Greetings!I've gotten a lot of fun hours in the MD-11 but something that always annoyed me was the VNAV system. Not because it wasn't realistic, but because it required entry of winds aloft to function accurately, and getting accurate data out of FSX was always a pain. On almost every flight the airplane would be off profile on descent because I didn't have the "right" numbers in the FMC. I know PMDG has spent a lot of time getting the VNAV on the NGX just right and I'm curious how the predicted winds function has been implemented. Are we still going to need to manually plug in wind data from somewhere else or will this be somehow automated?

It is plain obvious that VNAV can deliver much better results if it has good wind data. Absent of winds data it will do the best it can but if winds are to strong it will fail, it should be of no surpise to anyone. VNAV can't make something out of nothing.

Emm, I'm a bit confused. I'm no pilot, so I'm quite happy to be corrected, but they have to manually put the winds in as well.How could the FMS predict the weather?Craig Baillie

Emm, I'm a bit confused. I'm no pilot, so I'm quite happy to be corrected, but they have to manually put the winds in as well.How could the FMS predict the weather?Craig Baillie

I may be mistaken but I believe the FMC has a datalink where it can automatically download the winds data for each waypoint.

Emm, I'm a bit confused. I'm no pilot, so I'm quite happy to be corrected, but they have to manually put the winds in as well.How could the FMS predict the weather?Craig Baillie

Yes they can put it in manually. But they don't need to be put in. However as Michael just said, if you feed the FMC with correct winds aloft, it will do a fantastic job getting you where you wanna be.

On the RTE DATA page of the FMC, there's a REQUEST feature that will transmit a data link request for winds uplink, assuming the company data link exists and is working. (FCOM vol 2, page 11.42.32)On the CRZ DES page of the FMC, the computed actual winds are displayed.Does this work on the NGX? I don't know yet. :(

On the RTE DATA page of the FMC, there's a REQUEST feature that will transmit a data link request for winds uplink, assuming the company data link exists and is working. (FCOM vol 2, page 11.42.32)On the CRZ DES page of the FMC, the computed actual winds are displayed.Does this work on the NGX? I don't know yet. :(

This is what I'm really hoping for. Maybe too much to ask, but FSBUILD can pull from Active Sky's winds aloft data, so I'd imagine its at least theoretically possible in the NGX. IMHO that would greatly add to the immersion factor.

HiI mostly fly using real world weather conditions and I use the following link http://www.usairnet.com/cgi-bin/Winds/Aloft.cgi or similar to obtain wind aloft for my flights, I will try the request options I remember seeing it beforeThanks

Aivlasoft EFB has a very easy way to "read" the weather either directly from FSX, from VATSIM or from ASE (where you need to direct it to an exact text file that ASE creates).I assume that doing the same for NGX would be a day's work for PMDG assuming there aren't any legal implications.This way it'd be very easy for anyone to load winds instead of inserting the mmanually (which I never do cause in my limited simming time I prefer to fly rather than feeding FMCs)!Would you consider this option PMDG people (if it's not already in)?

Aivlasoft is a great add-on, recommend it to everyone.Other good ways to get winds aloft is Active Sky, makes it really easy to see what the weather is, assuming of course that the weather in FSX is what Active Sky is claiming it is.Another good one is FSFlight Keeper, which actually comes with an "ACARS" device, a gauge you can drop into any airplane which allows you to access FSFK from the flight deck and get a real nice list of the winds aloft for each of your way points, as well as winds at various altitudes at the destination and departure fields. Very useful for FMC aloft data.

The issue, as I understand it, is not where to find wind info but how to feed it in the plane computer in an easy and time-effective way.It'd be nice if the PMDGians could give us a hint on this matter...

Many airlines don't have ACARS. I know of one that provides enroute/descent winds in the flight planning package and they must manually key this into the FMC.Hope this helps.CheersNick Jones

Many airlines don't have ACARS. I know of one that provides enroute/descent winds in the flight planning package and they must manually key this into the FMC.Hope this helps.CheersNick Jones

Of course you 're correct, however it's always nice to have the option (especially if your available simming time is rather short) ;)

I use FOC and I have to manually input the winds into the FMC of the 747 or MD11. The difference between FOC and ASE I find is around 10% in direction and speed so it doesn't mess things up too much - I look at it as such that commerical flight planning data while won't be 100% accurate will be correct to a certain degree. I think an automatic insertion feature while being handy could cause more problems - what about it loading erronous data that causes an FMC crash? How do you know its correct unless you've checked the data agaisnt every waypoint?Unless I am mistaken, FSbuild does not use wind aloft data? so you would need to find the data and check it. For a few extra minutes work on the pilots part, I think its an item that should not be included as I'm sure there is other functionality that can be implemented instead.Inputting the data myself I know that its correct as I know that is what has been used in the calculation and therefore can check it against the output of ASECheersTim

I remember a retired 757 captain telling me that he almost never used VNAV in descent, due to the inaccuracy. Always in the climb, but almost never in descent.It would be interesting to know if, as simmers, we are obsessed with using the feature despite it's use being used less often in the real world.Martin Wilby