I have a question for the developers and experienced Infinite Flight pilots.
Are there any plans to improve or provide guidance on manually flying IFR arrivals and approaches without using LNAV?
I’d like to hand-fly procedures in Infinite Flight, but I’m struggling to understand how to know when to turn to the next published heading or leg without simply letting LNAV do everything.
For example:
What should I be looking at in the cockpit to know it’s time to turn?
How do I know when I’ve reached the next leg or fix while hand-flying?
Which instruments in Infinite Flight should I rely on to fly a STAR or approach manually as realistically as possible?
I know I can use HDG mode with ATC vectors, but I’m specifically interested in manually flying the published procedure without LNAV.
If this is already possible in Infinite Flight, I’d love to learn the correct technique. If not, is this something that could be improved in the future with better guidance or training resources?
If we’re talking airliners, in real life they have Flight Directors which has been a feature request on IF for a long time:
So there is a lot more workload relying on what’s available to us in IF. When I manually fly procedures I accept that it won’t be perfect. Honestly the easiest method for me is not the most realistic, but it’s honestly just looking at the shape of the flight plan while having the mini map on. To be fair I’d rather be more accurate than more realistic (which the latter isn’t even that possible because of the lack of the flight director).
Well before I was flying on the expert server, I would do a lot of hand flying on casual server (I really wanted to avoid violations if I messed up). So that helped me get an idea of how the plane turns and generally performs in departure and approach speeds.
Another quick way is of course to have charts, but that isn’t always an option. You can also look at the headings of the next leg—as they show up on the flight plan— and maybe write them down on a piece of paper because it’s probably not practical to open the FP interface when hand flying.