Hi Dave,
I am glad I undertook two tests before coming back to you:
- At a small airport (GBYD), the last instruction I got was "steady" - at the last node before the gate.
- But at a large airport EGKK), I was almost stunned to hear the words "left to gate"! WHOO HOO! Thanks for the pointer on that.
Interestingly, two of the ongoing issues seem to relate to small airports - by small I mean ones without taxiways parallel to the runway, where you can only turn off opposite the apron, which is usually pretty close. GBYD is a good example of what I mean.
The advice on arrival at the gate is really the most critical to me, I can live with the other issues listed below if necessary. But it puzzles me that at one time all of these worked perfectly and I can't remember when things changed - maybe when version 3 came along. I would be willing to test with version 2 to compare, if you would like me to, although I suspect that would be a bit more complicated than just copying an old pf3.exe across?
This is what remains:
- The "Recent ATC Communication Log" is completely blank for the entire flight on about one in four occasions, at other times it works perfectly. I haven't managed to establish any factors that are causing this yet.
- As described above, the final advice on arrival at gate does not seem to work at small airports. This is an opinion based on just two flights so far.
- The Taxi gauge, and the TGS display, do not give guidance occasionally - both when departing at the start and arriving at destination. The spoken guidance is fine. I am now leaning towards this being where the distance to be taxied is fairly short, e.g. small airports as described above, but also at larger airports where your start point is close to the runway.
- The random gate selection, selected in Options #1, continues to dump me in GA parking on about 50% of flights. I can't figure out why. To be honest I have found this so frustrating that I have reverted to choosing a gate (or whatever) in Options #2. The random idea is great, but it is so frustrating to have a perfect relaxing flight only for things to go wrong once back on the ground.
I will continue monitoring things and let you know if I can establish any consistent reasons for any of the above.
I am incredibly grateful for the time you (and Martin) have been putting into this, I don't think I am entitled to ask for a lot more (as a minority user of a rather outdated FS version) but if you could possibly fully fix item ii above I think I would be well happy to put up with the rest, which can't be described as "game-killers".
As I said above, I'm willing to put the time into re-installing an older version to see if my memory that all worked well then is correct. If it is, maybe some code comparison would reveal something?
With best regards,
John