Since every flight sim enthusiast is aware or at least heard about this game, I will make the introduction short. Tower!3D Pro is an ATC simulator developed by an independent developer and publishing company FeelThere established in 2002. The game was released on 3rd February 2017, so it’s a fairly new game.
Before you start reading the review, I would like to say Thanks to FeelThere for making this possible and providing us with a review copy.
Interface
The game has a pretty simple interface in both parts, the homepage and in-game. The homepage has three parts, the menu, the airport selection, and the runway selection.
In the airport selection, you choose the airport you want to control traffic on (obviously), traffic density and the environment (as seen above). The runway selection enables you to choose the runways which will be used by arivals. The selection will not affect departures.
You can’t do much in settings, but that will not limit you by any means, FeelThere included probably everything you will need to adjust.
You might be confused when you see the in-game interface for the first time, but don’t worry, it’s easier than you think. In the top left corner, you will see what are you saying or if the voice recognition doesn’t work for you, you can use it as a way to control traffic on the airport by selecting the aircraft and the procedure it should do. In the bottom left corner, there is a DBRITE panel which is basically showing you arriving aircraft, it’s basically an approach and departure radar. In the right top corner, there is an ADIRS panel, which is doing the same thing as DBRITE, but on the ground. In the right bottom corner, there is a STRIP panel showing a list of aircraft in the departure and arrival phase.
Each panel can be moved by dragging, but my
Voice recognition
If you read any reviews of this game you must’ve heard about people with accent having problems with voice recognition, and to be honest, I did not encounter any huge problems even though I have a Czech accent. Of course sometimes I needed to say a sentence twice since the game did not recognized my voice at all or did not recognized correctly, but that wasn’t a big of a deal and should not be the reason not to purchase this game. What I did not liked about the voice recognition is the fact, that you need an English localization each time you want to use the voice recognition, which can be quite annoying for someone.
DLCs
With the game itself there are three airports included, Los Angeles (KLAX), Saint Thomas (TIST) and Philadelphia (KPHL), but that is not what I want to talk about in this section. I would like to talk about the Real Traffic DLC and the Real Color DLC. If you are not sure what those DLCs do, Real Color is adding a real airline callsigns and liveries to the game and Real Traffic is adding a real world schedule to the game. In my opinion, these DLCs are nice to have, but not neccesary. The Real Color DLC is really nice to have since it makes the game more realistic, but, at least in my case, after multiple “rounds” I got the default callsings in my mind and I did not had a single problem using them. In terms of the airports, we did not had the chance to review them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you are a flight sim enthusiast this game will be a nice addition to your portfolio, and you will enjoy controlling the traffic while flying somewhere in the sim. The biggest con of the game is probably the quality of voice recognition and the graphics, but overall I really think this game has a potential and you should at least give it a chance.
If you are thinking about purchasing Tower!3D instead of Tower!3D Pro, think about that twice before doing so. The main difference between the versions is the voice recognition, Tower!3D does not include a voice recognition which in my opinion is not worth it.
You can purchase Tower!3D Pro for 45,99€ on Steam or for 46,99€ (without VAT) on FeelThere website.
