Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 2

[Orinks]

Hi Steve,

Is it necessary to have the Quick Information section in the debrief? it's in the briefing, I think the assessment is fine ending with the fuel report.

Just my personal oppinion.

[Steve Waite]

I added the quick section to the end of the assessment to improve the flight records. When the flight is logged the briefing is gone, so I found it quite handy to have the information looking back.

[Steve Waite]

I improved the section on the debrief rather than add the quick section. It is a lot shorter than the quick section but we can at least recall the conditions of the flight after it is saved from the records page.

I found a condition that causes a failed build with the generic message to re-index or try other settings. That could appear like random failure to build a flight or plague a particular type of plane or route type.

I found I had altered a reading that affected the experimental throttle manager. So that may have sent you off over the horizon out of control. Sorry about that. I've had time to get that going a lot better, but still experimental.

Preview 17 will be made available shortly and this version has been extensively modified to handle Prepar3D v5.

The major work in the last week has been incorporating new scenery data in P3D v5, which so far is undocumented. That work also cleans up certain addon scenery types in P3D v4 whereby there was no apron showing in airport maps.

[Steve Waite]

7/May/2020:

Latest IF versions include screen reader support and in-sim voice callouts by codelegend.com

Preview 17:

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

Please note only versions IFPro for P3D v4/5 and IF10SE>augmented for FSX feature the accessible Voice and Assistant functions.

[Steve Waite]

I found that the IF weather can keep injecting at a certain altitude/weather combination, appears like stutter. In the log it shows the repeating loading of weather. May not be affecting all because it depends on being in particular weather and cruising at a particular altitude.

As we know, when starting the flight one of the NAVs is pre set for the destination approach. I'm adding to the Assistance window so that alternative approaches can be set into the navigation simply by selection from the list.

I'm improving voices for repeating manual changes to items so that the most recent changes are more reliably spoken.

I'll continue to improve the throttle manager as I go, and anything else comes to my attention while testing.

[Steve Waite]

Beware in Preview 18 I have moved the Assistance and in-sim menu items nearer the top of the main popup menu.

I found a problem with pasting routes I introduced by mistake last preview. The entry form would not appear anyway for edit when the airports were invalid.

I fixed a minor issue after choosing to force a runway to be used, but then changing the departure would choose an arbitrary runway from the new departure.

[Steve Waite]

In the Assist form the runway starts are fixed. For some airports the starting locations may not be on the runway. We need those to be the starting lined up on the actual runway. The list box of starting locations, parking, runways, and helipads, starts properly now with the correct item preselected.

I'm just now completing the new feature of the Assist functions ability to select the navigation for a given runway into the instruments on the fly.

[Steve Waite]

So now I have in the Assistance window a dropdown list containing the Runways from the Airports in the plan. We already have IF set up the navigation OBS compass direction on the HSI, and also setting the NAV 1 frequency. So if we get near a destination and have to change to another runway, we can select it in the dropdown and the settings made in one go. It would be good to be able to load another GPS plan with waypoints to the new runway. I'm considering a computed approach to the new runway and a direct flight from where we are to the start of the approach.

I'll be increasing the items available in the Assistance window to enable quick setup of other things.

As for the throttle manager, I have improved that with relenting when we manually brake, and if we hold the brakes on for a few seconds after coming to a halt, the handbrake is activated, and the preset speed chosen set back to Parked.

Remember these Assistance functions are being constructed with a view to experimentation and are a work in progress. Hopefully these assistance functions can help with accessibility. Please feel free to make suggestions.

Other items in the near future are sou8nds for certain aspects of flight. All the current work is under review and things might change from one Preview to the next.

[Orinks]

I have a suggestion for the flight generator.

Can we either add the manual payload entry to the fuel entry page, or have a separate page containing both the payload and fuel options?

Just a suggestion.

[jessiepp]

sounds like a good idea it seems like it would be easier to do it in one dialog for both things.