Ok so when I plan a flight currently I use FSX flight planned make a vfr flight plan and use high airways. Is there a better programme for this maybe where I can incorporate STARs and SIDs? And also how about weather is there a better way of using real world weather then just letting FSX download it? And how can I plan what sort of head winds or tail winds ill be getting at cruise?<br /><br />Thanks

The FSX internal flight planner is basically useless :wink:

 

I use http://www.vatroute.net/ for the routing. Then take the first and last waypont of the vatroute flight plan as the SID and STAR fixes.

For the exact SID, you only need to know the active runway of your departure airport at the time you take off (mostly based on wind direction). If you enter the takeoff runway in the CDU of the NGX, the list of available SIDs will automatically be filtered to display only those applicable to the selected runway. Search for the one that matches your first FIX of the route, and select this one.

Same for STAR at your destination.

 

For weather, I use OpusFSX, which is the best weather engine I've ever seen. You will get real-world (and real-time) wind data both for lower and upper airspace and can enter them into the CDU as required. And it even features a great camera control which makes navigating the virtual cockpit a piece of cake.

 

Hope this helps,

Stefan

There's a lot of different flight planners out there:

 

-Professional Flight Planner X (http://www.flightsimsoft.com/pfpx/) (Not yet released)
-FSBuild (http://www.fsbuild.com/)

-VRoute (http://www.vroute.net/)

 

I did use FSBuild for a long time; the most anticipated is probably Professional Flight Planner X. I now use the planner that my Virtual Airline provides for its members. If you just want to get valid routes and do not want to plan them by yourself, you can go to VatRoute (http://vatroute.net/). However, there you get only the routes and no fuel calculations etc...

 

The Weather programs I know of are:

-ActiveSky (www.hifitechinc.com/)
-RealEnvironmentXtreme (www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/), more for textures but has also a weather engine.

 

I use ActiveSky Evolution and used earlier versions before. They both have limited flight planning capabilities as well.

 

Look at their webpages and see what suits you best. But the FSX flight Planner and Weather engine itself are suboptimal.
 

Want to get valid routes between any airport to any other airport, want to know how much fuel to the cupful, and ETA to the minute, and do not want to plan them by yourself? Use Ideal Flight, does not mean you need throw out your manual planner open those plans with IF and get the same treatment, IF will create a flight from any plan. The auto route finding along airways is unmatched. You would have to add SID/STAR manually with a manual planner. To build in a SID or a STAR and have a successful flight with ATC would mean making sure the winds at your departure/destination give ATC proper reason to allow it, you can set departure and destination winds in IF. IFs weather is a global weather simulation and has the most advanced weather available. If you want real world weather and manual plans use an RRW engine like REX, and manual planner like FSC with IF. IF version [sf] now under test automatically outputs your co routes and works with add-in navdata too. Works with REX/AS/Opus, NGX, everything.