An air traffic control game puts you in charge of the airspace rather than flying an aircraft. You read a radar display, talk to pilots, and decide where every aircraft goes. In Talk to Tower you issue headings, altitudes, speeds, approach clearances, and handoffs while keeping aircraft separated from each other.

What does an approach controller actually do?

An approach controller owns a volume of airspace roughly 30 to 40 miles around one airport. Arriving aircraft enter that airspace high, fast, and not aligned with the runway. The controller turns, descends, and slows each one until it can intercept the runway ILS beam, arranges the arrivals into one evenly spaced stream, then transfers each aircraft to the Tower controller who issues the landing clearance.

How does the ILS work?

The Instrument Landing System transmits two radio beams from the runway. The localizer indicates whether an aircraft is left or right of the runway centreline. The glideslope, normally angled at 3 degrees, indicates whether the aircraft is above or below the correct descent path. When an aircraft captures both beams, its autopilot follows them down to the runway.

Why do aircraft need vectors to the ILS?

The ILS beams are usable only from a narrow window: approximately 10 to 14 nautical miles from the runway, within about 30 degrees of the runway heading, and below the glideslope. An aircraft arriving too high or crossing the centreline at a steep angle passes through the beam without capturing it. Positioning aircraft inside that window is the controller core task.

What am I looking at when the game starts?

A radar scope with the airport at the centre. Each moving symbol is a simulated airliner labelled with its callsign, altitude, and speed. A dashed line extending west of the airport is the ILS approach path for runway 27. You select an aircraft, then talk to it.

Do I need aviation knowledge to start?

No. The guided training shift assumes you know nothing and explains each concept at the moment you first need it. The aviation logic is realistic, but the pacing and feedback are designed for a first-time player.

Can I play this air traffic control game with my voice?

Yes. Talk to Tower is built around push-to-talk voice clearances and spoken pilot readbacks. Keyboard input is always available, so the complete game works if you would rather not speak or cannot grant microphone permission.

Is Talk to Tower realistic?

It uses recognizable approach-control procedure: real callsigns, absolute headings, altitude and speed assignments, separation minima, localizer and glideslope capture, and Tower handoffs. Mumbai runway geometry and the ILS procedure are projected from published charts. It is a game and a training aid, not certified software, and is not for operational use.

Is the game free, and do I need an account?

The web beta is free to start and guest play requires no account. You can optionally create a controller account to keep career progress across supported devices.

Can I play on mobile?

The web game runs in modern desktop and mobile browsers, and the desktop version is a wide information-dense console. A dedicated Android build exists, with iOS planned; both use the same voice-first control concept.

How do I report a bug or request a feature?

Open an issue on the GitHub repository at github.com/aliacollins/talk-to-tower/issues. Bug reports, phraseology corrections from controllers, and airport requests are all welcome.

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PRIVACY · PLAIN LANGUAGE

Your voice controls the game.
It does not become a recording.

Talk to Tower never stores or retains your microphone audio. A push-to-talk clip may be processed transiently to turn speech into text, then it is discarded after the response.

Effective 23 July 2026 · Public beta

MICROPHONE PROMISE

No saved audio. No voice library. No audio training by Talk to Tower.

The microphone is used only when you deliberately transmit. Talk to Tower does not write the audio to a file, attach it to your account, place it in Supabase, or keep it in application logs.

Microphone audio

Before the operating system asks for microphone permission, the game shows a just-in-time notice. On the web, audio is captured in temporary memory only while push-to-talk is active and sent over HTTPS to the configured speech-recognition service. In the Android app, the device speech-recognition service may process the transmission.

Talk to Tower does not retain that audio after transcription and does not use microphone audio to train a model. You may decline microphone access and use keyboard controls.

Radio text and AI interpretation

The resulting transcript is text, not stored audio. It can appear in the current radio history, remain in the local saved session on your device, and be sent with the selected aircraft’s game state to the configured interpretation service when a natural-language command needs clarification.

Avoid saying personal or sensitive information over the game radio. ATC clearances should contain only callsigns and game instructions.

Guest play, accounts, and progress

You can play without entering a name or email. Guest progress is associated with a random anonymous account identifier and local device storage—not an IP address chosen by Talk to Tower. If you create an account, Supabase stores the email, profile, career progress, airport unlocks, and shift summaries needed for cross-device saves.

Product analytics and diagnostics

The game may store limited gameplay and technical events such as a session start, tutorial step, successful landing, separation event, device class, and performance timing. These measurements help diagnose failures and understand whether the game is playable. They are deliberately designed not to contain microphone audio or complete radio transcripts.

Services that process data

Vercel hosts the web app and server endpoints and may process standard connection and request logs.
Supabase provides anonymous/authenticated accounts, career saves, and aggregate gameplay analytics.
OpenRouter and model providers may process a short audio clip for transcription or radio text for interpretation when those cloud features are available.
Android speech services may process speech in the native Android build according to the device and recognizer configuration.

These services operate under their own terms. OpenRouter says prompt and response content is not logged by default, while request metadata is retained; its downstream model providers can have separate policies.

Retention and your choices

Microphone audio has no Talk to Tower retention period because Talk to Tower does not store it. Local progress and radio text remain until you reset the game or clear the app/site data. Cloud account and career records remain while the account is active or as needed to operate and secure the service.

You can play by keyboard, revoke microphone permission in the browser or device settings, reset career progress in the Career screen, or contact the creator about access or deletion through the public profile below.

Contact and changes

Talk to Tower is operated as an independent project by Arpan Jha. Questions, corrections, and privacy requests can begin through the linked creator profile or project issue tracker. A material policy change will update the effective date and the notice shown in the game.

This public beta is not directed to children under 13.