FSCommander and PMDG 747-400

Pro Member First Officer
W3CPR First Officer

When I generate a flight plan in FSCommander and then place it in the PMDG 747-400 I find that the cruise altitude is correct but that altitude remains the same even for the destination airport instead of a normal descent at a normal rate and change of speed. The aircraft flies right over the destination airport at the cruising altitude. I also notice that when I generate the same flight plan in FSBuild, this phenomena does not happen but works just as the flight plan has been calculated with the aircraft starting to descent at the proper time according to the flight plan. This happens to any flight plan that has been generated with FSCommander with the same results but only on the 747 and not the PMDG MD-11. I can change the flight plan manually in the PMDG 747-400 to make it work but this defeats the FSCommander purpose.

Answers 7 Answers

Jump to latest
Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

Near the bottom of this link (left side) it gives the email of the developer.
He asks you to email him with a problem, do so and your problem should be solved.

http://www.fscommander.com/

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
W3CPR First Officer

Hi Radarman... Thanks for the link. I will email him and keep you informed of the results.

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

W3CPR wrote:

Hi Radarman... Thanks for the link. I will email him and keep you informed of the results.

Yes, I would like to know how you do...good luck!

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
W3CPR First Officer

Hi Radarman... I have received a very timely reply as to the above problem from the people at PMDG. I received this answer, "The issue is with the Formatting used by FS Commander". I then proceeded to look into the comparison of a flight plan generated by FSBuild and FSCommander. FSCommander is not placing the runway information at the end of their flight plan being generated so the aircraft does not know where the destination airport is when flying from KABE to KPHL. The PMDG MD-11 aircraft does not present this problem. I then generated the flight plan in both FSCommander and FSBuild and made a copy of the last lines of code from the FSBuild flight plan and placed them in the FSCommander flight plan and that made the PMDG 747 work like it should. I have not heard from the FSCommander people as yet but the problem is definitely in the FSCommander flight plan generator and the way it is created when flying the PMDG 747-400.

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

At least they answered you promptly and are trying to help.
If you spell it out to them as detailed as you do to us then they should be able to figure it out.
Thanks, good luck.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
W3CPR First Officer

Hi Radarman... I have received an email from Volker of FSCommander in response to my problem. Here are some replies
-------------------------------------------------------------

"as in real life, no Dispatcher creates a flightplan from, for example, Frankfurt to New York and knows the destination runway. As I have written it in my previously email, that's not our philosophy.
We have programmed the FS Commander and do not want be a copy of FSBuild"

"Very often we have described this issue in our FlightSim Commander Forum.

However, the FSC created a flight plan without any height profile, Top of Climb and Top of Descend.
TOC and TOD depends on so many factors that it can not even be exact calculated in a real flightplan.

This corresponds also to our philosophy that this work is carried out by the Pilot and / or the FMC system.

The differences in the routes may arise through different navigation data
and of course also by the use of different mathematical formulas."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So it appears that he feels that placing the starting or destination airport runway is irrelevant in a flight plan. So this leads me to the question, then why bother to place waypoints in the FSCommander flight plan generator? The TC and TD can be left out as the FMC will take care of that. Not having access to a real flight plan that current pilots generate I cannot comment to much on the airport runway not being in the plan. Perhaps you are more knowledgeable than I on the current flight plans.

So the bottom line is this, FSCommander will not generate a flight plan showing the starting and ending runway in the flight plan when using the PMDG 747-400 aircraft. When you generate the flight plan in FSCommander and then load it into the PMDG 747-400 FMC you will find that when the aircraft reached cruising altitude, that altitude will remain for every waypoint from there out until you fly past the destination airport.

I seems that FSBuild can handle this very nicely and does include the starting and destination airports in the flight plan in the PMDG 747-400 and works perfectly on the PMDG 747-400. If you use FSBuild, be sure to download the updates including the one for FSBuild 2.

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

He's honest with you.
He feels that his product does what "the real world does" and that's that.
I guess you go with the other or accept his philosophy.
At least he's a gentleman and answers you promptly.

Radar

Still does not answer your question? Ask a new question!

If the question and answers provided above do not answer your specific question - why not ask a new question of your own? Our community and flight simulator experts will provided a dedicated and unique answer to your flight sim question. And, you don't even need to register to post your question!

Ask New Question...

Search

Search our questions and answers...

Be sure to search for your question from existing posted questions before asking a new question as your question may already exist from another user. If you're sure your question is unique and hasn't been asked before, consider asking a new question.

Related Questions

Flight Sim Questions that are closely related to this...