When talking about aviation, one of the key persons besides the pilot, that helps ensure a safe flight, is the air traffic controller. Therefore having a realistic ATC is important for an overall realistic simulated experience. Unfortunately many flight simmers are not really happy about the ATC that comes built in Flight Simulator X, especially when flying state of the art planes with FMC that supports SID/STAR. Also especially on mountain airports like LOWI default ATC keeps vectoring the pilot straight into mountains.
One option for a better air traffic control experience is joining one of the online communities like
IVAO or
VATSIM. Even there there are not always ATC connected and if you are living in some areas of the world with less coverage you might end up doing the flight alone.
Luckily there are a few ad-dons that successfully manage to replace the built in ATC of flight simulator and improve the overall experience.
