What if X-Plane, the FAA approved flight simulator available on Linux, Mac and PC, had built in support for the fantastic online service LiveATC.net [it streams live feeds from air traffic control towers from around the world].

Currently the simulator has random and continuous radio chatter to add to realism of in-cockpit sounds. And for real ATC communication it uses rather plastic voice synthesis.

If users could plug in the feed from the real airport they were flying to in the simulator and be able to control it from within the actual application, they would get a much better sense of realism – especially if the simulator was set to download real weather data from the Web as well.