Litjan

Yes, but what if you entered "At or Below 6000" really close to the end of your 2000NM route (last waypoint before the STAR starts)? While you are still sitting at the departure airport? Would you want the plane to fly at 6000 feet for 4 hours (its not very fast at 6000´) for the whole route? Edit: Tom beat me to it!

I have never flown to Innsbruck - sadly - but usually visual approaches or "circling with prescribed tracks" are also allowed at night - unless the AIP says otherwise. Then you´d find something on the chart like "daylight only". You need to have the airport in sight and be familiar with the terrain. And you also need to display some common sense and good airmanship if you want to live long enough to reap in your pension one day, so a visual approach on a moonless night in a tight-quarters valley is something that I wouldn´t do (outside X-Plane ;-) ). The landings lights only shine ahead far enough that you will be able to see if you crash into trees or barren rock... Jan

Hehe, that is our problem - we don´t know! I have never done that in 10 years of flying it - as there would be no reason to have a restriction at an enroute waypoint. But I know some of you guys will do so, so we need to cover it. Jan

The sad part is that she is absolutely right... Jan

This doesn´t even happen in real life all too often, so don´t get your hopes up . Jan

Yep, thats how my instructors tried to justify it as well ... some people said that Airbus picked design choices opposite to Boeing´s to both establish themselves as "nouvelle", and also to avoid lawsuits. No idea if that is true. Jan

Yes, this is the way for the TCAS to show the correct vertical speed to fly in a RA situation. More modern aircraft depict a "keep out zone" like a trapezoid in the EADI, or a "green and red" zone in the vertical speed indicator on the EADI (Airbus). Jan

I couldn´t have said it better . And there are some weird design choices - like if I want to see the "lower part" of a flightplan, I have to click the "up-arrow"? Or "deleting" a discontinuity - just feels strange to "delete" something that isn´t there. And going to the "fix info" page is a hassle, there really should be a button for that, instead of the workaround - lateral revision page... I do like the colouring, though! Part of my problem is also that I was brought up on Boeing FMS´s, so thats what I am used to. Much easier for someone that only knows Airbus FMGC. Cheers, Jan

Not that anyone would want to buy FMGC code... No offense, just got burned a few times with that, Jan

No Zimbabwean Dollars!

I wish so, too! But I think the licensing fee would raise the price of each copy to at least a 5-figure sum . Any takers? Jan

For now you will always see them when in "outside view" and never see them when "inside the cockpit". Might do a user preference if that is not satisfactory to some folks (like they don´t want to see them from outside). We won´t show them when inside the cockpit, that dude and his brother are just too ugly... Jan

Not initially - one tutorial is finished with a visual approach, though. This is something beyond the realm of the "basic training" we try to accomplish with our tutorials - just to get everyone up and flying while using the basic features of this aircraft. I am pondering a series of more advanced training videos in the future. In the meantime we have description of how to fly a non-precision approach in the written documentation. Jan

Hehe, I love these arguments. I think it´s perfectly acceptable to have different priorities in a product, and ideally they would all be fulfilled 100%. It is also fair to argue in favour of a feature you value very much - and we do bow to the "mass market pressure" in some way, too (3D-Pilots,...) Now clearly every potential customer vies to get his favourite aspects furthered. Some want a nice cabin, some want a step-climb functionality, some want a different coloured frame of the CRT´s. All these items would count towards the "100%", and everytime we have to say: "Sorry, not in V1.0", there is negativity. But if we´d say :"Sure, we will put it in, but it´s going to push release another 3 weeks" there is also a lot of negativity. So we can´t win In the end it´s going to be like Cameron said: We will build the airplane that we want to build, we release it when we want to relase - and you buy it if you want to. Jan

Because I like it that way .

Oh no, I have a lot of money from Africa still coming my way, already! Believe it or not, I had this relative I didn´t know about, and he died recently. He left me A LOT of money, and I am in the process - with some helpful attorney from Nigeria - to reap all that dough in!

To tell you the truth, the FMS is the warpcore, the holy grail, the "Theory of everything" of this product. It´s the conditio sine qua non. You see a bunch of nice payware planes out there - but the FMS is what really sets a product of this scale apart from "other" airliners. Yes, it would be possible to license it out, but this would be akin to giving away the recipe for Coca-Cola - not going to happen. Unless you offer us: ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (Puts pinky on corner of mouth) Jan

Not really anything new to show... you have seen most of the visual progress in the "sights and sounds" video. The last weeks have been almost exclusively FMS work, and it will stay like that until we are ready to release (save for some minor visual bugfixes). Jan

Yes, it is possible to enter a step altitude on the CRZ page (in the real plane). The FMC will calculate the optimum step point (when to climb), allow entry of estimated wind at the new step altitude (for fuel penalty/benefit calculation) and also show the prospective savings as a percentage. It shouldn´t be hard to implement that, I can almost do the calculation in my head... but it will need some time that we don´t have right now . Jan

Not quite decided, yet. It depends on wether we can slip it in before release, but I don´t think we will delay release for it. Jan

Set the MCP to the new target. Then change the CRZ ALT on the CRZ page, execute. Plane starts climbing (or descending). Jan

That is the idea - Tom made an architecture for the FMS that is designed to take abuse without faltering. Now it´s not omniscent, and it´s still a computer - garbage in, garbage out. But at least we don´t want it to crash in those scenarios. We want you to be able to change your mind, edit, delete, enter again - all without folding up. This takes a very "robust" code, and that´s what we have been hammering at the last months. Jan

The aircraft we model does not have the altitude or speed intervention buttons, just like many of the real 737-300s out there. But you are correct, if it had, using it would clear the next limiting speed restriction, which is the same as erasing it manually on the LEGs page. Jan

I think so, too