Main Features:

Ideal Flight, "IF", is a console-like program that provides press button flight generation and launch.

Press a button; IF creates a flight file for any aircraft, and can automatically add fuel and payload. Flights are generated with a complete cold & dark setup. A comprehensive flight briefing is included for the kneeboard, no matter what type of flight plan.

Press another button; IF launches FSX with the new flight loaded, and you are taken straight to the cockpit. The briefing is visible in the kneeboard, and you will find additional functions are available from the pull down Addon menu.

Fly the route; IF monitors the whole flight and IF presents an assessment/debrief after the flight.

More:

The briefing contains almost all the information you would like during a flight; airport maps, nav aid frequencies, route sections table, accurate ETA, fuel requirements, loading, speed conversion graphs, aircraft configuration notes, copy & paste quick information roundup, and so on for any plane in your collection.

The briefing describes how to climb, cruise, and descend, for accurate ETA's and fuel requirements. IF's fuel calculation is the most accurate available for FSX, and works for any aircraft in your collection.

IF generates flight plans for a specific aircraft and flight duration time.

IF flight plans are created by the most advanced auto flight plan generator available for FSX to date. The flight parameters for the aircraft, cruise altitude, speed, range, etc. are all taken into account when building the plan. The plan may guide you around high terrain. Plans include TOC and TOD and minimum safe altitudes.

Waypoints data in addition to FSX waypoints include oceanic tracks.

Adjust flight plans simply by setting aircraft flight parameters such as; flight time, climb rate, cruise speed, cruise altitude, and range. The fuel requirement is calculated and the aircraft is made ready and fuelled for the route.

There are special missions: fly coastguard missions to ships at sea and oil rigs, or maintain navigation equipment sites around the world.

Drag and Drop any plan file (.PLN) from your favourite tool onto IF and an "Ideal Flight" is created for the plan, with briefing, route sections table, nav aid frequencies, with TOC and TOD added to the plan if desired.

IF adds useful in-flight functions to the FSX pull down Addon menu like Go to Waypoint, Go to TOD, fast Save Game, and Fuel Consumption Report. Save/Load game provides more functionality than standard FSX save game files.

Automatically set aircraft panels and views simply by saving your favourite settings from the in-flight menu. These settings are then applied to all flights currently saved or newly generated for the aircraft.

IF introduces seamless thermal, cumulous, and deflected air currents, to any weather engine. Additional air currents are provided to breathe more life into the simulated environment. Winds are channelled and deflected by terrain. Constantly and seamlessly, hot air rises and cool air falls.

Global weather simulation; use instead of downloading internet weather reports, and choose any time of year. IF's weather engine will generate seamless weather across the oceans, and complex winds including jet streams, move you around 360° in all directions, not just horizontally. Cloud base and visibility are computed from atmospheric conditions to give a more realistic looking sky.

Adjust weather and winds simply by making them more or less severe.

IF monitors and rates the flight with a post flight assessment and debrief. All flight information is stored in a history file.

Each flight is assessed, and the pilot is presented with a debrief document when FSX is ended. Scores are recorded, and the profile is rated against other profiles in a pilot performance table. Other information about the profile can be viewed in the profile HTML document.

Adjust the severity of flight scoring, only log flights you are happy with, review pilot history in the easily accessible records library.

A group of robot pilots compete with you for the top spots in the pilot performance table.

An automatic database remembers where you parked your aircraft, and remembers the favourite settings for all of them. Parked aircraft appear in the sim where you left them.

Introduce Ai traffic exactly where you want it. IF adds a few Ai aircraft nearby your route, so you don't have to have the traffic slider up so much to get "interaction" with other aircraft.

There is an airports world map facility with search functions and filters, save and load favourite routes, and see enlarged airport diagrams.

User defined airport filter subsets comes with major hubs subset filter.

Drag and Drop your favourite screenshots onto any page to brighten it up! (excluding startup and info pages).

Please have a look at the help documentation: Ideal Flight Help Contents

Please see the FSN Ideal Flight Group page, featured at The Flight Simulator Network.

Screen Images:

FSX+IF=More fun:

Glider fun: Thermal and wind induced air currents determined by environment and terrain, affect all aircraft. Complex winds move you around 360° in all directions, not just horizontally.

Helicopter fun: Visit hundreds more locations than airports, including navigation equipment sites, ships, and oil rigs.

Navigation: Flight plans include top of climb and top of descent. Flight briefing includes detailed route sections and times, with an accurate ETA. Slick pilots can get within one minute of the ETA every time!

Incentive: Get a route generated automatically for the aircraft you have, from where you are, to a destination that can be reached in a preferred time. The flight will be monitored in detail and an assessment presented after the flight.

Indispensible: Save without disturbing the flight. Several autopilot and systems items not available in the standard FSX save game file are saved, and restored with Ideal Flight. Advance time to avoid lots of repetitive blue sky and concentrate more on the navigation sections of the flight.

Ideal Flight is also written nicely for Windows:

The Ideal Flight setup .zip file is only 2.7Mb, about the size of an FSX screenshot.

You don't need to be admin to install or run IF.

You can run the Ideal Flight setup from inside the zip, no need to unzip first. Ideal Flight does not need to undo itself into a temp folder before the setup can run. IF just gets on with it from inside the .zip.

IF setup knows your language, and locations of all the FSX directories, so you don't have to tell it. IF may ask you to confirm, perhaps the registry is not the same as the installation found, so checks the FSX installation, and repairs the FSX registry entries if needed.

When you run IF for the first time, a minute or two is required to make an index. There is a great deal to learn about your scenery, and so is scanned as fast as possible. After you make scenery changes, or re-index any time; from the popup menu on the startup screen.

You can start Ideal Flight by dropping your favourite .PLN file onto the IF desktop icon and IF starts with the .PLN loading. You can also drop .PLN's onto the icon to restore IF from minimized.

Ideal Flight is different technology that does not rely on c++ or .NET code libraries. IF will not hurt your FSX installation, and does not interact with other addons. You can use REX Textures and weather engine, or just REX textures, and the same goes with any other weather system. You can use any other traffic program, even if you use IF traffic. You can use almost any other addon too. Flight planning tools are especially enhanced by IF, since you can drop the plan file on to IF.

The program window can be resized (in settings) and there is no problem when your FSX video mode kicks in.

Ideal Flight uses little resources and has almost no effect on the frame rate. (Rain and snow will reduce your frame rate).

Backup Profiles and merge with fresh installations of Ideal Flight.

Please see the Help Documentation for more information.

Do more flying, see more airports, feel the environment come alive.

Screenshots:

All images Default FSX+IF, DX10, 1920x1200x32, 19fps limited internal, i7-960, GTX480.

Take the burden out of setting up a flight in Microsoft ® Flight Simulator X. The simple press of a button creates a completely new flight each time with weather, flight plan, and briefing. That's just a part of Ideal Flight; its comprehensive gamut of features makes Ideal Flight an essential add-on for Microsoft ® Flight Simulator X.

All weather generated from an algorithm, images provided have not been composed.

All images default FSX, Ideal Flight weather engine, seamless global weather.

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Ray Rentschler