OnCourse Software

Hello,

I've been using PF3 with MSFS 2020, and for the most part, it has worked very well.

However, during an IFR flight (between KSDF & KFFO), with a cruising altitude of 15,000 feet, I kept getting an ATC instruction to maintain 15,000 feet. I was already at 15,000 feet and my barometer was set correctly (pressing the B key).

I kept getting the nag from ATC until I set the barometer to STD (29.92). Once done, the nagging stopped.

NOTE: I am using the latest MSFS 2020 beta, which is working very well for me.

Of course, the transition altitude is 18,000 in the US. I also checked and set Options 1, Trans ALT & Alt Baro Calls settings correctly by making sure the TA is 18000 (and Alt Baro pressure in Millibars is UNCHECKED).

It appears there is an issue with PF3 where I have to set STD barometer below the Transition altitude to stop PF3 from nagging me to climb.

This is a known problem with MSFS I'm afraid... hopefully it will be addressed soon

Thank you Dave,

I'm not sure what you mean by a known problem. When I use the built in ATC, there are no issues at all. The reported altitude and ATC altitude all match...

Can you elaborate a bit more to help me understand?

That way, I can report back to MSFS 2020 beta team...it may be a bit difficult to simply say it's broke when using PF3.

Hi Dave,
I do not actually believe this is a bug in MSFS and therefore is never going to be fixed.

In recent days I have seen threads that providers of online ATC like VATSIM have been having discussions on trying to handle what is actually a change implemented in MSFS that actually makes the air pressure in MSFS a lot more accurate.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/va ... /489150/19

In summary MSFS now calculates air pressure using air pressure, temperature & humidity and not just air pressure, which explains why I have had PF3 be as much as 1500 feet out of sync with MSFS and on other occasions be completely in sync with MSFS

Regards

Musky,

Thank you for the information and link!

Very informative...and I can see where Dave might have some challenges ahead of him.

I do not know enough about FSUIPC7 to know if it reports back the calculated barometer setting or not (humidity, temperature, & air pressure). It seems that it would...but of course, I do not know.

Not sure if this helps or not, but last Tuesday was a similar post in the FSUIPC7 forums concerning the MSFS 2020 barometer setting:

https://forum.simflight.com/topic/94225 ... barometer/

Basically, the indicated altitude is held in offset 0x3324.

Interesting... thanks for the links, I'll look into it

If anyone would like to try this interim version so see if this altitude issue is any better... I've attached version 3.14.5

With an interim version you will NOT receive notification when a new release is available, even if using the 'Check for Updates' feature. So please keep checking back for an announcement on this forum when we release the next official version... hopefully it will be within the next week or so. Then you would need to download/install the latest cumulative updates package.

If you want to try this interim version just unzip and copy it into your main PF3 folder... it would be wise to make a copy of your existing PF3.exe first.

Please report back with your findings

OK Dave,

I have downloaded it and will try over the next couple of days and get back to you

Regards

OK I have tried a couple of flights now and the interim PF3.exe seems to have considerably improved the altitude discrepancies problem. I tried 1 flight with allowed altitude deviation 300ft and the second 200ft and PF3 was pretty much in that range. Have attached logs of both flights.

One other thing I have noticed for a few releases now is it seems to me that a previous change made to PF3 may have dropped out of subsequent releases. I am referring to ground handing you over to tower a lot earlier on departure. Now every time you are almost on the runway before handed over to tower the way it previously was in earlier releases.

Regards