As of right now, longer flights as impractical to undertake. It would be fantastic to be able to undertake something like a Trans-Atlantic flight, but at the moment, sitting down for ~8+ hours in once session is a bit much, and not really healthy either.
Being able to “Quit+Save” a flight would be a game changer in terms of the types of missions many players can take on. Since a lot of flight simmers are parents who cannot dedicate an entire day to the sim and for others, sitting down for very long sessions may be too much.
Even if the feature just saved the position of the plane, along with the date/time to pull for weather, I think that would be more than adequate to start.
I rarely get more than an hour or so tops at a time.
I’d love to fly, say a Cessna from Luton to Rome, taking in the sites along the way, but not all in one sitting, I’d like to be able to do it in chunks along the way.
I was looking through the developer documentation and there are indeed save and load flight functions documented. It seems like you are correct and the functionality is there. But for one reason or another, it was not surfaced in the UI.
This is probably something someone from the mod community could test out to see if these api calls are working, and if they’re somewhat functional, make something that will be somewhat passable until this is added into the game.
That is a saved flight plan. Just about the same as in 2020. However, what if one saves and quits while in mid-air? How do you bring up this same plan while you re-load in mid-air?
Actually, since this thread predates MSFS 2024, I’d like to request that this is looked at from the Working Title’s https://planner.flightsimulator.com service they created.
Could this wonderful service also provide an import/export functionality from which I (Xbox) could use to exchange PLN files with my PC friends who would prefer LittleNavMap or such? Could it also be able to import/export in the Navigraph (SimBrief) or SkyVector format(s)?
Disclaimer for DEVs, if the file formats are all the same then please just consider the import/export options.
We fly in a group flight twice every week and this has been lacking for me (only Xbox) since Day 1… so thanks for having provided it!
When you have a route created in the web based planner it has a box listing the departure and arrival airports with all of the waypoints between them.
You can copy and paste that block of text into SkyVectors waypoint block and it will, to the best of its ability, create a flightplan from that block of text.
However there are some airports in MSFS that have ICAO style identifiers that don’t exist in the real world.
So indeed, it would solve “me” sharing to “them” (and I’ll test as soon as this evening with my wingmen) but I have a hard time (maybe 'cause I’m not familiar enough with the format) to capture their LittleNavMap plans and import/edit them.
And you’re right : some ICAOs are present IRL and not in MSFS (and vice versa) so I wouldn’t mind (at all, personally) that the import flags (or straight out deletes) those that are invalid for MSFS.
This would be a great QoL improvement for the flying Xbox’ers (and me!)…
Hopefully, this will be adressed in this version.
Note to Asobo/Working Title folks (and I know you know more than I do) : could you specify this to the Xbox Security Railguard Bureau or Restrictiveness For Console Platforms department at Microsoft? PLN files are text files…) Maybe they would allow the default OneDrive with a specific folder with four-factor-authentication if they wish from which we could download a text file and import it in the Xbox. Maybe?
THANKS! I found it yesterday, in fact. Wonderful tool indeed!! I spoke with Mike from WT on their Discord and he said he’d try to help me “export/import” PLN files but it’s mainly a “Microsoft/Xbox ecosystem thing” (sort of)… I told him he needed to keep on trying since, after all, PLN files are mere text files… So … As long as @Microsoft and @Asobo help him out, I’m sure it could work out.
While the new flight planning tool is an excellent addition, the ability to save and reload a flight in progress, complete with flightplan and aircraft settings has never been resolved in 2020, and does not even exist as yet in 2024.
Why with so many votes at the head of this thread was this lack of basic functionality not even mentioned in the latest dev stream?
You’re absolutely right. The way I use MSFS is by making a (usually very large) flightplan, send it to my friend, and then we fly it together in VR over a few months. Without the ability to save flights, this is basically not possible anymore (it’s already ridiculously buggy in 2020, but we got it working with the work around I posted in this thread). Bottom line is that not being able to save a flight is a showstopper for me and I will not purchase 2024 until (hopefully) this “feature” is implemented. It’s really pathetic.
Please bring a save and resume function to MSFS 2024! It makes absolutely no sense to start an airliner flight when I know that I won’t have a guaranteed 3 uninterrupted hours ahead to just do the shortest of flights. It’s absolutely impossible for me to do even a mid-range flight without the ability to save and resume. FS24 makes no sense to me without this function. How you could even conceive a simulator that includes long-range aircraft without this function is beyond me tbh.
FStarter24 for MSFS2020 / MSFS2024 has a Save and Load Flight function embedded.
Not fully tested in MSFS2024 by me, but if someone try it and report any issues, I will look into it and see if it can be fixed.
It does; however, when you reload a saved flight, the program only places the aircraft in the last known position without the flight plan already in the MCU. Not everybody wants to fly VFR. I mostly fly IFR. FS9, FSX has this ability and 2020 did for a bit (with a work around), but that disappeared with their SU13 or 14 update and never has returned.
So I don’t understand this embedded save/resume flight function.
The “.pln” file format functionality seems to be updated and is receiving updates (see release notes), but the flight session “.flt” functionality does not work, despite it still being in the menus.
