MSFS 2024 Flight Planning and website

For me after I fly two flight plans the EFB stops loading plans. I have to restart the sim for it to start working again. I am doing free flights and using the longitude so there is no in plane tablet. No matter how I close the EFB Tablet doesn’t matter. No loading plans until I fully restart the sim.

1 Like

Indeed, for “gamers” …

Folks who use the sim more “professionally” (especially for GA, VFR, and IFR) know and see the differences between Lido and Jeppesen charts. Also, the coverage …

There are a lot of other technical features that are impossible with the Lido charts.

Last, the competition is good, and we had it in the past too (twice). It’s good to offer an independent service outside the MS world.

Just now (e.g., closed Marketplace), it is essential to have external webshops and companies that offer their service outside of such closed ecosystems - not only for the customers but also for vendors.

The MSFS EFB/Flightplanner is a good starting point for beginners, but there are good alternatives for advanced users… :wink:

Cheers
Richard

7 Likes

Need vs. want: The new features of 24 will meet some folks’ needs, maybe many folks’ needs once they get the EFB and charting features fully functional? And then there is want. There are folks who will want to keep (or get) a Navigraph subscription to have Jepp chart and the additional functionality the subscription offers them. They know who they are. For my part, the chart subscription also supports a related hobby of liking maps and weather. The weather depiction alone makes it worth the price, for me. All about how one looks at things, and for me, presentation is everything. Navigraph is a polished product at an added cost; 24 offers more for all comers, but doesn’t meet all users needs.

3 Likes

How cam you view terrain profile for the planned route to check altitudes?

With all due respect, it isn’t great to be leaning into the toxic “gamer” vs. “true simmer” dichotomy in this community, especially from a trusted developer like Navigraph. That’s not the right way to sell your products, and I say that as a dedicated Navigraph customer. I also think Working Title would balk at the idea that they created the flight planner with MS for “gamers” rather than for the entire community.

It’s fair to point out the limitations with LIDO and the benefits of your product more generally, of course.

8 Likes

I did not mean to disparage Navigraph. For a more casual simmer the lido charts are sufficient.

As a USA simmer, I like the EFB.

It has been stated that the USA simmer will benefit better from the EFB than other parts of the world.

You can do this with the official Flight Planner website. You need to go through the boxes on the right of the webpage and turn on all of the stuff. The top box is to change what map type. I use IFR Low and VFR and you can see they are modified from default because I turned on everything I could for Navaids, airspaces and the like.

You can also see the red numbers down in the lower left. A big 14 with a smaller 0. That is a suggested altitude to set when flying through that square. FL 140 or 14,000 ft.

SkyVector, another free web-based flight planner used by IRL pilots, also has similar information. Although SkyVector has lower suggested altitudes when using the World VFR map, and shows actual elevations for the terrain when you zoom in.

We can see that same section has recommendations of FL118 and FL117 for the area. You can also see peak elevations for individual peaks.

1 Like

The difference is the sim planner is using IFR grid Minimum Off-Route Altitudes (MORA) or Off-Route Obstacle Clearance Altitudes (OROCA) and the VFR sectional you see at Skyvector and other resources is using Maximum Elevation Figures (MEF). They are both on a grid and both shown in hundreds of feet, used somewhat similarly, but are calculated differently, and exist on a different scale.


MORA/OROCA

The overlay is called MORA in the planner, but the US uses OROCA, which is very similar and they match those figures on US IFR charts exactly, so I’ll go with the assumption that they’re being treated as the same in the planner.

A MORA/OROCA uses 1° grid spacing. It’s calculated by taking the highest obstacle or terrain within the grid plus a 4nm buffer outside the grid. It then rounds up to the next higher hundred, then applies a 1000’ buffer in non-mountainous areas, and a 2000’ buffer in designated mountain areas (like you see there at KHCR). It is basically the minimum altitude at which you will be safe from hitting things when flying IFR outside of an airway (the latter of which are surveyed and will usually have much lower MEA or MOCAs).

You’d think Mt Timpanogos at 11,749’ might be the controlling high point in that grid, but why then is it giving an OROCA of 140(00) instead of 13,800? My best guess is that it has to do with the rising terrain of the Uintas to the east of KHCR that lies within that 4NM buffer - something there is getting above 11,900’.


MEF

MEFs on the VFR charts use 30 minute grid spacing, so they are 4x the resolution of the MORA/OROCA. They are calculated by finding the highest terrain, adding 100’ for errors, adding a 200’ buffer, and rounding up to the next highest 100 feet. This why many MEFs are around 300-400’ higher than the highest terrain in that sector. If the highest elevation in that sector is man-made, then they apply only 100 feet for error, then round to the next 100 above that.

Here’s an example of MEFs (and their controlling obstacles) that occupy the four 30’ grids of the same OROCA shown by OP:

3 Likes

It sure would be nice if the people that made this stuff actually took the time to write up some instructions for it. Like where in the hell does it save your created flight plans. I have spent the last hour pulling my hair out trying to find where they store it so I can load one. I looked in all the Flight sim folders, My Documents, Steam limitless files. Freaking unreal. Why can’t they just ask you where you want it saved instead of just dumping it onto your system somewhere, where you have no idea where to find it. Could somebody help me find these files please.

Are you using the flight planner app, or the sim EFB?

The Web page app I guess it is for Msfs 2024. This is the link to it.
Flight Planner
Thank you for replying back. Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. Had to go with the wife Christmas shopping.

I don’t think that saves to your machine. It saves to the cloud on your account. You can load the saved flight plan in the Free Flight world map.

1 Like

Every time I try to load it it opens windows explorer file to select where I saved it to. That’s why I have been looking everywhere for it. How do I go about accessing it from the cloud? Thanks again for your help. I don’t have one drive enabled on my computer.

Oddly, there are two ways to load a flight plan.

In the top left of the Route page, the Load button will retrieve it from some mystery spot.

The Load in the lower left corner will pull from a location you locate.


Here is a picture of the flight app as it is now opened on my computer. Where is the spot I am supposed to click to load it? After that, how do I load it into the sim plane?

1 Like

Ok after all the hours of searching and help from members here, I finally stumbled onto what I think might be the holy grail for anyone having this issue. Just go here for instructions…
How to Load Flight Plans Made With Flight Planner Into Your EFB - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Guide - IGN

2 Likes

Got it! That link I posted above will clear it up for everyone. Thanks again for the help NixonRedgrave, and YggBjorn. I really appreciated it. :metal: :grinning: :metal:

3 Likes

I know you found another source for help, but I wanted to follow-up with what I was talking about, because I was making the assumption you needed help once you got into the sim and used the in-sim EFB to bring in a web-based Flight Planner plan.

This is the upper Load Flight Plan button that I was referring to that seems to link to a mysterious cloud-based save source:

Clicking that brings this up:

These are the plans I’ve made with the web-based Flight Planner and I saved them via this button in the lower left of the web-based tool:

Clicking that brings up this box:

Back to the in-sim EFB, there is this lower Load/Save PLN File button:

Clicking that brings this up:

This one seems to be more straightforward, like how 2020 is set up.

2 Likes

Has anyone tried to use the fuel planning on this web-planner or the EFB? No way to enter bock fuel, apparently. Can’t see myself trying to figure out Average Fuel Burn, or trusting my own assumtions to do a calc… really don’t understand the intent of this particular section