Is PFPX worth the price?

[Guest]

 

 

Actually, I think the ability to use non-live weather in planning is by far the biggest selling point of PFPX

 

I was just about to post that. I very frequently fly with historic weather and it's great that PFPX simply reads what ASN's historic weather is offering. That, plus the automatic adding of SID and STAR sold me. The included validation was a nice unexpected bonus.

 

Concerning AIRAC: I use NavDataPro without a subscription. I think that some of the online planners would get me intro problems with that.

 

 

I think most people fly with real time weather,

 

I doubt so. But maybe it's just me... A few example why I use historic weather: I often fly in the evening (I work during the day) but I don't like to fly in the dark every time. Now I could of course set the sim time to day but then I would be using the evening's weather which doesn't seem real to me.

Related with this is that I quite often fly on the other side of the world and again I don't always want to fly in the dark or at odd (sim) times with weather that's even more odd than when I fly in my part of the world.

Finally: I like seasons but I hate flying in the winter during the entire winter... I think that just a few of my winter flights are done during sim summer and obviously in that case historic weather is almost mandatory.

 

I don't think I am alone in this!  ^_^

[Jarkko 59]

I don't think I am alone in this! 

 

I have to say, that I'm just the opposite, so it's good that PFPX caters for both ways of flying.

 

I only fly with current real world weather. If it's night time in Europe and I want to do a day time flight, the I'll do a flight in US or Canada. I get tired of winter during winter, then I will fly somewhere where it's summer season.

[g_precentralis 191]

Yea, I'm opposite, I just like to sync a/c clock with GMT. But, I think both are extremes; I think most people just click fly and do not think about scheduling, time, fuel...

[MarkW 1,490]

Time is an interesting topic in flght simming.   I usually only fly for one of my two VA's, one of them requires the sim time is set to the actual local time of day the aircraft conducts the flight.  The other lets you fly whenever you want.  

 

My general rule is that I try to fly around the same time that it is in my location....why....I just find it incredibly difficult to fly at night in the sim when the bright sunshine is shining through my window....I just can't see anything.  When its nighttime at my location, then I like to fly the sim at night....so immersive when I turn out the lights in my office, turn on the small lamp and set the night lighting in the VC.   

[qqwertz 772]

I  mostly fly on Vatsim, so current UTC time and weather are a must for me.

[BeechPapa 32]

I don't think I am alone in this!  ^_^

 

Nope, I'm the same way. I don't have a specific preference for day or night, but I do enjoy sunset/sunrises, enough to alter flight times a little to see them. There are also moments that I'll find a realistic flight on Flightaware, but don't have the time to complete it right then, so I do it later historically. And time compression on the 777 only works with historical weather. If you accelerate time from the present, you'll end up in the future! (for which there is no real weather data). 

 

I was trying to explain the entire historical flight planning process to a buddy of mine who recently got into the 777 experience with ASN/PFPX and after a few confusing minutes, I realized I must have sounded like Doc telling Marty McFly the limitations and catches of time travel. It can be a little bit convoluted sometimes, but the freedom it affords is awesome. 

[aceridgey 330]

PFPX Is a must buy there is nothing better for the whole flight planning.

 

It changed my whole sim experience and I wouldn't recommend anything else.

 

I also need to get some tutorial videos.

 

Alex

[hawkhero 11]

Just bought PFPX from pc aviator. They have a 10% off sale this weekend. So the download was not too expensive! Now I have read the manual.