How can I see in this Sim the name of a certain city over which I am flying or approaching? I suppose that by pressing a certain key, its name will appear floating over the city. This is how it appears in Aerofly FS 2, pressing the letter “L”, and I suppose that here it has to have something similar that allows me to identify the city or small town.
I want to fly over the Panama Canal, also over the Suez Canal, how to locate them and fly over them?
At the moment, there’s nothing very helpful on the MSFS world map that will provide any detail of non-aviation landmarks (except the modeled points of interest). So generally there is no way to identify a city you just happen to fly over when out joy riding. There are lots of requests for more detail in the world map and in flight ‘VFR’ map (which actually bears no resemblance what so ever to a proper VFR chart…). We can only hope.
However, there are a bunch of flight planning add-ons that will provide you with a map in an external window and track your flight (Navigraph, Little Navmap, OnAir, etc. will all do this) and these all seem to have the ability to show your position on a world map from one source or another. Some of this are payware, some free. Most are designed for flight planning or flying ‘missions’ and so on, but all the ones I’ve tried can be used simply to see where you are. If you haven’t looked into this before - take a look at Little Navmap.
As for flying the Panama Canal … it’s a great disappointment. It was one of the first things I did in MSFS but the current scenery is pretty bland. It’s desperately in need of a makeover. Orbx were rumored to be making an add-on, but there’s nothing announced yet.
It will come. City labels were shown in the X-Box announcement Q&A. I see no reason why it wouldn’t come to PC as well.
In the mean time you can use Little Navmap, a free navigation and planning tool that can connect to the sim and show your position on OpenStreetMap. You will need a second monitor to see it while flying however.
Some third party planes include an in-cockpit tablet showing a map, like the (free) A32NX Airbus 320. There’s probably other addons that provide in-cockpit map viewing.
Honestly, the easiest way to do this would be to download the Volanta flight tracker from Orbx.
Volanta tracks your flights and gives you a bunch of stats about your flying, you get a live view of your plane on the map too. It runs outside of the sim (just minimizes to the tray), and you can open it up whenever you like and zoom in to where your flying to see what the city is.
Do you have access to VFR navigation charts for your area? If so, you can follow your progress on one, the way student pilots still must learn to do it.
To all of you who responded to my post “How to identify cities a flight”, I am grateful
You all contributed what each one of you supposes is the best. Based on my difficulties and lack of knowledge because I am very new to this issue, I must choose the answer / those that I think will be easier to execute.
From my point of view, what I see less complicated for me is what you express in the second section. In the first one if I need 2 monitors, it is not viable in my case.
I ask you this special favor: Could you elaborate on what you have described in the second section? At the moment, I am not able to do it. And I also ask you: once you have done what you describe, the operation of displaying the maps that are executed from the SIM by means of some command :? You say that the desired view would be obtained by pressing Shift + Tab. Is that correct?
To all, kind regards: Delfin.
Hello SpottedAxis. Have you looked at the “markers” under Navigation in Assistance Options? This will be more of the “billboards floating in the sky” type of thing you’re apparently used to from Aerofly FS 2. You can turn them on for airports, cities, “points of interest,” and fauna.
Be aware though that for places, the sim doesn’t seem to deem towns beneath a certain size worthy of a label.
Personally i like to use the Plugin - VFRmap add on, very simple to use doesnt hog system resources and allowes you to see exactly where your flying over in real time.
or you can use FSPM VFR as user DonQuilmi3528 pointed out above - The map which will show you locations in the in game vrf map
Another mention for Little NavMap. Truly amazing free mapper. You can also download Google Maps for it (even their satellite maps) and follow along as you fly. Best used if you have another monitor to place it on but works just fine with one as well.
I do miss the FSX map when flying. You could zoom in and out scroll along to the airport you were going and if flying a big jet look up the ILS runway and heading plus the ILS approach radio frequency for that particular runway. I use to write all this info down on a piece of paper for when I was cleared for the ILS approach.
