I've never used VATSIM, but I do enjoy watching streams of the yearly "Cross The Pond" event, where thousands of pilots fly across the Atlantic on VATSIM[1]. I

I've never used VATSIM, but I do enjoy watching streams of the yearly "Cross The Pond" event, where thousands of pilots fly across the Atlantic on VATSIM[1]. I have used PilotEdge quite a bit though, and having virtual ATC really adds a lot to the experience of flightsimming–it forces me to plan my flights in detail, taking into account all the air spaces, writing down frequencies ahead of time, checking weather, briefing the various phases ahead of time. I think there's also something interesting and different about VATSIM and PilotEdge, in that they don't really care what game you're using (as long as it's supported by their network), but all the players are still in the same world--which is a close digital twin to the real world, at least in all the respects that aviation cares about. It's like if WoW players and EverQuest players were in the same world and could interact with one another. Are there any other "games" or layers over games that do that sort of thing? BTW, PilotEdge does offer a 5 hour free trial, and they have an excellent tutorial series, the Communication and Airspace Training (CAT) program[2] which starts out easy (on the first flight you don't even have to talk to a controller) and gently progresses though increasingly complex situations: Non-towered to Non-towered then non-towered to class D, then class D to class D, until by the end you're flying in and out of class B. On each flight you get a pass/no-pass. And they have a similar series for IFR, the I-ratings. Every rating has a nice writeup and youtube video. 1. https://twitter.com/intheflightdeck/status/1718315524160156105 https://twitter.com/intheflightdeck/status/17183155241601561... 2. https://www.pilotedge.net/pages/cat-ratings https://www.pilotedge.net/pages/cat-ratings