Your helpful tips.

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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Fri Jul 05, 2019 1:34 pm

Missing Airport?

Let's say we index a stock P3D there's more than 24,000 airports. and 60,000 runways.

If we integrate an AIRAC there's 9,000 airports some with truncated names, and there's 24,000 runways.

If we set up Filters in the searches or not, the runway length continues to be a filter. The airport with runway lengths (and widths) shorter than that specified in the aircraft parameters will not come into the searches.

On a rare occasion Ideal Flight might reject an airport due to a problem in the data files. In this case the file will be itemised in the Index Log.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Wed Jul 10, 2019 5:09 pm

Browse Airports page - using the map

Move the map with the scroll mouse wheel, with the mouse in the bottom left scroll horizontally, with the mouse in the top right scroll vertically. Alternatively, drag the scroll bars. The map attempts to restore to the last position and magnification used when returning to the page.

Click on an area of the map and it will search the area surrounding the mouse for airports. If the CTRL key is held down the map will centralise around that point.

The map shows the radius of current flight times around the departure airport. Red is the minimum flight time desired, Orange is the maximum flight time desired, and Yellow shows the current Range parameter.

The circles look more distorted toward the poles since the global projection shows points of the North and South poles that occupy the complete width of the map.

The Plus button zooms into the map and eventually returns to the full map view. The up/down buttons magnify the current view and holding SHIFT will return to start magnification for that view.

When using the Random Airport and Random Route features the selection of airports is made from those currently visible on the map. When the map is zoomed in this will only allow random airports within view.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Mon Jul 15, 2019 1:59 pm

Airport, Home Page

In Ideal Flight we exist at a particular airport as we do in real life - wherever we are currently located in IF, we are said to be at our Home Airport. The Home page shows us our current location, and the current loaded Next Flight if ready.

We can make any place a kind of Base where we can leave our aircraft parked and these appear in the simulation so long as they are not parked in official parking bays. If they are parked in proper bays, we can choose not to show them in the AI Traffic settings. Otherwise the other AI traffic will likely sit right on top of the parked aircraft.

When we change aircraft we get a message to save the aircraft where it is parked, we do not take aircraft with us.

With Restricted Profiles we must fly to wherever we want to be, we can't move the profile to a new airport so Tour mode can't work for those unless the tour starts at our home airport.

Committed Profiles simply mean we can't avoid the score when we land.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:02 pm

Development road map?

Ideal Flight is constantly undergoing improvement and development. The main remit, what we expect to get when we pay for IF is usually 99% complete or more, with no real problems to stop the fun. However there's lots of additions and ideas that some want implemented and that is an ongoing process.

And so in any version of IF I can go to some place that might need improving or has problems depending on circumstances. In the preview versions there may be issues preventing even major items working in some way. If you are happy working with unfinished software you might like to try the preview builds, they are not too bad in general use.

The current previews have incorporated changes to support screen reader in an integrated way like recent Microsoft programs. At the moment, during development, most problems only arise when a screen reader is present or coming and going.

Ideal Flight incorporates additional technology that purposefully hand-holds Narrator and NVDA readers to enable them to find the right descriptions for controls without searching. This also incorporates the ability to focus on disabled controls so that blind users can know these controls exist. Usually, a program designed for screen readers would avoid disabled controls. Ideal Flight is built for all users to enjoy and has to perform more problematic User Interface procedures resolving to disabled controls.

Also the readers always find text to read in IF when not in a control. For example, page headers and footers allow the user to feel their way around and can be sure about the current page and focussed control.

The new version right now is nearing completion. With a new MS simulator on the horizon, just as when FSW was in progress, Ideal Flight continues to be improved and developed with the same goals and priorities.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:57 pm

Water strips and float planes

Water surfaces are described in the simulation data with a value of two. We can see this in the Ideal Flight mission page Surfaces check list.

When we taxi around during the flight the list of surfaces encountered is collected by the flight monitor. Some airports may have Tarmac runway and concrete taxi with asphalt parking. We would ensure surfaces list includes those.

With a float plane we may only be using surface number 2 for water. With the Goose for example we include water with regular hard surfaces.

Some addon planes with floats have no machine readable information about floats or their ability to land on water. Since Ideal Flight keeps a list of aircraft and their capability to float, we must check our float planes have the number two surface enabled in the Mission page.

It's not a fault of Ideal Flight that it has no idea our addon has floats. It is our responsibility to ensure the parameters list contains surface two for those. Some planes already have water described, they have detail about floats in the aircraft data.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Sun Jul 21, 2019 3:06 pm

An aircraft loaded into the simulation naturally must have information about floats to actually float in the sim. Ideal Flight doesn't load the complete aircraft for performance purposes. The aircraft have a machine readable section that Ideal Flight relies on for their capabilities for starting out with the aircraft. We tune in or own set of parameters that dictate the type of flight and plan we expect to fly that aircraft with. It could be said aircraft that do not fill out this section properly are not strictly compatible. There are some work arounds in Ideal Flight for popular older addons, but more recently, since Ideal Flight, aircraft (and scenery) are prepared more reliably by developers in my opinion.
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:48 am

Flight Generator System Time

System Time refers to the time of the PC when a flight is loaded into the simulation.

So it can be confusing.

When a flight is built, those times are created and shown with normal parameters and the briefing contains the same times with system time checked or not. System Time does not set a time into the flight.

When we get into the sim with that flight build, we will have the current PC system time on the clock.

In tour mode, that means the times only matter to the print in the briefing, the flight starts at the PC system time set.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:21 am

No Airports Found?

It is possible to arrive at a situation whereby no airports are listed as available destinations.

With our Flying Times set, Duration Hours (min, max) Flight Generator page, for example, we might want to fly for at least 1 hour but no more than 2 hours.

With those times, the search algorithm looks for destinations compatible with our settings and aircraft parameters. The area searched is a sort of doughnut shape, around our departure that could miss out a lot of airports.

The Flying Times are based on simple takeoff and landing, they do not include vectoring around airports, the runway directions only considered during flight builds. That means the final flight time may be outside of our desired times by the vectoring time if it is longer than straight takeoff and landing.

The planner reports "No compatible airports found". Also we might see the suggestion "please try adjusting aircraft flight parameters, flight generator times, or search filters".

This is done so we know there are none in the list and we go to the Flight Generator page and press Search. If none are listed we can modify the times, filters and parameters and repeat the Search.

Rather that way is less confusing, than allocate the current location as both the departure and arrival airport, or simply take a random airport from perhaps the favourites list. We would be unaware we have not a list of searched airports within the boundaries.
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 » Wed Aug 14, 2019 6:31 pm

NAT routes

There are no NAT waypoints in the sim.

There are some NAT waypoints added by IF but rarely come into a computed plan because they are usually way outside the great circle nearby the intended route.

We will see some NAT waypoints depending on the route being at a compliant Latitude to meet them.

To fly a NAT route correctly, that is when we most likely want to make a manual plan or download a NAT plan and drop it on IF. NAT waypoints don’t make sense to auto-plans since they are off route.

Ideal Flight auto plans link up continents as best as possible whereas the P3D/FSX planner does not.
software architect at codelegend.com
equipment: i9-9980Xe 64GB 2xRTX2080ti NVLink 2TB M.2 NVMe,
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Steve Waite
 
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Re: Your helpful tips.

Postby Steve Waite » Fri Aug 16, 2019 9:32 am

With a route across the Atlantic we can copy paste a few NAT waypoints in the plan in the Edit Plan window. Not as tricky as it sounds to copy a block with a waypoint, paste it and change the lat lon and name.

I had a Notapad file with a few saved and just copied them in if I wanted to increase the waypoint count in the middle of the Atlantic (or wherever). Otherwise I might get the aircraft steady and on course and do a jump or series of jumps.

To save hours of sea (or sand) and sky the jumps in Ideal Flight compute the fuel used and the time to take. The plane is lighter and the time is later.

Make sure the aircraft is stable. Check the fuel report a few times. Do the jump with proper fuel flow.
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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