It would be nice to have the terrain and elevation data overlayed onto the flight planning/world map. The “Blend” view isn’t very accurate at best and is non existant once you zoom in to about 1:500 000 map scale. This would make VRF flight planning a lot more realistic and even IFR. This doesn’t have to be 3D (though that would be cool). But when looking at real aero charts the topographical data is represented.
Agreed. About a week ago, I put in a VFR plan on the flight planning tool from Ogden (KOGD) to Aspen (KASE) for a quick 172 flight. I noticed in the flight planning profile that it defaulted the cruise altitude to the same altitude as Aspen (7800 ft) so set that up to about 11,000 ft. About half an hour into the flight, I ran across terrain that was about 12,500 to 13,000 ft and had to climb. Having the Aero Charts or some sort of 1,000 ft topo line map would have made the flight planning portion a lot easier.
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ForeFlight does this. It’s really useful, particularly in underpowered aircraft! It also depicts restricted airspace along the route, and allows you to set the corridor width and hazard altitudes.
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I think something like this integrated into the sim would be ideal - I’d personally be reluctant to have it as payware as I went for the Premium Deluxe edition. But just something that depicts the on-route terrain data would be a great start. At the moment I’m having to cross reference with Skyvector.com.
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I currently do most of my stuff in Alaska so I tend to go with the FAA’s AvCam Plus Site ( https://avcamsplus.faa.gov/) for route planning. I do like that they have weather camera stations for most of Alaska and Canada and recently added some in Colorado. They also have the ability to turn on the VFR, IFR Low & High and Terminal Area charts. You can also view a lot of the terminal area and weather information. Admittedly most of the chart information is US only, but they also offer METARs and TAFs for a lot of the world.
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The WYSIWYG Flight Planner in FSX had a far better UI than that in FS2020.
Drag and drop, setting altitudes along the flight path, etc etc … It was SO much better.
The current one is virtually useless, and seems difficult, if not impossible to edit, without starting again.
It is as if ASOBO never even looked at the FSX planner, to incorporated any of its good features into their design.
Yes, there will always be better and more complex external Flight Planners, but the Basic one in the Sim should at least be as functions as the one that was back in FSX.
This FS2020 planner is a step BACKWARDS - More suited to MS FLIGHT than MSFS2020
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Try fsxmap. com
You can track your flight live in FS2020 or FSX and it also has a topology map.
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It would help tremendously with flight planning