1. Overview

NextATC is an offline ATC simulation plugin for X-Plane. It manages the complete radio flow for the user aircraft, from flight plan filing through clearance, taxi, takeoff, climb, enroute control, descent, approach, landing, runway vacating, and taxi to parking.

The plugin does not require an online network. It uses X-Plane airports, frequencies, runways, procedures, weather, aircraft state, and optional Navigraph/CIFP procedure data when available. Only the optional real map in the Nav Display (section 4.4) downloads map images while it is shown.

Main features:

• IFR and VFR flight plan filing.
• Delivery, Ground, Tower, Center, and Approach radio flows.
• Readback and "Say Again" handling.
• Frequency selector with Handoff support.
• SID and STAR discovery, preview, and manual selection.
• VFR traffic-pattern arrival generation.
• Taxi guidance on the ground, including runway crossings and hold-short flow.
• Nav Display with route tabs, zoom/pan, taxi path, weather radar context, and TCAS traffic markers.
• Flight Info overlays for status and troubleshooting.
• Optional SimBrief import.
• Optional FMS programming.
• Optional text-to-speech, Azure TTS, push-to-talk recognition, and AI-generated phrase variation.
• Random flight-plan generation and Flight Snapshots.

NextATC is also a TCAS consumer. It can display and react to traffic published through X-Plane TCAS datarefs by X-Plane AI, LiveTraffic, XSquawkBox, or another publisher. TCAS-only traffic is observed traffic: NextATC can show it and use it for safety awareness, while built-in traffic is managed internally by the plugin.

Features marked (Alpha builds) are already in the Alpha builds for Patreon supporters and reach the Beta and Stable builds later.