Magenta Line

Mamu Designs just released a tool that does a lot of miscellaneous stuff, mostly related to exploring on foot, but one of the things it does is let you place objects down, save their locations, and share that info with other users of the addon so they can see what you've placed. https://www.fsexplore.com/

One common cause of short pauses/stutters is Navigraph's EFB app or toolbar panel with moving maps/plane location turned on. The EFB version can be more mysterious because it can keep running even when the EFB is hidden.

Parallel 42's Campout utility comes with camping-related objects that you can place wherever and it saves that state. FS Fire sounds like it has an "any object in the sim" placer feature: Simobject (Props) Scene Builder Browse the MSFS simobject catalog — hundreds of default objects, direct user entry, or MSFS 2024 file system scanned simobjects — spanning aircraft, ground vehicles, boats, animals, humans, and landmarks. Spawn any object by map-click or coordinate, rotate its heading, and drag it to reposition. Save and load entire scenes including fire layouts, with optional prop-only or fires-only saves.

Ah I see Haha, yeah, unfortunately, that "little experience" is a huge wall. Never even heard of "affinity." 😛 Although I actually can't say whether the actual graphical-text editing part is hard, because I've never gotten that far. Every time I've looked into editing liveries, I've ended up stuck at the "how do you deal with KTX2 files" step. My most recent failed attempt ended with me staring at the message "VK_FORMAT_BC7_UNORM_BLOCK not supported" from the umpteenth KTX2 conversion tool I tried downloading. The tutorials are written with assumptions of knowledge I don't have and it's like I'm trying to fake my way into a secret wizard council. 🧙

I think your N14CL or N508DB would be great for it. Could optionally recolor the burgundy parts of the livery to blue or something if you'd like to distinguish it as a fictional one. I forgot about the cockpit side. Can the registration simply be left off/blank there?

This plane seems fantastic, but the one thing stopping me from buying it is the lack of dynamic tail registration. I gotta have my M-LINE tail number! At first I thought it might be coming later for the Lancair, but looking into it, it seems Flysimware's other two FS2024 planes also don't have any dynamic registration liveries?

A couple of days ago I had the sim randomly change audio output devices in its own settings. I had to switch them back to what I wanted them on.

I just made a post on the official forum about the C152 engine issue. tl;dr disable Aircraft Stress Damage (not Engine Stress damage) (Or fly the Aerobat instead) https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/c152-aircraft-system-failure-engine-malfunction-error/759514/14

Moving map addons like can cause this, e.g. Navigraph EFB app when plane-location is turned on.

Sounds like the beta update instructions. Doesn't apply to non-beta updates.

BATC seems to be a small group, but it's not solo dev, as far as I can tell from their videos. The VFR programmer and IFR programmer can work at the same time, semi-independently.

Technically the ability to save in flight still exists in FS2024, though it's obfuscated. I guess they hid it since it had a lot of problems (in 2020 as well) with not everything getting saved (avionics, etc.) I've tested it and it works. I believe you need filename extensions set to visible in Windows if you don't have it that way already. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/fs2024-might-have-got-in-progess-save-load-flights-working-on-pc/683107 It even saves the state of the wear-and-tear system which normally isn't persisted for free flight, so that's neat.

The taxiway/parking requirement is for FShud For P2ATC, I seem to have remembered it being more automatic than it was, but it looks like to get all of FS2020's airports into P2ATC, you'll need to use a program called MakeRwys (link is lower down on that page) to generate a database from FS2020 that P2ATC can then import (using the Import button on the Taxi tab in the Data Mnt function inside the Utilities tab in P2ATC's Settings). Unfortunately I don't have 2020 installed anymore so can't quickly test this process at the moment. (MakeRwys doesn't work with FS2024, though you can keep using the airports extracted from FS2020) There's also a "display non-AIRAC airports" setting in Display settings but I think that's already on by default?

Since you want VFR, P2ATC and SayIntentions are it for the moment. BATC VFR is in early development and will probably be a bit limited for a while even if you pay for experimental version access. P2ATC's main limitations are: It's the only one of these ATC addons that still lacks NPC/AI traffic injection, so you won't ever hear other aircraft interacting with P2ATC. (Though P2ATC does see AI & multiplayer traffic in the sim if you have them by other means (such as the built-in MSFS settings) and will at least give you traffic alerts.) It uses old-school Windows voice recognition instead of modern solutions, so isn't as good as understanding people. (Obviously won't matter to those who'd rather select by menu instead of talk.) --------------- Even though you emphasized VFR, I'd still like to bring up IFR for future reference: P2ATC is the only one of these ATC addons that allows you to file an IFR flight plan to/from any airport in the sim. BATC, SI, and FSHud all currently have limitations on what airports you can use in IFR flight plans. For BATC and SI, IFR requires creating a plan in SimBrief, which is missing most tiny little airstrips. FShud doesn't require SimBrief, but unfortunately it has its own limitation of only allowing airports that have at least one parking spot and a taxiway connecting that parking spot to the runway, which again cuts out all of those little autogen airstrips in MSFS that don't have parking spaces. (Manually installing/creating new airport scenery can work around this, but you probably don't want to do that for every Neofly job.) The reason this matters is because Neofly will generate lots of jobs for those little airstrips. 😄 You can choose to filter out those airstrips in Neofly by using the settings to only show you jobs with destinations to lighted runways or airports with a control tower, or such, but of course that will limit the number of available jobs. This won't matter when/if you upgrade to bigger faster planes later that you wouldn't take to those little airstrips anyway, but I ran into this issue a lot in my early days of Neofly trying to use ATC addons with it. Having said that, BATC is implementing some additional ways to create flight plans besides SimBrief, first for VFR, but supposedly for IFR eventually, so in the future BATC may become the next ATC addon after P2ATC to let you IFR anywhere. ------------------- SayIntentions is still my favorite at the moment for a couple of reasons, but BATC is slowly catching up to the features I personally care about. In another year or two I might not need my SayIntentions subscription anymore.

I wonder if the "Fixed an issue where some lists were not fully displayed resolutions small than 1080p" entry in the patch notes for SU4 beta is about this phenomenon

Right, these tiny airstrips lack taxiways and parking. There's a wishlist thread from 2021 in the MSFS forums about the many small airports without parking. I looked at it again now and it seems I already voted on it before, lol. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/include-parking-at-all-airports/419449/81 If they ever get the world hub working, hopefully we can finally fix this ourselves.

I see, so it's not the runways but rather the parking spots. My apologies and thanks for the correction. (EDIT: I'm sorry, it won't let me edit my original post to remove the misinformation. I assume it must be a time limit.) My misunderstanding stems from how, when trying to make a flight plan for these tiny airports in FSHud, no runways are listed and typing in a runway number doesn't work. Incompatible airport example: Incompatible airports, runways not listed: Compatible airport, runways listed:

I'm hopeful they'll add a user option to change this in the future, like SayIntentions has. In the meantime, FSHud does the opposite: it doesn't care about readback accuracy so never asks you to repeat yourself. Could give it a try if you haven't already.

Currently the only two ATC addons that support VFR are Pilot2ATC and SayIntentions. Pilot2ATC doesn't do its own traffic injection/control (it only controls you alone), so may be a bit lonely compared to the others, but it does support integrating the ATC Chatter addon that Luis mentioned. SayIntentions just recently launched their version of traffic injection, but like all of the ATC addons right now, the NPC traffic is basically just airlines and some business jets, so while you can hear them in the air some, they probably won't be interacting with small airports.

None of the current ATC addons directly interface with the built-in planner, though you can copy & paste the route description out of the web flight planner into other things like Little Navmap, Simbrief, Pilot2ATC, FShud, anything that can accept route strings. If you fly small planes to small airports, something to keep in mind is that Simbrief doesn't have most small airstrips, and the current crop of ATC addons are largely limited to Simbrief airports, except for Pilot2ATC. BeyondATC can't work with non-Simbrief airports at all. SayIntentions can't do IFR with non-Simbrief airports, though it can do VFR with them. FSHud has its own airport database but it lacks runway data for mostly the same small airstrips that aren't in Simbrief, making them unsusable in FSHud, too. Only Pilot2ATC (and the built-in MSFS ATC) can fly IFR to any airport in the sim. But Pilot2ATC uses old-fashioned Windows voice recognition instead of the modern voice recognition the other three use, and it's also the only one not doing its own traffic injection for ATC to really control all aircraft and not just you. So pick your poison, lol. If you never fly to/from small airstrips (e.g. if you only fly airliners) you may not care about the Simbrief limitation for other ATC addons.

Even after SU2 (which partially fixed this issue), I've still occasionally been unable to click that button in VR, and had to toggle VR back off to do it, so could be useful for VR users. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/unable-to-click-ready-to-fly-in-vr/673612/9

I stand corrected! I forgot they added that! I'll put a strikethrough on my original post. EDIT: Maybe there's no strikethrough on this forum? I just deleted that part instead. EDIT2: I see a strikethrough option when making a new reply but not when editing.

My general impression is that BATC works great for airliners and larger airports, but has some limitations and quirks that are noticeable if you're flying smaller planes to smaller airports: ATC doesn't give out altimeter information on center-to-center transitions below transition level, and if you try to ask, the LLM will only respond with altimeter information for your departure or arrival airports ATC reads your entire tailnumber call sign every time. Never abbreviates tail number call signs, and doesn't use aircraft types, e.g. you'll never hear "Piper two four lima." If your flight plan doesn't have a STAR, ATC often issues approach vectors and descent instructions 100+ miles away from the airport. (They've already made one update addressing this, so probably they're continuing to work on it.) And the big one: you can't use airstrips that aren't in Simbrief, which puts a dent in the "ATC anywhere you want, even if VATSIM doesn't cover it" value of computer ATC. (As a bonus, Simbrief itself will assign STARs above your cruising altitude and above your plane's service ceiling, because its STAR database doesn't contain altitude constraint data. So for low-altitude planes you need to actually verify your flight plan like a real pilot and not just trust the machine. 😄 You'll need to consult an alternate source of information besides Simbrief to find out whether you can actually use a particular STAR.) Basically none of that will be relevant if you're in a big airliner. Not to imply that other ATC addons are perfect or anything. The only one that lets you fly IFR to/from any airport you want, Simbrief-be-damned, is Pilot2ATC, but there you have old-school Windows voice recognition and no traffic injection/control. You'd think FSHud would let you fly anywhere since they have their own airport database and flight planning option as an alternate to Simbrief, but sadly it lacks runway information for (mostly?) the same airports Simbrief lacks, preventing them from being used in FSHud, too. Wish they'd let me add my own runway data. Overall my favorite is currently SayIntentions, but funnily, the reasons have nothing to do with AI/LLM. SI lets you specify your full callsign and abbreviated callsign, which lets me handle even edge cases like "European tail number plane flying in the U.S." and such. SI does the altimeter information thing on transitions right (at least it did in VFR... hmm.. need to test IFR). And while SI too is limited to Simbrief for IFR, it at least has VFR as a fallback. SI also lets the user choose between readback enforcement (BATC and Pilot2ATC style) or no (loose?) readback enforcement (FSHud style) if you prefer smoothness over mistake corrections, especially if you're in a noisy environment/have a low quality microphone. Still, all of these programs are under active development and I expect they'll catch up/converge eventually. e.g. BATC already added the in-cockpit volume control feature that SI had first, and BATC is working on VFR now. Phew, that was long. But ATC is complicated so there's a lot to say I suppose. I didn't realize the page function actually put "Next/Previous" page buttons, thought it was just a line. 😄 Wonder how many people will read past the first page...

I'm currently using Pilot2ATC for VFR, as well as for IFR for the many airports that aren't in Simbrief. (I hope these newcomer ATC addons catch up to Pilot2ATC on letting you use any airport in the sim instead of limiting you to Simbrief airports. Flying wherever you want is supposed to be one of the big reasons to use them over VATSIM/IVAO!) But the old-school Windows voice recognition Pilot2ATC uses is inferior, and last I heard there's no plans to add traffic injection/NPC aircraft traffic control.

Re: developing bad habits from home simulator flying, that strikes me as less a product of any given simulator software/hardware and more a product of learning through solo experimentation with no instructor watching to correct you. (Unlike the presumably instructor-driven teaching that was the original topic of this thread.) Maybe we'll eventually have virtual flight-instructor software that uses eye-tracking to tell you to stop staring at the instruments. 😁