The AI First Officer

The First Officer is your AI co-pilot during a live flight. It follows your flight phase and your ATC conversation, tells you what's happening, coaches you on what to transmit next, and answers your questions in character. Think of it as a narrator and coach sitting on top of the ATC radio simulation, not a second radio channel of its own.

Choosing a personality

You pick a First Officer personality when you start a live flight, and can switch personas from the Cockpit at any time. Four are available today:

• Sofia, SOP focused and calm. By-the-book and steady, sticks to standard phraseology, no extra chatter.
• Mike, the Instructor. Explains the why behind each call, good for learning the flow instead of just the words.
• Alex, the Veteran. Thousands of hours, few words, only speaks up when something needs doing.
• Emma, Direct. Professional and to the point, tells you what to do and when, nothing more.

Pick whichever fits how you want to fly. None of them affect scoring, achievements, or Career Mode, it's purely a coaching style.

What the First Officer actually does

The First Officer mainly reasons from data Simmers already has: your current flight phase, your recent ATC messages, your SimBrief plan and runways if you imported one, your checklist progress, and airport weather. By design, it doesn't guess at your aircraft's actual state, gear, flaps, altitude, or whether you've captured the glideslope, unless it genuinely knows.

If you connect the Simmers Companion app (an optional Windows app, currently in early testing, that reads live data from your simulator), the First Officer can actually see some of it: your live altitude, speed, gear, and flaps, alongside your squawk code. Without the Companion connected, none of that exists, and the First Officer stays honest about it, it won't guess your altitude or claim to see your gear just because it would sound plausible for the current phase.

Day to day, it will:

• Nudge you toward the next radio call you're expected to make, and suggest what to say.
• Let you know when it's time to move to the next flight phase, once ATC and your checklist for the current phase are squared away.
• Answer aviation questions in character, explain procedures, run conversions, or just chat.

Talking to your First Officer

During a live flight, open a hands-free call or use push-to-talk from the Cockpit, then speak naturally. Say "Switch to First Officer" (or "push to copilot") to move from the ATC channel to the First Officer, and the same the other way to get back to ATC.

A few things you can say, grouped by what they do:

Checklist

• "Pause the checklist" / "hold on" / "stand by"
• "Continue the checklist" / "resume" / "go ahead"
• "Say again" / "repeat" / "come again"
• "Go back one item" / "skip"
• "Exit checklist" / "stop"

Channels

• "Switch to First Officer" / "push to copilot"
• "Switch to ATC" / "contact ground" / "tower" / "clearance" / "delivery"
• "Stand by" to mute, "listen" or "go ahead" to unmute
• "End call" / "close call" / "disconnect call"

Flight phase

• "Start boarding", "start pushback", "declare cruise", "start approach", "we are parked", and so on for every phase.

Flight settings

• "Set weather to rain" (also cloudy, storm, snow, fog, clear)
• "Rate this takeoff an eight" / "landing score is nine"
• "Play departure ATIS" or "play arrival ATIS" plays that leg's ATIS directly
• "Play local ATIS" (or "current ATIS") figures out which leg you're closer to from your flight phase, and plays that one, asking "departure or arrival?" only if you're at cruise and it genuinely can't tell
• "Play ATIS", "listen to ATIS", "connect to ATIS", or "tune to ATIS" all ask which leg you want if it isn't obvious, answer with the word, an ICAO code, or the city name

Briefings

• "Flight briefing" (or "route briefing") reads back route, aircraft, callsign, cruise altitude, flight time, both runways, alternate, and block fuel
• "Approach briefing" reads back the arrival runway (and where it came from), the filed STAR, the briefed approach chart if one's selected, and current destination weather

Conversation

• "Show voice commands" / "help" to open this list inside the Cockpit
• Ask anything aviation related: "What does QNH mean?", "explain the transition altitude", "convert ten miles to kilometers"

How the voice technology works

Speech recognition and speech generation both run on Simmers' own self-hosted infrastructure, not a per-message paid API call. That's what the basic voices you hear today are: free, included with your account, and always will be.

We're also testing more advanced, expressive voices for ATC and the First Officer with a small group of pilots. Those cost real money to generate per use, so once they're ready for everyone they'll be offered as a paid option on top of the free basic voices, never instead of them.

Turning it off

Some flights don't need ATC or a First Officer at all. You can turn either one off independently from the Cockpit if you'd rather fly quietly.