There are many infuriating things about MSFS (both 2020 and 2024), one of those are the PAPIs and Glideslopes.
They hardly ever match, and if they do they’re usually wrong anyway.
If they don’t match, either or both of them are usually wrong, though generally the PAPIs are more accurate.
What is the cause of this? It’s been years now and still a shambles…
With the Glides, from where do they come? Are they from the navdata? Are they somehow default in the sim even when using 3rd party scenery? Are the 3rd party scenery developers responsible for them?
Navigraph who produce the Navdata have years of experience and it was never like this is FSX and P3D, so surely they aren’t messing up most of the time…
It’s the same situation with 3rd party airport developers, many of these have years of experience and produced or still produce scenery for other flight simulators and there isn’t this issue there…
So is it something baked into the sim?
I see a lot of bad landings in MSFS when I watch YouTube videos and streams. So many of these are caused by crossing the runway threshold at totally the wrong height because the glideslope, or the PAPIs have led the poor pilot astray, or they’re having to guess which one is correct etc.
I’d just love to know what is causing this and how it can be solved so this is no longer an issue.
PAPI placement at the autogen airports has been a long standing issue. There are several threads that go into detail, some going back many years. You cross the threshold too high nearly every time.
I’m general, I think GS guidance has been ok compared to PAPI’s.
But they’re also often wrong at 3rd party airports. Is it bad elevation data for the base terrain of the sim or something?
Sadly I have had a different experience with the glideslopes, in so many of the airports I regularly fly to they are off and bring you in halfway down the runway, or smash you into the ground before the threshold. I live in fear for bad weather and having to perform and auto land…
I should add I only fly to 3rd party scenery, and I just can’t believe these experienced developers are consistently getting it so wrong.
Maybe there is an issue with how the sim aircraft receive the signal? Are they way too sensitive, so if you’re only a tiny fraction under or over the glideslope it is showing up as being way under or way over?
There are definitely many many airports where the glide is completely wrong though for sure.
I can’t say I’ve seen that myself. I don’t have any third party airports.
If you have some stock airports with the issue, post the plane, runway, and approach and maybe I can check it out sometime.
From what I’ve seen this is probably two different issues getting lumped together. At a lot of default airports the PAPI placement itself seems off, so you can fly a stable approach and still cross high. When the glideslope is badly wrong at a specific addon field, I usually suspect airport data, elevation, or approach coding not lining up cleanly with the current sim rather than the aircraft suddenly being too sensitive.
The useful test is probably a few exact examples: runway, approach, aircraft, and whether it is stock or 3rd party scenery. Without that it just turns into ‘MSFS glides are bad’ when the failure may actually be coming from different places.