Has anyone noticed the track to be incorrect between waypoints?
Flying between KUBIL and BEXAL the track should be 035° but the sim was flying 040°.
Surely the track should be the same regardless of wind conditions?
Which airplane? The heading indicators in most airplanes display the magnetic heading (where the nose is pointing), not the ground track, so if there is any crosswind, the two values will not match, because the aircraft will turn its nose into the wind to compensate for drift. The difference between the two will depend on the wind speed.
Some airliners have the option to display the heading as the actual ground track, but I don’t think any of the MSFS default airplanes have that ability.
ahh see thanks, it’s the default 320. It reads the track in the display (top right) which is different to the flight i was tracking.
Not quite correct…
Contrary to the MSFS NavLog, the column named “heading” should read “Course” or “desired track” since it is independent of wind. My zendesk report on that matter did not change things.
Basically all aircraft headings are magnetic headings (except for high latitudes) where certain aircraft can switch over to a true heading indication and thereby “turn the compass rose” a little. Since the heading itself is “fixed to the aircraft”, only the numerical readout will change depending on the selected reference. On Airbus aircraft, the track is indicated on the compass as a little green square standing on the corner. Another option to display track is by switching on the “bird” by using the HDG/TRK pushbutton on the FCU.
There’s an additional subtlety to all of this as well.
Lines between points on the globe are not straight lines, they are actually curved lines, called great circles. As you flying along this curved path, your track towards the final fix will actually change. For tracks at high latitudes, this can be an enormous amount of change, for those at the equator, this can be very little to no change.
However, in almost all avionics systems, the flight plan display will show only the initial desired track, and does not update the track as you proceed. The course needles, however, will update. So it is totally possible that the flight plan display and the actual plane track were disagreeing, if that’s what you were seeing.
-Matt | Working Title
interesting guys, thanks for the informative posts.
The flight tracker was saying 035° and my display was saying 040° even though i was on the same track. I’m wondering whether this is the tracker not having the correct information.
On a Boeing aircraft, a customer option is to display track as the heading reference on the ND. Actual magnetic heading is shown on the HSI rose on the PFD.,
If the ND is configured for TRK display, the aircraft will not show any applied wind correction angle - it will always be perfectly aligned with the displayed track. If the ND is configured for HDG, then the wind correction is visible, and the number at the top of the ND will be current magnetic heading.
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