Glad I found this thread…I thought I was going crazy!
For many months I flew the CJ4 Working Title, and the routing is near flawless. Sometimes you have to remove a discontinuity, but easy enough. The FMS menu system is a bit clunky, but I’m used to it and it’s all muscle memory for me now.
A month ago I decided to upgrade FS2020 so I could fly the Longitude (including WT G3000/5000 and the Flight Dynamics mod), and also paid for Navigraph so I could get more realistic and start using STARS/SIDs with flight plans. Now I get all sorts of weird stuff happening, like the aircraft loading a totally different SID from the Simbrief or Navigraph PLN file. Changing back to the SID I wanted, I get some error message in the FMS saying my Flight Plan is out of sync. I fly on, reach the transition of the SID and the plan does a 180, forcing me to fly direct to some further waypoint.
I’m curious…what actually does the Routing? Is it FS2020, or is it the Longitude base aicraft, or the G3000/5000 WT mod? Why doesn’t the CJ4 WT have the same problems?
In the meantime, I think I’ll go back to the CJ4 until this gets fixed. I lose autothrottle, range and speed, but gain VNAV (not just advisory), elegant flight planning, auto-populated altitude restrictions, and my sanity back.
You are a friggin hero! I thought for the longest time I was doing something wrong, but the more I checked it out, the more it pointed to the in-sim flight planner.
Could you please explain a bit more? I’m missing something here. You mention a “departure location page,” but the only pull-down menu I can think of is on the in-sim flight planning screen. If I try to import a flight plan from SimBrief, first it will place me on the runway, and then give me the wrong air routes (it seems to always choose the “high” routes, even though my altitude is well below FL180.
Is it on the SimBrief flight planning screen somewhere and I’m just missing it?
If I plan in SimBrief or Navigraph, I’ll set my altitude at say, 10,000’ and pick the low airways. Then when I import the flight plan into MSFS, it dang near always switches the low airways to high…and I have to select my departure spot because it seems that’s the only place I can do that. If I change my starting location to a ramp spot, and switch the airways back to low, MSFS will recalculate my route. Frustrating to say the least. If I try to fix the flight plan in the sim (I mean navigation points, SID, STAR, etc, there have been plenty of occasions where I’ve right clicked the element on the MSFS flight planning screen, and it just will not let me delete the point.
First I hope, your Pilot ID is not the real ID! If not, delete the picture urgently!
For your question or statement to elaborate a FPL by SimBrief using the lower level airways (FL 100). I’m not sure that it is possible by simbrief, because this App uses routes of airlines. Maybe LittleNavMap could be the more right planning software for you.
The G3000 is still buggy - even with the WT mod. I have the same experience with it producing unexpected behaviour, loading random waypoints into a SID etc. I wont use it anymore.
The WT mod is due a refresh at some point, but until then, like you, I’ll be sticking with the CJ4. The FBW A320 has a custom flight plan manager but it’s a steep learning curve. The Salty 747 has very similar MCDU functions to the WT CJ4 and you can fully edit routing in the same way. It also has full VNAV, holds, directs and an autothrottle.
Allow me to pile on here and ask for this to be fixed as well. With all the addons we have running, having to then go into notepad and edit and re-save everything is that much more tedious.
Copy the departure position from the file on the top to the file on the bottom (gate 42). Then remove the Runway Number. and runway designator in the first ATC waypoint of the file of the bottom. Then save that file and load it in the sim. Your plane will be positioned at the gate.
I’m trying to understand what you said you said to copy the gate number from the first form to the bottom am i copying the whole line and where do I copy it to on the second form?
The base problem:
Trying to start cold and dark at a gate, using a Simbrief flight plan … so you load your Simbrief FP in the World Map screen and as soon as you select a gate number (or change the runway, SID, or STAR) MSFS completely reshuffles your flight plan and introduces a bunch of garbage that makes no sense at all. But if you do not somehow get a flight plan into MSFS, the MSFS ATC will not recognize you as an IFR flight and ATC will not allow you to request an IFR flight plan from the ATC screen.
Here is the solution:
Make sure Simbrief, MSFS, and any aircraft like CRJ and PMDG are all using the same Airac Cycle … the best ways is to subscribe to Navigraph and always keep everything updated using the Navigraph Navdata Center.
Create your flight plan in Simbrief amd make sure you are saving it to all the correct places on your PC. (See specific instructions on Simbrief website)
Open MSFS and go to the World Map screen. Set up your aircraft, airline name, flight number, time and weather. Then select ONLY your departure airport and gate number. DO NOT LOAD YOUR SIMBRIEF FP FROM THE WORLD MAP SCREEN.
Click the FLY button … your aircraft should spawn at the correct gate (albeit sometimes a bit crooked ???)
Once inside the cockpit, open Navigraph Charts, click on Flights (on the Navigraph Charts toolbar), unload any old flight plan, and load the new flight plan, selecting your new flight plan from Simbrief.
Once your new flight plan is loaded into Navigraph charts, once again go to the Navigraph toolbar and click on Flights, then select EXPORT … one of the choices you will be given will be “Load as active MSFS Flight Plan”. Click on that choice, update the cruising altitude as shown on your Simbrief FP, and click on the pink Export button.
That’s it … now you can proceed with loading the plan to the MCDU, complete all the FMC programming and do the rest of your flight prep … when it is time for you to request IFR Clearance, the ATC will recognize your filght plan and it will match what is in Simbrief, Navigraph, and your MCDU … AND … they will allow you to request your IFR Flight Plan and ATC will follow your plan … not theirs!
Enjoy!
Perhaps I was a bit premature with this post, so I need to make a correction on it … in step #3 it says emphatically not to load your Simbrief plan from the World Map screen … That will not work in all cases. With my testing to this point, it seems that it works that way with some aircraft but not with all of them. It works that way, for example, with the CRJ, the FBW Airbus, and some (if not all) of the stock Asobo planes but does not work, with the PMDG 737-700 nor with the Salty 747. Depending on what planes you fly and what mods may be installed on those planes, you may still need to load the Simbrief FP from the World Map screen in order for MSFS ATC to recognize you as an IFR flight and allow you to request IFR Clearance. However, even though the setup procedure may vary (you may need to experiment with your aircraft), and even though you may still see garbage on the World Map screen after you change the gate, runway, SID, or STAR, further testing has so far shown that after the Export from Navigraph to “Load as active MSFS Flight Plan”, MSFS ATC as well as the VFR map will recognize the correct Simbrief flight path.
Apologies for the error in the original post and the need for the correction … I hope it did not cause too much frustration.
You are correct in that the ATC/Flight planner on occasion adds crazy **** like this. For the last few months, I’ve been flying IFR/RNAV approaches in VFR, programming the navaids/waypoints manually in the aircraft. For me, this has been an acceptable workaround.
Or, rather more simply: pick the departure gate/stand from the drop-down. That won’t shuffle your loaded flight plan.
Or use LittleNavMap to select a start point and then export that as a .pln when you load that into World Map it will have you at the gate you picked (except not the PMDG 737 for some reason)
Good to know about the Navigraph tip - never tried that route
I have not found this to be the case. I’ll generate a flight plan SimBrief, then load the plan at the “world screen”. That puts me on the runway. Sometimes, and it’s difficult to reproduce, when I then change my departure point from the runway to a gate / stand / ramp… MSFS decides that I need something like a random waypoint 200nm north of the departure airport to start my journey. THEN even if I click on the waypoint and select “remove,” it doesn’t! I really wish they’d let us just use a text box to input the route.
If you load the .pln created by SimBrief, yes it will always put you on the active runway. If you then use the world map to click on a parking sport it will reshuffle the plan. But if you use the drop-down at the top of the screen, it should allow you to select a parking spot without shuffling your flight plan. That always works for me.
My preferred method though is to take the Simbrief generated .pln and load that into LNM first, pick a parking spot and export it as a new .pln and load that into MSFS. That will start you at a gate and there is no chance the the flight plan being shuffled.
I’ve been using that method for over a year now without issue.
I guess the reason they don’t have a simple text string entry system is that it would be a bit more difficult for Xbox users. But that’s not a good reason for denying the option to all users. I mean, it is all a bit of a dogs-dinner, and this bug was supposed to have been fixed back in SU7 or 8.
I always have LNM up to see vatsim traffic, track the flight (in case of CTD) and gather performance data., so its no real extra work for me. Running it through LNM also cleans the .pln file format a reduces the chances of CTD (although this seems to have been fixed for some time now).
But just select a start from the drop-down. I do wish they would make an option for a gate to be the default start position rather than the active. This feature has been requested for a long time now.
Well then over to LNM or the other method posted above (but that needs navigraph).
There is another approach - reverse the flow: use the fligtht plan generated in the Wolrd Map and then export that out into LNM (so you can turn it into a text string) and then import that to SimBrief.
SimBrief does not actually generate very good flight plans - in my view the WorldMap does a better job (Ive compared both many times). Better yet, use a real-world source or a database like EDI-GLA.
I’m glad we’ve got smart folks in the community that have figured this junk out lol.
It’s a little frustrating that we have to jump through so many dang hoops though. Fingers crossed that the flight-planning screen will get some updates / default options in the future.
One thing I like about SimBrief is that it’ll barf out plans to my dedicated flight plan folder, I can set it to chuck things at specific airplanes that can handle it, and I can of course pull up the data in NaviGraph and STKP. I know adding every parking / gate / ramp spot for all the airports would be an undertaking, but man I hope they can do it too.
