MSFS 2020 issues

[joefremont]

Hi Flyers

Just so you all know, I have been seeing a number of cases coming through with fuel usage on the MSFS default B787-10. I have seen about 5 flights already where the system things the fuel usage is suspicious, at this point I do not know what the issue is but will pass it on if I learn anything.

I have also noticed the way that Pause is handled in MFSF is a bit strange. There are actually three pauses

Pause when you press escape and the menu us up.

Safe to use but time continues roll, but you can't see the AC or scenery.

Active Pause

Pauses the position of the aircraft but thats all, time, speed, autopilot keeps working. This is quite a dangerous thing to use, if you were in a climb and your speed was reducing, it will continue to reduce while paused, and the autopilot will keep trying to adjust things, but since the AC is not moving it will just keep adjusting it and when you release the pause you will probably fly out of control because the trim is all the way to one side. If you use this I advise only use it in level flight with the autopilot off.

Normal Pause

Not mapped to a key but I have not played with it much so can't comment on how it works

If you have any observations please feel free to share.

[Mikec5000]

Hi Flyers

Just so you all know, I have been seeing a number of cases coming through with fuel usage on the MSFS default B787-10. I have seen about 5 flights already where the system things the fuel usage is suspicious, at this point I do not know what the issue is but will pass it on if I learn anything.

I have also noticed the way that Pause is handled in MFSF is a bit strange. There are actually three pauses

Pause when you press escape and the menu us up.

Safe to use but time continues roll, but you can't see the AC or scenery.

Active Pause

Pauses the position of the aircraft but thats all, time, speed, autopilot keeps working. This is quite a dangerous thing to use, if you were in a climb and your speed was reducing, it will continue to reduce while paused, and the autopilot will keep trying to adjust things, but since the AC is not moving it will just keep adjusting it and when you release the pause you will probably fly out of control because the trim is all the way to one side. If you use this I advise only use it in level flight with the autopilot off.

Normal Pause

Not mapped to a key but I have not played with it much so can't comment on how it works

If you have any observations please feel free to share.

Think the issue is in the Sim itself. I did 2 flights in it today and it used barely any fuel. Don't think their consumption is right at all, but I cant fill it up to where I need or I land overweight.
I should have used 22,000lb but in game it only registered me using 8,000lb

[Mikec5000]

Looking at the conversions, they might be burning the KG amount in lbs. I just checked my last flight, it said i burned 3710kg which is 8179lbs which is what my flight says I burned in on FSA, 8179kg is 18031lb which seems a bit more realistic.

I cant find anything in the .cfg or .flt files to switch it but I don't usually delve into those unless i'm following instructions. Could be worth looking into?

[Mikec5000]

Looking at the adjustment you made to my first flight, its seems to be convert the KG to lbs then add the initial amount of kg as lbs on top.

e.g. my flight said originally 6,907lb which you changed to 22,694lb

6,907kg to lb is 15,227

ad the 6,907kg as lbs on top (15,227lb + 6,907lb) =22,134 - not exact but very close

[joefremont]

I was doing my first real 747-8 flight tonight. On seeing many pilots having issues with too much fuel used on the 748 I did some digging into the files and think I have figured out how to adjust the fuel usage.

First find where your MSFS content is and in

Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b7478i\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B747_8i

You will find a file engines.cfg, open it in a text editor and you will see a line

fuel_flow_scalar = 1 ; Fuel flow scalar

Change the number to somewhere between 0.5 and 0.6.

Unfortunately I can't say for certain what is the correct number, I was doing a test flight KJFK to EGLL and things seamed to be going well. The system said fuel usage should be 63769 kg and I loaded up at 50% fuel or around 90,000 kg and my simple spread sheet I use to calculate my fuel usage as I go said I had about 600 nm of extra fuel, I had started my decent when everything shut down. Seams the reserve tanks were full but were not being used, after about 10 minutes of pulling my hair out trying to get things running before I crashed I noticed the FSA client finally aborted on me, my randomly moving fuel around was too much for it and it gave up. Now I was using a fuel_flow_scalar of 0.6 and it may still be a bit high but its a starting point for us to start fiddling with it.

Since with MSFS you really can't use a sim rate greater than 4x I don't have time to repeat the experiment today so it will have to wait for another time.

[Mikec5000]

I was doing my first real 747-8 flight tonight. On seeing many pilots having issues with too much fuel used on the 748 I did some digging into the files and think I have figured out how to adjust the fuel usage.

First find where your MSFS content is and in

Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b7478i\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B747_8i

You will find a file engines.cfg, open it in a text editor and you will see a line

fuel_flow_scalar = 1 ; Fuel flow scalar

Change the number to somewhere between 0.5 and 0.6.

Unfortunately I can't say for certain what is the correct number, I was doing a test flight KJFK to EGLL and things seamed to be going well. The system said fuel usage should be 63769 kg and I loaded up at 50% fuel or around 90,000 kg and my simple spread sheet I use to calculate my fuel usage as I go said I had about 600 nm of extra fuel, I had started my decent when everything shut down. Seams the reserve tanks were full but were not being used, after about 10 minutes of pulling my hair out trying to get things running before I crashed I noticed the FSA client finally aborted on me, my randomly moving fuel around was too much for it and it gave up. Now I was using a fuel_flow_scalar of 0.6 and it may still be a bit high but its a starting point for us to start fiddling with it.

Since with MSFS you really can't use a sim rate greater than 4x I don't have time to repeat the experiment today so it will have to wait for another time.

Would it be the same with the B78X? upping the number this time. Or would that need checking seperately?

[joefremont]

I was doing my first real 747-8 flight tonight. On seeing many pilots having issues with too much fuel used on the 748 I did some digging into the files and think I have figured out how to adjust the fuel usage.

First find where your MSFS content is and in

Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b7478i\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B747_8i

You will find a file engines.cfg, open it in a text editor and you will see a line

fuel_flow_scalar = 1 ; Fuel flow scalar

Change the number to somewhere between 0.5 and 0.6.

Unfortunately I can't say for certain what is the correct number, I was doing a test flight KJFK to EGLL and things seamed to be going well. The system said fuel usage should be 63769 kg and I loaded up at 50% fuel or around 90,000 kg and my simple spread sheet I use to calculate my fuel usage as I go said I had about 600 nm of extra fuel, I had started my decent when everything shut down. Seams the reserve tanks were full but were not being used, after about 10 minutes of pulling my hair out trying to get things running before I crashed I noticed the FSA client finally aborted on me, my randomly moving fuel around was too much for it and it gave up. Now I was using a fuel_flow_scalar of 0.6 and it may still be a bit high but its a starting point for us to start fiddling with it.

Since with MSFS you really can't use a sim rate greater than 4x I don't have time to repeat the experiment today so it will have to wait for another time.

Would it be the same with the B78X? upping the number this time. Or would that need checking seperately?

I was looking a the files for the B78X, its located in:

Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b787-10\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B787_10

But there is no engines.cfg file so I am not sure how to adjust that.

[JasonO]

I've unfortunately run out of fuel twice despite taking the fuel in the document and adding more in the A320N that comes with the vanilla game.

I had run out a flight prior but lost engines about 200ft from the runway so managed to land, but knew next time I need to add even more, thinking I would get it right..

Based on the neo specs I found it should do 2790kg per 1000km. On my second flight I flew 2500km so that's rounded up to 7000kg of fuel required. According to the FSAirlines flight data I actually used 11465 kg of fuel and still didn't make it to the runway by about 4nm. I had a very minor headwind (5knots or less) and the route wasn't anything longer than you would expect. I thought the neos were better on fuel!!

There was one flight I was going to do that a real airline completes which puts it at the higher end of the range for the A320neo and I figured based on the MSFS fuel burn I'd probably run out way before getting there despite starting full fuel tanks.

I've since downloaded the A320NX mod, which is a freeway mod that replaces the in-game A320 which has better fuel burn but also some more features within the cockpit. It's much closer to the predicted fuel burn vs real life figures and prediction from FSA.
https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx


Oh, regarding pause - the esc pause has not caused me any problems with the FS Airlines client. Only time passing I guess is the only anomaly.

[FR0009]

Hi, just been fuel flagged between OAK and CDG with that MSF 787!! How a company who make flight sim for ages can release a plane with a 4600 lbs/hours comsumption at FL400 and 0.85 M?? I would have done thousand time better!!
As this plane is DRM protected, we can't adjust this silly fuel scalar....So I will fly it with speed brake on

[joefremont]

With the latest MSFS release I was hoping they would fix the fuel usage issues with the 787-10, and for a day or two they stopped getting flagged as using too little fuel, but I think that was because everyone was waiting for the update to download and now they are showing up again in the 'Flagged Flights' list.

The 747-8 also has a fuel usage problem but it uses too much fuel rather than too little, and looking at the files I think that it might be fixable, but the 78X is missing some of the .cfg files the 748 has so I don't know how to fix that.

[Cat]

Simconnect does not come installed with MSFS2020? We have a new pilot new to flight sim who says he keeps getting "sim not started" message on the Client. This seems like pretty important "need to know" information in setting up FSAirlines for a first time sim pilot on a 'virgin' computer with only a new download of MSFS2020.

[joefremont]

I never had any SimConnect errors, But I had installed the P3D SDK first and it comes with SimConnect. If that does not work go get FSUIPC7, you have to launch it each time you restart your computer but it works pretty reliably.

[Cat]

The pilot in question figured out how to install Simconnect. I'm just thinking this might be important need to know information for those who are brand new to flight simulation and are buying MSFS2020 then trying to fly in FSAirlines.

[MaxBeech]

I have the same issue with SimConnect - the Client can not connect to the Sim.
I downloaded the SDK for MSFS, but still get the error message "not started"?

FSUIPC can connect, but I have CTD since using it, so i want to try with SimConnect!

[Cat]

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/wh ... t/321575/3

This may or may not help .... no guarantee's, download at your own risk ... I don't have MSFS2020 ....