PilotEdge Forums

Hi X-Plane users,

I find it a bit tricky to navigate the taxiways while taxiing in X-Plane. I have the airport diagram in front of me and I have some freeware airport sceneries installed. The sceneries do contain taxi signs, but they are quite blurry and really hard to read when passing by. I usually have to temporary stop taxiing and zoom in to be able to read them. Not very realistic!

How do you do this? Do you have some kind of moving map (on a secondary monitor or perhaps on an iPad) showing your real-time position so that you know where you are? Or perhaps higher quality sceneries with super-sharp taxi signs?

Best regards,
Mats

Edit: Fixed heading/subject misspelling.

Mats, there's a great scenery enhancement pack at x-plane.org that addresses this very issue http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app ... file=19539

A must-have add on, IMO.

The key is to know where you are before you start taxiing. Rather than looking for specific taxiway signs (because I had to taxi for many years in the sim before they existed), I look for the "2nd left" or the "third right" and take as many queues as I can from what I see around me, including specific contours on the edges of ramps, taxiways, etc. You can also taxi from an external view if you like, I do that to make sure I am where I think I am, and then swap back to cockpit view once established on the desired taxiway.

Jeff N wrote:Mats, there's a great scenery enhancement pack at x-plane.org that addresses this very issue http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app ... file=19539

A must-have add on, IMO.

Wow, this one looks really good! Will try it out immediately!

Thanks for the tip!

Keith Smith wrote:The key is to know where you are before you start taxiing. Rather than looking for specific taxiway signs (because I had to taxi for many years in the sim before they existed), I look for the "2nd left" or the "third right" and take as many queues as I can from what I see around me, including specific contours on the edges of ramps, taxiways, etc. You can also taxi from an external view if you like, I do that to make sure I am where I think I am, and then swap back to cockpit view once established on the desired taxiway.

Good advice by counting intersections/turnoffs for keeping track of the current position. Will start doing that.

Haven't thought of temporary switching to an external view to increase the situation awareness -- that is also something I definitely will do if needed.

Thanks!