigraph account, downloads AIRAC data now, resets the saved login, or enables navdata download at startup.

General#

Autostart on X-Plane startup — start ATC automatically on launch.
Startup splash screen — show the splash when the plugin starts.
Auto-tune COM1 for first flight-plan request — tune COM1 to the first valid Delivery/Ground/Tower frequency when you begin filing.
Random flight on start — pick a random departure and file a random flight at plugin startup.
Region filters — six checkboxes (Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Oceania) that restrict the random-flight picker to the union of the selected regions.
Export GeoJSON files — write route geometry files for inspection.
Enable Debug — verbose log output for bug reports.
GUI animations — enable or disable UI animations.
Alert sound — cycle the cue played when a Radio Log action button appears; Off disables it and a selected cue previews immediately.

NextATC Windows Monitor#

Force plugin windows and overlays onto a specific monitor. Auto / Primary is the default and works for single-monitor setups.

On-screen Display#

OSD flash messages — short status flashes overlaid on the screen.

Theme#

Cycle the UI accent colour. Current themes: Yellow, Blue, Green, Cyan. The same area also has the language button, Plugin interface scale, and Text Style (None, Outline, Drop Shadow, Thick Outline, or Shadow + Outline).

If text is hard to read on your monitor or cockpit background, try a different Text Style, increase the plugin interface scale, and cycle Theme to a colour with better contrast.

Font rendering#

Font profile selects the bundled interface/operational pair: Red Hat, Atkinson Hyperlegible, IBM Plex, JetBrains Console, Cascadia Terminal (the default), Source, Geist, Intel One Mono, or Google Sans Code. Plugin interface scale cycles from 100% to 200%. Glyphs are rerasterized at the active X-Plane surface resolution, while plugin-owned windows, spacing, controls, hit targets, radio messages, Help/Manual, and the initial tutorial scale together. Content wraps, reflows, or scrolls when the selected monitor is too small; map zoom and geographical/world geometry do not change.

AA changes immediately and is saved: Balanced (default) uses grayscale antialiasing with light hinting; Crisp uses stronger hinting and often suits low-DPI or Windows displays; Smooth removes grid hinting and often suits Retina/high-DPI displays or larger scales; Pixel disables antialiasing. The best result can vary with OS scaling, X-Plane UI scaling, GPU, and monitor, so compare them at the scale you actually use. These portable modes work the same way in supported XP11 and XP12 releases and affect NextATC text only. RGB subpixel rendering is not offered because X-Plane compositing, VR, display scaling, and RGB/BGR panel order cannot preserve it reliably.

Text-to-Speech (TTS)#

NextATC's Kokoro and Piper voices run inside the plugin after download; they do not require the separate VoiceBox app used by X-ATC-Chatter.

Read ATC messages (TTS) — ATC voices the radio.
Speech engine — choose Operating system, Microsoft Azure, Kokoro (offline) or Piper (offline). Azure needs a key and region; Kokoro and Piper need downloaded local voice models.
Voice roles / Download... — open the selected engine's voice controls. For local models, select Download, press Download selected, choose the pilot and ATC voices, then Save voice roles. See Voice & Push-to-Talk.
Volume % (Azure / Kokoro / Piper, 0-200) — adjust those engines' volume. On Windows the field is Volume % (0-200) and also applies to the operating-system voice.
Radio voice effect (Azure / Kokoro / Piper) — configure the audio filter and use Test to preview it. On Windows the section is Radio voice effect and also applies to the operating-system voice; on macOS and Linux operating-system speech is unaffected.
Disable voice on readback — keep pilot readbacks silent.
Microsoft Azure TTS Stats — shows current and previous UTC calendar-month Azure-only request and estimated-character totals, plus the saved 10–99% Free Tier F0 safety cutoff. See Azure Setup for limits and disclaimers.

Push-to-Talk Recognition (Experimental)#

Whisper recognizes the pilot's microphone audio. CUDA on Windows and Metal on supported Macs can speed up that processing, but neither generates the controller's TTS voice or guarantees more accurate transcription with the same model.

All speech-recognition, model, GPU and microphone controls are grouped in the dedicated Speech tab; cloud and local TTS remain in Voice.

AI Voice Recognition (Experimental) — enable or disable voice recognition.
Talk Mode button — cycles between Talk Mode: Hold-to-Talk (press and hold while you speak) and Talk Mode: Toggle Talk (press once to start, press again to stop).
Auto-toggle guided prompts — auto-start listening when the readback flow opens, so you do not have to press PTT.
Auto-submit after no new words [sec] (0=off, 1-10) — finish the utterance after N seconds of silence in toggle mode.
Microphone button — choose the input device.
Voice Models — install / refresh / pick the recognition model; the status label below shows install progress and language.
Multilingual model support (default: English) — switch each model size to its separately downloaded multilingual Whisper variant. It lets Whisper detect the spoken language automatically, but NextATC still expects English ATC readbacks.
Use GPU acceleration — use the accelerator named beside the checkbox: Metal on supported Apple silicon Macs, or NVIDIA CUDA on Windows when the optional CUDA module is installed. The Windows package contains the module and uses CUDA Toolkit 12.8 or 12.9 from the PC, keeping the plugin download small. Install the Toolkit and restart X-Plane. Steam and standalone X-Plane use the same plugin-local module. Enabling recognition selects the checkbox automatically when the backend is available. Without a usable backend it remains visible but disabled and grey, with the exact probe failure shown underneath. Both supported Toolkit versions support Blackwell / GeForce RTX 50 GPUs. Disable the checkbox to force CPU recognition.

This feature is experimental. The speech model turns microphone audio into text, then the plugin checks that text against the readback or action currently expected by the ATC flow. It is not a free-form conversation engine. The three model buttons select embedded Whisper sizes with different speed, disk, and CPU requirements. English variants are the default; multilingual variants are separate downloads. Use Whisper Base English as the stable baseline; larger models are useful when you need better accent handling and can accept slower local transcription. Selecting an installed model, or finishing a model download, enables recognition automatically and shows the push-to-talk notice. Recoverable GPU-loading, model-initialization or inference errors retry on the same built-in CPU path. Fatal errors raised inside the upstream GPU runtime cannot be recovered in-process.

See Voice & Push-to-Talk for the practical guide.

Dialog Generation and A.I. (Experimental)#

NextATC — built-in phraseology (default).
AI - Gemini — cloud-driven phrase variation, requires an API Key (text field next to the button).
Model — switches between Gemini Flash and Gemini Flash-Lite; NextATC always uses the latest version of each published by Google.
Gemini variation — cycles four experimental inference styles for testing different rephrasing behaviour. Wording style changes; clearances do not.
AI - <model> (Local paused, Experimental) — local-model entries are listed but are currently unavailable and cannot be selected.
Test AI ATC — runs a quick clearance through the active backend so you can verify the API key.

AI output is validated. If the validation fails, the plugin falls back to the built-in phrase so clearances stay accurate.

Set expectations low for the current AI dialog mode. Gemini does not run the ATC logic, choose clearances, or invent operational decisions. The C++ flow still computes the runway, altitude, frequency, route, squawk, taxi instruction, and phase. Gemini only receives a verified template and tries to produce a slightly more natural variation of the same message.

AI phrase variation is deliberately conservative. Variation can be subtle, and many generated phrases are rejected by validation if they change facts, lose required TTS markers, or add unsafe information. That is expected. In those cases the built-in phrase is used.

Phraseology & Radio#

Radio procedure region — choose Europe (default) or United States; currently this changes the Radio Check reply only.
Allow non-standard phraseology — less strict phrase variation.
ATC radio static effect — only in builds with native static.
Release radio between dialogs — free the radio between message groups.
Point instead decimal in radio comms — say "point" instead of decimal.
Check Squawk Code — warn when the transponder code does not match the assigned squawk.

Radio Log#

Enabled — show the Radio Log.
Max visible lines (1-8) — limit visible history.
Auto-hide — hide the log after inactivity.
Auto-hide timeout [sec] (2-999, 0=never) — seconds before hiding.
Show anchor dot when hidden — keep a small click target visible.
Use sim time for timestamps — simulator time instead of real time.

Radio Copilot#

Remember Radio Copilot state — restore the current ON/OFF state after the plugin reloads. When disabled, Radio Copilot always starts OFF next time.
The Radio Copilot · ON/OFF chip in the Radio Log controls the current session. AutoFly has radio priority and temporarily shows it as paused.

SimBrief#

SimBrief Pilot ID — your numeric SimBrief account ID. Used by Fetch from SimBrief.

Vectoring#

Reduce heading vector calls — fewer repeated corrections.
Precise heading — tighter heading handling.
Calculate wind correction angle — account for wind in heading values.

Altitude#

Automatic local pressure phraseology and units — select QNH or altimeter terminology and hPa or inHg from the departure/arrival airport's known country policy. It is OFF by default and enabled by the Realistic profile.
Manual preference / automatic fallback: QNH and hPa — use QNH/hPa in manual mode and whenever the automatic policy does not know the local rule.
Altimeter [inHg] with decimal — speak inHg as a decimal value.
Low altitude speed restriction — warn at excessive speed low.
Check ground elevation — include terrain checks.
Respect SIDs and STARs restrictions — use procedure altitude windows.

Flight Assistance#

Heading indicator — heading guidance overlay.
Draw taxi guide on ground — draw taxi guidance while taxiing.

Traffic#

The Traffic tab in Options contains these traffic-related sections: Traffic, Synthetic Traffic and Traffic 3D Labels. Companion controls that live OUTSIDE Options (in the Plugins -> NextATC -> Traffic sub-menu) are listed in Traffic.

Traffic (master switches)#

Traffic engine — runtime on/off. Mirrors the menu toggle.
Enable Traffic at startup — persist runtime on/off across restarts.
Publish to X-Plane TCAS/map — publish synthetic aircraft over X-Plane's TCAS datarefs so X-Plane maps and compatible plugins can see them too.
Draw 3D aircraft — draw synthetic traffic in the 3D world (turn off to keep them only on TCAS/Nav Display, for performance).

Synthetic Traffic#

Traffic amount — cycles Low, Medium, High, Ultra High, and Nuts for the total ground-and-air traffic budget. Airport profile and local time adjust the effective count; see Traffic for the exact ranges.

Traffic 3D Labels#

Show breathing label over each aircraft — toggle the 3D label.
Color R / G / B (0-255) — three text fields, one per channel.
Alpha min (0.00-1.00) / Alpha max (0.00-1.00) — pulse opacity range.
Pulse period (ms, 100-30000) — pulse speed in milliseconds.
Max distance (NM, 0.1-200) — hide labels beyond this range.
Content mode (0/1/2) — callsign only, callsign + flight level, or callsign + aircraft type.

Other traffic controls#

Bluebell CSL install and the quick Traffic toggles live in the separate Plugins -> NextATC -> Traffic sub-menu — see Traffic.