Lack of arrows appearing might mean the SayIntentions-SimObjects-Optional link is missing in the Community folder of whichever sim you’re using.
Like if you originally installed SayIntentions for use in MSFS2020 and then later started using it in MSFS2024, the original installation/setup probably put SayIntentions-SimObjects-Optional in the MSFS2020 Community folder but may never have gotten it into the MSFS2024 Community folder…is just me guessing but have a look.
I’ve just looked in my Community folder and it says that folder is there… but when I click to open it it says it isn’t! Maybe I should reinstall?
“Real life” is also just a buggy mess that costs you thousands of dollars a month and its developer is neither listening to criticisms nor fixing the bugs! 
OK my taxi arrows issue is sorted thanks to the most amazing customer support on the Discord!
Very helpful and patient developer talked me through checking my system, discovered there was a file missing, and sorted it for me. This is solid gold, five star customer service. Highly recommended.
Basic question re VFR flight planning and SI.
I am totally confused about the simplest way to do this, given the number of ways of doing VFR flight plans now [(a) Simbrief “outside” of MSFS 2024, (b) Simbrief “inside” of MSFS, (c) the inbuilt EFB planner itself [i.e. not Simbrief], (d) “Free Flight” from the World Map, (e) Navigraph, (f) LittleNavMap].
I have looked at various YT videos, but none seem to set out the simplest, basic, most reliable method, that oldies like me can follow/try out.
Any guidance would be very much appreciated.
Just to stress - VFR plans, using SayIntentionsAI, is my preferred way of flying, predominantly in the G36 Bonanza Improvement Project - so with G1000s.
I have a Navigraph subscription.
Thanks in advance, Alasdair (aka FlyBasher…)
I haven’t used SI in a while, but I don’t think you even need a flight plan at all. Just spawn your plane at whatever airport you want, call tower or whomever, say “Podunk Tower, Bonanza N123, with [ATIS}, request VFR departure to the [Direction of travel]”. They’ll give you your clearance, and tower will give you heading for takeoff, and then give VFR instructions thereafter. Then fly to your destination, perhaps request flight following, and depending on what class of airport, you call approach or whomever and “say intentions”, , i. 10 miles south of Barharbor request full stop landing.
I’ve done very little VFR on VATSIM, but no flight plan is needed, even in real life (though recommended).
(Above is US based, unsure if Europe etc VFR. is different.)
Weekly, sometimes daily flyer, with SayIntentions every time I fly. If you want to go VFR, you don’t need to plan anything at all (though if you’re going for realism, you should, let’s be honest) - do you need to file that plan with SI? Nope.
If you want to go IFR, you must use SimBrief to create your plan because that’s what SI retrieves your plan from. You can prefile with SI from SimBrief, which is cool but not required.
When you’re VFR, depending on your departure airport, you may need to request VFR clearance, which is pretty normal for some busy airports. ATIS will tell you if you need to. And you should probably check ATIS during pre-flight anyway right? If you need to transit an airspace, call and ask. It’s pretty darn good in my opinion.
And since you’re using Charts, all the frequencies on your charts are recognized by SayIntentions.
I never fly without SayIntentions now, to be completely honest.
Having used beyond ATC previously I decided to get hold of SI as I have heard good things about it.
So to put it to the test I tried it out with the Flybywire mod A320 neo on a flight from Kaunas in Lithuania up to Enontekio in Northern Finland.
First up I requested clearance and noticed that the reply was in the American clearance format with expect this altitude 10 mins after departure and the departure frequency etc.
The next issue I had was the push back where it got all buggy and actually suggested going on their discord to resolve. I was using GSX to push back.
I received clearance to taxi at my discretion but then had to prompt the ATC for departure clerance as I was lined up on the runway in silence.
After departing out I spent what seemed like ages at 4000 feet before I again had to prompt the ATC for climb clerance.
I then decided to ask for more direct routing and received a direct to for a waypoint that was the very next one I was flying to anyway.
As I got closer to my destination ATC contacted me with arrival information and descend when ready clearance. I was then vectored to the ILS approach successfully albeit on a longer than necessary route.
Once I reported established it was acknowledged but I received no clearance to land and no further communication at all from ATC!!
Now admittedly I just jumped in so some of the above issues may be down to me.
Other observations.
All ATC voices were English/ American I have no doubt though that we will see more regionally appropriate voice sets going forwards. I did like how at the end of each initial communication ATC would add a greating in the country’s language. Really nice touch.
I also liked the feature where you could hear other pilot comms for the area you were in. Added some great immersion although sometimes the timing was off eg I was flying early morning and heard good afternoon evening etc.
Also really liked the cabin crew announcements in the back which were relevant and again added great immersion. My only issue being I couldnt find a way to make them louder.
I also tried talking to my co pilot. I asked her how far we were from our destination and got told a totally wrong answer. It could be that the AI had issues with the pronounceation of Enontekio and might have read it as somewhere else!
I also asked my co pilot for the time we were expected to arrive and got given a weather report!
I then asked them for the descent checklist and got told that was my job!!
On the whole I liked SI. I knew it wouldn’t be perfect and is still a work in progress. I’ll certainly continue to use it for future flights.
Great info - thank you very much.
Regards, A
Very helpful - thank you very much.
Regards, A
OpenSKY Free version:
Is anyone using SI with full IFR plans? if so, so you get approach instructions when coming from a STAR?
Im trying SI out, at the moment, so flew from LEGR → LEAM, with an IFR plan filed.
departure was expected and was given FL changes to cruise.
(though no other instructions)
but I expected at/near end of the STAR, Id get
but I got nothing… at all,
in ‘desperation’, I ended up requesting flight level changes to bring me down, and few to the airport (using proc I decided on) , until I was handed to tower… and even then, I had to request landing…
It felt like it was being handled as VFR flight… basically with no flight plan 
note: I had filed the ifr filght plan with SayIntentions via simbrief, and request IFR clearance before take-off, so all appeared ok (SI website also logged it as an IFR flight)
thoughts?
Im trying the 24 hour demo, but so far, Im not so sure if its not really using the flight plan fully.
edit: just noticed discord has a #setup-and-trial-help, so checking in their as well to see what the ‘issue’ is.
I noticed in some YT videos, some got approach instructions, and some didn’t.
I think it can sometimes happen but very rarely. I get “expect” instructions 90% of the time or more. In cases where something feels off, I just ask ATC to give me instructions and it usually does so.
yeah, I just tried another flight (this time in the US), and I got the expected behaviour.
in fact, this time around ATC was pretty ‘chatty’.
Maybe it just needed to warm up to you since you’re a new user. 
ok, so my 24 hour trial is done…
(Id recommend others give it a go, to see what they think)
generally, I like what SAI is doing, when it works it feels really natural.
I did 7 flights, 6 IFR , 1 VFR.
it worked pretty well for 4 out 6 IFR flights, but 2 (including the one above) it just seemed to lose track of me, during the approach phase- I checked the logs, and it just never brought me down.Ive a feeling for big airports its probably ok, but struggling on others?
its actually nice that SAI allows you to review the comms you’ve had on every flight.
the VFR flight was pretty good, it let me get on with it, have flight following, and I could ask it for vectors for final approach which was nice.
also, I used the opportunity to try the tour guide which was fun… though you can tells its just giving you what you’d get off chatGPT, but its nice it is position aware.
co-pilot didnt really do much for me, as its only for IFR flights, but I do think there is scope there for something really interesting.
overall, I like it… ofc, its still early days for it, so not surprised it has issues.
is it worth 185 euros / year (18.50/month)?
obviously this depends on personal situation, but for me…
if it was accurate then Id say yes.
but Im not sure I can justify it when 1/3rd of my flights didn’t complete correctly.
so I think, I’ll keep an eye on it, see if they can improve its accuracy.
one minor ‘fear’ I have, is that they seem to want to keep adding ‘features’,
but for me, the priority has to be having an accurate flight experience,
if I have to tell ATC how to do its job, or just descending as its not tracking me, then that seems to be an issue.
but again, its early days, still developing…
but not sure I can justify 185euros to help beta test it 
My thoughts, exactly. It works quite well for me in VFR, but I’ve lost confidence in SI for IFR flying. It’s hit and miss, I’m afraid. I wish they would quit adding cool features and just get the basics right.
EDIT: Since my old website doesn’t exist anymore, I’ll remove the links to it.
great write up… and Id agree with the points you make.
I do think it’s a shame, that sometimes developers are overly ‘defensive’.
Ive also got BeyondATC and unfortunately, whilst I think their videos dont come across as pushy as SAI, their discord/community moderators are just as defensive.
why is overly defensive bad?
( and don’t get me wrong, Im a developer and its an easy trap to fall into, I do it at times too, - and Ive known other developers doing the same )
a) it can come across as passive aggressive, not a good look to your (or potential) customers.
b) if your not careful you fall into the trap of justification, rather than listening.
you are better to just thank for the feedback and move on…
(and yes, again, as a passionate dev, that is much easier to say than do )
back on topic… though,
after playing with BeyondATC more, Im actually considering moving back (and subscribing) to SayIntentions, despite my criticisms above…
why?
opensky/skynet - I think the multiplayer side of SAI is going to be very enjoyable.
(this is not something BATC are doing, they believe BATC is a single player experience)
whilst I had issues with SAI getting approaches wrong, and initially felt BATC was better at this - Ive also been experience similar issues with BATC.
so Im starting to think neither are ‘perfect’ , so perhaps SAI flexibility is actually the better trade off.
BATC is not as cost-free (once purchased) as it seems…
Ive been getting a lot of issues with the ‘Basic (no cost)’ voice engine, and the response I got from support was “we cannot guarantee response from this free service”, basically, buy premium voices if you want full reliability!
… and that brings us back to the price of SAI, and subscription model.
as @StudentWolke4 points out above.
whilst there are free LLM/Speech services available, they all have caveats on usage, you exceed this, the service at a minimum degrades.
so to get something reliable, you (or your provider BATC/SAI) have to pay, so the sub model is unavoidable.
soo… is SAI worth it? thats the issue…
at the moment it feels high cost for what it provides, but hopefully it means they also paying that on for a decent SLA on the services they use.
its a tough one, esp, as we are getting inundated with everyone wanting us to subscribe, but it does feel like your getting what you pay for here.
I think the drive to add features is to entice more users through the product being more broad ranging. I will be absolutely honest - one of the things that made me decide to go with SI was its inclusion of cabin crew and mentors, which BATC and others didn’t have. There are standalone cabin crew addons such as Cabby, but that is pretty pricey for JUST the cabin crew, so SI is in some ways unique in what it offers.