Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 3

[ke7zum]

Wow, sorry about all the typos in my pmdg crash issue. I must have been eating butter or what not, or tired. anyway, I'll take a look at the post and keep trying as I miss using IF.

[Steve Waite]

Wow, sorry about all the typos in my pmdg crash issue. I must have been eating butter or what not, or tired. anyway, I'll take a look at the post and keep trying as I miss using IF.

Yes, it won't be an IF issue, you need to look at the sim settings and PMDG version and display driver for crashing, IF can't crash the sim but it presses more buttons in your sim which can mean the sim does more stuff which has to work properly. Using IF is a good test of your sim properly working. Even so, pressing ALT+TAB to change applications and your sim is crashing is definitely the fault of the sim, windows, or the PMDG and not an issue with IF.

[Steve Waite]

A problem in the Assist window has been spotted whereby, occasionally a new location, parking place or runway start is selected to warp to, and the OK button is greyed out.

I have been unable to recreate the problem, but I believe this may be to do with the way a screen reader is messaged when the list of locations is accessed, so some improvements are underway to help with the issue.

This will be uploaded before work continues on the take-off assistance for aircraft with non-stock autopilot.

[Steve Waite]

Please remember when experiencing issues, problems reported would be much easier to understand by including information on the version of the simulator in use and the version of IF, and any other software in use.

So I can help with any problems, it would be helpful if information showing me how to recreate the problem was included, that would make things much easier.

In terms of the sim crashing to the desktop, Ideal Flight will see that the sim has ended and can catch error reports so long as they are not obscured and display them in the de-brief.

Also, errors can be caught by the windows error logs, in Control Panel choose System and Security, View Event Logs, Custom Views, Administrative Events.

Presently, versions of Prepar3D and FSX can be adversely affected by Nvidia driver versions and certain settings in the sim or certain addons installed. In some cases with some addons or certain aircraft loaded, older drivers may be required to avoid crashes.

Ideal Flight is not an addon installed in the sim and does not change the nature of the sim. However if the sim is not fully working in all respects, use of Ideal Flight can show that problems exist.

For example, a recent caller said that P3D would not work from Ideal Flight. So I got the user to load a saved flight file and the sim refused to load it. Since Ideal Flight starts the sim with a saved flight file the sim could not load it. This kind of problem can look very much like a problem with Ideal Flight but in fact, is a problem in the sim and Ideal Flight is basically telling us that a problem exists in the sim.

In this case, the sim was completely reinstalled to get the saved flights loading. However, I expect it was due to some problem with installed addons in the sim and maybe it could have been resolved with less effort by unchecking some addons in the sim add-ons page to find the problem and then by properly installing the addon.

[Steve Waite]

...as it happened, in later talks with the user it transpired that he had random problems without Ideal Flight anyway, and these problems were gone with the reinstall.

So in effect, it was by running Ideal Flight, so testing the sim thoroughly, that a problem emerged. When that problem was cured, it solved the other issues as well.

[Steve Waite]

In the Assist window, I have modified the New Approach Plan Select Navigation list to include an option to select any airport. So we can choose a nearby airport by its ICAO code and the list is filled with the runways from that airport.

The list starts out with only the current destination and the option to choose a new destination. The plan generated is based on the Computed Approach which is like an RNAV for any runway.

See the Mission page Approaches and Departures the approach types and the Approach Leg Times are used to compute the waypoints (90/60/30 or 45/45) distance between them based on the approach and final speeds entered in the Aircraft Flight Parameters page.

[ke7zum]

A problem in the Assist window has been spotted whereby, occasionally a new location, parking place or runway start is selected to warp to, and the OK button is greyed out.

I have been unable to recreate the problem, but I believe this may be to do with the way a screen reader is messaged when the list of locations is accessed, so some improvements are underway to help with the issue.

This will be uploaded before work continues on the take-off assistance for aircraft with non-stock autopilot.

I beg you, quit reading my mind! I was going to report this as I just tried to move to a gate and I kind of couldn't. I can move from gate to runway but not runway to gate in all of my cases. I thought this was in europe only as that was where I happen to be, but I just managed to reproduce this at kpdx.

[Steve Waite]

The problem with moving to gates might be because the system is reporting back to Ideal Flight the location of other aircraft.

Ordinarily, the traffic report is requested by Ideal Flight and comes back from the simulator in a second or two and those gates that are occupied are not included in the list.

If the traffic management is slow then those gates may be seen to be clear at first, but later become occupied.

If this happens that you can't select a gate, pop out of the Assist window for a few seconds making sure the sim is unpaused and go back in and those occupied gates should be missing from the list.

Traffic managers may be slow to input the traffic.

Please let me know if the problem happens with Ideal Flight traffic, stock traffic, or an add-on traffic manager. And if it happens before departure or after arrival. And if it clears if you restart the Assist window.

[Steve Waite]

...I have been testing all day with 100% AI Traffic and Maximum Ideal Flight traffic combined, with screen reader active, and have been unable to get any problems with selecting parking locations or runways.

I have, nonetheless, made a few changes from basically guessing where problems may be encountered with some addons in the sim.

However, if any problems with choosing Assist locations are encountered, please try the steps I mentioned above and also report more precisely the system and set-up for me to try to replicate the relocation problem.

[Steve Waite]

9/July/2021:

Preview build 15:

Ideal Flight Professional P3D v4/5
Ideal Flight 10 Professional P3D v2/3
Ideal Flight 10 Special Edition
Ideal Flight 10 Original

The latest IF versions include screen reader support, versions 10_027 and 10_014 include in-sim voice callouts and flight assist functions.

Please see the report page for more details:
http://www.codelegend.com/idealflight/report.htm

This build includes the modifications to the Assist window functions to move to locations and change plan to approach other runways. Also, there are some modifications to see if the move to parking assist is more reliable, please report any problems.