Uncommanded quick responses - flight following, IFR

[CharlieFox00]

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

During career missions, after departing non-towered fields, career menu performs several uncommanded quick responses in rapid succession. The first automatically asks for flight following, the next IFR clearance, despite not being filed as such (verified flight was VFR in the EFB). This has happened several times.

Once the flight following initiates (again, uncommanded), I cancel manually. Then about 30 seconds later, an IFR clearance request initiates uncommanded, which I also have to cancel manually. During these auto sequences, there is no pilot voice or boxes in the comm panel, just rapid ATC directions. ATC also talks over me as I’m manually canceling.

If applicable, which aircraft is experiencing this issue:

SF50, XCub

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

About 60% of flights

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

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[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

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[CharlieFox00]

On the way from KGIC to S69 and it did it again.

One thing I observed is that there was a mission steps menu goal of “contact the next atc agent” or something to that effect, as well as one to open an IFR flight plan. I did NOT do any quick responses, but a minute or so after that appeared, the contact agency turned red as if I failed a check, then went through a LOT of steps to make a flight following request. Again, the comm window shows zero communication on my side, just rapid-fire “responses” from ATC:

As you can see, my next action was to cancel flight following. However, the mission steps goal to call for IFR clearance remained. Then, 30 seconds or so later, that one turned red, again, as if I had failed a check. It then proceeded to do the IFR clearance dialogue on its own:

I had to wait for rapid-fire ATC “conversation” (all one-sided) until I could cancel that:

I sincerely hope this is just a bug and the intent is not to force us to do flight following or IFR (in VMC). I’ll stop using career if that’s the case.

[CharlieFox00]

Did it again. U56 to KPOY. This is getting ridiculous.

However, I was able to capture some of the nonsense. This is what pops up immediately on climbout:

I did not file IFR or request flight following, and did not tune ZLC center.

If I do not acknowledge, eventually it does this and initiates the rigamarole:

[Jummivana]

Hi there! Just to confirm, two questions for you:

Does this happen on any career mission type or have you noticed it only on certain ones?

Did you ever run into this issue before the Beta?

Thanks!

[CharlieFox00]

Hi Jayne, it happens on light cargo and ferry flights. The only other types of flights I’ve done are skydiving and first flights and it does not happen during those.

This started during the beta and never happened prior.

[CharlieFox00]

As a followup, I’m currently flying out of my second towered field since the beta launched. Both flights were filed VFR, but I only have the option to request an IFR clearance. The fields have been very much VMC. I believe this is related to the auto-request for IFR when airborne from non-towered fields.

[CharlieFox00]

Another update:

Currently ferrying a Vision Jet from Lusk, WY (KLSK) to Custer State Park (3V0).

My normal routine since week 2 or so has been to use the EFB during the preflight briefing to change the assigned course, altitude, etc. In doing this, my understanding was the only way to get the in-flight dialogue and guidance boxes (which I don’t use anyway) to match your plan is to press “file plan with ATC.” Keep in mind, I did this under VFR 99% of the time.

Prior to the beta, even if I did this, just let me fly VFR without the rigamarole of all the ATC dialogue. Only since the beta has it been giving me these uncommanded responses and IFR filing in the air (which was also unwarranted and unwanted). The flight I just completed 30 minutes ago had all of this happen again.

This flight, however, I opted to just leave the plan as-is. Well, I’m currently halfway through the flight and none of the auto-responses have shown up. So I wonder if since the release of the beta, the “file plan with ATC” is now triggering these dialogues.

Will test on a few more flights.

[CharlieFox00]

Update: Did a Cessna 172 cargo flight from KRWL to WY00

I changed a few things in the EFB during the preflight briefing for a direct VFR flight and pressed “file plan with ATC.” Sure enough, I got the auto-dialogue all the way to an IFR clearance.

After that I flew another Cessna flight MT93 to 32S

For this flight, I did not change anything in the EFB during the preflight and did not get the auto-dialogue during the flight.

Summary: I think the “file plan with ATC” button is causing this. Since there seems to be no consequence as to whether we fly the EFB route or not, and I elect not to use the guidance boxes anyway, it really doesn’t matter to me if I use that modality.

However, as this represents a change from the base game, it should probably be published as such, and perhaps give some guidance as to how the process is intended to work. Additionally, I still consider this a bug as it obviously files an IFR plan and does all the auto responses, regardless of the pilot “filing” it as a VFR plan. In my opinion, preflight the planning portion of the flight should be siloed into the following actions:

• Planning the route and altitude
• Filing a VFR or IFR flight plan
• Sending the plan to the avionics

The guidance boxes should follow the “send to avionics” rather than having to send the plan to ATC.

Once in the sim, none of this should automatically initiate anything with regard to ATC or runway assignments = those should be independent actions. The runway selection should take place from a pilot dialogue prior to taxi, whether at a towered airport or not (tower should obviously select the runway based on current in-sim winds, etc). We should always have the option to change runways (or request a change from tower) at our discretion - pre-taxi, during taxi, even when on the runway. Same goes for landing - there is too much predisposition to runway assignments based on factors we are not observing or understanding. This is why we have been doing this weird process of sending to ATC.

In the sim, activating a VFR flight plan should be entirely at our leisure and entirely optional. IFR plans are a little more complicated and a little beyond the scope of a brief discussion.

[Chewwy94]

Thanks for answering the questions posed above and giving some further information!

We have created an internal ticket to see if our team already has this logged, and if not they will attempt to reproduce the issue and create a new bug report. This item is now marked as feedback-logged. If there is an existing bug report or one is created, we will move this thread to bug-logged.

[Jarannis]

I’ve managed to find a workaround for the IFR clearance requirement, and from my experience, it seems like when you file with ATC makes a difference. (this is all from trying to minimize medium cargo flight frustrations and eliminate hypoxia when flying the PC-12)

When looking at the mission briefing, making changes to the flight plan does not update the blue line on the map unless you submit to ATC. Switching from IFR to VFR is retained at this point.

After accepting the mission and moving to the hangar screen, the EFB will have all changes you made previously to the waypoints, cruise altitude, and flight type.

When you load in to do your pre-checks and pull covers, the EFB will still be correct, but after you are seated in the cockpit and listen to the first officer’s introduction, the flight rules will reset to IFR. Changing it to VFR and submitting it to ATC at this point specifically: after First Officer introduction and before engine startup, actually saves that you are flying VFR and updates the comms prompts.

The mission steps, guidance indicators, and communication prompts will be updated to match your selected flight plan. This includes cruise altitude (FL180 instead of 200+).

Prompts will be correct for the remainder of the flight, with the exception of some trips where there are errant prompts about “Fly to None”, prompts about being on final not appearing, on incorrect mission goals at the end of the flight (“Announce landing” vs “Contact destination airport” for towered vs non-towered, “Contact destination airport” correct but prompts to announce on final, pattern entry instructions, clearance to land, then the ATC panel getting stuck on “Announce taxi to parking” after tower prompted contacting ground.)

When prompted to announce taxi instead of contact ground, you can contact ground via COM2, receive parking clearance, and respond to parking clearance (sometimes) but the destination waypoint does not generate, and the taxi assistance arrows do not appear.

[CharlieFox00]

Interesting. In my case, IFR was never selected, but it did it anyway. I’m not in the habit of using the EFB in the plane, but I will try checking it before moving the plane to see if it changed to IFR and if I can thrn change it back to VFR.

The last part of your observation did happen to me once as well.

[CharlieFox00]

Another update: flew a couple flights last night. In this case I did the workaround that @Jarannis suggested - resubmitting the “file plan with ATC” while on the ramp, before taxiing out. This mitigated the autofile/autoresponse/autodialogue issue for that flight.

So the issue is why does it behave differently (incorrectly) if I do the exact same thing during the preflight?

[Jummivana]

Is it possible that you have AI Radio Communications enabled?