Q. Has anyone used it with AC that have their own loading/fueling options, specifically NGX?

A. Generate a flight and use the load and fuel figures in the briefing to set up the fuel and load programs for the addon.

 

Q. This topic is suspiciously the same as the topic started maybe a year ago… Or maybe its just that good?

A. I’m trying to make sure it is as good as it can be with the generous help of you guys and over at FSN.

 

Q. I am also not connected with the makers of this in any way.

A. No I’m not advertising or asking anyone to post. However, if I get a good heads up or a good idea from someone and it benefits IF, they will appear in the credits and contributors if I remember to put them there. Please let me know if I forgot you.

 

Q. Anyone have an issue with the demo taking you out of pause?

A. Strange one. The demo will take focus away from FSX once an hour or so and display a nag. Not sure how this could translate into an un-pause. I’m checking this out as a bug.

 

Q. Is it Navigraph updatable?

A. There is no automation for this so far, you can edit the plan from the flight generator page “Edit Plan”. You can copy and paste Navigraph Fixes right into the plan:

 

 

 

"FIX 06FA LATLON N 26 54.48918 W 80 19.70484"

 

Q. Hi, can you please elaborate a bit on the flight planner functionality?

A. Choose Airways to get all WPs including Intersections. Nav end routes include the nearest Nav to the airports for tuning if you need. It creates an FSX XML plan file so can be use by any FSX compatible program to view it. There is a searchable world map you can zoom and click on in the program shows you the airport compatible with your AC.

 

Q. I've gone through the list and adjusted many planes runway distance for STOL and will be able to reach many strips now.

A. This is what you do and you get into the “exact” performance of the plane. Also set fuel range from the fuel report in the de-brief. Use the fuel report in flight for exact fuel use figures. Set climb rates and cruise alt and speed and adhere to them, all in the kneeboard briefing for a great uninterrupted flight.

 

Q. Can anyone comment on the compatibility of IF 10 with other programs such as Active Sky 2012, REX, or Radar Contact?

A. So far all addons work fine with IF. With ATC programs like RC, you will need to ensure the flight starts un-paused. In IF you can set PAUSED, UNPAUSED, or PAUSE after momentarily starting – I use this with RC4.

 

Q. I've tried installing Ideal Flight 10 no luck.

A. Ensure no old installation is present. Install version [rq] or later.

 

Q. Weather wise-Can I still use Active Sky 2012 with this?

A. Yes. Turn off IF weather and ASE will run the weather, you can use the IF Thermal and Ridge engine with ASE, REX, and FSX real world weather.

 

Q. What I really want from IF is to have a selection of category settings to make totally random flights to explore the world. You know like bush type flying, GA passenger flights, huge airliner flights, water flying, etc.. A flying-type mission generator of sorts seems to be what I'm after. I was hoping for a total flight randomizer based on a few simple, broad categories.

A. This is what IF does. Ideal Flight attempts to simplify the whole deal, but allows you to set more than anything you could before. I suggest trying the walk through in the help. All flights are basically random. You can also choose a random departure, generate a random flight from it, and reverse the route too. There is a little learning curve and IF assumes you know how to fly.

 

Q. What the heck is a Maintenance Mission? (Sounds like you are trying to learn what IF does in too short a time).

A. Missions are generated for your bush plane or chopper to visit remote VOR stations and things like that.

 

Q. Ai generator error message.

A. Go into Ai Selection and choose Ai aircraft you want to see appear in flights. Be careful with addons, they don’t all work as Ai. Go and delete the file Profiles\AIInclude.dat and then go and set the AC you want for Ai.

Q. Does IF plan/schedule/have refuel stops? Demo won't show me fully how it manages fuel.

 

A. Flights are from departure to destination. If you land in the middle of nowhere, you can fly from this "Landing Site" of your own, to a known location, and a plan is generated for it. You can fill up or maintain your current fuel level.

 

Q. Things can be hard to find.

 

A. Yes it does a lot of stuff but at least you can fly at the touch of a button, and you can still set up almost anything. Obviously use the help index, but for example, to find the failures section - go to the Mission Page "Damage and Failures" top right.

Thanks! The demo mode did accidently unpause the sim if it was already paused, sorry about that, fixed in version [rr].

I keep a report on the site of issues being attended to: http://www.codelegend.com/idealflight/report.htm

Does IF plan/schedule/have refuel stops? Demo won't show me fully how it manages fuel.

 

I'm getting a bunch of AI errors while a plan is being created.

 

What or how do the missions work? Demo won't show me this either. What the heck is a Maintenance Mission?

 

The background of the message shows you have a very old version or a preview version. Go and download the latest version and make sure you completely uninstall any other versions before installing.

What actually has my interest in this program is the parked aircraft feature. Will it pick up previously saved flights you already have setup on your system and add them into its database upon installation or does it only show parked AC with flights flown with this program?

Only shows parked aircraft from flights assessed by the program or when the program notices you moved the plane. You can park anywhere on earth and the plane will be there. If you park on runways or official parking bays, there is a checkbox to display these or not, since Ai can be drawn over them. What you may be able to do with old saved flights is with the IF X button load the old flight move a little and exit, you should be able to save the parked position. I'll have a play with this later, can't remember testing it.

Steve

This thread is very similar to one that appeared last year some time - complete with the developer chiming in. Obviously it has a appeal to some simmers but how does it work with advanced aircraft such as the NGX - does it produce a flight plan in .rte format? Also what about RXP garmins - most of my GA aircraft use these? I usually prefer to create my own flightplans for GA rather than use an automated process. For the heavy iron I like to fly real world procedure as but it seems IF uses the FSX database which is now very outdated - I notice even Plan-G will be moving to Navigraph with v3. Intrigued a bit about the way weather is generated especially if it could be based on real world met observations.

 

Bruce

I tested loading any old flight and moving a little and go back to IF to save the location. You then find yourself with that plane, if you change aircraft the parked aircraft is saved.

 

Hey Bruce, yes not my fault, the way things are around here you'd think it was a crime mentioning a new piece of kit. I strongly encourage people to post about their experiences with IF just like they do with ORBX, REX, ASE, FSF, RC4, PMDG etc. Which all work fine with IF by the way.

 

Have no fear you can do all you ask and more, the NGX works fine, but then if it works with FSX, it works with IF.

 

Drop your own carefully hand crafted plan onto IF and you get the briefing for it, makes your hard work come to life and compliments a good route.

 

The plan is converted for your current flight parameters too, not many planners around do that. Plans are usually join the dots, not so with IF's heuristic route finder.

 

You can stuff all the Navigraph FIX’s you like into it. No need to scare people about the validity of their waypoints, since the FSX database is best, that's the world you are actually flying in.

 

But if you want real world waypoints then you need to update all the scenery to get the MAGVARs, runway numbers, and everything else right - but if you do - Ideal Flight handles it perfectly! So it's all go there too. :D

 

The weather is not random, it’s a new world weather system that works like the real world, to an extent, but is tuned for more fun. Let’s face it generally real weather is boring. Although IF’s weather is not computed like the algorithms on the Met Office Supercomputer, it does a good job of creating the weather conditions in sim to thrill you.

 

By the way, there's a lot more about IF over at FSN, and an IF group with lots of info if you are interested.

 

The point about GPSs: So far seems to work with them all, not had any reported problems.

 

.rte format files soon, although a good addon aircraft should be able to load an FSX plan into its FMC...

The point about GPSs: So far seems to work with them all, not had any reported problems.

 

.rte format files soon, although a good addon aircraft should be able to load an FSX plan into its FMC...

 

I would have thought that the PMDG 737NGX is the best addon aircraft ever for FSX by a wide margin and you can't import FSX flightplans into its FMC (but I note that the .rte format will be "soon"). The same applies to the RXP Garmin GPSs as they are based on Garmin's real world trainer so I see a problem here as I use the rxp430 and the 530 quite extensively. One thing I have found is that if you create a flightplan using a planner based on the Navigraph database (eg FSC, EFB etc.) and then export it in the FSX flightplan format you can get quite bizarre results when loaded into another planner that uses the FSX database. Happens with Plan-G I guess this is why it is moving to Navigraph - not that that is perfect but still much better that FSX database.

 

Bruce

Bruce,

 

Why don't you try IF with your Garmins and report then?

 

Yes the PMDG should be able to load an FSX plan, you are correct it does not. It's not difficult to provide an .rt2 with a complex plan, however I have to think of the wider picture and provide for CS, iFly, PIC, etc FMC's too, "soon" means soon.

 

The only issues I know causing problems are user waypoints, Ideal Flight and FSX handle them perfectly, but they are not so well handled by other software originally written for FS9.

 

One thing you should know about the PMDG is it's useless to program the plan with SID/STAR. The Navigraph waypoints alter all the time but these pose no problems with FSX, whatever day they come from, a VOR does not move. I have to admit I'm not with you on your FSX versus Navigraph waypoints issue...

I should clarify after Bruces obfuscating remark about data sets; the data set IF uses is the data that your aircraft's instruments respond to in the sim. That's why when you add airports IF performs another scan of the data - this is what you need.

 

If you do happen to make a plan using a toolset and waypoints from another dataset, Ideal Flight can read that plan including non existant waypoints. When you drop it on the Airport screen a briefing and flight is created for it, which enhances the plan tremendously.

 

However, there is no real point describing radio navigation waypoints in a plan unless they are physically in the sim. Other waypoints are called FIX's and do not have to have a physical location, none the less, all these waypoints are handled properly by Ideal Flight.

 

There are no problems found with any addons and all addons run with Ideal Flight because of the unique way IF has been designed and constructed.

 

More features are plannned for the current release, and an inexpensive upgrade path is planned for more specialist features. I've finally got round to setting up the UI properly, and installing some nicer buttons for the next version.

 

Thanks Stick_#Account_Closed for making my day with your post!

Steve,

 

I bought you program a while ago but only started really using it just recently and I must say that it rocks . Really looking forward to the updated UI as the present one is "flow-wise" rather confusing for newbies.

So after so many ringing endorsements, I finally bought Ideal Flight...

 

Initial impressions are cautiously optimistic! The app seems very powerful and flexible but perhaps lacking a little focus and finesse in the GUI...though it may be just my tired brain.

 

Two questions I did have -

 

1) does the app generate its own traffic? If so, how does one get it to stop doing so and use an alternate traffic app?

I generated a flight from NZNS and was set adrift in a flotilla of default FSX Utlralights...damn things were everywhere and I could barely get off the runway or a word in to ATC edgewise!

 

Now this may have been my Ultimate Traffic Pro 5.4, but it wasn't behaviour I had seen from it before, so I made the assumption it was Ideal Flight?

 

2) How does the Ideal Flight weather work? Does it get info from live data or does it randomly generate weather? The conditions I experienced were bizarre to say the least - thick cloud, blue sky, rain, sun and persistant, wide-ranging lightning!

 

(I do probably need to read the manual, so please feel free to tell me to RTFM if all of this is easily explained away!)

RTFM :Thinking:

 

I think your questions and observations are a little premature yet! :Money Eyes:

 

Set Ai in the Flight Generator page, Choose the aircraft you want Ai to use, if you dont want Trikes, don't check the Trike box, and set 10 or 20 if you already have a traffic addon. Traffic addons schedule flights around real world times, IF traffic shedules flights around your flight time. Set Zero Ai for no IF traffic.

 

If you want real world weather then Turn IF weather off in the Weather Page. IF weather is driven from an offline global simulation so you get weather where there are no weather stations. You can fly in night weather during your real daytime. Like real world weather, you need to change the date time or location for new weather, go back to the same time same day and the weather is the same. The weather is not bizarre, but has been tweaked to create more interesting situations than real world weather, you will still find conditions more or less what you expect for the area.

 

Since the main functions are all in place now, the UI is getting a makeover to improve looks, buttons, and workflow.

 

Thanks for your support.

Thanks for your advice Steve - it is really appreciated.

 

I hope you didn't take my comments as a criticism of Ideal Flight - I think it is an impressive and ambitious product and I am sure it will go from strength to strength!

 

(now I am off to rtfm!)