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I must admit that I'm a Jetliner-guy, but this little Saab is a piece of art! Excellent job guys! And GPS is very helpful flying on VATSIM/IVAO!

The last couple of days have been bug chasing for route editing features, mostly as it applies to VNAV calculations. The ability to edit the route in almost any circumstance is very important to simulating real operations. For example, the kinds of things we test are like so....give these a try on other products 1.) Enter a SID only, fly it on LNAV.....then enter an approach while in flight, EXEC....change your mind and enter a new destination airport while flying...select a new approach.....EXEC...begin flying that approach, shortcut to some point further down the approach for grins, EXEC.....enter a SID from the airport you are on approach to..... while on that approach (wipes out the previous route), EXEC... (plane should go into 'climb' phase and begin climbing)...and fly that successfully. 2.) Enter too high a cruise altitude for a short flight (KLAX > KTOA)....the FMS give you a "UNABLE CRZ ALT" warning and then calculates the intersection of the climb/descent "peak" and will change from climb to descend mode automatically as you pass this virtual intersection. OR you can begin to lower the cruise altitude on the CDU and as you do, you can watch the T/C and T/D symbols get closer and closer until you can visually see that you can make the cruise altitude. 3.) Fly a route on LNAV past a DISCO......lnav cuts out...AP needs to revert to hdg and pitch modes....then fly past the point on the other side of the DISCO...it (and the disco boxes) should automatically sequence off the CDU and you should be able to re-engage LNAV and continue on. 4.) Bunch of other crazy tests... Jan is the toughest beta tester I have ever seen...the stuff he does to try and break the FMS is ridiculous. If he can't manipulate it almost exactly as he does in real-life...he cracks the whip! Folks want to learn what its like to operate the real thing.....that means it has to be like the real thing. You know how stable and flexible the real thing has to be? That being said, there are several FMS features yet that we will not ship with V1.0 simply due to lack of time. Most all of these features though are 'fringe features' and certainly do not detract from typical operation most users will utilize. Putting those features in post 1.0 will be as much a matter of team pride as anything as most of the features will rarely get used. Still, we can't help but keep at it. As for right this moment, we're just finishing up a 'flight plan loader"...that will eventually be able to load and save routes. If you want to get a head start on your favorite routes, the format is rather self-explanatory. (format subject to VERY slight changes) Gear up! -tkyler

Iceland flight. Alabeo c404 Titan Steam DLC scenery

We just today finished a "save/load route" feature into the FMS CDU so you can save your routes. The format is proprietary and we are working with a few flight planning resources to provide our format (*.ixg), however, we are going to try and implement the import of other formats...notably .fpl and .fms, if we can squeeze it in in time. Ideally, you'd just copy all your flight plan files into a folder we provide and we'd be able to read them as long as the file names were unique (no LAXSAT.ixg vs. LAXSAT.fpl), etc. Right now, its all about time. We will keep moving just as rapidly after release to keep adding in features. If anybody wants to send me their .fpl file from PFPX, we can certainly give it a try. -tkyler

Also... if someone has 100 flight plans already created and saved and all they want to do is copy the files over to our coroutes folder, then this has merit....rather than re-exporting 100s of them again from their software. With our time crunch, we are unsure if or which flight plan formats we'll be able to accomoadate initially. As stated, we won't stop working just because the product is released. We ourselves are every bit as demanding as customers...and we'll keep working to improve out of sheer desire to get better features for ourselves too! -tkyler

I agree about the offset - but in reality this is mostly handled with headings. This is not only easier for the pilots and ATC, it is also more efficient (to fly a detour it is less way to fly a "triangle" as opposed to joining an offset distance and then rejoining later). But this should be no excuse for not having an offset feature, just an explanation why we decided it is ok to ship the initial version without it. The RTA mode is supposed to "adjust" your speed so that you arrive at a specified fix at a specified time (RTA = required time of arrival). I have used it once on the 747-400 when we were supposed to not arrive "too early" over a fix to cross Afghanistan airspace. It didn´t work at all... Yes, wind prediction for navigational purposes will be available. It will influence time and fuel predictions, climb and descent path calculation. OPT CRZ altitude calculation is not dependent on wind per se, and the FMS doesn´t adjust OPT ALT, even if multiple wind levels are known and input. OPT ALT as suggested by the FMS is based on weight and cruise speed, only. In reality a different wind level can make a less "optimum" level more desirable, of course, but the FMS won´t help you making that call. Jan

I don't know. I am putting in 12 hours a day, do not have another job in sight...this is it until this thing is out! If its not December, it will be as fast as possible on the other side of the new year.....I'm not slowing down and I can not tell you at this time that it will NOT be December as we are on a very productive pace. We'll know more in a few weeks. If 5 more days past 2015 are required to add much needed stabililty, then we'll take the 5 days rather than ship a product with a known bug. We're close, moving fast and we'll let folks know in a few weeks where we are. -tkyler

wheres the download link