Hi guys! I would like to make a blurt out! I think in a few months all of us will have to subscribe to navigraph and world map will be forgotten! All new aircraft would just fly without any issue if you are using simbrief/navigraph! So, if you just have MSFS 2020 it is not enough! Is this fair!? I would like to fly these aircraft using world map! At least they could use both options without any issues! What do you think about this!?
This doesn’t just affect the world map but also other in built functions such as fuel and weight & balance in some aircraft. My personal view is that it’s a big fail not to police add-on aircraft to the extent of making sure they are compatible with the in built tools as a basic criteria. To release an aircraft that doesn’t work with the tools in the sim is a big fail in my book. Sure let extra or additional functionality be added but force the devs to make the aircraft work with the in built tools. It’s crazy to think something is designed for use with a product and it’s not compatible with its standard tools.
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I used to have a Navigraph subscription.
I did not dislike it but I seemed to use the World Map more to create flights including IFR/ILS.
I was disappointed in looking at the maps on the MFD for the
approach and airport. Too small to see.
So. I dropped the Navigraph subscription.
Navigraph is for those pilots that want to see all the charts
for all of the data about a flight for planning and navigation.
I’m not into that.
I just want to fly.
So, I’m satisfied with the World Map.
I think many if not most simmers are content with the World Map.
Just my guess.
And, I use Little Navmap which is free and offers plenty of great features and functions.
Also Simbrief which is free (creates Flight Plan only).
So, I don’t see any reason for the World Map to go away.
FS2024 better have it.
And it’s a +1 from me.
I agree with all of you! That is exactly what I think too. For those who just want to fly and make a simple flight planning world map is OK and all aircraft that are created for MSFS should be able to use it. Even using simbrief or little nav map you should have navigraph for a correct AIRAC!
The plane that I most fly today is the Boeing 787-10 from asobo. For me, that is the only aircraft that has both worlds (World map/simbrief) without any issues.
So, for other aircraft that don´t fly without simbrief, ATC does not work. It seems that MSFS is becoming just a platform for other softwares to work together! ATC software, flight planning software, aircraft software and so on…
Disclaimer: I am a Navigraph user.
The World Map has very useful filters which not many users are aware of or talk about. It’s functionality cannot be replaced especially for XBox users who cannot use external NavData, nor can they use an external flight planner.
To be clear, Navigraph data is superior especially outside of CONUS - not to mention the superb integration of Charts as a multi-faceted EFB.
But to be fair, NavBlue data is close to parity inside CONUS thanks to the FAA Supplementary data which started around SU10/11.
It all depends on where you fly and what you need.
If you’re mostly a VFR flyer in CONUS, stock NavBlue + Little Nav Map will tide you over. XBox users are pretty much limited to the World Map as noted above.
If you are a hardcore IFR flyer and/or have overseas routes/plans, Navigraph is a must if you are on PC.
Charts has also made amazing Inroads with their VFR and weather integration. Navigraph has really good demo videos of all their features both on their Website and Discord Channel.
I apologize in advance for having to ask this…
Was there an announcement or comment that initiated this post? This is the first I’ve heard about it, just wondering what I missed.
Thank you.
Nope. OP just wants World Map gone, which isn’t going to happen 'natch.
Thank you!
I’ve been out of pocket and haven’t been able to keep up. Thought I may have missed an announcement.
On the contrary, no? He’s saying he’s frustrated that he can’t use the world map with some aircraft.
Here’s my take on the matter, take it as it is, I am not trying to push for one or the other approach, just making the flightsim better.
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Most developers who don’t have world map, custom weight and balance integration, tend to develop complex high fidelity addons. If the APIs for world map flight plan / weight and balance menu does not meet the necessary criteria to achieve this higher fidelity, they won’t like to use it. There are exceptions to this point though.
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For example FBW A32nx, a high fidelity aircraft does have integration with world map flightplan, although afaik, it’s experimental and it may cause issues. But this aircraft doesn’t use its own nav data but fetches it from sim.
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Another example is all the working title avionics which don’t need any custom nav data and have integration with world map.
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A counter example is iniBuilds A320 and A310 who uses simbrief for flight plan integration, but doesn’t use any custom nav data. Now, just yesterday I came to know from someone from iniBuilds and someone from workingtitle, that this is because they use WASM to handle this part of the addon, while the other aircraft I mentioned earlier uses JS interface for this part of the addon. And the wasm navdata api is limited in some respect compared to the JS API.
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Most other addons with non default avionics (Fenix, PMDG, maddog x all use custom nav data and no integration with world map flightplan. That’s probably because they can’t or don’t want to spend the resource to port their aircraft to use JS api and this makes some sense since their core codebase is from P3D era meaning written in C++ and that translates to wasm more easily compared to JS. When developers say an aircraft is made from scratch, that’s just marketting speak, i don’t think any developer entirely scraps their old codebase to develop for MS, may be models, textures and sounds are made from scratch, but code, i doubt it, because code works as it is written and if written properly, it can be modified with comparatively lower effort to adapt to a newer platform.
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Now MS can make thiese integration mandatory, BUT and this is a big one, how far reaching will they be? May be they can enforce this rule for items which are sold in marketplace and ofcourse to their own planes like A310, A320 and ATR. But how will they dictate what a developer sells in their own website. May be MS can make it part of the SDK license, but this will be very difficult to enforce. Plus it won’t make anything better in flightsim world, you want to enable developers to make better products, not tie their hands.
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BUT having said that, what MS should and probably can do is they should improve all this APIs and make the wasm and JS APIs equivalent, so that developers can choose what they like. And then may introduce such restrictions (since most devs would like to sell in marketplace as well, they should be ok with it, provided the api is sufficient for their use case).
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on a personal note, I find the world map very lacking in terms of flight planning, the UI to select departure and arrival is attrocious, the map doesn’t show different tipes of legs properly and I don’t think it’s usable at all for creating long flightplans with lots of waypoints and airways. Little nav map is much more capable, but yes, it’s only available for pc users I think, don’t know if xbox users can import custom .pln files from cloud. And little nav map doesn’t need navigraph, it’s optional, but it’s perfectly usable with the database loaded from the sim.
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and speaking of weight and balance widget, I find it very clunky to use, no way to input using keyboard, it doesn’t show zero fuel weight. Most addons which either uses a tablet or cdu does it better in my opinion. And it doesn’t even cost you anything extra unlike navigraph.
It’s unclear what he wants other than to not use the World Map. Quite frankly, I’m at a loss to think of which planes cannot use the World Map. Even if you had the capability to load the aircraft up and flight plan outside of the sim (which many planes and utilities allow you to do today), for the most part, loading the plan at the World Map is required to get synchronization with stock ATC, and in many cases, the convenience of having the plan pre-loaded into the aircraft’s FMS if one is available.
Agaiin, many folks don’t take into account that the filters on the World Map are available, and provide a basic capability to flight plan. The W&B screen, while imperfect for some planes, does provide again a basic capability to define pax/cargo/ fuel onboard and CG calculations.
And it’s all the XBox users have, minus any aircraft that can provide a secondary capability in-cockpit using a proprietary EFB.
Having external Navdata is solving a different problem.
Not all aircraft can accept Simbrief imports. So the statement about only having Navigraph/Simbrief going forward, well…
I believe the op is being sarcastic in their post title. They want all MSFS aircraft addons to integrate with the world map flight plan ( which unfortunately even some first party aircraft don’t do, prime example, ATR and A310), in this case they will have to either manually load the route in the cdu which can be tedious or use simbrief, which is great, but for most seamless integration, needs the latest AiRAC cycle from navigraph, otherwise it can use the default AIRAC in simbrief, but that is old and sometime may not match with MSFS navdata like missing waypoints and airways.
Their is another issue of 3rd party aircraft using their own navigraph nav data, which don’t get updated for free, so if the user doesn’t spend money for this, the aircraft nav data becomes out of sync with MSFS eventually.
Excellent post. Very informative. Thank you for the depth… good stuff!
I don’t see why his statement is unclear.
Why is that not clear?
What am I missing?
I don’t know what he is referring to: “in a few months”.
That’s something all flightsims kida are. One solution doesn’t fit all purposes, there can be some sane defaults, but not everyone will be happy with it and will want to customize. And that’s what makes flightsim great. It gives you choices.
You want to use world map and simple flights, sure, knock yourself out, there are plenty of aircraft, both GA and Airliners which integrates with the world map.
You want to go full on hardcore with starting from cold and dark, setting up fmc, manually input fplan, online ATC etc, sure you’ve got options for that too. Plenty of aircraft are there both default and payware where you can do atleast some of it.
You want something in between, you have plenty of options there too, all the working title aircraft and all other aircraft which use WT avionics fall into this category.
When you go for a complex addon you also expect some level of complexity in operating it. Entering flightplan is just one part of it. There are other issues i understand, specially them using 3rd party nav data which becomes outdated unless you pay, and I agree this aspect can and should be improved, but the tools needs to be improved for that to happen.
Please excuse my beginner question sire but what is a what you call a “Simbrief/Navigraph”? Is this a new DLC for the sim?
Joke aside I subscribe to nothing and don´t pay any stupid monthly services for some website just to get a flight pre-planned with one click and lazy load it in with one click. I can perfectly create wonderful flight paths for every GA-plane and also for my Fenix Airbus, and one of the biggest joys of the simulation is carefully pre-planning a flight by programming the Airbus MCDU waypoint to waypoint, or by doing old eighties navigation by looking at a map and write down a flight path from VOR to VOR
Google “jeppesen” (+ airport) and use this:
By the way did you know that you can also input custom waypoints into the Fenix MCDU for sightseeing flights?
For even better and more enhanced and customized flight plans?
Just look for something interesting in Google Maps, write down the coordinates, and converte these to for the MCDU understandable coordinate format:
I think when a flight begins by loading some stupid one-click simbrief into a plane´s board computer instead of the joys of carefully manually programming the MCDU, half of the fun of the awesome cockpit and computer simulation is missing
Yep that’s the way forward. If you enforce nothing, like appears to be the case currently with lots of SDK related things in the sim then you end up with a free for all and no standards. This makes compatibility a big issue. If the devs can’t do what they need then the obvious solution for the good of the sim as a whole is to fix what’s broken and/or provide what’s missing. I think that’s happening somewhat with the SDK updates and things like the WT improvements but there are still plenty of aircraft that break compatibility and that’s just not a great situation. You have to have some level of standards and I personally think some aircraft in some aspects are outside what I think should be expected.
Microsoft have the capability and power to tighten up on this if they wanted.
That would massively limit the possibilities of aircraft being correctly simulated. Many aircraft we have today wouldn’t be possible with the simplified fuel and payload system the sim provides.
Quality can be released by extending beyond the limitations a sim provides. That’s what we have been living from in the sim community for decades. Sims that have limited themselves to a too tight sandbox have always had a side appearance. Success comes only when 3rd party developers have the possibilty to be creative and expand the sim.