This video is one tower shift, 5 minutes 8 seconds, recorded in one take with nothing inside it cut, sped up or re-timed. Watch the screen to see each call's words as they are recognised, the readback panel, the flight strip, and the radio history.
What happens
You are in the tower seat at Bayview International (KBAY), the game's fictional training airport: daytime, clear weather, wind 250 degrees at 8 knots, runway 25 right, beginner difficulty. There are two aircraft from invented airlines: Seacliff 457, a regional jet departing, and Fogline 202, a narrowbody jet arriving. Only the start (the airport information broadcast) and the end were trimmed. Long quiet stretches run at normal speed: about 0:55 to 1:58 while Seacliff climbs away, and about 2:35 to 4:53 while Fogline flies the final approach, lands, and slows down. The transcript links let you skip them.
- 0:05 Line up and wait: Seacliff is told to line up on 25 right and reads it back.
- 0:20 A takeoff clearance has the heading left out on purpose ("turn left heading", no number), and the recogniser also heard the callsign as "See a cliff four five seven". The game marks the call NOT UNDERSTOOD, nothing is executed, and the pilot reports in position and asks "say again".
- 0:37 The call is repeated with a correction spoken mid-call ("heading two eight zero, correction, two six zero"), and the pilot reads back two six zero and takes off.
- 1:58 Handoff: Seacliff is sent to departure on 124.6.
- 2:16 Landing clearance for Fogline 202, with the wind.
- 4:53 After the landing, Fogline is sent to ground.
How this was recorded
This was recorded on a PC from a development build of the same game, using the same online speech service as the Android app. The screen layout is the phone layout.
The controller's voice is a synthetic voice (a text-to-speech voice, recorded once per call). A script waited for the frequency to go quiet before each call, the way a controller waits for a gap, and each call was played into the game's microphone input while the push-to-talk key was held. From there everything is the game working live: the online speech recognition, the phraseology grammar, the pilots' replies, and the traffic. See How it listens for what happens to a call in detail.
The call at 0:20 was written with the heading missing on purpose to show what happens. The misheard callsign was not planned. All other calls were understood the first time.
The pilots speak with studio-quality synthetic voices in this video. In the Android app, pilots speak with the phone's own text-to-speech voices, so they sound different on your phone.
Transcript
Every transmission in the video. The pilots' words are the game's own radio log; select a time to jump there.
- 0:05YOUSeacliff four five seven, runway two five right, line up and wait.
- 0:12SCZ457line up and wait runway two five right, Seacliff four five seven
- 0:20YOUSeacliff four five seven, turn left heading, runway two five right, cleared for takeoff.
- 0:27SCZ457Seacliff four five seven, in position runway two five right
- 0:32SCZ457say again for Seacliff four five seven
- 0:37YOUSeacliff four five seven, turn left heading two eight zero, correction, two six zero, runway two five right, cleared for takeoff.
- 0:51SCZ457turn left heading two six zero, cleared for takeoff runway two five right, Seacliff four five seven
- 1:58YOUSeacliff four five seven, contact departure one two four point six.
- 2:05SCZ457contact departure, one two four point six, thank you very much, all the best, Seacliff four five seven
- 2:16YOUFogline two zero two, runway two five right, wind two five zero at eight, cleared to land.
- 2:26FOG202cleared to land runway two five right, Fogline two zero two
- 4:53YOUFogline two zero two, contact ground.
- 4:59FOG202turning, over to ground, Fogline two zero two
