Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 2

[Steve Waite]

The main thing is that if we do the walk through, that is stock plane and airport, we would be getting into IF much more quickly.

There could be any kind of problem manifested in scenery that is not stock. So if the walk through works, ONLY THEN move onto more complications, and then report to me about that airport if a problem.

The Aircraft Situation is mentioned in the briefing in a few places. It might be nice to be reminded of where we are when the flight starts. I can incorporate that into the starting message.

Remember that IF is not accessing the sim when it calculates a route. The default runway on the Flight Generator page is the one that IF calculates to be in service via the winds setting. And so when we get In the sim, it may be different to the one ATC decides we should use. So we follow ATC when they say what to do, just like real life. The runway estimate is better than 90% if the IF weather is used, but external weather means we need to set winds in IF weather page or rebuild the route with the Edit plan button allows us to choose a runway.

The weather in IF is a forecast. If it says likelihood of rain it may not be falling on us at the time we enter the sim, but will be nearby or coming in ten minutes.

We don't choose a runway and expect the wind to be in the right heading, although this has been asked for it's not high up the list of want's

[Steve Waite]

...and there's the other situation we have encountered when pasting in plans or dropping/loading an external plan when that starts at another airport, and we find we are still where we were. That's not exactly 'some where else'. So when reporting problems I need information pertaining to that problem. Did the aircraft start near the correct runway, did it start at the actual airport. How was the flight built, does it work on stock airports, and so on. If I don't have the information I have to come here and explain things all over.

[Steve Waite]

21/February/2020:

Latest IF versions include screen reader support by codelegend Preview 07:

Ideal Flight Professional P3D v4
Ideal Flight 10 Professional P3D v3
Ideal Flight 10 Special Edition
Ideal Flight 10 Original

The Pro and Special Edition >augmented version Voice setting page has increased functions to break down the voice responding to the simulation. The new setting will require setting up in the saved setups.

The pro P3D v4 version has fixed CPU window menus and includes more items. The data recording also can track a single LP or the maximum core - see Records menu.

[Steve Waite]

Please re-index with this new build 07.

[Steve Waite]

I forgot to mention that the aircraft situation for the start of the flight is on page five of the kneeboard spoken information, rather than elongate the initial startup message.

[Steve Waite]

One possible problem might still be the 'starting in the wrong place' issue. Under the hood Ideal Flight remembers where we last parked or where we were when we left the simulation and which parking slot we were allotted. When we choose a new plane or airport, a location must be made for the aircraft, so a parking place is chosen. If the parking place is not chosen it falls back to the last parking place or the runway start. If there is no parking it should start on the runway anyway.

So it should not happen that we start at another airport than the planned departure. I have attempted various adjustments to the flight generation and have not so far found a way to start in the wrong airport.

If this happens: Please try to remember the circumstances leading to the problem. To continue, please choose a parking slot in Flight Gen page manually before building the route. Rebuild the route for a runway start.

[Orinks]

The bug relating to being placed at the previous departure was fixed, which was what was tripping us up.

Especially when runway start is checked, I wish that there was an option to have IF not place you where you previously parked and just put you on the active, since there's not an easy and/or accessible way to get to gates at the moment after landing. The best way to do it is to use FSDreamTeam's Ground Services X warp feature to warp to gates/runways. And not everyone has that and wants to purchase an addonto get it. Another way is via the airport dialogue, typing in the ICAO and selecting active runway or whatever gate/runway you want.

On a side note, would you be interested in joining our BVI Pilots Discord and chat with us? We've got an IF channel over there, among others.

About preview 7: I really like the voice selection items window. Makes it really easy to change things, though I just wish that we can get it to automatically change voice profiles based on the phase of flight because I set it the way I wanted it for each setup on the voice page.

I also can't wait for taxi stuff. My hope long-term is that you can add a feature to drive the aircraft to the runway/gate.

My thoughts as to where we should go from here with the voice settings are to make grouped items for things such as individual levers and autopilot functions.

[Steve Waite]

The hotkeys are planned to increase to do some things like cycle the voice settings.

An assist form is coming that allows to move where we want, when we want. Runway start or parking, and to work for pushback, hold short of runway, and return to parking. Auto throttle for climb cruise descent approach and final, pertaining to the aircraft flight parameters chosen. And other assist functions are planned. These will be selectable on the form like the voice settings, available in flight.

[Steve Waite]

OK - I found something that might make a difference to the wrong starting place with the FSX version IF Special edition. So that might still be an issue there.

[Orinks]

I can't remember if I brought this up before, but the BVI community, especially those who use FSX, are torn because those of us who use P3D only have to buy one version of Ideal Flight.

They wish that they, too, could buy the professional version that has all the expansions etc without buying a base version and then the augmented version after that to get what we have with all of the accessibility features.

Just some food for thought is all.