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Post by Les Smith on Feb 12, 2010 4:09:19 GMT -5
 An image of the FSC map and flight plan for my approach to Mt Hotham (YHOT). Having moved to FSX I was unable to use the much liked and trusted FS Navigator (FS9). Therefore, I decided to trial FS Commander. Well as I am now approaching the end of the 2010 GAAR I offer a short criticism of its performance. In general I like it and I will use it again in future flight sim events. The manual needs further development especially in respect of the descriptions and illustrations of the in-built GPS. The AGL window in the GPS truncates the value, lopping off the right most digit. A simple fix for the FSC designers would be to make the window one digit wider. The major fault that I have found with FSC is with the display of time, which is rounded to hours and whole minutes. This is not good enough for racing or attempting to match a time to two decimal places, as we do in the GAAR. The time should be displayed in hours, and minutes to two decimal places. The same as Tom G's excellent Ftimer. As I hope you can see in the above illustration the ETA of this flight plan is displayed as 00:57. So by changing the plan: cruise of the aircraft, rate of descent, approach speed, arrival pattern etc, the display can be changed but only by whole minutes up or down, and one can never create a plan that displays a decimal part of a minute. Tom's Ftimer starts at 35 kts and stops at 26 kts. It recorded 58.10' for this flight by the way. FSC starts its timer at wheels up and stops at wheels down and only displays an accuracy to whole minutes. If anyone knows how to change FSC to display minutes to one or two decimal places I would very much like to hear from you. Otherwise FSC will do everything that FS Nav will do, though with more difficulty in setting bearing points to nav aids. I look forward to the next version of FSC which I hope addresses these issues. Les |
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Post by ukv1342 - Mike on Feb 12, 2010 16:20:55 GMT -5
Les, will look into the timing function - I have the same issue - I use the chrono inside 'co-pilot' (part of the fsinn/copilot package) which i can put on any view to give a constant seconds readout better for tight manoeuvring just before landing - but have found another really great VFR planning / running tool 'Plan-G'. - just put Plan-G into google and try - it is really comprehensive and also gives en route altitude requirements. displays locked to FSX and shows with sat / terrain or hybrid views.
also download the elevation downloads as per the instructions - worth it for the elevation info. Will prob use for flight planning only with altitude planning
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Post by Brett I. Holcomb on Feb 12, 2010 19:19:24 GMT -5
[quote author=smithlr board=gaar2010 thread=383 post=3398
Having moved to FSX I was unable to use the much liked and trusted FS Navigator (FS9). Therefore, I decided to trial FS Commander. Well as I am now approaching the end of the 2010 GAAR I offer a short criticism of its performance.
In general I like it and I will use it again in future flight sim events.
The manual needs further development especially in respect of the descriptions and illustrations of the in-built GPS. The AGL window in the GPS truncates the value, lopping off the right most digit. A simple fix for the FSC designers would be to make the window one digit wider.
The major fault that I have found with FSC is with the display of time, which is rounded to hours and whole minutes. This is not good enough for racing or attempting to match a time to two decimal places, as we do in the GAAR. The time should be displayed in hours, and minutes to two decimal places. The same as Tom G's excellent Ftimer.
As I hope you can see in the above illustration the ETA of this flight plan is displayed as 00:57. So by changing the plan: cruise of the aircraft, rate of descent, approach speed, arrival pattern etc, the display can be changed but only by whole minutes up or down, and one can never create a plan that displays a decimal part of a minute.
Tom's Ftimer starts at 35 kts and stops at 26 kts. It recorded 58.10' for this flight by the way.
FSC starts its timer at wheels up and stops at wheels down and only displays an accuracy to whole minutes.
If anyone knows how to change FSC to display minutes to one or two decimal places I would very much like to hear from you.
Otherwise FSC will do everything that FS Nav will do, though with more difficulty in setting bearing points to nav aids.
I look forward to the next version of FSC which I hope addresses these issues.
Les
[/quote]
FSC is a very nice planner and I have a paid version of it. My biggest beef with it is that it doesn't import MSFS flight plans - and for a planner made for MSFS it seems a big oversight. I have a lot of plans in FS format and download some but if I use FSC I have to reenter them - not real good. The developers haven't seemed interested in addressing that either.
I've found myself using Plan-G a lot recently and used if for GAAR.
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