Best flight planner for VFR flights on your opinion

[Noio 0]

I would like to know what is the best flight planner you recommend that is compatible with X-Plane 11 for VFR flights. What are the pros and cons of flight planners you use. Thanks.

[Paraffin 2,197]

I use the free (donationware) Plan-G Flight Planner for all my flights in X-Plane, which are mostly in the FSEconomy game unless I'm just testing something. You set a flight plan, then export a .FMS file to X-Plane's flight plan subdirectory, load that into X-Plane's GPS and you're good to go.

It does everything I need for VFR and IFR flights in light to medium GA planes and helicopters. It will also operate as a moving map display during flight with a link via XPUIPC. You can scroll around anywhere in the world to look at airports and navaids in the X-Plane database, which gets around some limitations in the default XP11 map that only shows the current area around the plane.

By loading an outside (free) data source, it will show a MEF altitude for highest terrain near your flight path, so you can avoid smacking into mountains. You can even program user GPS waypoints for valley approaches. Very useful for the kind of bush flying I do.

Those are the "Pros," and I only notice a few "Cons":

* If you fly the heavies, it lacks SIDs and STARs. That doesn't affect how I fly, but some people need it.

* It's a separate program running outside the sim, so you have to tab back and forth to see it as a moving map.

* The map overlay showing topographic-style terrain used to be better. I think it was from Google Maps, but they started charging app developers for it, so the current options are a bit more sparse. I'm using the OpenCycleMap option in the program, which isn't bad but I miss the earlier map style.

There are other flight planners out there, this is just the one I'm most familiar with and it works well.

Edited November 10, 2018 by Paraffin

[Noio 0]

Thank you @Paraffin for your detailed explanation.

 

 

[Bjoern 1,157]

LittleNavMap can do everything you want it to.

https://albar965.github.io/littlenavmap.html

Edited November 10, 2018 by Bjoern

[fppilot 4,371]

Fltplan.com web site and FltPlanGo app on iPad or Android.  Real world products that tie in directly to FSX, P3D, and XP.  Do a search here on Avsim and read.....