When I have a flight plan set with my parameters, once I set VNAV and start initial descent from FL 350 to say, 9000 feet at location 100 miles away from point A, why is it sometimes that the plane deviates from that midway descent and proceed straight away to point B? I noticed it would be descending at a leisurely 1800 fpm and all of a sudden it descends at 3000 fpm and turns to point B instead of point A. Why is that so and any tips to overcome this in future flights?
Also, I believe there is an issue with the timelog when I go back and review the flight playback. Even with AP+, upon review of the playback footage, the entire flight isn’t shown and the plane appears shaking during takeoff / taxi / landing.
In general, I don’t recommend using VNAV in Infinite Flight as it’s a little too simplified, and will often try to force you into crazy descent profiles. Also, the SID and STAR altitudes are often minimum altitudes, so they aren’t really suitable to use as autopilot targets and real-life planes will often be much higher.
Typically I use the 3 NM per 1000 feet rule of thumb to figure out when to start my descent, at which point I set throttle to idle, and then use the V/S control to maintain a suitable airspeed until hitting the final altitude target.
I think your first problem was answered, but if it wasn’t, I’m not sure what I would do except follow @PA881’s advice
For this, know that only the parts where you are active are able to have replays recorded. That’s why there’s a difference between the entry and replay pages when looking at your logbook. So there will be know replayable part for the period that AP+ is engaged.
The camera shaking is a known issue and will be fixed hopefully in the hotfix coming this week! Hope this helps!
Oh, I didn’t know that! But doesn’t using VNAV allow the aircraft to automatically start descent about 140 to 150 NM from the destination? In my last flight, I set my altitude as FL 350 as cruise altitude and allowed the flight to descend to 9000 feet at waypoint A, and then so and so forth. Do you recommend starting VNAV at a lower altitude to avoid having unrealistic descent profiles? If so, at what altitude / FL?
Also I’ve been using IF for the past year and a half and I don’t know what is SID and STAR! I’ve always wondered how to use it. Can you give an example using ORD to LHR flight? And is SID / STAR better to use than depending on an airport’s generic departute and approach pathways?
Could you care to explain? I tend to stay within the same cruising speed during initial descent and slowly reduce them via notch as the altitude of the aircraft permits.
SID means Standard Instrumental Departure a pre planned flight route to ensure safe transition to en-route airspace.
STAR means Standard Terminal Arrival Route similarly a pre flight route for transition to your arrival runway.
I would recommend using simbrief for your flight planning routing it will automatically integrate the recommended SID and STAR profile to your flight route. I’m not aware of the SID profiles for KORD so can’t answer that. For LHR you would be using using North West or West profiles for STAR.
Definitely as both these airports have standard profiles and are updated so it will be similar to like IRL.
Would recommend to disconnect vnav and reduce your vs less than 1000vs and you can also transition to the next waypoint using waypoint direct feature less than 3nm from your next turn.
I used simbrief and that was so cool! Having the flight plan to automatically fly a predefined path on takeoff and before descent is just wow!! Quick question - does AP+ work even if we use simbrief flight plans? I noticed the cruising altitudes tend to change slightly from time to time throughout the flight.