Your helpful tips.

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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Thu May 02, 2019 9:08 am

Weather reports:

The weather reports or forecast, provides details of what we can expect, not necessarily what we will actually get, when we arrive at the aircraft prior to our departure time.

Here in the shot we happen to have 6NM in light rain. However, we could have missed the rain altogether and found we had better weather and visibility instead:

Image
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Sat May 04, 2019 1:52 am

I found that the G-Force reading in IF was turned off by mistake. I've switched it on again. This caused a bit of concern when it was recording because it's hard to control a sim aircraft sat next to a PC in the drawing room.

Knowing the G-Forces we created is good to enable the improvement to our skills with respect to smooth flying.


Someone once questioned the g-force reading in IF should show 1G.

The G-Force reading is not the G-Force we are at. For example, when stood on the appropriate place on the planet our G-Force will be 1.0 G. or approximately 9.81m/s/s.

IF always gives a reading of zero G with the plane parked and still.

Why?

Because IF is telling us the amount of G out of normal we are subjected to, not the total G we are at since it is unneeded. However, it is in fact absolutely necessary for the calculation to know that G-Force otherwise it can't be calculated without the reference.

IF weather, thermals, and the proximity blast of jet and prop, and even busses going past can rock the plane. (IF thermals engine does proximity to moving objects).
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Sat May 04, 2019 3:03 am

Acessibility

Ideal Flight is undergoing an important upgrade, to provide excellent accessibility to screen reader technology.

So rather than just implement the usual controls I have designed a unit under the heading TAccessible. It's programming speak for underlying technology that is inherited by others. Applying the code produces a new effect in Ideal Flight whereby it senses when a screen reader is active and changes the controls to suit the way the reader works.

Narrator, NVDA, Jaws and System Access are sensed automatically, otherwise the setting can be overridden.

To avoid over-complexity within the already extremely complex software, I have reduced the best hand-holding of readers down to Narrator and NVDA. The other readers can still be used to great effect but are not quite so well supported especially as Narrator and NVDA.

The work required a large upheaval of code and I very much appreciate the patience of the beta testers and the regular users of Ideal Flight as we make it better than ever before.

The upgrade is free across all versions of Ideal Flight.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Sun May 05, 2019 2:15 am

Picking up aircraft and location from the sim

Before deciding IF doesn't do something, investigate thoroughly first.

I remember someone thought IF didn't accept an old flight save file from before having IF.

This is one of the very great things we can actually do in IF and it is very simple:

Let’s say we fly somewhere without IF, then want IF to pick it up, the plane and the location.

Save the flight or leave the sim running.

Back in IF clear the IF flight if there’s one loaded.

In IF's Icon Shelf there is the P3D Start in Scenario button. That takes us into the simulator without an IF flight.

If the simulation is still active we go right in there. Otherwise we can choose to go back to the plane or load the saved flight.

Now we have to move the plane about ten feet so that IF senses it has moved, park it where we need it, then exit the flight.

Back to IF we have to accept the moved aircraft position at the debrief, tick icon or popup menu.

When that new location is accepted IF goes back to the Home page and we see the plane and location is applied to the current profile. That profile is now with that plane and that location for the next build.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Fri May 24, 2019 7:43 am

AI Traffic

IF traffic is designed to fill in with a small number of planes that are scheduled around our very flight time and flight path. This way we always have one or two aircraft around us on the ground and in the air.

IF traffic includes for commercial paints and addon airports with parking codes so that the proper parking is used by our AI aircraft models.

AI traffic aircraft are omitted when they won’t be seen and are silently removed from the sim when they won’t cross our sight.

Full AI optimisation, Mission page AI Selection settings. This restricts AI traffic to 200 including all addon traffic and doesn’t crash the sim as memory is correctly returned. The traffic values can be edited in the settings.ini file.

200 could be just one per airport with a regular traffic program.

In short IF is used to put a few AI around us when there might not ordinarily be, like 3am, at a less active airport, and so on. Even so IF can fill the airport with traffic.

AI traffic can only occupy one half of available parking slots, leaving the other half free to accept arrivals.

Editing Config.ini:

[FSSetup]
CullObjects=True (full ai optimisation)
CullDistance=64000 (meters)
CullFromCount=199 (allow less than 200)
CullInterval=60 (seconds)
software architect at codelegend.com
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:35 pm

If you are new to Ideal Flight but understand the concepts of simulation then the prospect of using Ideal Flight is not daunting at all. Instead Ideal Flight is your friend it can reduce your problems and increase your productivity.

Sometimes, old hands at the flight sim game, may see Ideal Flight as similar to other products or even inferior.

They may try to use IF in the way they use other tools. They may not realise that other tools are from real world data.

IF is driven from a mixture of data, sim data compared to real world data that you give it.

Ideal Flight has an unmatched navigation handling system with an unique abstract hierarchical database that consumes any of four AIRAC type which contain all the differences. Then compares to the sim navdata to produce the common subset so there's no surprises with Ideal Flight plans which are the best auto plans you can get for a number of reasons I can go into at length.

One thing that some newcomers get wrong is loading a plan into Ideal Flight then messing around with payload and fuel and altitudes. Instead before dropping a plan on IF, set up those parameters first. Then drop the plan on IF so that the Flight Level, Fuel, and payloads are correct already.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
i9-9900X 64GB RTX2080ti 2TB M.2 NVMe, i7-3960X 32GB GTX680 4TB RAID10,
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Steve Waite
 
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Fri Jun 21, 2019 9:31 am

When we do advances we might cross over a time zone boundary.

At this point the simulator pauses and the loading popup appears as the time is adjusted to the new Local Time in the simulator. When normal flying through to another time zone we see the clock move back or forward an hour as the local time is recalculated. But during advances in Ideal Flight we get the loading scene popup in the sim when we cross time zones.

Zulu time in the sim is indeterminate around zone boundaries due to the geodata available, so the simulator uses Local Time. When we study the flight generated files and saved flights from P3D and FSX we can see they use Local Time.

So in this way, the flights built by Ideal Flight are in Local Time which is appropriate for the simulator. When we arrive in the simulator we now see the proper Zulu time is shown, which might be indeterminate for real word use.

The reason everyone uses Zulu time is that the regular planners used for addons incorporate data from the real world, not the simulator and the detail of real world flights is Zulu time and can't always be correct when transferred into the simulator because they are based on real time and real routes and not sim time and simulator navigation data.

Ideal flight uses an abstract database built up from any AIRAC and scenery navigation data so works with the subset of data that appears in the real world and the simulator, with respect to local time.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
i9-9900X 64GB RTX2080ti 2TB M.2 NVMe, i7-3960X 32GB GTX680 4TB RAID10,
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Steve Waite
 
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:00 am

Screen Reader Notes for use of the keyboard within Ideal Flight main pages and popup forms:

The Tab and Shift+Tab move around the form from control to control forward and back respectively. Some items the readers focus on are simple notes for descriptive purposes, with the footers and headers that update as the form is used. The readers may report the control as a pane or group box or unknown with notes.

The cursor arrow keys move about inside controls, however when a button is selected (or notes) the arrow keys move to the next control. To move back from a main page to home page, the Left arrow key can be used to leave the page when not focused on an editable control. The Right arrow key works in the same way when at the start page to move forward to the home page.

The Enter key presses buttons, but with other controls will attempt to get the screen reader to repeat the control and content description. The Enter key moves from the start page to the home page. The Enter key builds a new flight when no flight is loaded, and starts the flight to the cockpit when a flight is ready. The Enter key presses menu items.

The Space Bar presses most buttons.

The Escape key pops up the menu. If the focus is inside an edited control then Escape key recovers the value of the control when entered focus. After recovering an unsaved edit the Escape key continues to pop up the menu.

Control+Alt invokes the popup menu as an alternative to Escape. The Escape key function can be altered in the Other Settings, More Settings checkbox list to avoid invoking the popup menu. In this case the edit in the current control is recovered as usual before the main page is escaped back to home page.

Screen readers work in different ways. Narrator is less responsive than NVDA and NVDA has more options so some controls may produce better descriptions with NVDA. Ideal Flight is specifically coded to help screen readers (Narrator and NVDA) navigate and describe the correct content.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
i9-9900X 64GB RTX2080ti 2TB M.2 NVMe, i7-3960X 32GB GTX680 4TB RAID10,
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Steve Waite
 
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Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 12:02 am

Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Thu Jul 04, 2019 11:40 am

Subsets available in Ideal Flight:

On the Startup page popup menu, choose the "Maintain Indexes" submenu, "Create Subset Files" item. Popup the menu again and see the item is checked, now start the "Navigation and Scenery Index". It will take a lot longer so go and make a cup of Tea. When it has done it has created more than a Dozen airport subsets, for example "Water Strips Airports" subset loaded into the Flight Generator page Enables only those Airports with Water strips.

A screenshot of the subsets dropdown list in the latest version showing the new Tour item at the end of the list:

Image


Subsets generated include:

Add-on Airports, AIRAC Common Subset, Cargo Parking Airports, Edge Lit Strips Airports,
Filtered Airports, Fuel Parking Airports, Helipad Airports, Hub Airports,
ILS Airports, Lit Strips Airports, Loose Strips Airports, Military Parking Airports,
No Parking Airports, Parking Codes Airports, Soft Strips Airports, Tower Frequency Airports,
Unlit Strips Airports, VASI Strips Airports, and Water Strips Airports.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
i9-9900X 64GB RTX2080ti 2TB M.2 NVMe, i7-3960X 32GB GTX680 4TB RAID10,
NAS @7TB RAID10 (16TB)
Steve Waite
 
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Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 12:02 am

Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Thu Jul 04, 2019 12:40 pm

I just don't know how users without Ideal Flight know where they can fly to in the plane they have and the time they have available to fly there, and for that matter where they can fly from when they are there. I suppose those of us that are Ideal Flightless users of the sim can look on a map for airports in their area?

When I choose a plane in IF I set up the parameters for it, and tune them in as I fly, range, runway length, cruise speed and so on. OK how about loading up heavy and landing to see how far we travel to a stop. We don't actually have to come to a complete halt in IF as it will interpolate our speed and location into the stopping place predicted by IF, that is, when we get down to Taxi speed. So we can continue to smoothly transfer into Taxi without a dead stop and the debrief contains the take off and stopping distances.

Check how far we traveled to take off with that load and that may be more or less what the stopping distance is. We choose the longest value and put that into the Ideal Flight Parameters for that plane. From now on when we use that plane we won't be surprised to run off the end of the runways if we get the landing right.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
i9-9900X 64GB RTX2080ti 2TB M.2 NVMe, i7-3960X 32GB GTX680 4TB RAID10,
NAS @7TB RAID10 (16TB)
Steve Waite
 
Posts: 5055
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 12:02 am

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