Your data¶
What the client sends, what is kept, and what stays on your PC. This page describes how the software works. It is not a legal agreement. xatc-agent is an invitation-only experiment; ask the project owner about anything this page does not answer.
Your account¶
You sign in with an xatc-agent account that the owner creates for you: your email address, a password you choose, and an authenticator app or a passkey.
- The client never sees your password. You type it into the sign-in page in your own browser.
- The client keeps your sign-in in Windows Credential Manager (on Linux, in your keyring), for up to 30 days. It is never written to a file.
- ATC knows which account is flying. A flight belongs to the pilot who started it, and nobody else can rejoin it.
- Sign out removes the sign-in from your PC and cancels it with the sign-in service.
What the client sends during a flight¶
Over one encrypted connection to ATC, for as long as a flight is running:
| What | When |
|---|---|
| Your flight plan: callsign, aircraft type, departure, destination, cruise altitude, route | When the flight starts |
| Your aircraft's state: position, altitude, speed, heading, radios (frequencies, and whether each is on and selected to listen), transponder code, on the ground or not | About once a second |
| The weather at your aircraft and X-Plane's clock | Every few seconds |
| The other aircraft in your X-Plane (the nearest 32) | About once a second |
| Your microphone | Only while you hold push-to-talk |
| Answers to ATC's questions about your scenery: an airport's taxiways and stands | When ATC asks. See Your X-Plane's data |
No connection to ATC is open when no flight is running, and your microphone is never sent outside push-to-talk.
What happens to your voice¶
While you hold push-to-talk, your audio is streamed to a speech recognition service and turned into text. The text is what ATC works from.
When the client's Speech recognition setting is Scribe, the audio of your transmissions goes to a third-party speech service outside xatc's own systems, to be written down. When it is Standard, or if that service cannot be reached, xatc's own speech recognition writes it down within xatc's systems.
The full statement, which names the services, is the Privacy page on the pilot site.
Recordings of your voice¶
By default nothing you say is kept as audio. The first time you connect, the window asks:
Keep your radio audio to improve xatc? xatc can keep recordings of what you say on the radio, to help it understand pilots better. Only your own transmissions are kept, in private storage, for 180 days. The owner and the ATC expert can listen to them. You can change this at any time in Settings. Nothing is kept unless you allow it.
- You must choose Allow or Don't allow before you can transmit.
- The choice is stored with your account, so you are asked once, not once per PC.
- Change it at any time in Settings > Your account > Recording.
- When the wording of the question changes, every pilot is asked again, so you will see the question once more after you update to client 0.16.0.
What is kept about a flight¶
Each flight is logged so that it can be reviewed and the controller improved:
- what you said, as text, and what ATC answered,
- what ATC decided,
- your aircraft's track,
- which account flew it.
The project owner, an air traffic control expert who advises the project, and the project's testers review flights in a private tool. They can see the items above. Only the owner and the expert can listen to your recordings, and only if you allowed them.
A flight log is kept until it is deleted: there is no automatic expiry today. The pilot site's Privacy page says how to ask for a copy of what is held about you, or for your account, flights or recordings to be deleted.
Other services¶
- The radio voices. ATC's voice is made by xatc's own text to speech. Only when ATC voices is set to Radio voices do the words ATC says on the radio go instead, as text, to a third-party speech service outside xatc's own systems, to give each controller a distinct voice and accent. Only ATC's words are sent, never your voice. The setting is off by default. Phone calls, the ATIS and AWOS are always spoken by xatc's own text to speech, and so is any transmission that the third-party service cannot speak in time.
- The AI model. The text of your transmissions, with the facts of your flight, is processed by an AI model to work out what you asked for and to judge readbacks. See How it works.
- SimBrief. If you load a flight plan from SimBrief, the client fetches your latest plan from SimBrief with the username or pilot ID you typed. No SimBrief password or key is involved.
What stays on your PC¶
- Settings: ATC's address (written from your account's answer, never shown in the window, and recorded in the log file), your SimBrief username or pilot ID, your X-Plane folder, your last flight plan. No password and no key.
- The log file: connections, ATC's address, what ATC asked of your X-Plane, warnings and errors. Never your sign-in and never audio.
- The window answers only to your own PC. No website can press your push-to-talk, sign you in or sign you out.
- Your X-Plane files are read, never uploaded as files. The only writes are the optional FAA procedures, which you install and remove yourself.