Hello, I have learned a lot about this process during our dialog. I appreciate it.
I think the problem is that I probably cannot locate POIs that are as small as castles, probably not much taller than 100 feet or so, especially when hidden or partially hidden by vegetation. /when I did the first plan you suggested, Scotland, including St. Andrews. Even when I was a couple of miles away and the locator was in view St. Andrews was visible in the distance so when the locator disappeared the POI was visible to fly over at 500 feet.
I am in central NJ, its snowing again, and it is Super Bowl Sunday. Where are you?
Hope you enjoyed the Superbowl; sounds like it wasn’t a great game.
I see your issue. Are you familiar with the Pause feature, and the external ‘drone’ camera? You hit the Pause key and eveything stops in-flight. Then you can hit the Insert key and this transfers to an external camera, which you can fly around separately to the plane, which is frozen in place. Hitting Insert again returns you to the plane.
The only thing you need to watch out for is that you should be in steady flight, as the Pause functionality pauses the plane, but not whatever the engine is doing. So if you had the throttle at full, the engine keeps accelerating and you can overstress the aircraft. But if you are in nice level flight, you can do all this. It would allow you to take a good look around and find the castles at your leisure.
But I sympathise. There are lots of unmistakeable landmarks to see too though. Fly from Orly to Charles De Gaulle in Paris and you can pick out several on the skyline, for example.
I’m in Ireland, the north west. A cold front is rolling in from Siberia and we’ll have snow by Wednesday, I think
I spent a few months in New Jersey about 20 years ago on a project. Somewhere between Morristown and Dover, I think - Cedar Knolls. Had a lot of fun.
Funny thing about the Superbowl was betting line, point spread if you will, was only 3 points. A lot of us were looking for a close, competitive, game. The outcome was never in doubt. Can’t take away from Brady and his buddy Gronkowski, a great pair.
I am half Irish, but only half as my mother married an Englishman. Have been studying Irish/British/Celtic History and have an appreciation of the great difficulties endured during the struggle for independence.
I will take a look at the drone camera feature. The problem for me is that when I search out an attraction on the web I am lured to a travel site which shows the best possible view which is usually a camera shot at ground level showing the best possible view, but not the best for overhead viewing.
Are you east or west of London-Derry (Derry)? We just had 20 inches in NJ which is more than we have had in the past 2 years and the worst single snowfall since 1996.
There is a lot of good information here on adding waypoints! One thing not mentioned is the two different “types” of waypoints, “fly-by” and “fly-to”. “Fly-by” means the aircraft will fly close to the waypoint but starts turning early to remain on the flight plan. “Fly-to” means the aircraft will fly over the waypoint and then begin turning to return to the flight plan. These distinctions become more. apparent when the flight plan course changes at larger angle. The best example is if the flight plan direction changes 170° at a waypoint. “Fly-by” waypoint shows the aircraft turning well before the waypoint.
I’m not sure how these are different types are indicated in the flight plan. The VFR Map shows the two different types having the magenta line going through the “fly-over” waypoint or for “fly-by” the magenta line turning near but not going through the waypoint.
I generally use Little Nav Map to create flight plans. I can solve my problems if I can specify “fly over” instead of “fly by”. If I can get right over the attraction I can use petethechop99’s suggestion of using the “drone” option to get the best view before continuing on.
Very interesting, I didn’t know that! Now we just need to figure out how to do it Hopefully Henry gets on ok with the camera thing; it’s a bit finicky but a great tool once you get used to it.
Nice! It’s a tough area of study as independence has cast a very long shadow - going on a hundred years now - that has its tendrils in a lot of Irish life
Yes, I was never crazy about Tom Brady but you have to hand it to him. The greatest ever, really.
Currently living about 20 miles west of Derry, in a town called Letterkenny. There is a Canadian comedy show of the same name, which is not related
Pete, I think the problem may be with LNM as no matter what I do the sim behaves in “fly-by” mode and not in “fly-to” mode. I posed a question on AVSIM hoping from a comment from LNM. Did you ever get the snow you were expecting?
According to my understanding the developer of LNM provides any support for LNM there - so far - no answer. The method of adding points of interest seems to work fine when creating a FP in MS as long as one is adding POIs already known to MS 2020, i.e., on the map. What would be great would be to have a bunch of attractions in Ireland in my community folder to make it easier to plan a trip.
It is when I try to use my preferred LNM when I have the problem.
Have not tried the Drone yet, but will.
In terms of snow 2 inches is an annoyance to us in central NJ - a week ago we had 20 inches followed by a 6 inch - then 3 inches. My daughter and her gang live in Fairfax County Virginia - very large county that has only about 50 snow plows - not nearly enough. My town has 30 or so plows. When they get 2 inches the county for all practical purposes is just about closed down.
Tried 2 other tests. One using AP - same result. I can use the MS flight planning in the sim but that only works if the site I want to add is already shown on the sim FP planning map - that works just fine. I just cannot use all the sites I have created in LNM. I followed up on the LNM support site after waiting a week for a reply.
I might have missed this but can add force site locations (POI) directly into the sim FP process.
Once I get firmed up on my use of the software I will try the Drone. In the meantime I will try to find a Youtube on using the Drone.
I guess it’s improvements by small degrees from now on - you’re getting within half a mile of the landmarks so for me personally, I wouldn’t expend a lot more effort on the last 1%. But I hope you get there
I think if you try the external camera/drone, it should meet some of your needs. I use it all the time. You don’t need to send it far from the plane; all it does is allow you to look around. Make sure to use it with Pause for peace of mind.
Is there a way I can create a POI, using sim flight planning to create a POI that the sim will know about. If so I would like to try it. When I fly a route containing POIs that already appear on the sim FP map. When I do that the needle (pointer) stays on target right to the end. I just don’t miss when using the sim FP method (not LNM), and it will be a delight to capture images from all angles of the POI.
Looking at a Youtube for the Drone I immediately its need for the keyboard. I am trying to get away from the keyboard and so far have been pretty successful in doing so. I have an older, less expensive, joystick, Logitech 3D PRO, which was my first joystick. Stopped using it because the stick itself had too many dead spots that meant it was more difficult to control flight. It does, however, have lots of buttons and a hat switch that I could use to control the Drone function. I assume I would have to negate all decouple all joystick functions and map the buttons for drone function.
I was sure you could do this, but I just tried and it was almost impossible. I eventually got a custom waypoint onto the map (I think it might be bugged), but when I flew the route the route curved away from the waypoint well beforehand, as we have seen before. And in any case, you can’t enter co ordinates, so you’d be making a stab in the dark every time.
Hmmm, yes, some of the functions are tied to the keyboard. I wouldn’t be keen on setting up a separate joystick just for this. What you should do is practice - when you appear on the runway to start your flight, don’t take off. Instead, try out the drone camera while your plane is sitting on the runway. You should find out pretty quickly if it’s something you can get on with.
I guess you and I are stumped on the problem of turn away when getting close to a “custom” POI. It happens to me when creating a FP using LNM and I have heard nothing in response to me query. I have even just sent a query to the webmaster? of AVSIM asking for help. So we can’t can’t do it in either LNM or the MSFS sim for now.
I have got a bunch of POIs in the UK and in my community folder. I am going to create a plan in the sim using those and figure out minimum actions needed to make the Drone work. I do have to minimize my cockpit reach because of limitations in arm/shoulder reach. If I can map everything I need to the numeric pad on the right end of the keyboard I will try that first before using 3D Pro.
Right now neither MS or LNM has an answer regarding the turn away problem.
I was just about to start work on the drone when I got notice of an update for the sim part of which included an update to t he UK and Ireland. I downloaded and updated and these new additions are indicated “owned” I noticed that many of the POIs added to the FP planning map have an “i” in a yellow circle. I have a shortcut to my community folder on my that does not contain these new additions. The shortcut icon on the desktop has symbol of a “padlock” in the upper right hand corner. Just a bit confused here.
In terms of the highlight it does not seem to cause any issues. Did an FP with a couple of points and it worked just fine. Rendition of Windsor Castle is very similar to what you would find if you were searching on-line using a travel website. The update was described as a UK/Ireland update but there are only a couple of new additions for Ireland.
Regarding the Community folder, is it possible that it only contains entries from “addons” that are not part of MS official updates and are in some other folder that we have never discussed.
Got some medical stuff to attend to but will work on the Drone soon as I can get to it.
Regarding the Community folder - yes, that’s restricted to user or third party add ons. For the official stuff, if you go up one directory, you can see an Official folder.
Actually the Drone looks interesting and I intend to pursue it - just dealing with family medical issues right now. Will keep you posted. Expecting as much as a foot of new snow tomorrow
I think my idea of using the Logitech 3D Extreme would benefit me considering my discomfort using the Keyboard. I hooked up the Logitech and the sim recognizes it. What I would like to do is to clear all the settings and set it up bit by bit for the Drone adding settings as I learn how to use it. Also, I want to be sure that there are no conflicts with my usually used settings.
Is there a way to totally clear all the settings for the Logitech before starting to set the Drone?
Hopefully Henry gets on ok with the camera thing; it’s a bit finicky but a great tool once you get used to it.
The advantages of being on the Gulf Stream.
