Been trying to get to grips with the whole flight planning / autopilot thing for the big tubes. Not entirely successful (more at the end) but slowly getting there (maybe). Tried a flight from Glasgow over to Brussels, late afternoon. OK until the arrival was approaching. I'd had a couple of previous attempts and in both those cases when I came back to the PC to check the aircraft had completely ignored EBBR and just gone heading straight on (almost made it to Moscow one time!), but I was sort of keeping an eye on this flight, and could see it was way too high and too fast as it was approaching EBBR and was obviously planning to go past again, so I took it back under manual control and had to go a little way past and turn back and bought it down by hand. Which meant coming in from the east as the sun was setting so grabbed a few shots on the replay.

So just a few shots. Set off late afternoon and headed south from Glasgow

This is from the other end of the flight once I'd turned round and was heading back in to the sunset for Brussels

Looks like Lady Penelope has got the ground transportation contract for EBBR now. (I'd inadvertantly not linked my ground traffic addon)

Bit of a wibbly-wobbly descent and landing, but managed to stay on path and landed fairly cleanly

And taxied to a totally inappropriate gate without actually destroying anything on the way.

So, not a disaster, but not what I was hoping to achieve.

Which is, to be able to automate a big iron flight as much as possible so that I spend as close to zero time as I can pushing buttons in the cockpit. Ideally, I'd like to be able to set up a flight plan, start the flight with one click (or as near to that as possible), and then let it run itself all the way from take off to landing, and if possible, taxi to the destination gate automatically as well. I would record the whole flight, and then explore it in more detail on the replay.

I don't know exactly to what degree that is possible. I did find a reference to a product called "FSX Pilot" which claimed to support MSFS and automate absolutely everything, but all the documentation refers only to FSX/P3D/XP and the product fails to run correctly on my system (undocumented error message and no log file being generated).

I'm reasonably happy setting up a flight plan, it doesn't seem particularly challenging in MSFS as the world map makes it easy. I've also gotten myself a free simbrief account set up and have created a couple of plans via that. My problems seem to arise when I try and get any of those plans into play in an aircraft.

So my basic question, if anyone is willing to take the time to answer (and for which I would be very grateful, but will quite understand if nobody does), is this. Once I've created a flight plan and loaded my aircraft, should that plan be automatically "inserted" into the aircraft's FMC? and if so, what do I have to do to "activate" it? A couple of years ago @Chuck (and btw, haven't seen him here for ages, anybody know if he's ok?) very kindly wrote me a tutorial for programming the FMC/CDU so I can do that if need be, but like I've always said, my goal here is not to learn to be a pilot but simply to explore the world in a plane. My very basic understanding is that once the aircraft is programmed and the engines running, all I should need to do is hit TOGA and everything should then happen automatically until I shut the engines down at the destination. But that just doesn't seem to happen.

Also, with aircraft like the A310/A300-600, the tablet lets me import my simbrief flight plan, but then what? I see no signs to indicate it has been accepted and taking off and hitting "autopilot on" does absolutely nothing.

I'm not looking for personal tuition here, but if anyone can just point me at a good source of info that will cover this stuff I'm happy to learn for myself, but I've been driving myself crazy for a week now watching (or more accurately, starting and then switching off) dozens of youtube videos and googling and scanning all sorts of places for info and getting nowhere. I can barely watch most youtubers - the dithering levels are phenomenal and most of them have the presentation and comprehension skills of a box of bananas.

None of this is an issue if I'm just doing my usual "pick an airport, any airport, take off and fly around for a bit until I either get bored or spot somewhere to aim for", which is certainly what I like to do most, but it would be kinda nice to be able to do the occasional semi-formal flight from one known destination to another in a big tube.

Thanks in advance for any response, but like I said, I'm fine if nobody wants to - I'll get this cracked one way or the other.

And in the meantime, enjoy the pix!

Fine shots Andy, i am shure you'l get it by learning and doeing, just watch some vids and take your time.

Nobody is born as a Flightsim Pilot, we all have to learn..😎

cheers 😉

It seems like most of the automated systems need frequent oversight - one way or the other.

from a few IRL airline pilot comments i've seen, that might not be too far off from reality 😉

 

Andy:

Glorious set of images...that "swooping" down shot of the 748, with gears down, into the sunset glow...I liked best ...

Very few here are RW pilots of Jumbos, Andy...🙂...I used to know and communicate with one, here, who would be often flying the 748 Freighters around the Globe...but the usual comments from such folks on my 747 Posts, here, used to be just "Nice shots ..." ...🙂... And I was glad for it...🙂 ...

Yes, the big irons need some automation for us virtual fliers ...to go from A to B and land successfully...But these days videos are plentily available, just need to pick the right ones, you'll get there...take it easy and have fun while doing it...

Again, like these pictures of the Queen in BA colors...I did fly 2-3 times in the 748 with LH ...the launch customer for the -8I...

Cheers ...!

Great shots from your experiment, Andy. However, I can not help you a lot since I keep on flying p3d in case of airliners.

The tower shot is fantastic!

Edited January 14, 20242 yr by Stiller Water

@pmplayer, @UrgentSiesta, @P_7878, and @Stiller Water,

thank you all for your comments. After playing around with all this for a while now, I've decided I'm not going to worry about the intricacies of doing all this stuff. I did a flight of just a couple of hours (EGLL to EKCH) and monitored it all the way and it was enough to convince me I'm not interested in doing this sort of thing. I did that trip somewhere between 50 and 100 times back in my teaching days, and I found doing it in the sim just as boring as doing it in real life (but the food and booze is better here). So at least I guess the sim is realistic <grin>.

For any future airport to airport trips in a tube I shall just record the setup and take off, and then separately the arrival at the target airport. How much after takeoff or before arrival will depend on the locations and potential interest in the surroundings, but I doubt more than maybe 10-15 minutes either end. The whole bit in the middle just feels pointless to me. If there were a basic, dead simple and guaranteed procedure to follow that was a) common to all tubes in the sim, and b) suitably documented so that I didn't have to sit through endless badly made youtubes, then I'd take the time to learn it, but that doesn't seem to be the way of things. It's just conceivable that I might get around to taking the time to get familiar with just one tube and its procedures, but even that's a long shot.

So for tubes, I'll record the start and end of the flights as separate recordings, and then I can mess around with the replays as is my wont, taking screenies, exploring the airports, maybe playing with GSX etc. Most of my flights are unplanned and non-tube anyway, so it's no biggie.

And if anyone is thinking of suggesting I can set up a long haul flight and then just go away and leave it to do it's own thing, I really don't see the point in doing that. To me, that just confirms that the middle bit is too boring to be worth doing.

Still, look on the bright side, I'm not a real world pilot - so you're all still perfectly safe out there in the real world!

Happy flying folks, however you choose to do it!

9 minutes ago, andy1252 said:

@pmplayer, @UrgentSiesta, @P_7878, and @Stiller Water,

thank you all for your comments. After playing around with all this for a while now, I've decided I'm not going to worry about the intricacies of doing all this stuff. I did a flight of just a couple of hours (EGLL to EKCH) and monitored it all the way and it was enough to convince me I'm not interested in doing this sort of thing. I did that trip somewhere between 50 and 100 times back in my teaching days, and I found doing it in the sim just as boring as doing it in real life (but the food and booze is better here). So at least I guess the sim is realistic <grin>.

For any future airport to airport trips in a tube I shall just record the setup and take off, and then separately the arrival at the target airport. How much after takeoff or before arrival will depend on the locations and potential interest in the surroundings, but I doubt more than maybe 10-15 minutes either end. The whole bit in the middle just feels pointless to me. If there were a basic, dead simple and guaranteed procedure to follow that was a) common to all tubes in the sim, and b) suitably documented so that I didn't have to sit through endless badly made youtubes, then I'd take the time to learn it, but that doesn't seem to be the way of things. It's just conceivable that I might get around to taking the time to get familiar with just one tube and its procedures, but even that's a long shot.

So for tubes, I'll record the start and end of the flights as separate recordings, and then I can mess around with the replays as is my wont, taking screenies, exploring the airports, maybe playing with GSX etc. Most of my flights are unplanned and non-tube anyway, so it's no biggie.

And if anyone is thinking of suggesting I can set up a long haul flight and then just go away and leave it to do it's own thing, I really don't see the point in doing that. To me, that just confirms that the middle bit is too boring to be worth doing.

Still, look on the bright side, I'm not a real world pilot - so you're all still perfectly safe out there in the real world!

Happy flying folks, however you choose to do it!

I feel much the same 😁

I would LOVE to do it IRL, but it's just not engaging enough pretend pilot in my limited spare time. 

I prefer figuring out low level Military Training Routes (eg Mach Loop) and flying those in a variety of aircraft. Y'know - where you actually have to put your hands on the controls and fly, or...you "die" 😁

nice moody shots! I'm not really into airliners, but here this one looks really good!

On 1/17/2024 at 8:42 PM, jankees said:

nice moody shots! I'm not really into airliners, but here this one looks really good!

Cheers Jan, appreciate it!  Not my favourite thing either, but every now and then . . .