lambourne

I tend to avoid London / southern UK because the VATSIM controllers there have a longstanding habit of trying to control far too many aircraft at once so you can't get a word in edgeways. They open up centres covering multiple busy airports with no ground or tower coverage, resulting in 20+ pilots fighting for radio airtime. I assume it's something they do to show off to each other but it makes the whole experience so much worse.

Many thanks for the insightful replies! I freely admit my decision-making here was a total pig's breakfast and I was well behind the aircraft. But that's why I posted: I want to learn where I went wrong so next time it all goes smoothly. Granted, that also involves learning when to bin it, take up the hold and re brief the new approach properly... I think that's what must have happened. The final approach was a bit bumpy and I must have drifted into a climb while struggling to get back to two reds, two whites. Yup...! I am fairly sure I selected the VOR DME 05, but having abandoned my briefed plan at zero notice to press on with the new approach - silly decision - I can't be sure. Maybe I did select the wrong one, but I was hand flying to cross the FAF at 2,000ft. I don't remember for sure but it wasn't FINAL APP which is what I was expecting to see. Quite possible it was APP NAV, which fits the scenario. Noted on LOC, I'll go back to the FCOM and FCTM to learn afresh when to use it. Biggest lesson of all - nope. I was flustered by the rwy 05 approach having no STAR or initial approach procedure from my approach direction and became fixated on finding a VOR DME procedure that would give me FMS guidance all the way down. Then, having made a decision to go visual and circle to land, I failed to stick to that plan. And then I failed to give myself adequate time to properly plan and brief my third (!) type of approach, basically winging it visually. Looking back, I think I should have reviewed the Simbrief flight plan properly and checked the terminal waypoint and approach. At 100nm out I was expecting to just select the approach in the box and follow it down from there. Had I noticed that the filed plan omitted the INS VOR, I could have added it myself (even en route) and used it to hold, breathe and think about what to do next.

Just had a rather confusing flight in the Fenix A320, landing at EGPE (Inverness) where the aircraft stopped giving me the expected landing guidance, forcing me to turn it into a visual approach. I've set out what I did below in the hope someone here can tell me where I went wrong. I set the flight up in Simbrief (Liverpool EGGP - Inverness) without too much thought and took off easily enough. I was specifically looking for a VOR/DME approach without using the ILS so ignored that in planning. En route I realised the wind had swung around and given me a 9kt tailwind for landing on runway 05 as initially planned. Being about 100nm out I tried to reprogram the box for runway 23, only to find that the route basically vanished in the FMGS after leaving airway N560 at GUSSI, the final en-route waypoint of my flightplan as filed. All that was between GUSSI and the runway were two waypoints that I assume were the IAF and FAF. Inverness has no STARs so the only charts relevant to what I wanted to do were the VOR DME plates for runways 05 and 23. I was approaching from the south - the screenshot's come out too small to read the text but you can see that there is no STAR-type layout from the south (like the charted arc at INS 14 DME on the VOR DME Rwy 05) that gets you onto the VOR DME Rwy 23 approach. So I figured I'd take the VOR DME 05 as originally planned and turn it into a circle-to-land if visual by 1500ft QFE, and I set up the inbound radial with FIX INFO in the FMGC, giving me a blue dashed line to follow. I selected TRK/FPA and turned off the flight directors for the DME arc. But at about 9 DME on the final approach track, I realised I had another option... Easy enough, I thought, I've already manually tuned the INS VOR/DME anyway so all I need to do is follow the procedure turn onto radial 226 after going overhead the VOR. It was fairly easy to set up radial 021 and a 9 DME arc in FIX INFO. After passing over the beacon I re selected the approach in the FMGC as VOR 23. Then I carried out the turn and got onto the inbound radial. At this point I realised I could not arm the LOC button on the glareshield. I tried it with and without flight directors and LS, but it wasn't working. The FMS was giving me lateral and vertical guidance but, being visual, I could clearly see the vertical guidance was going to take me into the ground about 1nm short of the airport if I followed the green bricks on the PFD, so I disconnected the autopilot and hand flew the remainder of the approach. I'm aware that VOR approaches are offset a few degrees from the runway heading. For the last two miles of the approach I was getting DON'T SINK cautions from the GPWS and the radalt callouts appeared to be inhibited until 50ft. I don't recall what mode was on the FMA. So, experts of AVSIM, what did I get wrong here and why did my Fenix A320 not step into FINAL APP and give me the expected guidance? Why did the GPWS activate even though I had runway 23 in the box at that late stage of the approach?

Seems that 2020 is still where it's at, and 2024 might have promise in a year or two. Thanks for sharing your views on the two sims, everyone, that's been helpful.

Coming back to MSFS after a few years immersed in DCS. I saw the Fenix BFU being advertised and am really tempted to buy it and get back into long range IFR commercial simming again but I see that MSFS2020 and 2024 are still running side by side. Is this like the old days when everyone ran different versions of P3D alongside each other because some addons were only available for certain versions? Or have things changed up a bit? I still have MSFS2020 installed but I can't tell whether MSFS2024 is worth it or not. It appears that most or all addons have been developed to be fully compatible with both sims so... what's the advantages and disadvantages?

Groan... you're right, all I want to do is build tiles for P3D. I've inserted the path to the P3D SDK resample.exe into ortho4xp.cfg but I guess this whole thing probably isn't for the likes of ordinary users like me.

Aha. I'm running from your exe and compiling my own binaries is beyond my skills. Is there anything I can do, bearing that in mind, to fix this? I have assumed that my general lack of success with Ortho4XP (Ortho4P3D, should we call this??) was because of the create geotiff problem. Despite running the exe and following the instructional video you posted back towards the beginning of the thread, I'm not getting any bgl or scenery/texture folders in the output, just files I assume are for Xplane. I'm happy to help write a basic noob's guide or step-by-step for getting this version up and running if I get that far!

Hi folks. Downloaded and installed ortho4xp from the link at the start of the thread, however it's not working. When trying to make geotiffs I get the following error: Building geotiffs. ------------------ -> Initializing providers with potential data on this tile. The orthophoto 10992_16384_BI15.jpg is already present. Converting orthophoto(s) to build texture 10992_16384_BI15-WGS84.tif. Exception in thread Thread-1: Traceback (most recent call last): File "threading.py", line 916, in _bootstrap_inner File "threading.py", line 864, in run File "src\O4_Imagery_Utils.py", line 1137, in build_geotiffs File "src\O4_Imagery_Utils.py", line 1459, in convert_texture File "subprocess.py", line 267, in call File "subprocess.py", line 709, in __init__ File "subprocess.py", line 997, in _execute_child FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified All help gratefully received! Lambourne