On recently re-investing my time in Vatsim after a period of leave I discovered the Euroscope and the voice Client AVC. I did see the box you could tick for STREAMDECk and since I have the 32 Key XL Streamdeck I was also curious as to what that meant. I discovered that it has been around in the forum for a long time without any clear explanation or documentation as to what its use was going to be.
However my view is and it is not representative of any software team at Vatsim is the following
(1) AVC is related to transmission of Voiced commands to and from controllers to pilots and other controllers. Streamdeck is not direcectly associated with voice as it is just a button operated device.
(2) Based on 1 above maybe the thinking behind this was to have a STREAMDECK programmed with values of the next controller and with a recorded voice that would say ‘Contact Tower on 119.275 thank you and have a good day’ but then it would be very complicated to use unless you can speak the callsign of the pilot as well.
(3) Maybe the use of a Streamdeck is better suited to Euroscope where some pilots prefer to use text instead of voice then it makes sense to have a button for handing over to another controller as hopefully the Streamdeck could access the Vatsim data in the same way as euroscope and build the string that gets sent if you press the button on the streamdeck.
Personally I would use a Streamdeck to say record the callsign and show a status for that aircraft as you can have 32 aircraft on a single page and many pages can be used on a streamdeck. So if a pilot was asking for clearance that would be picked up by you and you would click the button for the callsign after you give clearance so then the colour and message for that callsign changes to cleared. Likewise for push and start , then taxi and finally handing off. Thats for Ground operations , but likewise tower could have a set of action buttons that if they controlled Ground as well .
Yes the Streamdeck has been well used to help pilots control aircraft such as switching on or off lights as that is a repetitive action so where some ATC workflows are somewhat repetative there has to be the flexible part that you are dealing with a number of pilot callsigns at the same time.