New Simbrief route finde - horrible route finding

SimBrief General
1

I think it’s awesome that Simbrief ventures into route finding and I understand that it is a difficult topic.
The problem is however, that the new route finde is causing quite a few issues. I am based in the LOVV FIR so naturally I tried it there and some of the routes are wild! Some interesting one’s:
LOWW LOWI OSPEN DCT NANIT
LOWW EDDF MEDI1E MEDIX PINQI DEXIT PETIX PETI4A

These routes are catatstrophic when flying online. They are 200% IFPS invalid, they are nowhere near the paths aircraft departing/arriving these airports would take and this will cause immense issues when flying online.

Both routes have IFPS valid options available that were ignored, there was no reason to generate a new one. The mandatory routing is OSPEN DCT ABRUK DCT SETAL for instance, for LOWW see https://charts.vacc-austria.org/LOVV/LOVV_Enroute_SECSI%20Departure%20via%20LOWW_23042020.pdf

An issue seems to be mandatory routings set in the the RAD. In this case this affects mostly departure and arrival routes (3A ARR/DEP).

I would greatly appreciate if, given the current state of the route finde, a Eurocontrol validated route were selected preferentially. We spend a lot of time clearing worng routes time and time again, these new routes destroy so much progress.

2

Hi, IFPS compliant routes continue to be proposed by default for the user. That hasn’t changed.

But if the user chooses to manually scroll down to the route calculator create their own custom route, then yes, it will be up to them to verify that applicable restrictions are complied with. Even multi-million dollar real-world flight planning software often cannot generate IFPS compliant routes without some human intervention, so it is unrealistic to expect SimBrief to do this.

Instead, pre-validated route suggestions continue to be proposed by default for the vast majority of flights. This system hasn’t changed, and 99% of users will not override these routes. Also note how we have separated the route calculator feature into its own section (collapsed by default) to further reduce this risk, so the impact on VATSIM controllers should hopefully be minor.

There may still be a few users who manually generate a non-compliant custom route, but we still believe the benefits of the new tool outweigh this potential inconvenience. And it may even have the opposite effect, since it also makes it easier for experienced users to find compliant routes.

In the end, your concerns are certainly valid, but we also cannot (and should not) prevent users from using any route they please. SimBrief is a flight planning tool, we are not the “route police”, even though we do our best to guide users towards valid routes whenever possible. :slight_smile:

Best regards,

3

I understand that creating a route finder with valid routes is very difficult and that ultimately the responsibility lies with the user but the current logic the new simbrief route finder employs is beyond unusable und putting a strain on virtual controllers.

You are indeed not the route police, nor do you make it easy for the staff members cleaning routes to do so, it’s an unnecessary tedious and hideous task, having to select every route, delete and confirm before being able to proceed to the next.

However, you are providing the tool for people and as such I would hope you care more about routes, given how important they are for simming. It is how you build and engage this tool, that ultimately decides the outcome.

You have created a new tool for pilots, please find a way to moderate it (at least through us, building routes for simbrief and deleting the garbage). Allow us for example to set certain mandatory routes or maybe you can even start with building a foundation where we could start to manually transcribe the RAD. PFPX has done it, I am hopeful that Navigraph can one day as well.

For the time being I would appreciate if the tool would output preferentially the route database that we carefully build up. Just like in real flight planning software there is no need to reinvent the wheel, when a perfectly good route is stored in the database and available.

Also maybe you could strike a deal with airnavradar? They even European routes visible on their website, maybe this could be added just like in the US?

4

As long as there are tools which are clearly doing a lot better job, for example PFPX with imported RAD, I disagree that it is not your job to produce valid routes.

I completely understand that you are not able to make it perfect and that you are not able to cover everything, but the stuff which Route Calculator produces is such a nonsense garbage, that it is basically not even making a genuine effort.

5

Yeah fair point, my wording wasn’t the best. I certainly didn’t mean it that way.

I was responding to the earlier suggestion that we should prevent users from manually inputting a non-compliant route, which I disagree with. Mainly because, inevitably, there will always be cases where our info is incorrect, and users should always be able to override it with something different.

We’ve put a ton of work into providing IFPS compliant routes over the years, and will continue to do so. These days, when a user simply enters a departure/arrival into SimBrief, the vast majority of the time it auto-fills an IFPS compliant route. That isn’t by accident, there is a ton of work that goes on behind the scenes to make this happen. Both by us, and increasingly by a group of dedicated users who submit and update compliant routes to the database. I feel like this gets taken for granted sometimes.

Yes, this is something that is already being looked into actually. Thanks for bringing it up again. :slight_smile:

The new update doesn’t change or replace that system, it’s a separate thing entirely. SimBrief still auto-fills IFPS compliant routes by default. None of that has changed.

The main goal of this route calculator update was to improve the UI and make it actually useable. SimBrief has always has a custom route generator feature, but the previous version often couldn’t even find a route. And even when it did, it could take up to a minute. And the results were even worse with respect to RAD compliance, FRA, etc.

The new version improves on all of these issues, provides a better UI, previews what you’re avoiding/including on the map, gives more control over SID/STARs, makes it easier to include NAT/PACOTS, and so on. It provides us with a solid base to build upon.

Adding better RAD compliance and FRA improvements to this new route calculator feature will come with time, your reports are valid and they have been noted for future updates.

But I want to stress, that this new feature doesn’t remove or otherwise degrade the previous route suggestion system. Most users will continue to use the default suggestions, we already have many soft barriers in place to encourage new pilots to use the default IFPS compliant routes (collapsing the route calculator feature by default, for example).

Best regards,