Looks very nice!
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It looks really cool.
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Already signed up-looking great
Just turned on my PC and had a notification from ORBX that the new flight tracking app âVolantaâ is now available for free download.
Honestly, didnât know anything about it before today so going to give it a whirl since itâs free (with premium features to come).
Cheers!
So itâs like a logbook and sort of a limited flight planner?
I keep reading the site and Iâm confused as to why I would use it.
Iâm sure I am missing something here so please definitely enlighten me.
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It basically keeps track of all your flights (log book) as well as a moving map, including current information from VATSIM, PilotEdge etc. If youâre familiar with the old projectFly, itâs pretty much the same thing.
Not sure that I would say that its a flight planner, it just plugs in the flight plan from simbrief and the like.
I donât think theyâre marketing it as a flight planner.
It brings a lot of good features from other types of products that simmers use and mashes them together and has some nice integration with other services like Simbrief, PilotEdge and VATSIM.
Iâm pretty impressed with the package (which was no cost) for the limited time I spent with it today.
I see
Interesting stuff. Thank you for the replies.
Doesnât sound like itâs for me, but definitely seems cool.
Itâs not a patch on LNM feature wise, but it does have one very nice feature. You can see other players on a variety of different networks, such as Vatsim, IVAO, Volanta itself etc.
It can also integrate with Navigraph, but seemed to be using cycle 1908 for some reason.
Oh, and it records your landing performance too.
Agree, only the network features are more than LNM provides and it is lacking in almost every other area. I found the web version unresponsive and very slow. The downloaded app was better, but still sluggish. Maybe teething issues. I tried logging a flight by just running the app and then flying in the sim. This seemed to register the flight. I then landed and parked (MSFS log book popped up) I then quit back to the main menu then quit the sim. The Volanta app then didnât register the flight had been completed and I can find no way of doing so. Clicking âend flightâ just gets an endless spinny circle from windows.
The map is monotone and doesnât show anything like the detail available from LNM and it has no included flight planning.
It looks as if you should be able to load a flight plan from MSFS, but you canât.
I canât really see a good reason for using it unless you are especially interested in the network features.
Edit: there seemed to be navigraph integration as notes by others, but I canât see any benefit of this and it us 1908 not 2101
Also, my flight didnât seem to end so I didnât see any landing rating
The only time I have seen this is if I have it minimised in the tool tray, and have put my computer to sleep.
When it wakes up, and I start MSFS, Volanta will detect the plane I am in, and where I am, but often wonât detect the landing or the flight ending. The only way around this I have found is to ensure that Volanta is re-started immediately before or after MSFS starts. It then works perfectly.
When it is monitoring flights correctly, it will detect landings other than you destination, and offer to change to this new alternate, which you can cancel. At the end, it will detect you have ended your flight, and a timer will start where it will end your flight for you. There is a button you can press to do this immediately as well.
You can then analyse your flight, showing your profile, and terrain height, block time, flight time, fuel consumption, and also landing performance. I quite like it, and look forward to newer versions of it.
But I miss being able to pull up airport info, procedures etc. I donât know how far OrbX plan to push it. Whether they see it as a competitor down the road.
Since it logs details of how many people have visited a given airport, and its interesting to see who visited where, a cynic might see this as a marketing tool so they can work out which airport they need to work on! 
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There are few things about it that I like. It is a nice flight log and path tracker with height data. It will also track where all your aircraft are and will show you a list of flights and tracks that you have made with each aircraft you have registered. So, for example, I like it because I can see when the last time I flew a plane, how many times I have flown it, where I have been with it and where I last left it.
I like it mainly for going back to review past flight tracks and landing performance stats. Other than that, itâs a fairly borderline tool for me because it doesnât do anything else specific that I really need (I donât use VATSIM etc.and it has a nice coverage map for example). For planning and in-flight navaid and airport info, Little Navmap is better for my needs. Volanta does fill a specific gap for me in terms of recording a flight track and logging - which is where LNM is not as pretty or effective - and which I was really looking for, so it get a thumbs up from me.
I signed up for beta testing and they seem to be quite keen for users to provide feedback so that they can take in the direction that user want and fix any issues that crop up. They appear to have released this as a kind of âminimum viable productâ and are quite open to suggestions, so I donât think theâre pretending to be anything specific.
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Volanta is now available for public use - ORBXâs Flight Tracker - Flightsim.to Forums
Hope you enjoy
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I wonder how this works in VR? Does this also have an ingame moving map?
How altruistic of Orbx to provide a free flight tracking app. I suppose it would be slightly cynical to think that a company very keen on selling MSFS addons would provide a free app so they can collect all this data on where people are flying and in what, and then before you know it and as if by miracle or pure coincidence, theyâll be churning out even more airports specifically targeted to âmeet customer demandâ at reasonable prices 
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The map is not ingame, you would have to switch to the volanta app in this case, so it may be difficult to use in VR without customized VR windowsâŠ
I guess there will be a price tag at some point for some advanced features down the road.
What I donât understand is that you canât fetch and maintain the app via Orbxdirect but download Volanta separately only.
Smart business strategy if you ask me 
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Well Iâve been using it for a few days and quite honestly it doesnât add anything to the sim experience for me. The background map is plain black with airports and traffic overlaid - no geographical details. Traffic it picks up from various feeds including itself, VATSIM etc.can be selected and queried for details and of course it tracks your own flight.
I use VFRMap and Little Navmap on a second monitor which provides all the info I need.
Not usually a cynic but I agree with above comments - itâs a marketing tool.
Been using this to record my flights and itâs been working great!