13 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Confusion born from ignorance for many and malice for some desirous to prove by any means that MSF is not a simulator yada yada yada....

You've just hit the nail. That's the sole point of some peoples arguing.

I'm fully aware that MSFS is nowhere near perfect in terms of IFR. No need to write essays about it. I usually only use it for airliners and they are mediocre at best as well, so this in not an option anyway. But I'm having lots of fun doing VFR flying. 🙂

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by tweekz

There is something to be said for giving constructive feedback to move the sim forward. Praise is fine, but it only contributes to the status quo. 

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by Andreas Stangenes

27 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

There is something to be said for giving constructive feedback to move the sim forward. Praise is fine, but it only contributes to the status quo. 

This is the spirit of what a forum is all about and the thread you initiated certainly goes into the right direction. Sorting out the true issues from misconceptions and keeping on banging the pans. 

Do not complain, let them work, everything will be fixed after the alpha, everything will be be fixed in 6 months, everything will be fixed within a year. You buy that, you buy a bridge. We need to remind the team of what is wrong without forgetting the many things that are better in this sim than in the older competitors. One does not preclude the other. 

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

1 hour ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Finally, the only thing left for me to say is that I *really DO hope that Asobo reads this thread and fixes the issues so that we dont need to hh ave every plane modded to follow procedures. 

I'm pretty sure that Asobo has to fix every single plane too. IMHO the routing bugs that you describe happen within each individual FMS/G1x/G3x code, this is not some systematic error in the simulator itself. Asobo have to go through each of those modules and specify the necessary changes, implement them and then (regression) test their functionality. That could easily amount to hundreds of individual work items, and take months to iron out (and cause any number of new bugs in the process). 

PMDG etc. don't have to care about any of this. Their FMSs have always been completely independent from the sim, using their very own Navigraph databases. 

Best regards

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by Lorby_SI

On 10/23/2020 at 4:59 AM, Rocky said:

This is exactly the problem with Asobo, they are not professional pilots (maybe they have PPL, I am not even sure) so the concepts of SID, STAR, transition, approach is completely unknown to them. They have been asked to develop a new sim with amazing visual, this is what they did, but they probably know nothing about IFR and procedures.

 

I can almost 100% guarantee they consulted real world aviation professionals during the development of this flight sim.   I cannot explain why this issue persists, but you can bank on the fact that SIDs, STARs, and transitions are NOT completely unknown to them.

1 minute ago, Lorby_SI said:

I'm pretty sure that Asobo has to fix every single plane too. The routing bugs that you describe happen within each individual FMS/G1x/G3x code, this is not some systematic error in the simulator itself. Asobo have to go through each of those modules and specify the necessary changes, implement them and then (regression) test their functionality. That could easily amount to hundreds of individual work items, and take months to iron out (and cause any number of new bugs in the process). 

PMDG etc. don't have to care about any of this. Their FMSs have always been completely independent from the sim, using their very own Navigraph databases. 

Best regards

Well, I have always used Navigraph with PMDG. PMDG never offered an airac cycle update for any of their products. They rely on Navigraph for that. Navigraph cant help them this time. Or perhaps Navigraph just have to give up on updating the MSF default nav database and just work together with those TPD and their custom nav bases. I dont know. I also dont know what is the point of updated navblue  nav database in the sim when it works so poorly as it does. 

5 minutes ago, Tierborn said:

I can almost 100% guarantee they consulted real world aviation professionals during the development of this flight sim.   I cannot explain why this issue persists, but you can bank on the fact that SIDs, STARs, and transitions are NOT completely unknown to them.

I'm sorry to say I disagree. If they consulted real world aviation professionals, how can you believe they left so many basic bugs in the sim? How can an aviation professional validate a flight director that does not work? This is a very BASIC function that all pilots use.
Other example: how can a professional pilot validate the fact that when the ATC gives you a clearance for an approach, the entry point of the procedure has been passed, so it is BEHIND the aircraft and the autopilot commands a U-turn to go back to the entry point and start the procedure, this is ridiculous.

There are many other examples but these are the ones that come to my mind now.

Don't make me wrong, I am not saying MSFS is bad. I love it, I fly as often as I can because it gives a feeling of realism that I never felt before. But this is true for VFR and light aircraft flying only, everything that is related to liners and IFR is very bad.

29 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Well, I have always used Navigraph with PMDG. PMDG never offered an airac cycle update for any of their products. They rely on Navigraph for that. Navigraph cant help them this time. Or perhaps Navigraph just have to give up on updating the MSF default nav database and just work together with those TPD and their custom nav bases. I dont know. I also dont know what is the point of updated navblue  nav database in the sim when it works so poorly as it does. 

PMDG never used the sim-internal nav database either - because there wasn't one. All RNAV information was hard coded into the scenery BGL files, scattered everywhere. So they decided to use external Navigraph data instead, and they can just do the same in MSFS. The "roadblock" with MSFS was/is, that a WASM module (which their FMS would likely be) cannot access the local file system that easily - so they can't access the Navigraph files - yet.

All route calculations that the PMDG FMS performs are their own code and have nothing whatsoever to do with the core sim. An error in the PMDG FMS has to be corrected by PMDG - just like an error in the MSFS G1000 has to be taken up with whoever made that instrument.

So instead of one bugfix item "Fix approach selection logic" I expect there would be many in the backlog "Fix 320 FMS", "Fix 747 FMC", "Fix G1000" etc. Meaning, we are in for a longer wait, and they will come one after the other.

Best regards

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by Lorby_SI

3 hours ago, Rocky said:

I'm sorry to say I disagree. If they consulted real world aviation professionals, how can you believe they left so many basic bugs in the sim? How can an aviation professional validate a flight director that does not work? This is a very BASIC function that all pilots use.
Other example: how can a professional pilot validate the fact that when the ATC gives you a clearance for an approach, the entry point of the procedure has been passed, so it is BEHIND the aircraft and the autopilot commands a U-turn to go back to the entry point and start the procedure, this is ridiculous.

There are many other examples but these are the ones that come to my mind now.

Don't make me wrong, I am not saying MSFS is bad. I love it, I fly as often as I can because it gives a feeling of realism that I never felt before. But this is true for VFR and light aircraft flying only, everything that is related to liners and IFR is very bad.

My guess is that they decided that these "basic bugs"  were low priority for the release timeline.  Additionally, there is not a single flight sim that does ATC right.   Again, the development teams do not want to invest in programming a perfect ATC.   We see this in very flight sim title since the birth of desktop flightsiming.

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by Tierborn

By the way, someone claimed that it is possible to cirumvent the IFR limitations in MSF when flying on Vatsim. Can someone please explain to me how to cirumvent the issues when you are with Center and given clearence for a STAR and expected ILS approach? How would you do this so you fly the STAR in accordance with ATC expectations? 

2 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

IMHO the routing bugs that you describe happen within each individual FMS/G1x/G3x code, this is not some systematic error in the simulator itself.

All of the planes in the sim call the hardcoded sim flight plan builder through the same javascript class, FlightPlanManager. The aircrafts themselves do not have any routing or autopilot waypoint following logic, that's all in the sim as well. So, in a sense, it is most definitely a systematic problem.

However, as I mentioned prior, the procedure data available is quite good. It's just the sim plan builder that seems to oversimplify or misinterpret the legs, and subsequently botch the AP sync.

-Matt

20 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

All of the planes in the sim call the hardcoded sim flight plan builder through the same javascript class, FlightPlanManager. The aircrafts themselves do not have any routing or autopilot waypoint following logic, that's all in the sim as well. So, in a sense, it is most definitely a systematic problem.

Thanks for the explanation. That means that if they change the central modules, they (and all 3rd party developers who rely on them) have to revisit -all- their products to make sure that they can still call them and still interpret the result correctly? Doesn't change the effort involed by that much IMHO.

Best regards 

Edited October 26, 20205 yr by Lorby_SI

Just now, Lorby_SI said:

That means that if they change the central modules, they (and all 3rd party developers who rely on them) have to revisit -all- their products to make sure that they still interpreted the result?

The sim plan builder gives you the complete waypoints, there isn't anything to interpret. Basically, it works something like this: the plane tells the sim, "hey, I'm gonna select the ROBUC3 arrival", then the sim, in the background, figures out what those waypoints are supposed to be based on the procedure data, and then delivers the already built waypoints back to the plane code.

-Matt

Just now, Lorby_SI said:

have to revisit -all- their products

Out of curiosity, what products would that involve? As of right now and apart from scenery, there is very little available. Unless you're referring to add-ons in production or Asobo's own default aircraft?

10 minutes ago, airlinejets said:

Out of curiosity, what products would that involve? As of right now and apart from scenery, there is very little available. Unless you're referring to add-ons in production or Asobo's own default aircraft?

That is a matter of general principle. If you are using a third party asset in your code, and that asset gets changed, you can either trust that it still works as before, or you go in and make sure by re-examining all your own code that relies on it.

In this case, if Asobo changes the in-sim plan builder as Matt describes above, you can either trust in them that the result is what you expect - or you play it safe and make sure. And if something would be broken in the central module, all depending addons break at the same time. Ideally this happens through an undetected merge or build error in the release version.

Best regards