I am a player of FS24. During my gameplay, I’ve noticed some issues regarding the map in the Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) and would like to put forward some suggestions for the improvement of the game.
Currently, the map in the game’s EFB seemingly uses the Mercator projection. With this projection method, the straight-line trajectory shown is a rhumb line. However, the routes used in Airbus and G1000 are great-circle routes. This results in a discrepancy between the trajectories on the EFB and the minimap on the game’s HUD and the actual trajectory followed by the autopilot. I have seen this difference has caused confusion for many players, especially novice players. They feel lost when flying with AP LNAV and HUD turned on, not knowing which one to follow. See the screengrab below for clearer idea:
To enhance the gaming experience of players, especially those who are used to fly with the HUD/minimap on, I suggest adding an option in the EFB that allows players to choose to make the displayed trajectory follow the great-circle route. Or this may be caused by my own misunderstanding, I will be happy if someone could explain.
This mismatch is unrelated to the map projection, as the EFB, the minimap, and the G1000 all use the exact same method to draw flight paths, which is as a curved great circle. You can see this by making a flight across a significant enough distance in the EFB or G1000 and then observing the resultant drawn curved flight path.
In the case you are showing above, this is because there is an intentional difference between the mission path and the avionics. The mission path, the EFB, and minimap include the advisory visual pattern you would fly manually when departing the origin airport and when approaching the destination airport. The flight path drawn for those is between the end of the departure visual pattern and the start of the approach visual pattern.
However, just as in real life, avionics have no knowledge of these advisory visual patterns, and indeed you would not be flying them with the autopilot in real life. A real life analog to this would be selecting an advisory visual pattern in Foreflight on your EFB, while your G1000 would continue to show a direct flight plan from one airport to the other. It is up to the pilot how they want to enter and exit those patterns appropriately for conditions and local rules, and understand when they would deviate from the avionics flight plan.
Don’t get sucked into the idea that the autopilot is the ultimate great guide in the sky and you just press the button and take a passive ride to your destination! In VFR conditions you will be turning that off and doing pattern work IRL by hand, or at a minimum using just heading mode. The autopilot is not intended to place you at the feet of the runway in this situation. You’re still the pilot here, the autopilot is not.
Thank you, Bishop, for the clarification. After attempting validation, I can now confirm that, with version 1.3.23.0, this issue does not exist and was wrongly raised. For anyone with similar concerns, please refer to @Bishop398’s response for a great explanation .
I’ve flagged this post for moderators so that they can decide whether it should be removed or moved to another category, according to the forum guideline.
In VFR conditions you will be turning that off and doing pattern work IRL by hand, or at a minimum using just heading mode. The autopilot is not intended to place you at the feet of the runway in this situation. You’re still the pilot here, the autopilot is not.
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