"PF3 does not know anything about terrain surrounding the airports" --This is a pretty darned significant deficiency!
Harsh words because from the real world point of view the deficiency would be that of the pilot i.e. you in the event of an accident. And also from a legal point of view. Think of an airport surrounded by mountains in poor visibility. The local ATC although they know that (one hopes), they cannot always see you, as radar won't work very well with too many surface reflections. So although the local ATC may still give you vectors they rely on the PIC to ensure he/she gets it right.
It is your responsibility to read the charts. Check the MSA minimum safe altitude for each wypt step down to the airport and feed it to PF3. Make sure that at the point when you want PF3 to vector you the way is clear and that importantly you have sufficient altitude. Making sure that you avoid terrain and a CFIT is all part of the real world flight planning process and as said before is the real world responsibility of the pilot not ATC. This is because all the routes to the airport will be published with safe altitudes and distances. To illustrate my point have a look at the charts for LOWI Innsbruck
here You will see how important it is to get the altitudes and distances correct. PMDG use the rwy 26 approach for one of their tutorials. So to say
This is a pretty darned significant deficiency!
is not correct at all. When you look at the charts remember that the heights are altitudes and are QNH unless specifically annotated.
Another good example is Paro notwithstanding that it is a VMC only airport. The published arrival procedure "must" be followed. There will be no vectoring given by ATC so the PIC must do it all him/herself. PF3 allows you to do that too. If memory serves only 8 pilots are qualified to fly into Paro!
PF3 is an extremely deep and flexible programme once you know it. It doesn't hand everything to you on a plate as it were. And it shouldn't either as that is not real world practice. Happy flying!
I'm guessing that you don't do much real-world IFR flying -- at least not in the US where FAA regulations cover this sort of thing. Yes, of course the pilot is ultimately responsible for the safety of his/her aircraft, and for maintaining situational awareness. Flight plans, especially for flight into known IMC, are a "contract", of sorts, between you and ATC: "we both agree that flying this route (and by "route" I'm including DPs, SIDs, the enroute portion, STARs, and a published approach) will get the airplane safely to it's destination". Every single section of the route depicts either a MSA/MEA or a specific altitude (or range of altitudes). When cleared to fly a route (or a section of the route), it is indeed the pilots responsibility to comply with ATC altitude assignments and/or published restrictions. If, for example, you're flying an enroute leg with a MEA of 8000' and ATC issues a descent to 4000' -- you'd be irresponsible not to question it.
When ATC vectors you OFF of the agreed-upon route, though, ATC assumes responsibility for terrain separation (at least in the US, under the FARs).
In real-world flying, this makes sense. When you're flying in IMC you have no visual reference to the ground. If ATC vectors you off of your planned route you are dependent upon them to ensure you're not going to fly into a mountain or an obstruction until you're back on an expected segment of your flight plan. COULD you, in principle, refer to charts before complying with an ATC vector, try to extrapolate the new heading into a course, then use that to check for terrain clearance? In *principle* -- sure. In *practice* that's impossible. In the *real world*, when ATC says "turn right heading xxx descend and maintain yyy", you have no choice but to assume they know what they're doing, and are following their own rules for terrain separation (and they have different rules than you do; they have set of "minimum vectoring altitude" charts that you don't have access to in the cockpit). Another requirement for vectoring (again, in the US, maybe it's different in other parts of the world), is that the controller has to tell you WHY you're being vectored: "turn right 10 degrees for traffic separation", "turn right, heading xxx, vectors to the final approach course", etc. That doesn't happen in PF3 either -- but it's critical to know if you're flying in IMC in case you lose communications.
I chose the word "deficiency" deliberately. An ATC simulator should FIRST implement features which are focused on the primary goals of ATC in general, i.e., the "safe, orderly and expeditious" flow of traffic. "Safe" is the primary goal, and a failure to keep an aircraft safe when the pilot has no practical way of knowing they are NOT safe is indeed a deficiency in the simulation.
The advice I'm getting is a collection of workarounds for lots of other "deficiencies" in the simulation -- and I'm OK with that. Acknowledging that a simulation doesn't (yet) do something it's supposed to do is perfectly fine. Claiming it's NOT required behave in a certain way that the *real world* thing it's simulating actually *does* have to do, though, is just silly.
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