Future IF (revisited)

[Steve Waite]

I'm gathering thoughts about possible future upgrades to IF. Here are some:

Plan types to include approach/departure fixes, unavailable approaches/departures replaced with computed waypoints.

Automatically read AIRAC files - Plan types to include AIRAC approaches & departures options, unavailable approaches/departures replaced with computed waypoints.

Output FSX & FS9.PLN, .rte, and .rt2 files to external directories - proper setup functionality includes security setting of export directories. Export directories settable per aircraft.

Collate external information with the flight generation, approach plates, charts...

More AI control - choosing aircraft, plans...

More Mission types - search and report, search and rescue, follow me aircraft, mystery tours...

Enchained destinations list: Generated flights progress through a list of airports along a route, and return to the start when the list is exhausted

Committed profile setup: set options such as; choose to accept the result, choose save/restore/advance functions availability...

Multiple Parameters setups per plane - hight alt, low alt, fast, slow...

In-Flight Weather menu - weather types, wind speeds...

fsx.cfg, dll.xml, exe.xml, per aircraft - requires FSX closed to restart.



more ideas added below:

P3D full support.

Taxiway names shown in maps.

World maps representing the time of year set in the profile, other functions.

Some new functonality kept a secret for the time being

Airport Subset Generation

Real World Weather support

Mutiple User Aircraft Directories

Random time of day for next flight

Specify the seat count in aircraft params, and per person average weight and max weight per cell

Manually enter fuel amounts

[hangar]

Hey Steve, really like a few of those ideas such as:

1. More AI Control - easily choosing aircraft and their plans via a simple interface menu.

2. Enchained Dest. List - awesome for flying multi-legged plans right?

3. Please add the ability for IF to download REAL Weather data from the net BEFORE the flight begins so that it can display the info to you in IF and also use it to compute the correct runway assigned at your destination. The already built in weather generator is a nice feature for sure, but It really needs to also have real weather.

I know you can start the sim first to load the real weather in FSX and then start IF flight but then the iF approach plans don't work out many times, and it can also be a bit buggy just getting the flight to start at times in this way. I think having the real weather loaded into IF before the flight begins is obviously the best way to go (if you were willing to take on the extra work I mean).

[Steve Waite]

Hi,

Thanks for your input.

I've not included real world weather METARS so far since it's handled well by ASE/REX and I didn't want IF to placed alongside those products just yet and confuse IF's strongpoints.

Real weather is not actually too much of a problem. It could be read in for the briefing and could still use REX/ASE or IF could run the RRW completely. The runways predictions will still be only guesses as they are with the IF weather - since it's impossible to tell without the sim running and Ai traffic landing.

IF could well get these features in the not too distant future.

[hangar]

well then IMO, the only really worthwhile way of implementing real weather for IF is to have IF pull the metars from somewhere online and then have IF BUILD/CREATE/INJECT those same weather conditions as IF's weather. So in essence instead of IF creating RANDOM weather as it sort of does now, it would create weather based on the metars and taf's it downloads, and inject that into FSX.

[Steve Waite]

yes exactly that.. can pull the metars from an html file on the net and use that as the basis for the weather, can use it just to make the briefing or dress up the METARS and inject real world weather instead of IF's simulated METARS.

For the record, IF's weather is not random, if you go to the same place on the same day at the same time the weather - even cloud positioning - is the same.

[hangar]

yea definitely go for it then...sounds pretty good as long as it's using the latest available metars

For me , personally speaking... the 3 items i mentioned above in my first post are the only things missing for in IF right now. The real weather, the ability to fly multiple leg plans, and the ability to inject an AI of my choice at my departure airport that will use the same flightplan i am flying during that session. I really like how it gives the AI departure and arrival times at both airports in the plan as well...and having IF put all the session info into the Kneeboard has been just fabulous. Love to fly now where each time im piacking up exactly where I left off during previous session...really liking it, Steve....please keep up the good work!!

[Steve Waite]

The metars are from generally around 1-3 hours late, some may not have been updated at all, or for hours - generally ok in popular locations.

I don't have the timeline for the above upgrades yet.
All the best

[Steve Waite]

I added a few things above I forgot to mention.

[ru] is now out.

Probably now moving to Ideal Flight v 10.011[sa] and then on to the upgraded versions.

[Steve Waite]

Re Choosing Ai and Plans:
Don't forget for the time being you can use a text editor and make copies of your plans for the Ai of your choice, see the help index.

[Steve Waite]

For real world weather:

Generate the flight. Look at the weather for the route with your usual tools. Try using the tower views to see which runways are in use, or estimate them from the weather reports.

Go into the flight gen page and Edit Plan, select the two runways you want and continue.

Now you have the route and the correct runways.

Although it is impossible to work out the runway in use before the sim runs since FSX uses probability. IF uses the same method with the same data structures but without the sim running, it is just a guess.