We can add that at some point – that’s something I’ve thought about adding at some point.

If you have a hat switch you can navigate the menu from the hat switch.

very interessino and useful insights!

one other question on the ATC … Is there a command to read back ATC instructions or can it be added in a future release? It is sometimes a bit cumbersome to hit enter, navigate with cursor and hit enter again, especially when flying the approach … I’ve sometimes mistakenly cancelled the IFR flight instead, just because the two are close to one another … it would be nice to be able to bind the read back to a joystick button and do this in an easier way (yes I know this wouldn’t be possible IRL …)

I can’t speak to Ben Gurion, but I can tell you a -lot- about KBOS, which could give you some indication of what life is like at a large international airport servicing heavy jets and commuter props with dense traffic.

1. You really only fly into the airport because you need to land there. I actually heard a student pilot request touch & go’s at KBOS (who the hell was his instructor?!?!) on a Friday afternoon, and it took the approach controller 3 tries to understand controller to even understand the request because it’s so ridiculous…it would be like learning to parallel park in the Indi 500 during a race. Suffice it to stay, the student was denied.

2. The only reason you would change runways is due to operational concerns…e.g at KBOS if they are mostly departing 7000 foot runways and you are a very heavy heavy, you can request the arrival runway for departure because it’s longer (10k feet). You can also request one of the inactive crossing runways (for departure, not arrival) and amazingly they will give it to you…but really only if it makes -ATC’s- job easier. In other words, if you were going to request the long runway (which you can demand because your heavy jet needs it) maybe they’ll give you a weird one – whatever gets more planes out faster).

3. If you’re flying an airliner jet, you are by definition not an inexperienced pilot. Pilots do request ILSes because sometimes airlines require them to fly a certain number of ILS periodically for practice. But if the airport is busy and more planes are going to land if the airplane can take the visual approach, that’s what you’re getting.

4. In real life, at least at big international airports, everyone gets to land but no one gets to practice. So it’s not that the 737 has priority, but as a C172 you can do things the 737 can’t, e.g. land on a 1/4 mile final. The VATSIM guys had a recording of a C172 pilot trying to land runway 27 at KBOS – this is a case where they have to put the C172 down the airliner’s runway, and the results are … interesting to listen to. ATC continuously asks the C172 pilot to “keep the speed up”, and the C172 pilot says he doesn’t want to “miss the runway”. The issue is that there’s an MD80 coming up on the C172’s tail .. ATC has put a huge space between them and it’s getting smaller since the MD80 is going over 2x as fast as the Cessna. So in real life as the C172 pilot you’re going to get brought in to the runway at a funny angle and you’ll be asked to make a crazy turn on final to keep you flying for a long time at slow speed on the final approach course. On departure, you’ll be turned off runway heading immediately to make room for other airplanes.

Anyway, none of this is modeled in the x-plane AI ATC. The AI ATC simply runs the flows it gets from WED. If there are no flows, it picks flows based on whatever the longest wind-aligned runway is.

Thanks for the tips. Never used WED so I’ll look into this.

As I don’t have any real-life piloting experience I can only imagine asking for a runway change from a non-ILS to an ILS runway would normally happen due to low visibility or a non-experienced pilot feeling uncomfortable landing an airline jet without ILS aid. The specific airport I was approaching was LLBG which, in x-plane, has two ILS runways and a non-ILS runway. I imagine in real-life, ATCs would normally always give airline jets ILS preference at such an airport. Is this modeled in the AI? (i.e. does the AI give any ILS runway priority based on the plane charactertistics – e.g. 737 vs a Cessna)?

Thanks.

As Ben said fairly easy in WED with flows. What I would much rather see is a “pick you ramp spot to taxi to” option.

Andrew, you might try increasing the landing gear rolling coefficient of friction from 0.025 to 0.110 like I did on my tail draggers and that made a huge difference in the handling of the aircraft when taxiing, takeoff & landing.

You can’t request the destination runway with ATC but you can control it by one of:

1. Changing the weather (if the airport has multiple airport “flows” or)
2. Editing the airport in WED and simply changing (or adding) the flow information.

If the airport has no flow info and you want a runway, it’s relatively easy to pick a runway – you just need to add one flow with no wind, time or vis rules and one runway for all equipment types (takeoff and landing).

We may add “pick a runway” someday, but this is also a little bit tricky – if the airport is -in use- by the AI aircraft with a different runway, the runway you want might be out of flow.

One question/request:

I was doing an IFR flight today to an airport with ILS and non-ILS runways and was given a non-ILS runway for landing. Is there a way to instruct ATC to give me another runway as I wanted to do an ILS approach? I seem to remember FSX had an ATC instruction requesting a different runway. If not, is there any other way to preset the destination runway for the ATC and are there any plans to implement this feature.

Thanks.

This was aimed at Randy Shore above, it just did not reply right, user error for sure.

I believe I read somewhere before that this wont overlap , or disable custom packs; I see this to be true.

However, for cities I do not have scenery installed ( airports yes, but city, no) such as Denver, Peoria Illinois, Boise – I do not see any buildings that were shown in the NYC images. my settings are set to “tons”

am I mis understanding ? thanks