Gates

[donkster 0]

Hi People. Im new to this . so be gentle with me I have purchased MFS 2020 and think its really great.

Last  night I landed at an airport and was instructed to proceed to the gate ? I looked high and low on the task bar 

which appears on the top of the screen to try to locate the gate i was being sent to...No success after travelling up and down to  around ten minutes while taking in the scenery and looking for info on the gate i eventually parked close to another aircraft where i then asked for ground teams to do thier job  then logged out... HELP 

[n4gix 4,947]

Look in the menus and turn on the progressive taxi feature. This will display a dotted line directing you to the gates/parking as well as the runway when departing.

[stans 702]

Unless you are directed to taxi to a specific gate/parking spot and know exactly where that gate/parking spot is located, using the progressive taxi feature is your best option.  To activate and deactivate the progressive taxi, after you are given your taxi to parking instructions, open the ATC window and select the progressive taxi on/off option.

Edited September 5, 2020 by stans

[Chock 17,769]

As others have noted, in the flight sims options in the assistance section, you can turn on the Taxi Ribbon option which is listed under navigation aids. This will make a big blue dotted line appear in the sim to guide your aeroplane to the stand and provide a large green box on the stand telling you exactly where to park your aeroplane. Don't forget to press the apply and save, button to make sure you turn the feature on properly when you exit the options to go back into the sim itself. You should see this:

In other flight sims such as FSX and P3D, this is an option which could be turned on or off while you were in the sim, but in MSFS, there is no in game option to do that, you have to do the above to get it to show. Hopefully the developer of MSFS will make this a choice you can do from in game.

Don't think of it as cheating either. At airports which pilots are unfamiliar with in real life, the ATC will often provide a 'follow me' car to guide an aeroplane to the stand it has been assigned, or sometimes turn on lights on specific taxiways to help guide the pilot. In fact at some airports, they do this even without you asking when the weather is poor and you can't see the taxiway well if it is wet or covered in snow, or if the route from the runway to the stand is not well marked. An example of this in real life is when going to Stand 27 at EGCC Manchester Airport in the UK; there is a really tight turn off the taxiway onto the stand, which is very difficult to see from a cockpit and can easily be missed.

We will sometimes stand there with a marshaling wand at the head of the stand and wave a wand down the line the aeroplane should be aiming for when the weather is wet so the pilot can see where to aim for when steering, since it can be really hard to see the lines when it is wet, for example like this where you can't see the taxiway lines at all:

[donkster 0]

Many thanks for the valuable info.

I have done as directed and can now not only land but can cruise to the correct gate...

my next task is to input flight instructions in the AIRBUS A320 NEO

Once again thank you and happy flying.