As we know, some aircraft in Infinite Flight aren’t always able to hit their target mach speed. For example, if I am flying in the A350 and I set my target speed to M0.85 via the autopilot panel, the aircraft will often only maintain M0.84 according to the HUD/PFD.
That’s no biggie, because I can manually adjust my target mach speed my manually adjusting thrust and resetting the target speed (still within the M0.85 range) and seeing what effect this has on the mach speed the aircraft actually maintains. There are a few issues with this, which I will explain below.
As shown in this image, the target speed is M0.85 (shown in the autopilot panel on the right), but the speed the aircraft is maintaining is M0.84 (as shown on the left hand side of the screenshot). I am not sure if the target speed is M0.850 or M0.859 (which is a sizeable difference).
I am also not sure how close the aircraft is to M0.85, it could be at M0.840, M0.844, or M0.849 for all I know. This is a sizeable difference of around 5kts GS.
My proposed fix is: Display 3 decimal places of mach in the HUD and PFD in Infinite Flight. Instead of seeing my cruising speed as M0.84, I would be able to see M0.843 (or whatever it actually is).
It would be very helpful and would provide an additional degree of realism if the HUD and PFD in infinite flight showed our mach to 3 decimal places. The reasons for this are;
- In real cockpits, the PFD shows mach to 3dp (I am not sure about the HUD)
- I am not sure how mach rounding works in infinite flight. For example, if I am cruising in-game at M0.840, then I would assume the HUD shows M0.84, but if I am cruising at M0.845, I am not sure if IF would display M0.84 or M0.85 (by rounding). By displaying 3dp of mach, this guesswork would be taken away, and it would be easier for pilots to control and adjust their speed as desired.
By displaying our airspeed to 3dp of mach, it would not only make the flying experience more realistic, but would make life in the cockpit easier for IF pilots.
Image: An A330 PFD, which displays their airspeed as M0.818 (3 decimal places) in the bottom left hand corner of the PFD. Credit: pics from the office: LCD PFD & ND close up
Bonus: If we could also control our target airspeed to 3 decimal places, that would make it easier to control the airspeed our aircraft is able to maintain, rather than having to disable speed in the autopilot, manually adjust our thrust until we reach a higher target airspeed, and then re-enable autopilot speed.
I am no developer, so I don’t know if this would be easy or difficult for the devs to implement, however it doesn’t seem like a very difficult feature to implement. (Someone, please correct me if I am mistaken here). Seems like a simple change that would improve quality-of-life in-app.