Devlog 03: The MultiScope Academy

Last week was about working with the controllers around you in multisector. Not everyone wants to jump straight into that, though. Getting into air traffic control isn’t easy. On VATSIM the wait for a training slot can be long, and real ATC training takes only a few trainees a year, one of the reasons we made MultiScope Air Traffic Control. We build the game in a way anyone can try it at their own pace, and the MultiScope Academy is where that starts. Every new controller begins in a practice airspace: a made-up area with one runway, a few fixes and only a handful of aircraft at a time. We started there ourselves. The airspace only gets bigger and the traffic busier once the basics worked without thinking.

STARTING DIFFICULTY

Not every player starts from zero, so the game asks where you are. On first launch you pick Beginner, Enthusiast or Professional. A Beginner is invited to the Academy Intro. An Enthusiast or a Professional probably knows their way around air traffic control already, but MultiScope has its own way of working: the radar, the input devices, the keyboard and your voice. The Controls lesson shows you all of it in a few minutes, with one aircraft on an empty scope. After that you choose: straight to a busy airport, or a quick refresher in the Approach Academy first.

While playing, the game may recommend a lesson when you start a kind of session you haven't played before: The parallel approaches course before your first session with two parallel landing runways or the COSYS, arrival and feeder course before your first multisector session.

THE ACADEMY BOX

The Academy Box is a fictional airspace of 40 by 40 NM. It holds only what the lessons need, and it changes as the course goes on. In the first Intro sessions there is no airport yet: only a few entry and exit points and blocks of airspace to fly around. In Basic Training the blocks make way for an airport with one runway and the airspace around it. Later a second, parallel runway is added. There are no charts to study before you start as the teachers take you trough everything step by step, and you can always go back. The radar, labels, input panels, voice control and aircraft performance are the same as everywhere else in MultiScope, so everything you practice in the box works the same way throughout the game.

ONE STEP AT A TIME

Each session adds one new thing to what you have just learned. The curve is steep, but you can replay every session as often as you like. You start with the airspace, move on to headings and levels, then the localizer, following is a sequence of arrivals, next you learn about departures, and finally all of it at once. New skills are shown before you use them. An instructor walks you through the first aircraft step by step, and you work the next ones yourself. There are two instructors. Rodger explains the airspace and what the aircraft do. Wilko shows you how to do it on the input panels.

From the single runway, the Advanced Training in the Approach Academy moves on to parallel runways, an approach split between a feeder and an arrival controller, and coordination with the sectors around you in COSYS.

PHRASEOLOGY ACADEMY

Next to the Approach Academy is the Phraseology Academy, for the radio side of voice control (Devlog 01). Basic and Advanced radio teach the phrases from callsigns and headings up to holds and combined instructions. It is optional, since everything can be done with the input panels. Devlog 04 is about multiplayer: work a sector with your friends, send each other coordinations and keep the arrivals and departures flowing together. Follow and wishlist MultiScope ATC on Steam to hear the moment Early Access opens. We're also on Discord. See you on frequency. - The MultiScope Team