As an ATC with VATCAN, the one issue I have with SIMBRIEF is that it doesn’t populate a valid SELCAL. For domestic it’s not an issue, but for oceanic it’s a huge issue. Without a SELCAL code, pilots will leave their sim on auto and go away for the duration of their flight in oceanic. Therefor, I would suggest that SIMBRIEF also assign a discrete code to each oceanic flight plan.
My experience has been that, if one does not enter a valid SELCAL in vPilot (and I imagine, xPilot) when connecting to VATSIM, SELCAL won’t work anyway until you disconnect and reconnect (and enter the SELCAL code in vPilot)?
IIRC, I have had a couple flights where I didn’t have a SELCAL and the controller offered to assign one for me, but the SELCAL check never worked when they did, the only solution was to disconnect and reconnect.
Simbrief can specify a SELCAL during the flight plan prefile, but unless things have changed it still would not work if the user doesn’t also enter the code in the vPilot connection dialog?
Also, users who leave their flight unattended for the entire oceanic crossing are most probably unlikely to respond to a SELCAL call anyway, aren’t they? Or does it make a lot more noise than, say, a regular “contact me”? I can’t recall.
Not that assigning a random SELCAL for oceanic operations is necessarily a bad idea, just that it probably isn’t as useful as one might think.
Regards,
Tim