Now this topic has ben combined, posting here to ensure it remains relevant.
The ideal solution would be as Ehness94 mentioned, is to have this FIR based (with user override for any unit type).
Enter into a Chinese FIR and expect kgs metres and hPa and C*
Enter into the US and expect lbs feet "Hg and F*
This would also then enable FIR specific transition altitudes, as most countries use different levels.
A few birds with one stone in a way…
I’d say we need to go even deeper (and move away from US centric measurements):
Distances:
A lot of work, but one that potentially could be crowdsourced to the community if man power is lacking. Then we’d have a world wide user updated database of most airports in the world. Such a thing doesn’t really exist yet, outside of the larger companies (Jeppesen, Navblue, Lido etc)
Perhaps this is something we the community needs to start, so that MSFS can reference this instead?
It is unlikely that I am the first one to bring this up, as the game has been released for 3 years. However the unit system in game is still limited to “US system”, “Metric” and “Hybrid”. None of them matches the reality in Australia (where I am flying), and appearantly there are more combinations than these three presets.
My advice is to separate those measurements and let the player decide which one to use, for every single physical quantity. or include as much presets as possible. One day it could even be dynamic according to flight information regions that you are flying, but at the moment it’s quite necessary to expand units settings first.
For people in the US, flying in Australia uses:
Knots for speed
Feet for height
Nautical miles for distance
Kilometres for visbility
Hectopascal for pressure
Kilograms for mass/weight
Litres for fuel volume
At least four of them are different from the US system, but in order to keep more critical units the same, I will have to use other US units… which is …sad 
and unrealistic.
Edit:
I noticed my post was moved and linked to this topic, which is great that a lot people having the same thoughts. However when I checked the original post time for this topic - ■■■■ it’s been 3 years still no further progress
Please Asobo, can we finally have some improvements in the area!
3 years in and we shouldn’t still be having to ask in order to get these basics fixed
How is not fixed the ATIS in Europe not giving QNH on the proper scale and units? hows that to hear QNH 2994
Australia uses QNH in hectopascals too. It would be nice to have an option to switch the ATC between the measurements, or even have it region specific too.
This is utterly pathetic that this issue has not been resolved. Over 90% of the world uses nautical miles for distance measure, kilometers for runway length and hectopastals for air pressure, and feet for altitude. . This is all so fundamental to flying it is absurd. (i’m an international airline pilot of 20 years).
I just cannot believe this was an issue at launch and still and issue now. It truly defies belief. Extremely dissapointing! fix it asobo!
Me too, and I agree!
And it’s a few simple lines of code to convert them. Amazing.
I agree, this needs to be resolved. At least give people the choice.
For the anecdote - Believe it or not, in France when learning to fly, they use km / hour for speeds. In fact, in the French-built Robin DR400 (included in MSFS), the aircraft used in most flying schools in France, the airspeed indicator is in km / hour Source: I got my PPL in France. Here is a photo
That’s a perfect example.
That same aircraft would be flown with all the same units as in Europe (different to the US), but then use knots for the airspeed.
For an aircraft like this in the sim, multiple airspeed indicator textures should be accessible according to the airspeed option the user has chosen.
It is crazy to me that this still hasn’t been resolved and was frustrating me again this week as I was trying to do a bush trip and needed to convert from KM to NM in my head.
The next dev livestream is coming up and I have submitted a question around this bug in hopes that it will raise awareness and we can get some transparency around why this still hasn’t been addressed. If anyone else is sick of this still being an issue I would suggest also posting a question for the live stream (I assume if multiple people ask the same thing it increases the chance of it being included on the stream)
Spotted this in a FS2024 preview. It seems we will at last have individual control over units. Well at least in the new sim.
Great new. Would be nice to also have the pressure included.
good catch! very nice, definitely needed
Seems not at all well thought out. I hope that isn’t their final implementation.
No Pressure setting, speed is only knots or kph (where is mph?), similarly no miles setting for distance. Also there needs to be different types of “distance”. Runway length (and visibility etc) is measured in m in most of the world, but range etc are measured in nautical miles (same issue in the US but runway length is in feet).
This will likely only affect those aircraft that are tied into this for a particular parameter. The example that springs to mind is the altimeter in the C414 which is so would follow whatever setting you have there. Many other aircraft do not tie it in and therefore have it fixed to whatever units the graphics of the gauge are designed for. Changing speed to km/h here is not going to force an airspeed indicator with a scale in mph or knots to suddenly display in km/h. That’s assuming of course that all they’ve done is break out the individual units and not changed the fundamental way things are tied in to the aircraft in fs2020. It’s really dependent on how the aircraft dev sees fit to implement and I’m just fine with that.
Definitely an improvement, but still along way from where a ‘simulator’ needs to be.
I think you may have misunderstood the point of the issue. These settings do not affect any of the instruments in the aircraft.
They are for the UI, so things like bush trips (or just any nav log for any flight) and landing challenges where distances, speeds, etc are displayed in the game outside of the instruments in the aircraft.
Wrong. I understand quite well. I gave an example of one where it changes an aircraft. You may want it just for bush trips but they are used in a few places in the sim.
You suggested that these settings will only affect some aircraft which support changing units this way. I was just pointing out that the main point of this issue is not the units on the instruments in the aircraft, but the units shown in the UI
