I found a really cool scenery/aircraft(?) on Flight Replicas, that is an entire bomb group of 126 B-17s as 1 "aircraft", so you can have a massive swarm of B-17s for simulated missions without the tedious formation making or extra polys causing lag. The issue is - how the heck do you get it to follow a mission plan!?

In this case, I essentially just want 1 AI aircraft, to follow a loop of coordinates (about 12), no takeoff or landing, and enough to where I can fly along in formation. I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why nobody has figured out how to do this in FSX yet? I'm using FSX:SE, so the default mission editor SDK will not work (which I've heard it's not very good anyway). I've tried FSX Mission Editor 2, but the documentation on it is lacking, and I can't find anybody who has tried to make an AI aircraft follow a set of waypoints, or even uploaded a screenshot of their setup for it. I've tried AI Flight Planner (AIFP), but that seems to not be much help (just the same A-B airport planning). I have also heard that you can make fake floating airports with runways enroute so your aircraft do something that resembles making a waypoint, but I have concerns of how good this works, and also how to set it up (I wasn't able to find a concise tutorial about that either).

Am I trying to do something that just isn't possible? Is there a way to just have an AI aircraft follow waypoints at all, in any way, shape, or form? 

Hello ngc427

Unfortunately, I can only help you indirectly because I don't work with FSX Mission Editor 2. To be precise, I don't even create missions for FSX, but for its successor, Prepared.

However, Prepared is still so similar to FSX that I can open and edit FSX missions using its Mission Editor (called SimDirector). This way, I was able to make many FSX missions work in Prepared by making minor modifications (often the missions don't work because a certain aircraft or building isn't available in Prepared; I replace it with something similar, and the missions work).

But now to your question about whether it's generally possible to have AI aircraft follow waypoints:
It works perfectly; in some standard FSX missions, AI aircraft follow waypoints.

I recommend opening and analyzing existing missions in your Mission Editor 2.
For example, "TokyoExec" and "Triangle" use such waypoints for the following AI aircraft.

Triangle is probably the best option for you, as it has a squadron following a waypoint list in the shape of a figure 8. (These are the five torpedo bombers that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945.)

In my sim editor, the flight loop looks like this:

There are five WP lists, each with 10 waypoints, which fly the loop again at the end of the loop (infinitely).

So, if you analyze this mission, you should be able to create your own mission without any problems.
Good luck!

If it works, I would like to test your finished mission, because I have FSX installed on my PC in addition to Prepared.

After some deliberation, and a personal tough stretch of two weeks, I decided to treat myself and finally upgrade to P3D v5, and holy wow was it worth every single penny, even if I had to re-buy some aircraft to get the full experience (thankfully early Black Friday sales saved me a bit there).

But, all of that to say, I did try out Prepar3Ds SimDirector, and creating missions with basic formation flights and things work exceptionally well, and is very intuitive after a few hours of learning and tutorials. I did get the FlightReplicas B-17 formation "aircraft" working with a simple mission plan, just starting on the runway and following along with the AI formation, and it works very well. Unfortunately, just with the way that the formation is a single "aircraft", means that trying to hold a formation in a turn is impossible - the left side suddenly speeds up 20kts, and the right side suddenly drops 20kts. Though, just flying in a cloud of B-17s without holding a formation is still very impressive looking, essentially moving scenery that greatly enhances the experience of flying a mission flight plan. It is a little difficult to tune altitudes and speeds that I can follow along with in the A2A B-17, but after some tweaking and some firsthand knowledge of good climb and cruise speeds, it all turned out pretty nicely.

 

Edited December 2, 2025Dec 2 by ngc427

Hi ngc427, Hi everyone

I'm glad it worked out.
I'd love to take a look at your AI formation and maybe even try flying it.
Could you send me the relevant files as a zip file? I mean Flight.fxml, Flight.pln, Flight.wx, and Flight.xml (there might not be a Flight.pln file).
My email address is [email protected]

If you need some more practice with SimDirector, I recommend my tutorial. Using a simple mission that you can recreate step by step, I explain many of SimDirector's functions and potential pitfalls.

You can find the tutorial here:
ExampleFlight

By the way, this tutorial is interesting for anyone who wants to try SimDirector themselves.

-----
Deutsch
-----

Hallo ngc427, Hallo Leute

Freut mich, dass es geklappt hat.
Ich würde mir deine Ki-Formation gerne anschauen und auch mal Fliegen.
Kannst du mir die entsprechenden Dateien als zip zuschicken? Ich meine die Flight.fxml, Flight.pln, Flight.wx und Flight.xml (eventuell ist keine Flight.pln vorhanden).
Meine Mailadresse: [email protected]

Falls du noch etwas Einarbeitung in den SimDirector benötigst, empfehle ich dir mein Tutorial. An einer simplen Mission, welche man schrittweise nachbauen kann, erkläre ich viele Funktionen und Stolperfallen des SimDirektor.
Das Tutorial findest du hier:
ExampleFlight

Das Tutorial ist übrigens für jeden interessant, welcher sich auch selber einmal im SimDirector versuchen will.