Been having trouble with the InGame Panel when loading new flights from the simulator. Works fine when loading from Simbrief or manually but often crashes – dark gray box comes up – when you try to load from the simulator. The real problem is that there is no way that I know of to restart the panel without exiting the simulator entirely.
Some more information:
Windows 11
Windows store version of MS2020
Latest Dev build of FBW320
Flight plan imported from Simbrief into FBW320 already and “Saved” back to simulator
Again, it makes sense that the panel might not be able to load a particular flight plant but it should not crash completely OR should should have some way of resetting it without leaving the simulator.
I have had it happen a few times now when using the FBW320. Yesterday, the flight plan in Simbrief was for: TJSJ-KJFK arriving on 22L. Simbrief generated the following.
I don’t remember 100% but I believe I tried to load the flight plan into Navigraph charts BEFORE adding the Arrival, Star, VIA information into the MCDU on the A320. Don’t remember.
I have seen Charts not recognize parts of a flight plan before but usually it just pops a warning of some sort and you can click through it. Unfortunately, when this happens, you are kind of stuck without a way to restart the plugin other than exiting the sim.
This is what I would expect it to do, and we have never seen such crashes before so I’m guessing something has changed in the simulator that we are not aware of.
How do you load the flightplan into the simulator? In order to use the “Import from simulator” function you need to have a flightplan loaded. There should always be one loaded for you even if you just select your departure airport and hit the fly button, but since you are loading the flight from the simulator I am still interested in the file that you used to import the flight into MSFS in the first place.
It should be a .pln file, presumably exported from either Charts or Simbrief?
I start the flight cold and dark from a gate at the originating airport using the World Map screen—TJSJ in this case. Then I import the flight DIRECTLY from Simbrief using the import function of the FBW320. It loads it right in without a pln file. Then, I launch the charts app and it prompts me to load the plan manually, from Simbrief, or from the Simulator (though this option is not always available for some reason). In the instance above, I loaded the plan into the charts AFTER loading into the FBW320.
There is no .PLN file. Make sense? Pretty standard workflow for the FBW320 for me. And, works 95% of the time.
Not sure to what extent we’re able to support loading flightplans that are created and injected into the simulator by 3rd-party developers, but I still want to know what is causing the crashes.
Initial suspicion is that the flightplan that FBW injects is not using the same format that we expect to find in the simulator, and if that is the case then there is nothing I can do about it except for fixing the crash issue which I hope is possible. I’ll set up a reproduction scenario and let you know!
By the way, why not load the flightplan from Simbrief directly into Charts?
I totally agree. I suspect it has something to do with the way the FBW320 saves the plan to the simulator after it imports it. And, don’t think you should have to support plans injected by 3rd party developers at all. But, it would be super helpful if you could trap for errors you may ingest and fail gracefully.
I can (and, sometimes do) import from Simbrief directly into the charts. The problem is that Simbrief does not get the Star/Arrival information right a lot of the time. So, folks often have to add the STAR/VIA information in the MCDU after the import. If you do this and then load it into the charts you get the final flight plan.
Mark
P.S. Not sure if this helps or not. While the Chart plugin does appear to be completely frozen with the gray box in the center as pictured — the +/- buttons on the lower right of the screen that adjust the size of the interface continue to work. Nothing else is alive but those buttons do work.
That is totally reasonable, and I’ll see what I can do about it. Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for reporting it, we’ll do our best to prevent the situation!
That is very peculiar indeed! I would definitely expect that function to freeze as well, thank you for this information!
I am not a Simbrief developer but AFAIK, Simbrief is very good at finding SIDs and should allow you to choose to override the automatically selected procedure in case you would like to.
Yes, that is the Simbrief option I use…but end up with a bunch of discontinuity errors after import. Hence, it is just easier to load into the MCDU directly.
Also, AFAIK, Simbrief/Navigraph don’t check ATIS for the arrival airport which you can do from within the 320 MCDU. That makes it easier to pick the expected arrival runway.
The Route section lets you input your desired route and provides various resources to help you. If the city pair you enter has already been flown by another user, the route box may get auto-filled as you type in your departure and arrival airports. You are in no way obligated to use this route and may modify/erase it to suit your needs.
You can use the links provided at the top of the route field to get real-world flights or, as you and I both prefer, do it yourself based on weather information.
Navigraph Charts does not currently do this either, however, I can tell you that the next major version of Navigraph Charts will actually include lots of weather-related features, and head/crosswind components for runways will be one of them!
The latest news I received from FBW on this matter after asking because of previous support requests we got, was this:
Right now there is two way syncing implemented. By default it is read only (so it’ll only read from the simulator flight plan) due to the saving being very prone to CTDs.
However I’m not sure if the FMS will load the flight plan every time it changes or if it’s only the first time.
Keep in mind this is all only in the experimental version for now.
I have looked into this by installing the experimental version, enabling the “Save” mode, importing a Simbrief flightplan and then load the panel and it works fine for me, which is unfortunate as I have no way of knowing what causes the crash. If you want, you could possibly help out by enabling developer mode and then execute the following:
Scroll to the bottom of the list that appears, and select the link containing the word NavigraphPanel
In the interface that appears, select the “Console” tab located along the top of the screen
Focus the simulator window and try to load a flight through the panel until it crashes
Open the browser window, scroll to the bottom of the log and take a screenshot, then attach it to your next post. Please be mindful that the log will include lots of errors that are completely irrelevant and expected from any panel (even built-in) at the beginning, so make sure to scroll all the way down.
Eager to help out but away from my computer the next few days. Will check out when I return Thursday.
A few data points for you:
I am running the latest Dev build and do have save enabled.
I usually don’t load the plan into Navigraph until after I have modified it using the 320 mod so it properly reflects SIDS/STARs/vias. This means it is likely reading something written to the FS by the 320 mod.
It definitely works some/most of the time. The plan I shared earlier was one that froze it up. Did you try TJSJ-KJFK with a 22L arrival and CAMDN Star via DPK?
Hmm, yes I have tried using the exact same steps as outlined, with the same flightplan. No dice so far, still works fine every time. Unfortunately, it seems like I will require some screenshots from the logs as mentioned earlier in order to get to understand this!
