Talking Flight Monitor — Release Notes, Version 8.1.0

Talking Flight Monitor (TFM) gives blind and visually-impaired pilots spoken output and full keyboard control for flight simulators, with deep support for the PMDG 737 and 777 add-on aircraft.

If you are coming from version 7, this is a big one. Version 8.0.0 went to testers only and was never released, so everything it introduced arrives here for the first time: a taxi guidance system, a First Officer who runs your standard procedures and callouts, clearer and more natural speech, and a long list of fixes. It is all listed below. Two things you already know how to do have changed — read the next section even if you skip the rest.

If you were on the 8.0.0 tester build, everything below still applies, and the last section, “Fixed since the 8.0.0 tester build”, is the part that is new to you.

Two things you will need to relearn

Almost everything here is new capability you can simply ignore until you want it. Two changes are different, because they affect something you already do — which is why this is version 8 rather than 7.1:

• The PMDG 777 no longer needs FSUIPC. If you only fly the 777, you no longer need it running at all. The 737 still does. Details under System Requirements below.
• The Electronic Clipboard no longer moves switches. Ticking an item records that you did it; it never actuates the cockpit. It still reads each item’s live state aloud and ticks items off automatically as you set them, so walking a checklist by ear is unchanged — but if you relied on the clipboard to work the switches for you, that job now belongs to the First Officer. The two toolbar checkboxes for it are gone.

Two smaller ones, if you flew the 8.0.0 tester build:

• On the PMDG 737’s MCP, + and - now increase and decrease the speed brake the right way round. They were reversed before.
• TFM’s shortcut keys now work only while TFM or the simulator is in front. Before, they worked in every program, which meant typing a comma in a chat window could arm a chord and run a checklist flow on the aircraft. TFM tells you about this once, on first launch. If you want the old behaviour, it is in Settings under Keyboard shortcuts.

System Requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64-bit).
• .NET 10 Desktop Runtime. If it isn’t already on your PC, Windows will point you to the free download the first time you start TFM.
• A flight simulator: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 or Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. These are the only supported simulators — Flight Simulator X, Prepar3D, and X-Plane are not supported.
• FSUIPC (free): still needed for the PMDG 737. The PMDG 777 no longer needs it — TFM now connects to the 777 through the simulator’s own built-in link (SimConnect). See “The PMDG 777 no longer needs FSUIPC” below. For the 737, use FSUIPC7.
• A way to hear TFM: a screen reader such as NVDA or JAWS, or the voices built into Windows. For higher-quality voices, you can optionally connect a Microsoft Azure Speech account.
• For the PMDG 777 features: the PMDG aircraft installed, plus the free MobiFlight module described just below. TFM can install it for you, and the 777 needs it — TFM cannot read some of that aircraft’s switches and displays without it.

Installing the MobiFlight Module

The First Officer needs a small, free add-on called the MobiFlight module to read some of the PMDG 777’s switches and displays — for example, whether the speedbrake is armed. TFM includes a copy and can install it for you:

1. Open the Tools menu.
2. Choose “Install / update MobiFlight module.”
3. TFM finds your Microsoft Flight Simulator Community folder and copies the module in. If you have both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024, it handles both.
4. Restart Microsoft Flight Simulator so it loads the module.

If TFM can’t find your Community folder, start Microsoft Flight Simulator once so the folder is created, then try again. TFM also checks for this module each time it starts and offers to install or update it if needed — that prompt has a “don’t ask again” option.

Known Issues in This Build

• If you have edited the 777 First Officer checklist yourself, your copy still holds the old engine-start check — the one that passes when a start has been aborted. On your copy the First Officer can still say “Engine Start Procedure, complete” when an engine did not start, and the two new Before Takeoff engine checks are missing as well. TFM only refreshes a built-in checklist it can prove you have not changed. To get the fix, either restore the built-in checklist, or edit the two Engine Start items to check Left/Right Engine Running is “running” and add the two Before Takeoff items. The takeoff-roll warning and the FO-flies refusal still cover you once the aircraft is moving.
• “First Officer flies the aircraft” is experimental and off until you turn it on, under Settings → Priority Boarding → First Officer flies the aircraft. It is PMDG 777 only. Press F1 on any of its controls in the First Officer window for details, and read the takeoff-roll note below before you arm it.
• During the takeoff roll and the rotation, moving the yoke does not take the aircraft back from the First Officer. On the ground the FO-flies chord disarms it; once the wheels are off, the chord will not disarm it either. From the climb onwards the yoke does take it back, and a bank past 20 degrees always hands it back — but that bank check only starts at rotation, not during the roll. This is why the feature is off by default.
• The First Officer will not fly a takeoff in more than 15 knots of crosswind. That limit is about how little it has been tested, not what the aircraft can do; you can raise it in Mission Setup.
• The First Officer cannot fly a landing. Only the takeoff is implemented — there is no landing hand-off in this build, the Mission Setup checkbox for it is switched off and says so, and the FO-flies chord in flight will tell you the same.
• The four situational First Officer flows have not had a test flight yet. Turnaround, cold-weather anti-ice, de-icing and the holding and diversion reviews have been checked by reading the code, not by flying them. They move real switches — flaps, gear, packs, bleeds — so please treat your first run of each as a test and be ready to fly it yourself. None of them ever starts on its own; you have to run the chord.
• The go-around and missed approach flows have not been flown either, and no longer arm themselves. Both are off by default now. Run them from the checklist chord (semicolon then O, semicolon then M), or switch the auto-arm back on for each on the First Officer’s Phase Auto-Arm tab.
• The improved runway detection has not had a full test flight. It should be more reliable than before: it uses your heading to pick the correct runway and briefly holds the last runway if the reading flickers. If you ever hear it name the wrong runway, please let us know — it will not affect anything you rely on.
• On Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, the features that need the airport scenery database do not run: the ground position readout, runway awareness callouts, taxi guidance, and the runway lists in Mission Setup, which come up empty. That database is built from Flight Simulator 2024 only. This is a known gap we intend to close, not four separate faults — please do not file them individually.
• At airports with very long arrivals lists — more than eight pages on the CDU — the flight computer cannot reach approaches near the end of the list. It reports the approach as not found, and on a long search it can run out of time and leave the STAR unprogrammed too. This is a search limit, not out-of-date navigation data.
• Some PMDG 737 announcement checkboxes still do nothing. The 16 on the Warnings page were fixed this release, but a number of the per-panel announcement boxes elsewhere under Settings → PMDG 737 switch an announcement on or off that was never written — so ticking them changes nothing either way. The AFS page, Control Stand → Trim, and Overhead → Service Interphone are entirely like this; several other panel pages are partly so. Nothing is lost by leaving them alone; we are working through them.
• A chord on/off list won’t update live if you toggle chords from the keyboard while it’s open. If you leave the Tools → TFM chords submenu or the Keyboard Manager’s “Chord keys on / off” list open and then press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L, the checkmarks stay as they were until you click an item or reopen the list — the keys themselves respond correctly, only the on-screen checkmarks lag.

The First Officer

The First Officer is TFM’s automated copilot. It runs your checklists and standard procedures, calls out the flight, and — on the PMDG 777 — works many cockpit switches for you. Every behaviour below can be switched on or off.

Checklist notes are no longer silenced by your verbosity setting

• Spoken notes written into a checklist now always play, at every verbosity setting.
• They were being treated as per-item chatter, so on default settings you never heard them.
• Five notes that just repeated the next checklist’s name have been removed as duplicates.
• The 737 power-down now really does wait two minutes for the APU instead of just saying so.

The First Officer stops downgrading anti-ice you selected yourself

• The Before Taxi checklist sets anti-ice to AUTO but now leaves anything you set to ON alone.
• It also says which way the selectors went instead of only “checked”.

New First Officer flows for turnaround, de-icing, holding and diverting (PMDG 777)

• Turnaround: one chord sets a parked aircraft back up for the next leg and uplinks the new plan.
• It reads back which flight plan is loaded first, so you can catch a stale one before uplinking.
• “Keep battery on between flights” now works — the FO leaves the panel alive for a turnaround.
• It is on by default, so the FO no longer shuts the battery down at the end of a flight.
• Cold weather: anti-ice setup, a de-ice setup that closes the aircraft up, and the restore after.
• The de-ice restore puts your packs and APU bleed back to your Mission Setup takeoff config.
• It also reminds you to note your holdover time before you go.
• Holding: your fuel read aloud, anti-ice per your Mission Setup, then the hold details to confirm.
• Diversion: fuel, then the alternate setup, and the approach and landing checklists come back.
• The descent checklist comes back too if the FMC has a new top of descent for the alternate.
• “Cold-weather operations” in the First Officer settings now switches the three cold flows on.
• None of the four is ever announced on its own — a hold or a diversion is your decision, not a state.
• New chords: comma then R, W, D or C on the ground; semicolon then H or V in the air.

The First Officer now works a go-around (PMDG 777)

• A go-around starts the flow on its own: flaps 20, gear up on positive rate, speed brake stowed.
• The flaps only ever come up for a go-around — an early go-around never gets extra flap.
• If you have told the FO not to work a lever, it now says what that lever reads and what it wants.
• It reads back the MCP altitude and heading so you can check them against the missed approach.
• That read-back says “track” instead of “heading” when your MCP dial is in track mode.
• The speed brake is left alone when it is armed for landing, and stowed when it is deployed.
• Once cleaned up, a Missed Approach review reads your fuel and asks for your intentions.
• The Approach and Landing checklists are offered again on the second approach.
• They are also held back during the go-around itself, so nothing competes with it.
• New chords: semicolon then O for the go-around, semicolon then M for the missed approach review.
• Neither arms itself any more: both are OFF by default, because neither has been flown yet.
• Switch either back on when you want it, on the First Officer’s Phase Auto-Arm tab.

Approach callouts say whether the autopilot is actually armed

• “Localizer centred. Approach mode not armed.” replaces “captured” when nothing is armed to fly it.
• The ILS readout says “no glide slope” instead of “on glide path” when nothing is being received.
• A pegged needle now says “full scale high by 2450 feet” instead of repeating the same number.
• “Auto pilot status” now includes the vertical mode, the selected altitude and the lateral mode.
• A nav ident that is not a real station identifier is no longer read out as the aircraft type.
• FMC uplink progress no longer reads its diagnostic log aloud during preflight or the descent, but every warning and every phase failure is now spoken, with its cause.
• The on-demand “Current ILS position” key gives the same honest answer as the periodic readout.
• Re-typing an MCP value that is already set says “already set” rather than “did not change”.
• The crew oxygen needles read as a rounded gauge value, not a nineteen-digit number.

Above-glideslope warning no longer fires on departure

• The “Above glideslope, descend” warning no longer triggers during climb-out or a go-around.
• It only speaks once the aircraft is actually arriving, so it stays available for the approach.

First Officer V2.0

• A major rework of the First Officer. Highlights:
  • A dedicated First Officer voice and its own verbosity settings, separate from your main TFM speech.
  • A “Mute other TFM output during flows” toggle so the First Officer’s callouts aren’t buried under the usual automatic announcements while you run a procedure.
  • A repeat hotkey (Ctrl+R) that re-speaks the last First Officer callout.
  • Skip now works in the middle of a step, even while the First Officer is waiting on something or running a controls check.
  • It won’t start a second procedure on top of one already running, so two flows can’t get tangled together.
  • Shorter phase and page names, and related procedures grouped into segments so a single “Run segment” command walks you through a whole phase from start to finish.
  • The First Officer keeps running its flows even when you close the First Officer window.

A third voice: the Captain (PMDG 777)

• TFM now has three separate spoken voices you can set up independently: the main TFM voice (system narration), the First Officer, and a new Captain voice for captain callouts. Each voice has its own choice of engine (screen reader, built-in Windows voice, or the higher-quality online voice), its own voice/rate/pitch/style controls, and its own volume slider.
• The Captain channel is off by default. Turn it on by picking a voice under Settings → Captain. Its online voice defaults to a male voice so it sounds clearly different from the First Officer.
• What the Captain says today:
  • Cabin announcements: “Cabin crew, prepare for takeoff” (right after liftoff) and “Cabin crew, prepare for landing” (when descending through 10,000 feet).
  • Seat-belt sign callouts: “Seat belt sign on” and “Seat belt sign off,” since the captain works that switch.
  • “Rotate” on takeoff: the First Officer calls “V1,” the Captain calls “Rotate,” giving a natural two-voice takeoff. This applies when your speed callouts are set to the separate “V1, Rotate” style.
  • “Continuing” at minimums: the real-cockpit reply — First Officer calls “Minimums,” Captain answers “Continuing” about a second and a half later. You still choose to go around manually when you need to.

High-quality online voice for the First Officer

• The First Officer can now speak through a natural online voice instead of a screen reader or the built-in Windows voice. The delivery is far more lifelike — it sounds like a real copilot rather than a synthetic reading.
• Only the First Officer uses the online voice. Your main TFM voice (system narration, weather, position, hotkey readouts) keeps whatever you already use. Because the First Officer is only a small share of total TFM speech, most pilots stay comfortably inside the online voice’s generous free monthly allowance.
• To set it up: First Officer settings → Speech output → online voice, then pick a voice (Davis, Aria, Guy, Ryan, and more) or paste any voice ID. You’ll need an online-voice account key and region, covered in a separate setup guide.
• The First Officer never goes silent. If the online voice is misconfigured, the internet drops, or you run out of allowance, it falls back to the built-in Windows voice automatically — you just hear a different voice, mid-procedure and all.
• Extras: the voice starts speaking almost instantly even on long lines; common callouts like “V1,” “Rotate,” and “Gear up” are remembered so they replay at no cost; aviation abbreviations (VREF, ILS, VOR, FMC, airport codes) are spelled out cleanly; a speed slider adjusts how fast the First Officer talks; and a “Test voice” button helps confirm your setup.

Better online (Azure) First Officer voice

• Refresh voice list button now pulls the full online voice catalog (hundreds of voices across all languages) instead of a short built-in list.
• Language filter dropdown above the voice list lets you narrow the hundreds of voices down to just the handful for a chosen language and country, with friendly names.
• Pitch slider to raise or lower the voice.
• Speaking style dropdown — many voices offer styles like calm, friendly, or newscast; the available styles fill in automatically when you pick a voice.
• Style intensity slider to make the chosen style stronger or softer.
• Online voice key and region boxes are now right on the First Officer settings panel, so you can enter them without editing any files.
• Cleaner settings panel: choosing the online voice hides the controls that only apply to the built-in Windows voice, and vice versa, so you only see the controls that matter for your choice.

First Officer Voice Tuning (Azure voices)

• When using Azure voices, five new sliders let you shape the intercom sound of the First Officer and Captain voices to suit your headset or speakers: a low and a high tone control, a warmth/saturation control, and separate left/right balance for each pilot.
• The same five sliders appear on both the First Officer and Captain panels and control the same settings, so you can adjust from either one. By default, the Captain now comes through centered.

Cockpit intercom sound for the crew voices

• Optional headset/intercom effect for the online voices. Turn it on and the First Officer and Captain voices take on the classic cockpit-headset sound: the narrower comm-radio tone, a touch of warmth, and stereo placement so the Captain sits slightly to your left (left seat) and the First Officer slightly to your right (right seat).
• Off by default. Turn it on by checking Apply cockpit intercom effects in either the First Officer or Captain settings panel.
• The effect only applies to the online (Azure) voices. If the crew is set to your screen reader or the built-in Windows voice, they speak normally without it.

Captain and First Officer voice polish

• Common cockpit words are no longer spelled out letter by letter. Words like AUTO, NORM, STBY, HEAT, OPEN, GEAR, FLAP, FUEL, and BARO are now spoken as words. Real airport codes such as KSFO still spell out cleanly.
• Softer captain confirmations. Short replies like “Set.” or “Auto.” used to land too hard on the higher-quality online voices. They now sound more relaxed, like a real captain’s casual confirmation. A new “Soften emphasis on short responses” toggle is on the First Officer settings panel and is on by default.

Captain confirms the First Officer’s work

• Two-voice checklist confirmations. A new “Captain confirms First Officer checklist items” toggle on the First Officer window’s Behavior tab. When on, confirmations split across two voices: the First Officer names the item (“Parking brake?”) and the Captain gives the state (“Set.”). When off (the default), the First Officer speaks the whole thing as before. Safety-critical items still get the “Safety check:” lead-in.
• For the cleanest back-and-forth, set both the First Officer and Captain to the online voices so they take turns; mixing voice types can cause them to talk over each other.
• Captain reads the completion callouts. The “checklist complete” line at the end of each page, the “SimBrief uplink complete” callout, and the arrivals and landing-flaps summary at the end of the descent update are now spoken in the Captain’s voice — the captain confirming the crew’s work, cockpit-style. Anything reporting a problem stays on the First Officer’s voice.
• Crew notes now say “Confirm when ready” instead of being read out and then waiting silently.
• The approach briefing waits two and a half minutes before reminding you, instead of eight seconds.
• The descent checklist no longer reads out an empty note that just said “Notes”.

First Officer and Captain voice settings

• Voice settings moved into the First Officer window. The old Settings entries for the First Officer and Captain voices are gone. Instead, the First Officer window’s Behavior tab now has two buttons — “Configure FO voice…” and “Configure Captain voice…” — that open the full voice setup (speech engine, voice choice, rate, pitch, speaking style, intensity, cockpit sound tone, left/right balance, gentle emphasis on short replies, and Azure speech key setup). Press Escape to close either one, and changes take effect as you make them. Voice setup is now one click from the procedure runner instead of buried in the settings menu.
• Each voice’s left/right balance now lives on its own panel. The First Officer’s balance slider no longer appears on the Captain’s panel by mistake.
• The “chatter level” setting is easier to find and clearer. The detail-level dropdown moved to the First Officer window’s Behavior tab (Ctrl+5) and is now labeled “FO / Captain chatter level.” It has two choices instead of three — the old “Brief” and “Verbose” did exactly the same thing, so “Brief” now becomes “Verbose” automatically.
• Placeholder settings are now clearly marked. Every checkbox for a feature that isn’t finished yet is now labeled “(not implemented yet),” including the runway-awareness thresholds tab and a couple of audio and startup options. These settings still save, so they’ll start working on their own as each feature ships.

First Officer setting labels reworded for clarity

• “Captain confirms FO checklist items” is now “Use two voices for checklist items (FO challenges, Captain responds)” — making it clear it controls which voice speaks, not what gets said.
• “Speak automated readback items” is now “Read live values aloud (V-speeds, MCP altitude, trim, flap setting…)” so you can tell it reads back live numbers, not switch positions.
• The old, misleadingly narrow “Call system changes” toggle — which actually echoes every warning-light and switch change (fire, oxygen, anti-ice, electrical, hydraulics, fuel pumps, and more) — is now “FO / Captain voice echoes every TFM annunciator and switch change.” The help text explains that this is a second voice speaking on top of the normal TFM announcements, and points to the PMDG 777 panel settings if you want to quiet the TFM side too. The keyboard shortcut for the two-voices setting changed so it no longer clashed with “checklist complete.”

First Officer checklist automation (PMDG 777)

• Wide automation of the preflight, before-start, and before-takeoff work:
  • The First Officer and Captain preflight panels are combined into one setup procedure.
  • Automated annunciator, APU, engine-computer (left and right), and TCAS preflight tests.
  • The Before-Takeoff procedure arms itself automatically once you line up on the departure runway.
  • Speed, heading, and altitude on the autopilot panel are set automatically from SimBrief, and Recall is pressed automatically afterward.
  • Wheel chocks are removed automatically through the FMC.
  • Live V-speeds and flap setting from the FMC are used in preference to the SimBrief numbers.
  • The walkaround runs on a timer and moves on by itself after a set time unless you speak up.
  • Stabilizer trim is announced from the FMC takeoff page; you set the trim wheel by hand.
  • Automatic setting of anti-ice to AUTO, oxygen tests, fire/evacuation press-and-hold checks, the flight-deck lighting knobs, exterior lights for taxi and takeoff, and several other grouped items.
  • The engine-start phase is split out and automated.
  • GSX-aware door handling — exterior doors wait up to 10 minutes for GSX to finish closing cargo, with a per-procedure toggle.

First Officer checklist step types

• New ways the First Officer can run a checklist item:
  • Readback — the First Officer reads live values from the aircraft, for example “MCP: speed 250, heading 270, altitude 5000.” You can silence this chatter while still marking items done.
  • Timed step — moves on by itself after a set time unless you confirm early.
  • Flight-controls check — an interactive controls test. The First Officer calls out “full left, checked,” “neutral,” and so on as you move the yoke through each direction, calling each one the moment you reach the stop, exactly once.
  • Minimums callout driven by your settings (radio or barometric height, and the value).

The checklist list shows today’s real state

• The procedure checklist in the First Officer window now starts fresh every session instead of restoring last time’s checkmarks. When you open a checklist, the First Officer checks the aircraft for the real state of each item and automatically marks anything that’s already set up correctly. You no longer redo items the aircraft is already configured for, and a cold, dark cockpit doesn’t pretend it’s half-ready. Spoken items like briefings stay unmarked until you act on them.

Build your own checklists and First Officer flows

• A new editor lets you create your own checklists — and full First Officer flows — without editing any files by hand. It’s an optional feature: turn it on under Settings → Priority Boarding → Checklist editor, then open it from Tools → Checklist editor. It works for the PMDG 777 and 737, and you can build a checklist offline without the simulator running.
• For each step you choose what the First Officer does with it: just announce and wait for you, operate a control and check it, wait until a state is reached, read back live values, pause for a set time, and more.
• You don’t have to memorize any names. Searchable pickers let you choose an aircraft control, fill in a state to read, or drop a live value into a read-back — and a “Choose Method” list offers advanced controls that the quick picker leaves out.
• A built-in check (Edit → Validate Checklist) looks over your work and tells you, before you fly, if a control won’t work, a name is misspelled, a required field is missing, or a step could leave a switch in the wrong position. Opening a file with problems offers to show you the report, and the results are spoken, not just shown.
• Your saved files go straight into the folder the First Officer and the Electronic Clipboard already read from, so a checklist you build shows up in their lists right away. Tools menu shortcuts open that folder or restore the checklists that ship with TFM. The whole editor is built for keyboard and screen-reader use.

Standard procedures

The First Officer can now handle many standard airline procedures automatically and call them out for you, from takeoff climb all the way through landing rollout. You can turn each behavior on or off, and set the altitude or speed that triggers it.

Climb callouts and automatic actions

• The First Officer calls “400 feet” on climb-out.
• It can automatically engage the autopilot, and switch on the navigation and vertical guidance modes (which fly the FMC’s planned route and altitudes), at heights you choose during the initial climb. Sensible defaults are set for you.
• It calls “Acceleration altitude” as you climb through a set height (default 1,500 feet). This is your cue to lower the nose and begin retracting flaps. It’s just a spoken reminder, with no action taken.
• It turns off all three landing lights (left, right, and nose) as you climb above a set altitude (default 10,000 feet). If the lights are already off, it stays quiet.
• It raises the landing gear and calls “Gear up” once you’re safely climbing past a set height after liftoff (default 100 feet, just after the “Positive rate” call). It won’t do this on a long takeoff roll or a low bounce, and it skips the action if the gear is already up.
• The First Officer no longer arms the navigation and vertical guidance modes before takeoff. Arming those on the runway used to trigger false warnings, so they’re now armed in the air at the height you set.
• It no longer switches anything off by mistake. If the autopilot or a guidance mode is already on when a trigger height is reached, the First Officer makes the call-out but skips the switch.

“Climbing/descending through” altitude calls

• The First Officer calls “Climbing through 10,000 feet” and “Descending through 10,000 feet” at the altitudes you set. The climb and descent altitudes are separate, so you can, for example, get the descent call at your top-of-descent point without changing the climb call.
• It also calls out passing 10,000 feet in both directions, matching the usual “sterile cockpit” rule where non-essential talk stops below that altitude.

Descent and approach automation

• The First Officer lowers the landing gear and calls “Gear down” as you descend through a set height (default 2,500 feet). It skips the action if the gear is already down, and it won’t trigger on a go-around (climbing back up). A separate on/off switch lets you keep the announcement but lower the gear yourself.
• It turns the landing lights back on as you descend through the same altitude used for the climb rule, so you don’t have to remember to switch them on for the approach. If you already turned them on early, it stays quiet.
• Three optional descent behaviors let the First Officer engage approach mode, disconnect the auto-throttle, and disconnect the autopilot, each at a height you choose. All three are off by default. Each one skips its action if you’ve already done it manually.

Localizer, glideslope, and go-around

• The First Officer calls “Localizer captured” and “Glideslope captured” once you’re established on each. (The localizer is the left-right guidance to the runway centerline; the glideslope is the up-down guidance to the touchdown point.)
• It calls “Glideslope alive” once per approach, the first time the glideslope needle comes off its limit and starts moving toward center. This works whether you intercept from above or below.
• It warns “Above glideslope, descend” when you’re sitting high on final approach, and repeats more insistently if you stay level.
• The flap schedule now keeps working through level flight segments on final, not just while you’re actively descending.
• After a go-around, all the approach callouts and flap steps reset so they work again for your second approach.

Minimums

• The First Officer calls “Minimums” as you descend to the decision height or altitude you set for the approach. (Minimums is the lowest point you may descend before you must either see the runway or go around.) You can base it on height above the ground or on altitude above sea level. It’s a spoken call only, with no action.
• On the PMDG 777, the First Officer automatically dials the minimums value into both pilots’ displays as you descend through 10,000 feet, and sets the correct reference type (above-ground or sea-level) on each side to match. If you already entered the value or set the reference yourself, it leaves your work alone. This runs only if you’ve entered a minimums value in Mission Setup, and it can be switched off.
• Minimums are now handled during descent rather than at the gate, which is where a real crew sets them. You enter the value once in Mission Setup, alongside landing flaps, autobrake, and anti-ice.

Landing rollout callouts

• The First Officer calls “Stabilized, 40 knots” as you slow through a set speed on the landing rollout (default 40 knots). This fires once per flight, on the ground.

Engine start callouts

• The First Officer calls “Starting engine 2” then “Starting engine 1” as it begins each start. On the 777 it now starts engine 2 first, then engine 1, matching Boeing’s order.
• It calls “Engine 1 stable” and “Engine 2 stable” once as each engine spins up during start. This works on any twin-engine aircraft. It won’t fire if an engine is already running, or during shutdown.

Fuel management (PMDG 777)

• The First Officer turns off the center fuel tank pumps and announces “Center tank pumps off” once the center tank empties in flight. It won’t touch pumps you’ve already switched off. You can adjust the fuel level that triggers this.

Landing and After Landing, fully automated (PMDG 777)

The First Officer now handles the remaining hands-on steps in these checklists for you:

• Landing flaps — sets your chosen landing flap setting at the Landing checklist, so you don’t have to work the flap lever.
• APU — starts the auxiliary power unit only if it’s still off (no effect if you’ve already started it).
• Exterior lights — turns off the landing lights, strobes, and runway turnoff lights after landing, but leaves the beacon, taxi, navigation, and logo lights where you set them.
• Transponder — sets it to standby.
• Weather radar — switches the weather radar off on both sides. Note the aircraft doesn’t report a fixed on/off state for this, so it simply flips both sides. From the normal case (both on), this cleanly turns both off.

The First Officer follows your Mission Setup

• The First Officer’s takeoff callouts and actions now match what you entered in Mission Setup. If your air conditioning packs, flaps, or altitude are already set correctly, it stays quiet at engine start instead of announcing something that’s already done. It speaks and acts only when there’s a real change to make (for example, if you’ve chosen packs-off for a heavy takeoff but they were left on).
• The preflight checklist now sets the air conditioning packs to whatever you chose in Mission Setup, instead of always turning them on. If you’re flying a packs-off takeoff, the cockpit is set up correctly right from the preflight.
• On descent, the autobrake and anti-ice callouts also stay silent if the cockpit already matches your Mission Setup choices.

Mission Setup Improvements

• Runway and procedure dropdowns. The runway and departure/arrival procedure fields on the Mission Setup tab are now selectable dropdowns instead of plain text. Runway lists come from your installed scenery so they match your sim, and departure/arrival procedures and approaches come from the navigation database. Each list is still editable, so you can type a value that isn’t listed. Your edits to runway, departure procedure, and cruise altitude now survive a SimBrief reload — the “From SimBrief” button still overwrites them if you want to start fresh.

First Officer — Light Coupling and Setup

• Light coupling (PMDG 777 and 737). When you turn the landing lights on or off, the First Officer matches the taxi light to them; when you toggle the wing lights, the logo light follows. Manual mismatches are respected. Toggle on the SOPs tab. Now works on both the 777 and the 737.
• SOPs tab reorganized. The First Officer’s SOPs settings tab now uses clear section headings — Automatic Callouts, Climb and Descent Altitude Thresholds, Lights & Ground Handling, Fuel & Systems, and Auto-Flow Policy — instead of one long list of checkboxes. Same settings, easier to scan.
• Display Reader switches EICAS pages more reliably (PMDG 777). Pressing Left Bracket then a letter to read a system display page (engine, electrical, hydraulic, fuel, and so on) now uses the cockpit’s own glareshield buttons. Previously this stopped working in flight and kept showing the same page; now it works at any point in the flight.

Takeoff and Climb

• TOGA now presses at the start of the takeoff roll. TOGA sets the engines to takeoff power and arms the takeoff flight mode. The First Officer used to wait until the aircraft was already rolling above 20 knots, which meant the press never actually happened — it needs to be done before the roll begins. Now, when you’re on the ground with takeoff flaps set and push the throttles past halfway, the First Officer presses TOGA right on time. Running the engines at the gate with flaps up won’t trigger it.
• Takeoff-roll callouts. During the takeoff run the First Officer calls “Eighty knots,” “V1,” “Rotate,” and “Positive rate.” V1 (the speed past which you’re committed to taking off) and Rotate come from your Mission Setup speeds, which fill in automatically from your SimBrief flight plan or your own edits. You can turn these callouts on or off.
• Choose how V-speeds are called. A new setting lets you pick “V1, VR” (two separate calls), a combined “V1, rotate” spoken together at V1, or “VR only” (skip V1 entirely). Changes take effect on your next flight — no restart needed.
• After Takeoff checklist no longer rushes the flaps. The checklist used to prompt “Flaps up” right after gear-up, which pushed you to bring flaps up too early. It now simply confirms the flaps have reached up as you retract them at the proper speeds — whether the First Officer raises them for you or you do it on cue.
• VNAV won’t be pressed too low. VNAV is the autopilot mode that flies the vertical part of your planned route. The PMDG 777 ignores a VNAV press below 400 feet above ground, so pilots who set a lower value used to hear “VNAV engaged” while nothing actually happened — leaving the aircraft climbing at fixed power and slowly losing speed. The First Officer now never attempts the press below 400 feet, so it always takes effect. Higher settings still work as before.
• Autopilot won’t be engaged too low. Turning the autopilot on too soon after VNAV and LNAV can leave it holding a steep nose-up attitude before the flight modes settle, which bleeds off speed. The First Officer now waits until at least 1,000 feet above ground before engaging the autopilot. The default was already 1,000; this only affects pilots who lowered it.

Cruise and Descent

• Flap schedule for climb and descent (PMDG 777). The First Officer now works the flaps in both directions at the right speeds — retracting them step by step as you speed up in the climb, and extending them step by step as you slow down for landing, ending at the landing flap setting you chose in Mission Setup. Each step only happens if the flaps are in the position it expects, so different takeoff setups skip the steps that don’t apply. The target speeds adjust for aircraft weight. If you’d rather work the handle yourself, you can turn off the automatic movement and still hear the callouts.
• Autobrake set on descent (PMDG 777). Passing through 18,000 feet on the way down, the First Officer sets the autobrake to the level you chose in Mission Setup (RTO, 1–4, or AUTO). Won’t re-apply a setting that’s already in place. Toggle on the SOPs tab.
• Anti-ice set on descent (PMDG 777). Passing through 10,000 feet on the way down, the First Officer applies your Mission Setup anti-ice choice (AUTO, ON, or OFF) to the wings and both engines. The default AUTO is a safe set-and-forget option.
• Altimeter set automatically (PMDG 777). As you climb through the transition altitude the First Officer calls “Set altimeter standard” and now also switches both pilots’ altimeters to standard pressure. Coming down through the transition level it calls “Set altimeter local” and switches them back to the local setting — no knobs to turn by hand. If you already pressed the standard button yourself, it’s left alone. Toggle on the SOPs tab.
• Seat belt sign policy (PMDG 777). The First Officer turns the seat belt sign off climbing through 10,000 feet and back on descending through 10,000 feet. If you change the sign yourself, your setting is respected. Toggle on the SOPs tab.

Landing and Rollout

• Landing-roll spoiler and reverser callouts. After touchdown the First Officer calls “Spoilers” when the speedbrakes deploy, then “Reverse” and “Full reverse” as the engine reverse thrust builds up. These work on any aircraft, not just PMDG. One toggle on the SOPs tab covers all three.
• Optional “no spoilers / no reverse” callouts. If you want a heads-up when something didn’t happen, the First Officer can call “No spoilers” three seconds after touchdown if the speedbrakes haven’t come up, and “No reverse” five seconds in if reverse thrust isn’t engaged. Off by default — the positive callouts stay on. Toggle on the SOPs tab.
• Reverse callouts now handle four-engine aircraft. The “Reverse,” “Full reverse,” and “No reverse” calls now check all four engine positions, so three- and four-engine aircraft trigger them correctly. Twin-engine behavior is unchanged.
• Parking brake set at the gate after landing (PMDG 777). The First Officer sets the parking brake automatically once you come to a stop on the ground after a flight. A hold-short stop before takeoff won’t trigger it, and it leaves the brake alone if it’s already set.
• Taxi-speed warning. The First Officer calls “Taxi speed” once if you cross above the set taxi speed on the ground (default about 26 knots, roughly 30 mph). It resets each flight so your next taxi gets a fresh check. Set the speed or turn it off on the SOPs tab.

Engine Start and Ground Setup (PMDG 777)

• Configure for takeoff. With the new “configure flaps and packs for takeoff” toggle on, the First Officer sets the flap handle to your Mission Setup takeoff flaps (5, 15, or 20) and the air-conditioning packs to your chosen setting once the first engine spools up. It speaks the result so you can confirm it matches what you wanted.
• APU bleed for takeoff. A new Mission Setup choice (APU bleed ON or OFF) lets the First Officer set the APU bleed switch during engine start — used with packs off for maximum-thrust takeoffs. If your SimBrief plan specifies a bleed setting, the field fills in automatically. If you already set it by hand, the First Officer stays quiet.
• Center fuel pumps turned off when the tank is empty. If SimBrief loads a small fuel amount that leaves the center tank empty, the First Officer now catches it at engine start, turns the center pumps off, and says “Center tanks empty. Center pumps off.” Previously an already-empty center tank could slip through and trigger a low-pressure caution at the runway.
• Adjustable center-pump fuel limit. A new General Options setting (default 50 pounds) lets you decide how empty the center tank has to be before the First Officer switches its pumps off.
• Set the initial altitude on the autopilot. When the first engine spools up, the First Officer can set the autopilot altitude dial to the Initial Altitude from Mission Setup. New toggle on the SOPs tab; does nothing if you haven’t set an initial altitude.
• Manage ground lights. One “manage ground lights” toggle handles three automatic actions: beacon on when the first engine spools up, strobes on as you accelerate through 60 knots on the takeoff roll, and beacon off when both engines shut down at the gate. Manual light changes are respected.

Alerts and System Callouts

• “What alerts are active” hotkey (PMDG 777). Press Right Bracket then Shift+A to hear a spoken list of every caution and warning currently lit up — master caution and warning lights, fire warnings, low fuel-pump pressure, pack and bleed problems, generator and battery faults, ground-proximity alerts, and many more. It now also covers hydraulic pump faults, the ram-air turbine, outflow valves, and window heat, so a hydraulic caution is named instead of just reported as a generic warning. Says “No active alerts” when everything is clear. Handy after a long sim pause.
• System-change callouts in the First Officer’s voice (PMDG 777). An optional setting lets the First Officer, rather than the standard automatic voice, announce changes across most safety systems — packs, engine bleeds, hydraulic pumps, fuel low-pressure, generators and battery, cargo fire warnings, fire-bottle discharges, passenger oxygen, anti-ice, and more. Off by default, since the standard announcements already cover this; turn it on if you prefer the First Officer voice. Frequently-cycling systems are left out so they don’t drown out real warnings.

Checklists

• The checklist item list is easier to read with a screen reader. The Electronic Clipboard’s list of items used to be a multi-column table, which forced you to arrow across several cells to hear one item. It’s now a plain list where each item reads as a single line — its name, the expected state, and the live state — in one go. Just arrow down the list to hear each item spoken as one clear sentence. The First Officer’s procedure list reads the same way.
• Two new clipboard reading commands. Press F5 to hear every item you haven’t checked off yet, and F6 to jump to the next item whose real state doesn’t match what the checklist expects — a quick way to find what still needs doing without reading the whole list.
• The Electronic Clipboard is now read-and-verify only. Checking an item on the clipboard records that you did it — it never moves a switch in the cockpit. The clipboard still reads each item’s live state aloud (“Battery switch, on, currently off”) and ticks items off automatically as you set them correctly, so it stays a fast way to walk a checklist by ear. If you want your copilot to actually work the switches for you, use the First Officer. (The two “auto-check” and “control manipulation” checkboxes that used to live on the clipboard toolbar are gone — the First Officer is now the single home for any automation.)
• Mute the “complete” callout. A new toggle controls whether the First Officer says “complete” at the end of each checklist page. On by default; turn it off to finish pages silently. Failed items still always announce.
• Mute skipped-item callouts. A new toggle controls whether the First Officer says “skipped” when you skip a checklist item. On by default; turn it off if you often skip items that don’t apply to your setup and don’t want to hear about each one.
• Repeat readback values. An optional setting makes the First Officer say each readback item twice with a short pause — helpful in noisy environments or for hard-of-hearing pilots. Off by default because it adds a couple of seconds per item.
• Safety-critical items stand out. Important checklist items — takeoff flap setting, flight-control check, speedbrake armed, landing gear down, landing flaps — are now read with a “Safety check:” prefix so they don’t blend in with routine items. On by default. If you write your own checklists, you can mark items to get the same emphasis.
• Descent checklist programs the arrival into the FMC. When the descent checklist runs, the First Officer reads your destination runway, arrival route, and approach from Mission Setup and enters them into the flight computer’s arrival page. This matches the natural workflow: when ATC clears you for an approach in cruise, update Mission Setup and the First Officer programs the FMC at descent.

The Com and Nav radios windows

• The current frequencies are on the menu now. Before you even open the Com radios or Nav radios window, focusing its item in the Aircraft menu speaks the live tuning — for example “Com radios. Com1 118.50, Com2 121.90” and “Nav radios. Nav1 110.30, Nav2 111.75, VOR SEA” — so you can check what’s set without opening anything.
• Both windows are now a single arrow-through list. They used to be split into Com1/Com2 (and Nav1/Nav2/ADF) tabs, which hid half the fields until you found the tab strip. Now every field is one arrow-key stop in one top-to-bottom flow — all four Com registers, and Nav1, Nav2, ADF and the received VOR — so nothing is hidden and every field reads with its own name.
• Tuning now talks back. When you type a frequency or course and press Enter, TFM speaks what it set (“Com1 118.50”) — reading the value the sim actually accepted. If you type something invalid or out of range, it says so (“Com1: invalid frequency, not tuned”; “Nav1 course: course must be 0 to 359, not set”) and puts the box back, instead of silently keeping the bad text.
• The received VOR is announced even when only its identifier is known. On the PMDG 777 the station name isn’t always available; the VOR box and the Nav-radios readout used to say “Not available” in that case even though the identifier (like “SEA”) was known. It now speaks the identifier.
• A fix under the hood. Reopening either window repeatedly no longer stacks up stale copies that keep updating in the background.
• F1 help in both windows. Press F1 on any field for what it does, its units, and its valid range; press F1 when you’re not on a field for a short overview of the whole window. It’s all searchable under a new “Aircraft” section in the TFM Help window.

The Transponder window

• Setting a squawk now talks back. Type the four-digit code and press Enter; TFM reads back the code it set. A bad code (not four digits, or a digit above 7) is announced right away as “Invalid squawk, not set,” the field is restored, and TFM tells you the code you’re still squawking — so you always know what’s actually set. No more silent failure or a two-second wait before you’re told.
• Changing the mode, sending Ident, and running Test are all spoken. You hear “Transponder mode TA/RA,” “Ident sent,” and — for the self-test — a confirmation. Before, these fired with no spoken feedback, so you couldn’t tell the command was sent.
• The Test button is now two-step. Because it’s easy to land on by accident while arrowing the buttons, the first press arms it (“Transponder self-test. Press again to confirm.”) and a second press within a few seconds runs it. It also announces itself as a self-test when focused.
• The mode selector no longer re-commands the transponder when you open the window. A bug could re-send the mode — and in a bad case silently drop the transponder from TA/RA to standby — just from opening the panel or on a background update. Fixed.
• The buttons are properly named for your screen reader. The two selector buttons used to be unnamed until the first update and then read only a bare letter or number; they now always announce their purpose and a self-describing state (transponder unit, altitude source).
• On the PMDG 737, a transponder fault is spoken on the code field. If the unit’s FAIL light is lit, you hear it as part of the code field’s name.
• The current squawk and mode are on the Aircraft menu. Focusing the Transponder item speaks e.g. “Transponder. Squawk 4321, mode TA/RA” without opening the panel.
• F1 help, with the aviation shorthand spelled out. Press F1 on any control for what it does; the mode help explains what “alt rpt off,” “TA only,” and “TA/RA” actually mean. Searchable under the “Aircraft” section of the TFM Help window.
• One window now serves both aircraft. The 777 and 737 transponders were separate near-identical screens that could drift apart; they’re now a single shared window, so both behave and speak identically.

The Doors window

• A brand-new Doors window, built for the ear. The old grid of door buttons was hard to read with a screen reader and answered the wrong question. The new window is a single arrow-through list where each door is one stop that reads as one line — for example “Door 1L, closed” or “Forward cargo door, open.” Arrow down to hear every door; type a door’s name or number to jump straight to it.
• It opens by telling you what matters most. The first thing you land on is a summary — “Doors summary, all exterior doors closed” or “…open: 1L, forward cargo” — so before pushback you get the one answer you need without walking the whole list. Press F5 anywhere to hear it again, and F6 to jump straight to the next door that isn’t closed.
• Two serious bugs fixed. The Door 2R button used to move door 2L instead — press 2R, and the wrong door cycled. And on the 777 Freighter the Main and Bulk cargo buttons each worked the other door. Both are fixed: every button now moves exactly the door it names, on every variant.
• Opening a door asks first. Because a door switch just toggles open/closed, pressing a closed door opens it. To prevent an accidental cabin-door opening before pushback, TFM now warns “Door 1L is closed. Press again to open it” and only opens on a second press. Closing a door happens right away.
• Every press tells you what happened. You hear the action as you press (“Opening Door 1L”) and then the settled result a moment later (“Door 1L open”) — even if that door’s automatic announcement is switched off, the simulator link is down, or the door doesn’t respond (you’ll hear “Door 1L did not respond”).
• A “Close all exterior doors” button (PMDG 777). One press closes every exterior door for pushback and speaks the result, including naming any door that didn’t respond. It respects your GSX setting — with it on, passenger doors are left to GSX and only the cargo doors are closed. If the First Officer is already closing doors, a manual press waits its turn instead of fighting it. Note it closes the doors; arming the slides is a separate cabin-crew action the simulator doesn’t expose, so TFM no longer claims to “arm.”
• The cockpit door is now listed (read-only — the simulator has no switch for it), and the missing cockpit-door announcement checkbox was added to the Doors settings.
• Honest “state not available.” Before the simulator has sent real door data, the list says “state not available” and won’t actuate — instead of the old behavior of guessing (the 777 used to assume every door was open, the 737 that every door was closed).
• The doors are on the Aircraft menu. Focusing the Doors item speaks “Doors (all closed)” or “Doors (open: 1L, forward cargo)” without opening the window.
• F1 help, searchable under the “Aircraft” section of the TFM Help window, and one shared window for both aircraft so the 777 and 737 behave and speak identically.
• On the 737, forward-cargo-door announcements — silent by default because of a settings bug — now work on a fresh install, and the old expandable-tree door panel is replaced by the same clean list.

Cockpit controls removed (PMDG 777)

• The thrust-lever sliders are gone from the MCP Speed tab and the Control Stand panel. They never showed your real thrust — TFM had no way to read lever position, so they always read zero even at climb power. Worse, arrowing a slider from that false zero commanded the engines directly, overriding an engaged autothrottle. Set thrust with your joystick or throttle hardware.
• The TOGA buttons are gone from the MCP Speed tab, and with the sliders goes the only reverse-thrust control. The First Officer still presses TOGA for you on takeoff, and TOGA remains available when building your own checklists.

MCP value fixes (PMDG 777 and 737)

• Mach and flight-path-angle entries are no longer set one step too low. Typing .78 set M0.779 and typing -1.8 flew -1.9; both now land exactly where you typed.
• The 737’s Mach window can be set at all now. TFM was sending the 737 a value ten times too large — the number the 737 expects is not the one the 777 expects — so Mach entries on the 737 simply did nothing.
• A rejected speed entry now tells you. Bad Mach entries used to fail in complete silence, leaving the wrong number on screen as if it had worked.
• Mach can be typed without a decimal point. Enter “84” for M0.84. The period key belongs to the traffic chord, so a decimal point typed on the main keyboard never reached the box — the numeric keypad’s decimal key still works if you want a third digit.
• Heading 360 is finally accepted. Typing the ordinary “360” for north was rejected, and the First Officer’s initial-heading step failed on every due-north departure.
• Vertical speed is range-checked. A stray keystroke could turn “-800” plus “1500” into a -7,991,500 fpm command with no error and nothing spoken.
• In flight-path-angle mode, Shift+V now reads the angle instead of the vertical-speed number. It used to say “-1200 deg” when the target was -3 degrees.
• The 25-degree bank limit is reachable again. The bank-limit button skipped past it and wrapped early.
• Shift+S says “FMC managed” when the speed window is blank, instead of reading out a stale target the aircraft isn’t flying to, and Mach is read to three digits.
• “Announce FPA” now works, and turning off “Announce vertical speed” no longer silently removes the vertical-speed mode callout. A new “Announce altitude increment” checkbox joins them in Settings.
• The First Officer now really arms the autothrottle on the preflight — both channels. It was pressing the A/T engage button instead, which cannot move the arm switch, so the autothrottle was never armed for takeoff.
• A refused MCP altitude is spoken. The First Officer used to announce it had set the altitude bug even when the write was rejected.

MCP panel fixes (PMDG 777)

• Switching aircraft no longer leaves a dead MCP on screen. The panel kept showing plausible numbers and let you press every button, but nothing reached the aircraft and nothing was spoken. It now closes itself and says so.
• Changing aircraft no longer disconnects everything else. Switching aircraft tore down the simulator connection shared by traffic, taxi guidance and GSX — including for the aircraft you had just selected.
• Your typing is no longer overwritten mid-entry. If the First Officer or a checklist set a value while you were part-way through typing one, the box silently changed under you and Enter then commanded the wrong number. Your entry is now kept and the change is announced.
• Pressing Enter on a blank speed or vertical-speed window is refused out loud (“speed is managed by the FMC”) instead of silently submitting the word “FMC”.
• In flight-path-angle mode the vertical window now shows the angle, not the feet-per-minute number, and says which unit it is in. Reading the value back and pressing Enter used to send an undefined command to the aircraft.
• Toggle buttons no longer flip three times per press. Pressing V-NAV said “pressed”, “not pressed”, then “pressed” again. A press the aircraft refuses is now reported instead of leaving the button stuck on.
• Opening the Speed tab no longer moves the autobrake selector. Loading the panel could command the autobrakes, and TFM echoed every autobrake change back at the simulator.
• Ctrl+M brings the open MCP forward instead of stacking up more identical “MCP” windows.
• The MCP no longer steals focus from the tab strip, so arrowing between tabs works without being dropped into a text box.
• The vertical-speed mode button no longer disappears when the FMC owns the window — it was the only place that told you whether the window was in V/S or FPA.
• Value announcements can no longer arrive out of order. Two changes in the same instant could be spoken newest-first, so the last thing you heard was not the current selection.
• The panel says when there is no simulator data instead of presenting an invented autoflight state as real.
• The 737 MCP now gets the same treatment: no stacking duplicate announcements after revisiting a tab, no focus grab, no autobrake move on open, and it refuses out loud when there is no 737 loaded.

MCP panel rebuilt (PMDG 777)

• Press F6 to jump to the next thing that is not normal — an approach armed with no localizer, the disengage bar down, or one autothrottle armed and the other not. If nothing is abnormal, it says so.
• The Aircraft menu’s MCP item now shows the autoflight state when you arrow onto it — the speed, heading and altitude targets plus any engaged modes — so you can check what the automation is doing without opening the panel.
• New: an Altitude increment control on the Altitude tab. TFM has announced this setting for years but gave you no way to set it back if it changed.
• New: a Vertical speed armed readout on the Vertical speed tab — the only confirmation available that the pitch mode is what you think it is.
• The “Flight controls” tab is now called “Autopilot.” The old name collided with the checklist’s “Flight controls checked” callout, which is a completely different check.
• Every button now speaks its name and its state together — “V NAV, engaged” rather than a name and a separate pressed/not-pressed.
• A refused entry reselects the reverted value, so correcting it is one retype rather than a delete-and-retype.
• The heading window says “track” when the panel is in TRK mode instead of calling it a heading.
• The speed and vertical windows go blank when the FMC owns them rather than showing a target the aircraft is not flying.
• Fixed: pressing Speed intervene did not make the speed window typeable until something else changed. Same for Vertical speed intervene.
• Fixed: an entry you started and then left could sit in the box for the rest of the flight, so every later read of that window was wrong.

General Options

• New General Options tab. A dedicated tab in the First Officer window (Ctrl+8) collects a range of preferences grouped into Units & Phrasing, Audio Cues, Workflow, and Voice Commands. A few options are placeholders for features arriving in later updates — you can set them now and they’ll take effect as those features land.
• Weight callouts in kilograms. A toggle switches the fuel, per-tank, and gross-weight readouts from pounds to kilograms.
• Spell airport codes phonetically. With this on, an airport code like “KSFO” is read as “Kilo Sierra Foxtrot Oscar” in flight-plan and procedure-viewer announcements, instead of being mispronounced by the voice.
• Ding before First Officer messages. Plays a short tone before each First Officer callout so you know one is coming.
• Turn off flap-position callouts. Silences the “Flaps 5,” “Flaps 1,” “Flaps up” spoken callouts during climb and descent while still letting the First Officer move the flaps.
• Flight-controls test phrasing. Switches the elevator-check callouts from “full forward / full back” to “full down / full up,” whichever you find clearer.
• Approach mode only arms for ILS. The autopilot approach mode now only arms when your Mission Setup approach is an ILS, so RNAV, visual, and VOR approaches don’t accidentally trigger it.
• Announce crossing airspace boundaries. With this on, the First Officer announces when you cross into a new air-traffic control region (for example, “Now in Oakland Oceanic”). No announcements while taxiing on the ground. Works on any aircraft.

Fine Control Over First Officer and Captain Callouts

• A new Callouts tab (open with Ctrl+6) gives you a checkbox for every automated First Officer and Captain voice callout, grouped by phase of flight: engine start, taxi and takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, landing and shutdown, and per-item callouts during a running checklist.
• Unchecking a callout silences just that spoken line. The action behind it still happens: the beacon still turns on, the parking brake is still set, the MCP altitude is still dialed in, and so on. You just do it without the spoken accompaniment, leaving room for TFM’s main voice to narrate.
• “Mute all” and “Speak all” buttons flip every callout at once, and there’s a Reset to defaults.
• If you had previously silenced these callouts using the older single switch, your quiet setup is preserved. Use the Callouts tab to turn back on just the ones you want.
• Your own pilot callouts are unaffected, including V1, Rotate, “Positive rate, gear up,” “Climbing through 10,000,” “Glideslope alive,” spoilers and reverse on the landing roll, minimums, and “Now in [airspace].”

Choose Which Read-Backs You Hear

• The old single “Read live values aloud” switch is now eight separate switches on the Callouts tab, so you can silence just the read-backs you don’t want instead of turning them all off at once.
• The eight are: departure briefing, V-speeds, MCP, trim, flaps, minimums, passenger signs, and heading & altimeter.
• Your old setting carries over automatically. If it was on, all eight turn on; if it was off, all eight stay off.

First Officer flies the aircraft (PMDG 777)

Experimental, and off until you turn it on under Settings → Priority Boarding → First Officer flies the aircraft. Only the takeoff exists — the First Officer cannot fly a landing. Read the Known Issues entry on it near the top of these notes before you arm it — there are two things about taking the aircraft back that you need to know first.

For pilots without working hardware flight controls, the First Officer can fly the takeoff for you.

• The First Officer can fly the takeoff. Arm it with the First Officer chord — tap the apostrophe, then F — while you are on the ground, push the throttles up to takeoff power, and the First Officer takes the airplane through the takeoff roll, rotation and initial climb, then hands it to the autopilot at your “Engage Autopilot at AGL” height on the SOPs tab. If the crosswind is above your set limit (15 knots by default), it declines the takeoff with a clear callout and leaves the aircraft with you.
• How to take the aircraft back. On the ground, press the same chord again. Once you are airborne the chord will not disarm it — from the climb onwards, moving the yoke takes it back, and a bank past 20 degrees always hands it back. ⚠ During the takeoff roll and the rotation the yoke does not take it back, so disarm before you roll if you are unsure.
• It has flown. A complete hands-off takeoff to the hand-off height on 9 August 2026, and a full gate-to-gate flight the next day. Both were a single runway in a light crosswind, so treat every takeoff as a test flight and keep a hand near the yoke.
• Mission Setup. The First Officer window’s Mission Setup tab has an “FO flies the aircraft” section for the per-flight defaults: whether the First Officer flies the takeoff, and the maximum crosswind for a First-Officer takeoff (15 knots by default). The hand-back height is the SOPs tab’s “Engage Autopilot at AGL”, so there is one source of truth for it.

First Officer checklists

• The First Officer no longer spells out cockpit abbreviations letter-by-letter. Items like “XPNDR” or “APU BTL DISCH” are now spoken as real words — “transponder,” “APU bottle discharge,” and so on.
• Checklist verification is much harder to fool. A review of the PMDG 777 checklists found items that could silently “pass” even when a switch wasn’t where it should be. Now fixed:
  • Opposite settings no longer count as a match. The First Officer used to treat words like “connected” and “disconnected” as the same because one contains the other, so a check could pass on the exact wrong condition. It now catches the opposite and rejects it.
  • Engine start now waits for the engine to actually begin spinning up before it listens for idle, so a fresh start can’t be reported “at idle” the instant it begins.
  • APU start, APU generator, and engine-drive checks now confirm the equipment is really running and connected, instead of passing on the wrong indicator.
  • On the Secure checklist, the emergency lights can now be turned off. The First Officer used to be silently blocked by the switch guard and left the lights armed; it now opens the guard, sets the switch off, and closes the guard again.
  • Disconnecting ground power at shutdown no longer errors or hangs when there’s no ground power cart, or when it’s already disconnected.
  • Before-takeoff items are more accurate: the transponder now correctly selects the traffic-alert mode, the auto-throttle arm switch moves the right way, the engine-computer check reads the switch position, and several on-screen option lists were corrected.
  • The First Officer now announces the landing flap setting it chooses (for example, “Landing flaps 30”), reads the APU bleed switch as “auto” to match the real placard, and says “V-ref” correctly instead of “vreff.”
• The auxiliary fuel pump is no longer accidentally switched on, and the preflight no longer stalls on it. A checklist item meant to confirm this pump is off was actually flipping it on, because the aircraft doesn’t report that pump’s state for the First Officer to check. It now simply calls “Auxiliary fuel pump switch, off” and moves on — the pump is already off at a cold gate, so nothing needs changing.

First Officer departure and takeoff

• The After Takeoff checklist arms itself again on a normal departure. When flaps retract at acceleration altitude the climb rate briefly dips, and that was being mistaken for the aircraft having already passed the After Takeoff phase, which disabled it for the whole leg. It’s now handled correctly, and “Ready for After Takeoff Checklist” plays as intended.
• Teleporting onto a runway no longer triggers the After Landing checklist. A teleport briefly looked like a takeoff-then-landing to the First Officer, which could run the After Landing procedure on the departure runway and raise your takeoff flaps. The First Officer now only counts the aircraft as having flown once it actually climbs above 100 feet.
• Before Takeoff no longer refuses to arm because of stale traffic data. When the SayIntentions.AI app is closed it leaves an old flight file behind, and the First Officer was reading it and aiming at a runway from a previous flight. It now only trusts that runway when the app is actually running; otherwise it uses your SimBrief departure runway, then whatever runway you’re physically lined up on.
• The First Officer’s control shortcuts moved to a two-key combo so they stop clashing with other features. Pause/resume, stop, repeat, “FO flies,” and active alerts used to share keys with pop-out panels, the transponder, and runway guidance, so the First Officer’s keys silently failed. Now you press the apostrophe (‘) and then a letter: P to pause or resume, S to stop, R to repeat, F for FO flies, A for active alerts. (PMDG 777 for now; the 737 follows.)

First Officer descent and approach

• Programming the arrival into the FMC during descent is reliable again. The “FMC arrivals” step was reporting most entries as failed because it searched the wrong page after the first match. It now returns to the first page before each search, so the runway, arrival route, and transitions program correctly.
• The auto-throttle now actually disconnects on descent. The disconnect step used to check the wrong indicator and could skip disconnecting while still announcing “auto-throttle off.” It now reads the correct switch.
• The “Minimums” call for a radio-altimeter approach now matches your radio-altimeter instrument. When your approach minimums are set to RADIO, the call now triggers off the radio-altimeter height instead of a ground-height calculation, which can differ over uneven terrain. Barometric (BARO) minimums are unchanged.

First Officer settings and Mission Setup

• “Reset all mission setup fields” no longer leaves the First Officer armed to fly the takeoff or landing. The reset was missing a few newer fields (including the experimental “FO flies the aircraft” toggles), so resetting and saving could re-arm them. Reset now clears every field.
• Three dropdowns now announce the right value after you press Cancel or Reset. The V-speed callout style, auto-flow policy, and chatter-level menus used to keep speaking their old value even after reverting; they now refresh.
• On the Mission Setup tab, the Fuel, Zero-fuel-weight, and Cargo fields now show and label the same weight unit as your SimBrief plan. A kilograms flight plan used to show kilogram numbers wrongly labeled as pounds. (Spoken weight callouts still follow the separate “Use kilograms” option.)
• The engine-start callout is now included when you use the Reset, Mute all, and Speak all buttons on the Callouts tab — it used to be skipped.
• Pushback distance callouts can now be turned off and retuned. There’s a new “Announce pushback distance” checkbox and an “every N feet” box on the General Options tab; before, these ran on every flight with no way to turn them off.
• Assorted Mission Setup cleanups: the departure route and destination-gate fields are now marked as information-only (the First Officer doesn’t act on them), button names were made clearer, and the Captain’s left/right audio position no longer resets itself every time you launch if you set it to one side on purpose. Related settings and help text were also tidied up for screen-reader users.

Dead or misleading settings cleaned up

• Three First Officer switches that looked active but did nothing were fixed or removed:
  • “Announce when a segment or phase starts and finishes” now actually works — it controls the “Starting…” and “…complete” narration you hear when running a whole phase or segment.
  • “Announce each checklist’s name when it starts” now actually works — it controls whether the First Officer speaks each checklist’s name as it begins. The matching “complete” callout stays with its own existing setting, so the two no longer overlap.
  • A flap-callout-phrasing option that never did anything was removed (the First Officer already calls flaps by number, like “Flaps 5”). Both surviving switches default to on and now have clear descriptions.

First Officer information requests

• Info hotkeys now play even while other output is muted. When a checklist has muted the automatic announcements (altitude crossings, switch-change callouts, and the like), pressing a hotkey to ask for information — heading, altitude, wind, trim, transponder, ILS deviation, or anything else under Right Bracket then a letter — now speaks the answer through the mute. Your requests always get answered.

Reliability and other fixes

• Flap lever commands now confirm they worked and retry if needed, so a missed click can no longer stall the checklist.
• Centerline assist (which helps keep the aircraft on the runway centerline) got stronger crosswind authority, and now cleanly stops helping when you signal you don’t want it.
• If a checklist gets stuck waiting on you, the First Officer re-prompts out loud after four seconds, at any verbosity level.
• Flaps are no longer extended at liftoff. Approach flaps now require a genuine arrival descent.
• Missing sections on an already-active arrival no longer produce false error messages.
• The First Officer no longer sets minimums during preflight, which was too early. It now does it during descent, and reads the value back to you as part of the Landing Data call-out.

First Officer flight-review polish (PMDG 777)

• The First Officer now sets the wheel chocks at the gate on shutdown.
• The shutdown check for a running APU (the small onboard engine that supplies power and air on the ground) is now the First Officer’s job, not a manual prompt.
• “APU fault” no longer false-alarms during a normal APU shutdown.
• Ground power at the gate now takes one quick check and callout instead of two long waits.
• After landing, flap retraction now calls “flaps coming up” then “flaps up.”
• The speed brake no longer repeats “down” several times while retracting.
• The next-waypoint callout no longer garbles its readout during the flare.
• Descent-distance and top-of-descent readouts no longer have a doubled comma.
• The before-takeoff flaps readback no longer stutters “Flaps, Flaps 5.”
• The walkaround item no longer says “complete” before you’ve done it.
• First Officer startup no longer announces two conflicting phase counts.
• Combined taxi and landing lights no longer get announced twice in both voices.
• Seat-belt-sign and parking-brake calls at the gate no longer echo twice.
• Thrust-limit callouts are silenced on final approach and the landing rollout.
• The “still waiting to confirm” prompt is shorter but keeps the value.
• Phase changes announce one line less, dropping a redundant readout.

Taxi Guidance

A whole new system that guides you along your taxi route to and from the runway, using spoken directions, guiding tones, or both. Find it under the “Taxi clearance” item in the PMDG 777 Aircraft menu, or as a pop-out window. It’s turned off by default; enable it in Settings first.

Building a taxi route

• When you arrive at an airport, the taxiway, hold-short, and runway crossing dropdowns fill in automatically from the scenery database.
• Type a clearance the way ATC gives it (for example, “Taxi to runway 08R via Alpha, hold short 13, cross 13, continue Alpha”) and TFM turns it into a step-by-step route.
• Prefer to build it yourself? Add each instruction click by click using the structured buttons.
• A route preview lists every turn, hold-short, and crossing with its distance. A label tells you how trustworthy that airport’s scenery data is, so you know how much to rely on the guidance.
• No ATC to give you a clearance? Press Alt+U (“Auto build route”): pick your destination runway and TFM figures out a route from where you’re parked to the runway, filling in the fields so you can review or edit it. For safety, it won’t automatically add runway-crossing instructions; the First Officer stops at every runway crossing and waits for you to confirm you’re cleared across.

Spoken taxi directions

• Once you accept a route, press Ctrl+Shift+M to start manual mode. TFM tracks where you are and speaks directions at the right moments:
  • Turn callouts ahead of time and again at the turn (“Turn left onto Bravo in 500 feet,” then “Turn left onto Bravo, now”).
  • Hold-short warnings, and “Holding short of runway X” once you stop there.
  • Drift warnings when you wander off the centerline (“Drifting right, 12 feet from centerline”).
  • An urgent alarm if you roll off the paved surface, and another if you stray well off your planned route.
• Handy shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+T opens the window, Ctrl+Shift+M starts manual mode, Ctrl+Shift+W tells you where you are, Ctrl+Shift+S stops guidance, and Ctrl+Shift+R repeats the last announcement.

Guiding tones (great with headphones)

• You can choose Voice only, Tones only (voice still speaks for hold-shorts, errors, and questions), or Both together (the default).
• Two tone streams work at once:
  • A soft, steady centerline tone that shifts toward the side you need to steer to get back on the line, always running so you know the system is alive.
  • A separate turn-warning tone that pulses faster and rises in pitch as a turn approaches, leaning toward the side the turn is on.
• The tones now play as true 3D audio, so you can hear whether something is ahead, behind, left, or right of you, and steer toward the sound as it gets louder.
• If you drift off the route, a distinct recovery tone points you back to the nearest spot on your route. You’ll hear “Back on the planned route” once you rejoin, with no need to re-arm. A voice reminder every few seconds adds an explicit heading, like “Route 200 feet at 9 o’clock.”
• A separate volume slider lets you balance the tones against the spoken voice.
• A clear rising “whoop” fires from the turn direction about a second before each turn, giving you an unmistakable “begin the turn now” moment instead of judging it from the beeping alone.

Learning and customizing the tones

• The Taxi Clearance window has a “Guidance sound samples” section with buttons to play short narrated demos of each tone (centerline, turn warning, off-route recovery), so you can learn what each one means before you rely on it in the cockpit. Best with headphones.
• A dedicated “Taxi tone setup” page (in the Aircraft menu) lets you retune each of the four guidance tones by pitch, volume, and sound character, with a Play button beside each to hear your changes instantly. This is built for pilots with hearing loss in certain frequency ranges: move a tone into a range you hear well, boost the ones you struggle with, or pick a mellower or brighter sound. A Reset button restores the defaults.

Let the First Officer taxi for you (experimental)

• Press Ctrl+Shift+A to start AUTO mode and the First Officer taxis the airplane itself along your cleared route: holding a safe taxi speed, steering to track the centerline, slowing for turns, and coming to a full stop with the parking brake at every hold-short.
• When ATC clears you across a runway, press Ctrl+Shift+X to cross. At your destination the First Officer stops and hands control back (“Captain, you have control”).
• Take the controls yourself or press Ctrl+Shift+S to stop at any time. It also stops on its own if it wanders off the pavement or off the route.
• Because the PMDG 777’s ground steering can behave differently, Ctrl+Shift+J switches the steering method so you can find the one your aircraft responds to best. This is an early version, and speeds and steering will keep improving with testing.

Taxi guidance refinements

• Smoother tones and steadier steering, thanks to position updates many times per second instead of once a second.
• Hold-shorts and runway crossings now sit at the exact spot the route crosses each runway, so callouts fire and auto mode stops in the right place.
• Safer auto mode: it only engages when you’re on the ground with engines running, releases the parking brake for you, brakes to a stop before handing control back, brakes hard and warns you if a hold-short is about to be crossed, and falls back to spoken guidance if you leave the pavement or route.
• After you finish a turn, the First Officer confirms the taxiway you’re now on (“On Bravo”), closing the loop from “turn coming” to “turn now” to “done.”
• Your choice of Voice, Tones, or Both now sticks reliably between sessions.
• Auto mode now stops at every runway your route crosses, even one near your departure runway that used to be skipped.
• Runway crossing clearances are matched more reliably, including when ATC names the runway by its opposite end (13 versus 31).
• The First Officer stops the correct distance short of your destination runway, never creeping past the hold-short line.
• “Hold short of taxiway B” is understood correctly and no longer sends you onto that taxiway by mistake.
• If your aircraft is parked somewhere with no connected taxiway in the scenery, the route builder now says so instead of planning from the wrong spot.
• Accepting a new clearance while guidance is running now asks you to confirm first, so you can’t drop guidance mid-taxi by accident.
• While the First Officer is taxiing, it no longer mistakes its own steering for you taking over during sharp turns.
• Changing a tone’s pitch or sound while guidance is armed now tells you to re-arm for it to take effect.
• Taxi shortcuts stay off while the feature is disabled and only work on the ground, as intended.

Traffic Awareness (TCAS)

A brand-new traffic-awareness system that tells you what’s around you — in the air and on the airport surface — built for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. It reads nearby aircraft directly from the simulator (no FSUIPC needed) and, importantly, works with live real-world traffic: real callsigns, airlines, and flight numbers. It’s experimental and off by default: turn on “Traffic” under Settings → Priority Boarding, then enable it and set your preferences on the new Settings → Traffic (TCAS) page.

Everything is on a “Traffic chord”: press the period key, then a letter.

• Nearest traffic report (period, then R). Speaks the most important traffic first, the way ATC describes it: clock position, whether it’s above, below, or at your altitude, distance, and how long until it’s closest. Says “no traffic nearby” when you’re clear.
• Sonar sweep (period, then W). One keypress plays a quick spatial sweep around you, dropping a positioned tone at each aircraft’s bearing — the whole picture in about two seconds, using 3D audio so you hear where each one is.
• Step through traffic by ear (period, then N for next, P for previous). Move through the contacts one at a time, most-threatening first; each one plays a tone at its bearing and speaks its callsign and position. Press period then D for the full details of the one you’re on.
• Track-lock one aircraft (period, then L). Step to the aircraft you care about and lock onto it. It keeps its own distinct spatial ping — following it out of the surrounding traffic — even when closer aircraft appear, and the rest of the pings quiet down beneath it. Press period then L again to release it.
• Runway and surface safety. If an aircraft is on the runway you’re lined up on or landing toward, TFM interrupts with “Traffic on runway.” A parked aircraft on the runway is stated once, calmly, as “holding on runway”; one that’s moving or landing gets the urgent, interrupting call. It also warns about traffic on final for your runway and aircraft crossing ahead of you while you taxi — the situations you can’t see.
• Calls don’t step on each other. When several things happen at once, TFM speaks the most important one and mentions “and one more” rather than talking over itself, and a more urgent call (like a runway warning) is the only thing that will interrupt one already in progress.
• Ambient “ping” bed (optional). The two or three nearest threats can sound a continuous, quiet spatial ping so you keep peripheral awareness without asking. Closer traffic pings faster; higher-pitched means higher traffic; a two-note chord marks the dangerous same-altitude case. It’s turned off by default — turn it on with the Standard or Chatty verbosity setting — and it drops to a whisper while TFM is speaking so the words always come through.
• A spatial dialect all its own. The traffic tones are deliberately different from the taxi guidance tones (short “sonar” pings versus sustained tones) so you never confuse them.
• Verbosity you control. Choose Off, Alerts-only, Standard, or Chatty on the Traffic settings page. Alerts-only is the default — the quiet daily setting: safety calls and your on-demand tools, with no continuous background pinging. Standard and Chatty add the ambient bed.
• Quiet on the ground. By default, airborne traffic advisories are held while you’re taxiing — as real TCAS does — so the airport-surface calls that matter aren’t buried in chatter. Runway, on-final, and crossing warnings always still sound. A checkbox on the Traffic settings page turns airborne calls back on for the ground if you want them.
• Set your own range. Choose how far out — 3, 6, 12, or 20 nautical miles — the scan, sweep, and table report traffic. This controls what gets read to you; it does not change safety alerting, which always warns you about a genuine threat regardless of the range you pick.
• Panic mute (period, then M). When you’re task-saturated, one press silences the ambient pings and chatter — but never the runway-occupancy and collision advisories, which always come through.
• A traffic table for study. The TCAS view (in the Aircraft menu) lists every contact with clock, range, relative altitude, trend, and threat level. Your screen reader reads each aircraft as one sentence on a single arrow press. It’s meant for reviewing the picture on the ground; in the air, the audio is the interface.

SimBrief Flight Plans

• A “Fetch current flight plan” item on the SimBrief menu loads your latest SimBrief plan into TFM and just tells you the route (“KJFK to KBOS”), without opening the plan viewer — handy when you only want to stage the plan for the uplink or First Officer.
• Creating a plan no longer forces the viewer open. After you fetch a newly generated plan on the Create page, TFM announces it and stays put; open “View flight plan” yourself whenever you want to brief it.

Flight Plan Uplink to the PMDG 777

The uplink sends your SimBrief flight plan straight into the aircraft’s flight computer (the FMC), so you don’t have to type it all in by hand. This release makes it more accurate and much harder to get wrong.

• The uplink now loads your runway, departure route (SID), arrival route (STAR), and their transitions automatically, not just the basic route and performance numbers.
• The uplink waits until the aircraft is truly ready before it starts: it confirms the navigation system has finished aligning and that electrical power is on, and it uses whichever flight computer is powered up.
• If your saved SimBrief plan is out of date, the uplink asks you before continuing instead of quietly loading old data.
• When it finishes, the uplink leaves the flight computer on the main menu page instead of stranding it on a random screen.
• The uplink now fills in your departure transition altitude on the correct page, even when it sits on a second page in some 777 versions. (Transition altitude is the point where you switch your altimeter between the local pressure setting and the standard setting.) The value comes from your Mission Setup entry if you changed it, otherwise from SimBrief. There is no arrival equivalent in the 777’s flight computer, so on the way down the First Officer sets your altimeter for you as you descend through the transition level.
• The arrival update won’t program the wrong airport’s arrival page, and if an update fails it cleans up its half-finished changes instead of loading them.
• Descent updates now ask which airport you’re landing at instead of guessing, and skip any arrival route you’ve already chosen so your planned descent and top-of-descent point stay intact.
• If your arrival is already set, the First Officer says “arrival already set, no route changes” instead of re-entering it.
• In Mission Setup, the arrival route and transition menus fill in automatically from SimBrief. If a menu can’t find a match, it no longer wipes your SimBrief arrival when you close the window.
• Changing your arrival in Mission Setup during the flight now re-programs the flight computer and updates your destination.
• A new runway or approach mid-flight no longer re-enters the arrival route you are already flying.
• The First Officer now says which part it is reprogramming, and tells you when the arrival route was left untouched.
• RNAV approaches now load into the flight computer; they were being skipped entirely.
• Approaches with a letter suffix, like ILS-Y 04R, now load instead of being skipped.
• Approach names are spoken the way the Mission Setup list shows them, so they match what you picked.
• The SID, arrival route and transition lists now have a “(none)” choice, so a flight without one can be set.
• Picking a different approach or arrival route no longer keeps the old one’s transition, which the flight computer could never find.
• If your arrival runway does not match your chosen approach, the First Officer says so instead of reporting no changes.
• The preflight and turnaround uplinks now program your departure only. The arrival is programmed by the descent checklist, so the two no longer both write it.
• After a descent update, the Captain reminds you to check the legs page for any gaps in the route.
• The arrival uplink is about 20 seconds faster and produces fewer warnings.
• The First Officer can now set your landing runway’s ILS automatically during the descent, and it fills the local altimeter setting on descent instead of only releasing the standard setting. (ILS is the radio system that guides you down to the runway.)
• The arrival summary now only reports changes that actually went through.

SimBrief and FMC uplink

• The SimBrief uplink now works on the 777-200LR. On that variant the route and departure/arrival steps could get stuck on the position-init page and fail the whole uplink; the FMC now recovers and completes the full uplink just like it does on the -300ER.
• Fuel and zero-fuel-weight uplink now handles kilograms and pounds correctly. On the 777, if your SimBrief plan and the FMC use different weight units, the uplink now converts instead of writing a number that’s roughly 2.2 times off. On the 737, where TFM can’t detect the FMC’s unit automatically, it warns you to double-check the unit after uplink.
• Weight-aware flap speeds are correct on a kilograms flight plan. The flap callouts and retraction were reading a kilograms weight as if it were pounds, which lowered the flap speeds by about 27 knots and could retract flaps too early on a heavy jet. Kilogram plans are now converted properly.

Runway Awareness and Approach Callouts

Runway Awareness with a 3D centerline sound (RAAS)

• Line up and press the runway-guidance hotkey to arm it. The centerline sound and spoken alerts run during the takeoff roll; press the hotkey again after liftoff to turn it off. Press it again on approach for the landing rollout. It no longer arms itself automatically from ground speed, which used to false-trigger during taxi.
• It follows you during both the takeoff and landing ground rolls and announces:
  • “Off runway!” when you drift off the active runway, “On centerline.” when you come back within tolerance, and “3,000 feet remaining.” at your chosen interval.
  • A 3D centerline tone (the new part): a steady tone placed in 3D space at the point on the centerline nearest your aircraft. It’s silent while you’re within tolerance (about 10 feet by default) and plays once you drift wider. Because it’s positioned relative to which way your nose is pointing, you simply steer toward the sound to get back on the centerline. It works best with headphones.
• It figures out the active runway for you. In order, it uses: the runway you’re physically sitting on; otherwise your planned departure runway; otherwise your destination runway — and if both are set and you’re not on a runway, it picks the closer one. So the same hotkey works for both takeoff and landing without extra setup.
• Clear message when it can’t find a runway. If it can’t identify a runway any of those ways, you hear “Runway awareness has no runway. Falling back to heading-drift guidance.” instead of it going quiet.
• Simple fallback when no runway is known. If neither a departure nor destination runway is available (for example, flying with no flight plan loaded), the runway-guidance hotkey falls back to its original behavior: it locks in your current heading and pulses if you turn off it. So the hotkey does something useful in every situation, and you get the richer guidance whenever a runway is known.
• If the 3D audio can’t start on your system, it falls back to spoken alerts only.

Centerline Assist (PMDG 777)

• A new helper keeps you tracking the runway centerline during takeoff and landing roll by working the rudder for you. You still handle the throttle, rotation, flare, and braking yourself.
• Turn it on or off with the First Officer key (apostrophe) then L, or from the “Centerline assist” box on the Mission Setup tab. It remembers whether you left it armed between sessions.
• It kicks in once you commit to the takeoff roll or touch down, and lets go the moment you lift off or slow to taxi speed.

Heading callouts now match your charts

• Runway-guidance heading is now magnetic. The “tracking heading” callout used to read the true heading, which can differ from the runway chart by the local magnetic variation. It now speaks the magnetic heading, matching the number on your charts and the heading bug. For example, at Vancouver’s runway 8R you now hear “84,” the same as the chart, instead of “100.”
• All other heading callouts are magnetic too. The same fix now applies to:
  • The “current heading” hotkey (H) — now reads magnetic, so pressing H on the runway matches your heading bug and the takeoff briefing.
  • The left/right course guidance spoken during an ILS approach — now compared correctly so it stays accurate even at far-north airports.
  • The runway centering guidance spoken outside of an ILS approach — same fix.

Landing, Approach, and Distance

• Distance to your destination is now the true straight-line distance. It no longer includes the go-around (missed approach) route that made the number too big. A new setting lets you pick straight-line or full-route distance, and the readout tells you which one it’s reading.
• Landing rate now reports your real touchdown sink rate instead of always reading zero. (Landing rate is how fast you were descending at the moment the wheels touched.)
• ILS “in range” callouts now wait until you’re actually near the airport instead of firing over 150 miles out.
• The “above glideslope” warning can no longer go off during the flare (the last-second nose-up just before touchdown).
• Your landing brief (flaps, approach speed, and minimums) is now spoken aloud during First Officer procedures instead of being muted.

Safer Automation Around the Runway

• The First Officer can no longer push the takeoff/go-around (TOGA) button while you’re still on the runway after landing.
• The parking brake now waits until you’ve cleared the runway before setting, and it sets at the actual gate — including when you teleport straight to the gate.
• The “taxi speed” warning no longer sounds during the takeoff roll, and the cabin crew takeoff call now plays during the roll instead of after you lift off.

RAAS Thresholds Tab

• New RAAS Thresholds tab. A tab in the First Officer window (Ctrl+7) lets you set values for runway-awareness alerts — short-runway warning, approaching-runway distance, unstable-approach height, altimeter-mismatch warning, taxiway over-speed, long-landing warning, and more. The defaults match a trusted reference configuration. These are placeholders for now — set them today and they’ll take effect once the runway-awareness feature ships.

PMDG 777 Systems and Cockpit Reading

The PMDG 777 no longer needs FSUIPC

• TFM now reads and controls the PMDG 777 entirely through SimConnect — the connection built into Microsoft Flight Simulator itself — instead of the separate, paid FSUIPC add-on. You can select and fly the 777 with FSUIPC not installed and not running.
• Everything TFM does with the 777 goes through this built-in link now: the cockpit panels, the flight computer and its screens, switches and gauges, and teleporting to a runway or gate.
• FSUIPC is still used by the PMDG 737 and a few older shared readouts, so keep it installed if you fly the 737. If you pick an aircraft that still needs FSUIPC while it isn’t running, TFM tells you to start FSUIPC or choose a different aircraft, rather than failing silently.

PMDG 777 Systems

• Added throttle sliders plus thrust and reverser controls.
• Reworked the control stand: multi-position controls now use dropdowns, the TOGA button is added, and a parking brake glitch is fixed.
• Added a setting to turn brake announcements on or off.
• Airspeed and Mach now read blank while parked, matching the real aircraft, so you no longer hear a fake airspeed sitting at the gate.
• The speedbrake now speaks only at its real notch positions with a live step readout, and its “HALF” position is renamed “FLT” to match the real lever.
• The speedbrake readout now says “Speed brake armed” instead of just “armed”.
• Fixed the ground-power connections so the primary and secondary units are no longer swapped.
• Fixed the Turn Around page: its two ground-power buttons were swapped, so the one that said “primary” connected the secondary cart. Its switches now read their name and state in the same one clear phrase as the rest of the panels, and reopening the page no longer doubles up its spoken callouts.
• Fixed the bus tie isolation callout: it now says “isolated” when a bus tie is actually isolated (and “normal” otherwise), instead of confusingly reporting it as “off.”
• Fixed a misspelled cargo-fire callout so the depressurized state is now spoken correctly.
• Fixed the pressurization panel: choosing “closed” for the forward outflow valve now closes the forward valve instead of the aft one, and opening the panel no longer re-commands either valve. The two outflow-valve controls now always announce their name and auto/manual state clearly, even on a cold panel.
• Selecting a panel in the tree now speaks the panel name and reminds you to press F6 to move into its controls, instead of loading silently. The F6 reminder stops once you’ve used it, so it doesn’t repeat on every panel.
• Panels with tabs (Electrical, Hydraulics, Air conditioning, Oxygen, APU/Cargo fire, Engine fire, Forward center) no longer use a tab strip. Each former tab is now a labeled section you arrow straight through in one continuous motion, with the section name announced as you reach it — no more Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+5 to switch tabs.
• Cockpit switches now announce their name and state in one clear phrase, for example “Left forward pump, on, low pressure,” with a warning like low pressure spoken only when it’s actually present. Every panel now reads its switches the same consistent way.
• Press F5 on any panel to hear what’s abnormal on it — a short “Fuel: normal” when all is well, or the active cautions (like a low-pressure pump) when something needs attention. It reads the aircraft’s real state, so it covers panels with tabs completely, including tabs you’re not looking at, and never recites routine switch or dropdown positions. Full per-control detail is still a keystroke away by tabbing through the panel.
• The panels tree now reopens on the last panel you used instead of jumping back to the top each time.
• Cargo and passenger doors close more reliably: they no longer pop back open after closing, and the aircraft now names which door is holding up a procedure.

Reading the 777 lower display pages

• AI Vision Display Reader (PMDG 777). TFM can describe the lower engine-display pages (engine, fuel, hydraulics, electrical, air, doors, gear, flight controls, status, and synoptics) by looking at the screen and reading them aloud. Each page has its own hotkey, and TFM switches pages on the spare CDU so it won’t disturb the captain’s CDU.
• Instant, free readouts for most pages. Seven of those pages now read straight from the aircraft’s own data instead of looking at the screen, so they’re instant, cost nothing, and work at any camera angle:
  • Hydraulics (Left Bracket, then Y) — quantity and pressure per system, plus every pump and valve.
  • Electrical (Left Bracket, then L) — generators, drives, external power, bus ties, and battery.
  • Engine detail (Left Bracket, then E) — N1/N2/EGT/fuel flow and oil pressure, temperature, and quantity per engine.
  • Fuel (Left Bracket, then U) — total and per-tank amounts, all pumps with low-pressure warnings, and crossfeeds.
  • Air conditioning (Left Bracket, then A) — duct pressures, packs, bleeds, isolation valves, and cabin zone temperatures.
  • Doors (Left Bracket, then O) — sums up to “All exterior doors closed” when nothing is open.
  • Flight controls (Left Bracket, then C) — control-surface positions, stabilizer trim, and spoilers.
  • The Status page (Left Bracket, then S) and Gear page (Left Bracket, then G) still use the screen-reading method for now.

MobiFlight Cockpit-Reading Module

• The First Officer needs a small MobiFlight add-on to read certain PMDG 777 switch positions (like whether the speedbrake is armed, brightness knobs, and temperature selectors).
• TFM now checks at startup whether this add-on is installed and up to date, and offers to install the included copy if it’s missing or outdated. This works for both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 if you have both. Restart the simulator afterward so it loads.
• You can run this check any time from Tools, “Install / update MobiFlight module.” The startup prompt has a “don’t ask again” option.

MobiFlight and hardware reads

• The connection to MobiFlight now keeps retrying. Before, if you started TFM while Microsoft Flight Simulator was still loading, the link that lets TFM read certain PMDG 777 values could fail once and then give up silently for the rest of the session — every read came back as zero and you had to know to restart TFM. Now it retries every 5 seconds for up to a minute and connects as soon as the simulator is ready. If it still can’t connect after a minute, it gives a clear warning naming the likely causes.

Radios and Avionics

• Radio tuning, transponder, and throttle commands now go through a more reliable method, so tuning that the simulator used to reject now works. This includes support for 8.33 kHz channel spacing (the finer radio-frequency steps used in Europe).
• VOR station ID and name now announce correctly, and ADF frequency now reads correctly. (VOR and ADF are older ground-based navigation radios.)
• ILS detection is more reliable.
• The aircraft no longer reads out radio frequencies on its own during startup.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Turning TFM’s special keys on and off

• Type punctuation normally when you need to. TFM uses several punctuation keys (apostrophe, semicolon, backslash, comma, period, left bracket, right bracket) as shortcut “openers,” so it normally grabs them before they reach other programs. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L to release them all at once so you can type them in another app or in the sim, then press it again to bring your shortcuts back. This is a quick, temporary release: pressing it back restores whatever layout you’d set up, so it never disturbs any openers you keep switched off. The key combo can be changed in the Keyboard Manager. (PMDG 777.)
• Turn off just the openers you don’t want, and keep it that way. You no longer have to release them all at once. The Tools → TFM chords submenu and the Keyboard Manager both let you switch each opener key on or off on its own — for example, free up the brackets to type in the flight computer while the First Officer and taxi shortcuts stay live. There’s still an “All chords active” switch when you want everything on or off in one go.
• The period now types into TFM’s own boxes instead of arming the traffic chord. Typing a decimal — “0.84” into the Mach window, or a decimal in the flight computer scratchpad — used to lose the dot, because the traffic shortcut grabs that key before any window sees it. While your cursor is in a box you can type in, the period and comma type normally, and they go back to being shortcut keys the moment you move off. Every other opener stays live the whole time, so your First Officer, taxi and ground shortcuts still work while the cursor is sitting in a field.
• Read-only fields keep your shortcuts. Sitting in a display-only box — a flight-computer page, or a speed window the FMC owns — does not disturb any opener key.
• Your layout now sticks. Whatever you turn off stays off after you reload the aircraft or reconnect to the sim, so you set it once instead of every flight.
• Clear spoken feedback for every change. The quick Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L release says “All chords released” and “All chords restored,” while the saved “All chords active” switch says “All chords on” and “All chords off” — so you can always tell a temporary release from a saved change by ear. Turning a single opener on or off names it, for example “Taxi chords off.” The Tools and Keyboard Manager lists always show which openers are actually live right now, including during a temporary release. And if you’ve switched every opener off in your saved settings, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L tells you they’re already off instead of pretending to change something.
• The old TFM → Control keys Enable/Disable menu has been removed. Turning the shortcut keys on and off now lives in the Tools → TFM chords submenu and the Keyboard Manager. The window title still shows when control keys are off.
• Known limitation: if you leave the Tools → TFM chords submenu or the Keyboard Manager’s “Chord keys on / off” section open and then press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L, the checkmarks won’t refresh until you click an item or reopen the list. The keys themselves respond correctly — only the on-screen checkmarks lag behind.

Shortcut groups made simpler

• First Officer, taxi, and ground-and-start actions are now grouped under easy-to-remember opener keys. Press an opener key, then a letter:
  • apostrophe — First Officer (pause or resume, stop, repeat, hand flying to the First Officer, alerts, and confirm)
  • semicolon — checklists (before and after takeoff, descent, approach, landing, after landing, shutdown, go around, missed approach, holding, diversion)
  • backslash — taxi guidance
  • comma — ground and engine-start actions (run all of preflight, engine start, or before-taxi at once, or each phase on its own, plus turnaround and the three cold-weather flows)
• A go-around shortcut. Press the apostrophe then G to hit TOGA. In the air it fires straight away, so you are not opening a window on short final. On the ground the same switch is takeoff thrust, so TFM tells you that and waits for a second press before sending it. This is now the only way to press TOGA yourself — the buttons that used to sit on the MCP Speed tab were removed. (PMDG 777.)
• New “reset camera view” shortcut. Press Right Bracket then Ctrl+Home to snap the cockpit camera back to its default forward view. This is handy when the sim leaves the camera zoomed in on one panel and the number keys start clicking autopilot buttons instead of changing camera views — something that can happen after using the teleport feature.

A rebuilt, screen-reader-friendly Keyboard Manager

• Easier to find and change shortcuts. The old flat grid is gone. There’s now a search box (type part of an action name or a key to filter) and a grouped list sorted by category. The shortcut groups are shown for you to browse.
• A talking dialog for reassigning keys. When you assign a key, it speaks the key you pressed and tells you whether it’s free or already in use — and which action is using it. Delete removes a shortcut. If you pick a key that’s already taken, it moves the key to your new action and frees it from the old one.
• Changes take effect right away — no need to reload the aircraft. You can reset a single shortcut or reset everything.
• Keys are spoken in plain English. The list now says “right bracket,” “apostrophe,” and “shift C” instead of confusing internal names. You can still type the exact key combination to filter the list.
• Shortcuts show the full sequence. For example, “right bracket then G — altitude above ground,” so you can see the opener key and the letter that follows it.
• More ways to browse and search. The list is grouped by opener key and then by function, a drop-down narrows it to one group at a time, and F6 jumps between the search box and the list. You can also search by key (for example, type “Control+G”). The same key can be reused in different groups without a false “already assigned” warning.
• You can now change the letters that follow an opener key. For example, apostrophe then P pauses or resumes the First Officer — pick that entry in the Keyboard Manager and press Change to choose a different letter or digit. It reads the prompt aloud and won’t let you pick a letter that’s already used in that group. You can reset one shortcut or reset them all to the defaults.
• Changing an opener key is fully checked. You can’t set an opener key (apostrophe, semicolon, backslash, comma, left bracket, right bracket) to a letter that any group already uses, and it explains why out loud. You also can’t take an opener’s key for another action or remove it entirely — the manager tells you to reassign that group’s opener key first.

Find a shortcut by pressing it

• Press the key to hear what it does. Turn on Search by key press (a checkbox, or press F3) and just press the key you’re wondering about. It tells you what that key does, or that it’s free, using plain words like “control right bracket,” and selects it so you can press Enter to reassign it. This works for punctuation keys like comma and equals too. Press Escape or F3 to go back to text search. It also recognizes opener keys — press a letter and it lists every group that uses it.
• This mode no longer triggers the key you’re testing. While it’s on, your normal shortcuts pause, so pressing an opener key just tells you what it is — it won’t start a shortcut, beep, or run the action. Your shortcuts come back the moment you leave this mode or close the window. This fixes the old problem where pressing Right Bracket to look it up would actually start its shortcut.

Search that lands you in the results

• Both search modes now move you straight into the results. They announce how many matches were found and put you right in the filtered list so you can arrow through them. In text search, press Enter or the Down arrow to jump to the results. In key-press search, the list opens as soon as you press a key — and that also turns key-press mode off, so your arrow keys and letters work normally in the list. Press Escape to clear the filter and show everything again.

Easier to learn

• The Keyboard Manager speaks a short overview when you open it, and each group starts with a plain-English line explaining how it works. The display-page keys (Left Bracket then a letter) are listed for reference, Reset all asks for a second press to confirm, and conflict messages tell you which group to look in.

Getting Around the Airport

Where You Are on the Ground

• Fixed a crash in the ground-location readout. The feature that tells you where you are on the airport surface would fail on startup. It now works reliably again — including the runway-awareness announcements that rely on knowing your position on the ground.

Jump to a Runway or Gate (FS2024)

• Teleporting to a runway or gate is more reliable. Pressing Enter on a runway or gate no longer wrongly reports “Not connected” when the sim is actually running. It now checks the real connection and moves you cleanly to the chosen spot.
• Better centerline help. When lining up, the assist now steers a small angle back toward the centerline and holds it, even in a crosswind.
• Safer teleports. The feature refuses to move you when ground-elevation data is missing, so you won’t end up spawned underground.
• No more facing the wrong way. Jumping to a runway is blocked when its heading is unknown, instead of pointing you north by mistake.
• Clear feedback when you switch runways. Jumping to a different runway than the one in your flight plan now tells you it replaced the old one.
• No accidental double-teleports. Pressing Enter twice quickly no longer triggers a second identical jump.

Runway and gate teleport

• Teleporting to a runway or gate now works even when the older FSUIPC add-on isn’t running, and it snaps the aircraft into place instantly. It speaks a warning in the rare case where the airport or runway elevation isn’t in the data (mostly very short private strips).
• The gate list now shows the magnetic heading a pilot actually flies, matching the cockpit compass. It used to show a “true” heading that could be off by the local magnetic variation — for example, showing 84 instead of the 100 you’d see on the compass.
• When you teleport to a gate, TFM now speaks a plain-English description of the parking spot — for example, “Moved to West parking 2 stand A, ramp cargo” instead of a cryptic code like “Moved to W2A.” This helps a lot at unfamiliar airports where you can’t memorize every gate code.

Easier to move around the airport

• New “By direction” option when you right-click the gate list: it groups parking by compass side (North, Northeast, East, and so on). Handy at big airports for finding the right cargo apron or general-aviation ramp by which side of the field it’s on. The option only appears when the airport actually labels its parking by direction.
• Arrowing through the runway list and gate list now reads a full description of each row instead of just saying “data item.” A runway row now reads something like “Runway 08R, heading 100, ILS IVR, 11,500 feet, asphalt,” and a gate row reads its plain-English parking description.
• Missing ILS approaches at some airports are now found correctly. A small number of ILS records in the flight-sim scenery data were missing the link to their runway, so TFM would report “no ILS runways available” even when an ILS was really there — this was caught at Vancouver (CYVR), where runway 08R has a Category III approach but was showing as having no ILS. TFM now repairs these missing links automatically after each scenery rebuild. Existing installs get the fix on their next scenery rebuild.

Choosing Your Aircraft

• A new searchable “Choose aircraft” window. Open it with Ctrl+Shift+N from anywhere in the main TFM window, or from the Aircraft menu. Type part of a name to filter, arrow through the list, and press Enter to pick — Escape cancels. It’s built for keyboard and screen-reader use, and it scales cleanly as more aircraft are added.
• Menus reorganized. Aircraft is now the first menu on the bar (holding “Choose aircraft…” plus the current aircraft’s functions), and the connection controls moved to their own Connection menu. The old “TFM” menu is gone — its items now live where they belong.
• Menu polish and accessibility. Fixed duplicate Alt-key shortcuts across the Aircraft, Tools, and Help menus so a letter jumps straight to its item instead of cycling — the Aircraft menu now assigns each item a unique shortcut automatically, so it stays collision-free as more aircraft are added; showed the Ctrl+Shift+N shortcut on the “Choose aircraft” item; tidied a few labels (“Changes” is now “Release notes”, the Settings submenu’s inner item is “Open settings”, “SimBrief” is spelled correctly); and made the menus keep their order when you connect or disconnect the simulator, so positions you’ve memorized stay put. (One small exception: on the PMDG aircraft menus the FMC item has no letter shortcut of its own — every available letter is taken by another item — but it’s still reachable with the arrow keys.)
• Two new spoken hints. Focusing “Disconnect FSUIPC” now says it closes only the FSUIPC link (SimConnect stays connected while MSFS is running), so you won’t mistake it for cutting the whole sim link; and the chooser’s aircraft list announces how it’s grouped — favorites first, then recent, then by manufacturer.
• It opens on your current aircraft, so re-selecting the plane you usually fly is just Ctrl+Shift+N then Enter. Aircraft you’ve flown recently appear in a “Recent” group at the top, and your last choice is remembered between sessions.
• Pin your favorite aircraft. Highlight an aircraft and press Alt+P (or the Pin button) to keep it in a “Favorites” group at the very top — handy as the aircraft list grows. Press again to unpin. Your favorites are remembered between sessions.
• See how long you’ve flown each aircraft. The list shows a running total next to aircraft you’ve used — for example “PMDG 777, used 55 hours” — so you can tell your regulars from the ones you’ve barely touched. The count builds up across all your sessions.
• Reset a usage count when you want. Highlight an aircraft and choose “Reset usage” (Alt+R) to set its total back to zero. It asks you to confirm first, since it can’t be undone.
• A gentle first-run reminder. If you start TFM without ever having chosen an aircraft, it speaks a short reminder of how to open the chooser (Ctrl+Shift+N). Once you’ve picked an aircraft, it stops for good.
• The Aircraft menu shows which aircraft is active — its “Choose aircraft” item reads “(active: PMDG 777)” (or “none selected”) so you can check without opening the window.
• Picking an aircraft the simulator hasn’t loaded no longer blocks you with an error. TFM now just notes that the sim reports a different aircraft and lets you continue — the choice is always yours.

Other Fixes

Built-in checklists now stay up to date

• Built-in checklists now update when you update TFM. Until now your copy was frozen at whatever shipped the first time you ran TFM, so later checklist fixes and new phases never reached you.
• Checklists you edited yourself are never overwritten by that update. TFM only refreshes a copy it can prove you have not changed, and says in the log when it leaves yours alone.
• Every checklist overwrite now saves a timestamped backup alongside it first, including “restore default checklist”.
• If you edited a checklist and want the newer built-in one, use restore default checklist; your version is backed up, not lost.

Connection and reliability

• No more losing the sim connection during descent. Rapid switch changes (like the First Officer spinning the approach-minimums knobs many times a second) used to overload the connection and drop it, which then cascaded into errors, dead keyboard shortcuts, and reconnect loops. This no longer happens.
• More reliable runway and gate detection in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Two parts of TFM could read the scenery database at the same moment and collide, briefly dropping runway and gate detection. That’s fixed.
• Landing gear and other PMDG readouts are correct right after you connect. Just after starting TFM or restarting a flight, the gear could wrongly read “up” while you were parked on the ground, because no fresh data had arrived yet. TFM now asks the aircraft for its current state the moment it connects, and reports “not available yet” rather than guessing.
• Fixed a harmless internal error and log noise when you changed the sim rate early in a session.

CDU and flight-plan fixes

• The scratchpad no longer drops the last character you type.
• Your line-select-key preference now loads correctly on the 777.
• Page titles are announced properly when moving through the CDU, and failed moves stop cleanly instead of getting stuck in a loop.
• Loading the same SimBrief plan twice at once now runs as a single load.
• The background CDU reader pauses during automated CDU work so the two can’t fight mid-flight.
• Settings panels no longer thrash when you change several options quickly.
• Various fixes to attachments and roles for licensed users.
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is now detected reliably.

Other fixes

• PFD window fixes. The vertical-speed readout no longer shows a wrong, unlabeled number when you display altitudes in meters — it now always reads feet per minute with its unit. The “Mach” label’s shortcut key now lands on the Mach field instead of the heading field. And the flight-director pitch and bank fields read “N/A” on every aircraft instead of showing a frozen value that looked live, since there’s no live flight-director feed yet. Reopening or popping out the PFD window no longer piles up duplicate readouts.

• GSX ground services no longer causes an error when its toolbar panel closes.

• Reset on the SOPs tab now includes “FO sets minimums on descent.” This checkbox was accidentally left out of the tab’s Reset action, so pressing Reset changed every other setting but quietly kept this one. It now resets along with everything else.

• The RAAS tab now controls the runway-awareness beacon (previously 8 sliders that did nothing). The First Officer window’s runway- awareness tab used to show 8 sliders that had no effect. It now gives you the controls the feature actually uses: turn the centerline beacon on or off, change the beacon tone pitch (so you can move it into a range you hear well — it was locked at 440 Hz before), how far off the centerline before it warns you, the minimum ground speed for it to start, and how often it calls out the runway distance remaining. There is also a Play beacon tone button so you can sample the current pitch and tune it by ear (headphones recommended). The 8 old advisory sliders (short-runway, long-landing, and so on) are kept for a future feature and simply no longer show controls that don’t work.

• Shorter, snappier help text on many controls. Your screen reader reads a control’s help aloud every time you land on it, so long help slows down tabbing through a page. About 80 of the wordiest help messages — mostly on the First Officer window and the Checklist Editor, plus the settings, taxi, and keyboard pages — were trimmed to say what the control does and any important catch, without the extra explanation. Nothing changed about how the controls work, only how much is read to you.

• Press F1 for the full story on any control. The detail that was trimmed out of the quick on-focus help now has a home: land on any control and press F1 to open a readable help window (it’s also spoken) with the complete explanation — what the control does, when to use it, defaults, and any catch. It works across the First Officer window, the settings, taxi and keyboard pages, the controller-sensitivity window, and the Checklist Editor. If a control doesn’t have a written-up entry yet, F1 still reads you its short help, so it’s never a dead end. Escape closes the window.

• One F-key moved in the First Officer window. Because F1 is now the Help key everywhere, the First Officer window’s old F1 = focus the checklist dropdown moved to F8. Everything else is exactly where it was (F2–F7 and Escape are unchanged); only that one rarely-used shortcut shifted, and F1 now opens help there like everywhere else.

• Checklist Editor: F1 is now context help. Pressing F1 while on a field explains that field; the Quick Start Guide is still one click away in the Help menu (and F1 still shows it when you’re not on a specific field).

• A “what’s this section for” overview on every page. Press F1 when you’re not on a specific control (for example on a tab) and you’ll hear a short overview of that section — what it’s for and the order to use it in — instead of just per-control help. There’s one for the First Officer window, the Captain and First Officer settings, taxi clearance and taxi tones, the Keyboard Manager, and controller sensitivity.

• A searchable “TFM Help” window. The main Help menu now has TFM Help, built like the FMC help window — a search box and three tabs, each a browsable tree with a reading pane:

  • Help topics — every control’s help (the same text F1 shows, so it can’t fall out of date), grouped by section, plus the PMDG FMC page help.
  • Tutorials — step-by-step walkthroughs for getting started: choosing an aircraft, your first First Officer flight, setting up the voices, loading SimBrief, taxiing with guidance, the panels, hotkeys, the FMC uplink, building a checklist, tuning the tones, and quick key references — plus the FMC tutorials. Group them by experience level or by feature.
  • Keyboard shortcuts — the FMC shortcuts and TFM’s own hotkeys in one place, and each TFM hotkey now has a fuller description of what it does and how it works (what it reads out, its units, whether it toggles or announces once, and any aircraft-specific notes).

• F1 help on the PMDG 777 MCP. Press F1 on any control in the MCP (autoflight) window to hear what it does and how to use it — the altitude/speed/heading/vertical- speed windows, VNAV/LNAV/LVL CHG, the autothrottle and TOGA, flight directors and autopilots, approach and localizer. F1 on the panel itself gives a short MCP overview, and it’s all searchable under PMDG 777 in the TFM Help window.

• F1 help on the PMDG 777 cockpit panels — down to the individual switch. In the Panels view, press F1 on any panel in the tree for what that panel is for, and press F1 on any switch, knob, or button inside a loaded panel for what that specific control does, its positions, and when you’d use it — across electrical, hydraulics, fuel, anti-ice, pressurization, air conditioning, lights, oxygen, EFIS, the engine-fire panel, the control stand, and the rest. Every panel and switch is browsable and searchable under PMDG 777 → Panels in TFM Help, nested by cockpit area and panel.

  Search filters the current tab; F2/F3/F4 jump around; type in a tree to jump to an item. It’s the screen-reader-friendly place to read or look something up.

• F1 help spread to more of TFM. Press F1 for context help across the Settings pages (Aircraft, Assistive technology, Vision API, User interface, Networking, Mapping, Enhanced hotkeys, Flight planning), the Connection status view, and the Flight plan builder and SimBrief import — with each surface browsable under Settings and Flight planning in the TFM Help window.

• A “Getting started” section, and a tidier topic list. The TFM Help window now opens on Getting started — plain-English articles on what TFM is, how it works and connects, what you need, finding your way around, and getting help — plus a “Welcome to TFM: your first 10 minutes” tutorial. The Help topics are grouped into sections that match the app’s own menus (Getting started, First Officer, Taxi guidance, Keyboard & controllers, PMDG 777), and the voice-settings pages are now clearly named “Captain’s voice settings” and “First Officer voice settings”.

• F1 always opens the right control’s help. A few controls share the same internal name across different windows (for example a “Stop”, “Reset”, or “Save” button, or the “Speech output” picker on both the Captain and First Officer voice pages). F1 now always shows the help for the window you’re actually in, so the Captain’s voice page no longer reads First Officer text and the air-conditioning reset no longer reads taxi-tone help.

• A cleaner, easier-to-arrow Help topic tree. The topic tree no longer mixes individual topics and folders at the same level — where a section has both, the loose topics gather under a “General” folder, so arrowing a level gives you all folders or all topics, not a jumble. Internal “overview” placeholders no longer show up as stray topics. Plus small wording fixes: the autobrake and vertical-speed hotkey descriptions now match what each PMDG jet actually says, the “all landing lights” button is described correctly (left, right, and nose — there’s no fourth light), the transition-altitude callouts point to Mission Setup, and the MCP vertical-speed field and Settings search now cite the right keys.

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Fixed since the 8.0.0 tester build

Everything above is new if you are coming from version 7. This last section is for the testers who flew 8.0.0 — it is what changed between that build and this one.

• Typing in another program can no longer trigger a chord and act on your aircraft.
• PMDG 777: engine start now checks the engine actually started, not just the switch.
• PMDG 777: the First Officer warns you if a takeoff begins with an engine not running.
• PMDG 777: the Before Takeoff procedure now confirms both engines are running, first.
• FO-flies (PMDG 777 only) hands the aircraft back if an engine is not running.
• FO-flies now also catches an engine failing during the takeoff roll.
• Cancelling FO-flies mid-roll now actually gives the controls back.
• FO-flies no longer arms itself again after you have landed.
• Go-around and missed approach no longer arm themselves; run them from the checklist chord. Upgrading switches them off once, even if you had them on. Turn them back on in the First Officer window, Phase Auto-Arm tab, and they stay on.
• The First Officer tells you before the roll if the crosswind is too strong.
• Flaps no longer retract before the gear when the climb-out is fast.
• The First Officer reminds you the aircraft is not secured after shutdown.
• Auto-taxi says which engine is out when you taxi on one.
• The engine info key now reports real N1 and N2 on the 777; it read zero.
• A checklist that fails now says so before it says the page name.
• PMDG 737 DC amps, DC volts, AC amps and AC volts now update live.
• GLS approaches now load into the 777 flight computer; they never did before.
• More approach types recognised: TACAN, NDB/DME, VOR-via-VORTAC and SDF.
• Fixed the flight computer selecting a similarly-named approach to the wrong runway.
• VOR/DME and TACAN approaches now load on the first try instead of the second.
• Arrivals no longer report a failed entry when a procedure has no transitions.
• Mission Setup now names approach types instead of raw codes, except circling approaches.
• Setting only the arrival runway no longer selects an approach you did not ask for.
• PMDG 737 speed brake keys now announce what they actually do.
• PMDG 737 Auto brake MAX is Ctrl+Shift+4; its old key never worked.
• The About box no longer says TFM runs on FSUIPC; the 777 has not since 8.0.0.
• Help now says the 777 needs MobiFlight, which has been true since April.
• Pressing the control key twice quickly on the PMDG 737 no longer crashes TFM.
• Airport data no longer fails to load at random, which silently killed runway callouts, taxi guidance and the ground position readout for a whole session.
• When the First Officer cannot work out a value, it says so and leaves it for you to set.
• PMDG 737: First Officer pause, stop and repeat now work — press the control key, then Ctrl+H, Ctrl+E or Ctrl+Y. Their old keys clashed with other actions and never fired.
• Connection Status no longer reports a working 777 as not connected.
• PMDG 777: the takeoff trim callout now speaks the flight computer’s own figure — 3.25, not 3.3.
• PMDG 777: the trim readout now tells you how far you are from the FMC setting.
• The runway reminder no longer nudges you to arm FO-flies when FO-flies is switched off.
• Turning FO-flies on is now spoken as a setting you can change, not as missing from the build.
• FO-flies no longer gives the aircraft back before the autopilot is due to engage. If you had set the engage height below 1000 feet, it used to let go at your height and leave nobody flying until 1000.
• FO-flies no longer says the autopilot is engaged when it is not; it now tells you outright.
• Closing a required update no longer disables the menu bar for the rest of the session.
• The “no update available” screen can now be closed with the close-view key.
• TFM now always checks the one update feed. If your licence is named “preview”, it was checking a feed that no longer exists, so you would never have been offered an update again.
• The update screen’s download button now opens the official download page.
• Help → changes now opens the release-notes archive, so you can read every version’s notes in one place.
• Connection Status help now explains that the PMDG 777 needs no FSUIPC.
• The Keyboard shortcut scope help entries now have readable titles.
• Help no longer promises taxi guidance to Flight Simulator 2020 pilots, who cannot run it.
• Mission Setup’s rollout hand-back field is now named for centerline assist, which uses it.
• PMDG 737: the 16 Warnings checkboxes now actually work. Unchecking “Master caution”, a fire warning or any other annunciator on Settings → PMDG 737 → Glare Shield → Warnings really does silence it now. They had no effect at all before — the announcements played regardless.
• “Announce elevator trim” on the Aircraft settings page now saves. It was wired to the wrong name, so ticking or unticking it never stuck.
• Removed six settings that never did anything: a PMDG 737 MCP announcements checkbox, the FMC scratchpad announcement checkbox, “Load license messages”, the Display Reader capture-region page, and the 777 FMC “distance to top of descent” and “distance to destination” boxes. None of them changed anything when you set them.
• The working PMDG 737 MCP announcement toggles are under Glare Shield, then MCP.
• Scratchpad text is still announced by “Announce FMC changes after actions”.

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Also new since the 8.0.0 tester build

• New Settings page: choose whether shortcut keys work everywhere, or only in TFM and the sim.
• The First Officer can fly your takeoff on the PMDG 777. Experimental, and off until you turn it on under Settings → Priority Boarding → First Officer flies the aircraft.
• The PMDG 737 MCP now uses the same panel as the 777.
• F1 help on every MCP control, on both aircraft.
• F6 on the MCP jumps to whatever is abnormal, or says nothing is.
• The 737 MCP now refuses entry when it has no live data, instead of showing zeros.

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