Add the ability to upload Little Nav Map flightplans to the game

I am a big fan of Little Nav Map. It allows me to look at the current weather and plan the runway, departure procedure, the route, the arrival procedure and approach. I then import the plan into the game and the MSFS flight planner strips out the runway, departure procedure - leaves the route - and strips the arrival procedure and approach. :frowning:

I then reinsert the information and carry on. It is a needless and frustrating step. Why?!

Here are two example files. The first is the LNM flight plan .lnmpln with the entire flight plan from beginning to end. The other is the stripped down .pln file that will only be accepted by flight planner.

IFR Izumo (RJOC) to Narita Intl (RJAA).pln (5.2 KB)

IFR Izumo (RJOC) to Narita Intl (RJAA).lnmpln (2.6 KB)

I suggest MS come up with a new format for flight plans, with a new extension. The format would be JSON. From time to time they would introduce new keywords. MS would also have to support the old .PLN format indefinitely, but would not extend it.

I also suggest that MS convert their airport database to something more reasonable (like SQL), or publish software that would allow conversion of their current DB into SQL.

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Do you know if you can use Little Navmap to automatically import to the PMDG 737, i have been unable to use it.

I don’t own any PMDG products, sorry I can’t help.

Little Navmap currently supports what Microsoft Flight Simulator offers to import as a flight plan. .lnmpln is the file type of Little NavMap and I think it’s unlikely this would be adopted by Microsoft; rather Microsoft would set a standard for the flight plan format for the sim.

If the flight save / flight plan format would be further developed, the author of Little Navmap could update the software to support the new file type format.

At the moment the basic save / load feature is in an incomplete state.

An improvement in the pln file would be fine too. As it stands the SIDs STARs and approaches in the .pln file exported to MSFS are not read or aren’t there. It’s a run around for no good reason. One is forced to reinsert the SID, STAR and approach twice, once in LNM and again on the flightplanning page. If the Asobo developers are struggling with this why not open it up to other formats that are doing it right? That is all I am saying.

the joke here is thinking SQL is “reasonable.”

I troubleshoot SQL at an OS level for my job and it’s a nightmare to set up and Asobo would likely have to hire someone to maintain said such a database (if they don’t already have an army of analysts already). IDK about where you live but in the US, database admins typically cost about 100k a year to start because you’re paying for someone’s time rather than their skillset or experience.

Not only that, you’d have to recode the game appropriately to interface with those databases. I feel like it’s easier to have the game read the data natively rather than having to tell the game to check against a database which could take time if the database is not optimized or you are the mercy of your ISP. I also don’t think people would be keen knowing there’s an 80gb (or bigger) mdf database getting downloaded to their computer if they decided to have the db local to the users computer to save bandwidth. You get too big a DB and it’ll bog down even the bestest of computers because the game has to go through all that data to find what it needs (assuming it hasn’t been optimized)

You’d just end up breaking more than you would if you just fixed the way the game brings in .pln files currently rather than reinvent the wheel.

I think it would be much easier for MSFS to create a standard flight plan format and developers would have to create a way for their planes to work with the standard MSFS format. not even .flp it could be .fsfp or .msfs or something idk. it doesn’t have to be .pln or .flp or whatever

It would already be great if the flight plan loading of the present PLN format in MSFS would be fixed. No much use discussing new formats as long as this does not work.

Keep in mind that you can also create the plan in MSFS, save it as PLN and then load this into LNM for flight following.

Loading the plan directly through SimConnect is not as direct as one might think. You cannot simply transfer a plan through SimConnect to MSFS. The program has to save it as a PLN file first and then tell MSFS to load this. I suppose you will see the same issues.

Alex

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My method is to create a flightplan in LNM and export the .pln file to the flightplan folder then open it up on the flightplanner page in MSFS.

I would like to be able to export the entire flightplan, including SID, STAR and approach. The exported .pln file does not contain these. It only contains the departure airport, enroute waypoints and destination airport.

The .lnmpln file does contain these items thus my suggestion

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