When will VFR flight planning be fixed?

Brief description of the issue:
The NAV log is broken and has been so since day one, something that is especially annoying on a sim that is virtually THE VFR machine. My problem: the column „Heading“ is a complete misnomer, the numbers in it are not headings but courses (also called desired tracks). The difference: none (if there is no wind) to substantial (when there IS wind). Proper flight planning takes a course from the map, calculates a so-called “wind correction angle” (WCA) and a Ground speed (true airspeed corrected for Head- or Tailwind component. That gives both the heading to be flown and the timing for that leg between two checkpoints.
And that is not done at all nor is it editable manually.
In their bush trips, Asobo cleverly avoids that problem by just not introducing any wind worth mentioning. Many pilots also like to fly when the air is not still…
The only solution for me so far is to fly one of the GPS aircraft where I can either stupidly follow the CDI GPS course or by putting my track indicator on where my course is. No nice VFR dead reckoning is possible on the steam-gauge aircraft
I can’t print out a corrected Nav log because I don’t want to take off my VR goggles all the time in flight nor do I wish to fiddle around with additional windows.
And there IS already a nav-log in-game that just does not do its job.
Why not quickly calculate proper headings and flight times when the flight is being loaded?
Yes, winds change and after two hours of flight it is not as accurate as it is towards the beginning when the winds fit the calculation properly, but hey, that is what “classic” navigation is all about!
That this issue that is so detrimental to the core-strength of MSFS, VFR flying, has not yet been adressed is very disappointing. And besides, it really should not be too work-intensive to fix.

Detail steps to reproduce the issue encountered:
Try to fly a VFR flight plan with any crosswinds of more than 10, 15 kts on any non-GPS aircraft without a paper Navlog.

The solution I use is to use one of the addon panels that can show the Little NavMap web server inside the sim. Little NavMap calculates the WCA’s automatically based on the weather or you can set the conditions manually. Also the map (especially with the topo layer) is way closer to what an aviation map should look like than the joke we have called the “VFR map” inside the sim.
https://www.rafaelsantos.es/web/simulators/flight-simulator/panels/105-ingamepanel-navmap-for-flight-simulator

You can also just export the flight plan from LNM (with pre set winds) as flp and load it before the flight. That way you’ll get the courses in the navlog.

2 Likes

Your last sentence: do you mean the proper adjusted headings? If so, that would be a great leap forward for me. But it’d nevertheless be a workaround.

I believe so. For sure your can see them in the LNM panel. You could also just edit the PLN file and change the headings.

Nope that won’t work. There are no headings in the PLN-file, just the waypoint coordinates and altitudes.
And I don’t do subscriptions, so that option of LittleNavMap-window integration does not work for me.
Besides, I do consider some sort of proper VFR flight planning an integral demand of a “Flight Sim for simmers” (Jörg Neumann).

If you’re not flying in VR you can just put little nav map on another monitor.

Yeah, if I still flew non-VR that would definetely be an option.