The built-in flight planner in MSFS is amazing!

[Marco Manieri]

Just now, captain420 said:

How do you do that? Will it work for G1000, G3000, Boeing FMS and the Airbus MCDU?

Any of them. Save the fsx/P3D .pln file somewhere and just pick it up from the Load/Save in world screen

[captain420]

Just now, Marco Manieri said:

Sids and stars do not get imported. Tried yesterday

That's unfortunate then. I would like to have everything loaded and ready to go. Would make the flight planning process so much faster, that way we don't have to mess with it much and focus on other parts like actual pushback, taxiing and departing.

[captain420]

Just now, d.tsakiris said:

I just like using real world flight plans (which I then load into the FMS/GPS btw). For VFR I sometimes use the built-in planner.

I like real world IFR flight plans too, but if you can do that using the built-in flight planner then why wouldn't you want so? Instead of having to rely or purchase a 3rd party flight planner. For real world routes, you would still have to go out and find them and then input them into whatever flight planner it is that you're using anyways. So if I were to find a real world route that I'd like to use, I'd manually insert those waypoints into the built-in flight planner, and be able to see my route on the globe visually and make adjustments from there, and when I'm done, have the option to automatically load that into the plane that you've chosen. It's a big time saver. Like I said, it would be nice to have that as an option so that people who prefer it this way, can use it, and if not, they can manually import the flight plan as they wish.

But my time is limited, so having this done for me would be very convenient so that I can get up in the air quickly. Flight planning takes a lot of time for me, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. I would have to research the airport, figure out what gate to start off from, and then find the weather, which runway to use, and then look up for the real world route, etc. It's very time consuming.

[lenny777]

10 minutes ago, captain420 said:

How do you do that? Will it work for G1000, G3000, Boeing FMS and the Airbus MCDU?

I'm talking right into the flightplanner itself. I've used it with the Airbus.  I'll check again but all of a sudden I have been unable to get by the opening 'press a key' screen.

[d.tsakiris]

14 minutes ago, captain420 said:

but if you can do that using the built-in flight planner then why wouldn't you want so? Instead of having to rely or purchase a 3rd party flight planner. For real world routes, you would still have to go out and find them and then input them into whatever flight planner it is that you're using anyways.

Most tools (freeware also) export the appropriate file formats. If they don't, one can copy & paste the route into other tools (VirtualDispatch for example) and have that export the file. I like it that way, because I also have limited simming time. But like I already said, I also use the built-in planner sometimes.

[markjj]

The flight planner kills performance for me when used with the airliners.  

[cwburnett]

The good news is, you don't have to specify a flight plan. So if you want to manually enter a flight plan with the knob in the G1000, you can. I get enough of that in the real thing, I certainly don't need to do that in the sim. Having the OPTION to build a flight plan in the sim menu and have it populated in the avionics is really nice.

Especially now that we can build a real flight plan in simbrief and import it, it's the best of all worlds. Re-adding the SIDS and STARS in the sim takes about 5 seconds, so I don't mind that. That's how it was most of the time in P3D anyhow - most FMS imports for third party planes required you to choose the departure and arrival even after importing the main route.

My only real complaint for the flight planner was the inability to type a route or edit from the navlog...having to zoom in to find each fix was quite tedious and sometimes impossible, but not with simbrief it won't matter anymore.

Now if only the avionics would actually show all the fixes and allow one to navigate directly to a fix on an arrival or approach procedure, we'd be there. I'm sure that will get sorted in time...

 

[bean_sprout]

53 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

No offense, but I hope they don't 😉

No offense but I hope they DO 🙂

Regards

bs

Edited August 21, 2020 by bean_sprout

[JRBarrett]

9 minutes ago, captain420 said:

like real world IFR flight plans too, but if you can do that using the built-in flight planner then why wouldn't you want so? Instead of having to rely or purchase a 3rd party flight planner. For real world routes, you would still have to go out and find them and then input them into whatever flight planner it is that you're using anyways. So if I were to find a real world route that I'd like to use, I'd manually insert those waypoints into the built-in flight planner, and be able to see my route on the globe visually and make adjustments from there, and when I'm done, have the option to automatically load that into the plane that you've chosen. It's a big time saver. Like I said, it would be nice to have that as an option so that people who prefer it this way, can use it, and if not, they can manually import the flight plan as they wish

The default flight planner does do a nice job of automatically creating a low or high altitude flight plan between points A and B, with the added advantage that you can select a SID for departure or a STAR for arrival. For many sim pilots, that functionality will be all that is needed. 

Where it falls short is if the pilot does not want to use the auto generated route, but instead wants to fly a specific r/w flight plan. There is no easy way to create the “in between” part between the end of the SID and the beginning of the STAR.

If I wanted to fly a route on airway J230 between RBV VOR and AIR VOR, all I would have to do when using a planner like PFPX or SimBrief would be to just enter that segment as “RBV J230 AIR”, and the planner would automatically insert all the waypoints that lie on that airway between the entry and exit points.

The MSFS planner has no way to enter your own airway routings. You would have to search for and insert each individual waypoint on J230 one at a time.

Fortunately, specific routings can be created using an external planner like PFPX, exported in PLN format and loaded into MSFS.

But if you simply want to get from one airport to another without needing to fly a specific route, the default planner works very well.

[captain420]

3 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

The default flight planner does do a nice job of automatically creating a low or high altitude flight plan between points A and B, with the added advantage that you can select a SID for departure or a STAR for arrival. For many sim pilots, that functionality will be all that is needed. 

Where it falls short is if the pilot does not want to use the auto generated route, but instead wants to fly a specific r/w flight plan. There is no easy way to create the “in between” part between the end of the SID and the beginning of the STAR.

If I wanted to fly a route on airway J230 between RBV VOR and AIR VOR, all I would have to do when using a planner like PFPX or SimBrief would be to just enter that segment as “RBV J230 AIR”, and the planner would automatically insert all the waypoints that lie on that airway between the entry and exit points.

The MSFS planner has no way to enter your own airway routings. You would have to search for and insert each individual waypoint on J230 one at a time.

Fortunately, specific routings can be created using an external planner like PFPX, exported in PLN format and loaded into MSFS.

But if you simply want to get from one airport to another without needing to fly a specific route, the default planner works very well.

Yes, which is why I'm hoping that Asobo will further make improvements so that we can go in and manually edit our routes directly without to resort to 3rd party. The foundation is already there, they just have to tweak things. Would love to have the ability to also add/edit and customize my waypoints as well. This would make it the perfect flight planner for me. I like how they turned flight planning from boring into a visually impressive tool. Something I've always wished for and wanted in a flight planner such as PFPX. But having it built into the core sim is much, much better.

[Farlis]

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

Gone are the days where I have to rely on 3rd party flight planning software

Nope. You can't edit the flightplan using via routing. As long as that is not a function I will still do my flightplans outside of the sim.

[raymar]

1 hour ago, Lenny777 said:

I'm talking right into the flightplanner itself. I've used it with the Airbus.  I'll check again but all of a sudden I have been unable to get by the opening 'press a key' screen.

Try a left mouse click on the Press Any Key line on your screen and see what happens.

[joec63]

What am I missing . I can edit a flight plan and add any waypoint by clicking on the waypoint and selecting ADD. 

[lenny777]

23 minutes ago, raymar said:

Try a left mouse click on the Press Any Key line on your screen and see what happens.

Unfortunately I was caught up in this mess - the solution provided in here:

 

 

[dobee51]

2 hours ago, captain420 said:

Didn't even know you can save a flight plan using the built-in flight planner. That's awesome. I haven't used it extensively enough, but what you're reporting may be a bug. I think I came across a similar thread on the official forums with someone experiencing the same problem. If you haven't done so already I would definitely submit a ticket to Asobo to let them know about it so that they can fix it. The more people who can submit a detailed report of all the bugs or problems they find, the faster they can have it sorted and updated.

There's actually two files that get saved, a PLN and a FLT file. Maybe you have to load them both.