PMDG

Talking flight monitor 9.0.0 release notes

by

Talking Flight Monitor 9.0.0

Baseline: 8.1.0. This file covers only what changed since then. For the previous release, see release-notes-8.1.0.md.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 works properly again

If you fly MSFS 2020 with the PMDG 777 and do not run FSUIPC, TFM could not tell which simulator it was connected to. After a 30-second pause it gave up and loaded no airport data at all. Everything built on that data went quiet, and nothing said why.

This affected 8.0.0 and 8.1.0. The workaround was to run FSUIPC; you no longer need to.

  • MSFS 2020 with the 777 and no FSUIPC no longer loses every airport-data feature.
  • The gates and runways lists no longer say “Airport not found” for airports that exist.
  • TFM identifies the simulator immediately instead of pausing 30 seconds first.
  • If TFM still cannot identify your simulator, the log now records what it was told.

Using the right simulator’s airport data

If you have both simulators installed, TFM keeps two sets of airport data. It used to answer from whichever set had been loaded most recently rather than from the simulator you were flying.

  • Your location, ILS callouts and destination now come from the simulator you are flying.
  • Browsing the other simulator’s gates no longer changes the answers for your current flight.
  • TFM now names the simulator when it could matter, and refuses to move your aircraft using the wrong simulator’s coordinates.
  • The airport box and the list now say which simulator’s data you are reading.
  • A destination you saved is now restored on Flight Simulator 2024 as well, not just 2020.

Jumping to a gate or runway

  • Jump to a gate or runway now works on MSFS 2020 without FSUIPC running.
  • It no longer answers “Not connected” while TFM is perfectly well connected.
  • A successful jump now says where you were moved to, instead of moving you in silence.
  • If the move fails, TFM says so rather than leaving you wondering.

Knowing where you are

  • The current location key works on MSFS 2020 again, instead of “No location data available”.
  • ILS position announcements and the First Officer’s runway checks read that same position, so they have what they need on MSFS 2020 again.
  • Your location is reported from the airport database you already built. Nothing new to install.
  • On MSFS 2020 TFM names the airport, runway and stand, but not the taxiway you are on.
  • On the PMDG 737, your position no longer depends on the MSFS 2020 airport database being loaded. It previously came from that database whichever simulator you were flying.
  • So on MSFS 2024 the 737 reports its position reliably, rather than only after you happened to open one of the MSFS 2020 airport windows.
  • The PMDG 737’s ILS distance was measured from the wrong place entirely. Now it reads your aircraft.
  • The repeating approach callouts need “Read ILS” switched on.
  • TFM says “distance unavailable” instead of announcing a distance it cannot measure.
  • The Local time key speaks again on aircraft that run without FSUIPC. It had been silent, clock included.
  • Teleporting to a gate or runway from the MSFS 2024 lists now refuses while you are airborne on the PMDG 737, as it already did on the MSFS 2020 lists.

Picking a runway in Mission Setup

The departure and destination runway lists read MSFS 2024’s scenery and nothing else, so on MSFS 2020 both were empty — and neither list lets you type a name, so there was no way to set either one. They now read whichever simulator you are running.

  • ⚠ The lists come from the airports database, so it has to be built first. Tools, Airports database. If a list is empty the log now says why instead of just showing nothing.

Setting a destination runway

  • Ctrl+D on the runways list now actually stores your destination on MSFS 2020.
  • It no longer confirms a destination it did not save, and no longer reads back the previous flight’s runway as though you had just chosen it.
  • If it cannot set the destination, it tells you, and says the airport database may not be loaded.
  • The destination box no longer shows “Not set” for the rest of the session after a successful set.

ILS glide slope

  • The ILS glide slope now reports the real angle instead of always saying 3 degrees.
  • Steep approaches read correctly — London City is 5.5 degrees, Lugano 6.65.
  • Where no glide slope is published, TFM still says 3 degrees, which remains the standard.

Distance and bearing to a gate

  • Gate distance and bearing now read real figures instead of 0.00 and zero.
  • This works without FSUIPC, so the 777 has it back — it had been reading 0.00 miles and bearing zero since 8.0.0, when that aircraft stopped needing FSUIPC.
  • If TFM has no aircraft position, it now says so when the gates load.

When the airport database is not built

  • An unbuilt airport database now says so, instead of “Airport not found” for every airport.
  • The message names where to build it: Tools, Airports database, Build database.
  • The gates and runways lists say it when you open them, not only when a search fails.
  • A database left incomplete by a cancelled rebuild is now named as incomplete, not missing.
  • Both lists load the database on demand, so you can browse airports with no simulator running.

Help and polish

  • Press F1 in the gates, runways or airport database windows for help on the focused control.
  • The help browser has a new “Airport data” section covering all three.
  • TFM no longer repeats “No running flight simulator detected” throughout the log.
  • When FSUIPC is running, TFM no longer takes its word alone for which simulator you are on. It now also asks the simulator itself, which matters if your FSUIPC predates MSFS 2024.

Rebuilding the airport database

  • Abandoning a running rebuild no longer leaves you with no airport data at all.
  • Your existing data is set aside first and put back if the rebuild does not finish.
  • Your existing database is protected too, not just the scenery scan it is built from.
  • Closing TFM mid-build now really does just mean starting the build again later.
  • A rebuild stopped by a crash or a power cut is repaired the next time TFM starts.
  • Starting your simulator while a rebuild is running no longer disturbs the build.
  • The log now records how many airports a rebuild found, for when you report a problem.
  • The Airports database view now reports your real airport and runway counts with no simulator running, instead of always saying the database is not loaded.
  • It also tells you whether the database is missing, incomplete, or simply not loaded yet.
  • Arrowing through the gates or runways list after editing the airport box no longer crashes TFM.

The takeoff briefing gives you a departure runway heading on 2020

The First Officer’s Before Start briefing reads back your departure runway heading. On MSFS 2020 it could only say the heading was unknown, because it looked in MSFS 2024’s scenery and nowhere else — so the one number that tells you which way you are about to point was missing on exactly the simulator this release is about.

  • It now reads whichever airport database belongs to the simulator you are running.
  • With no simulator running it uses whichever database is loaded, so you can still plan on the ground.
  • The log names which database answered, if you ever need to check it.

The SimBrief uplink says when it cannot tell which 777 you are in

If TFM cannot identify the 777 variant, it puts the flight plan in the 777-300ER’s folder — and if that is not your aircraft, the uplink then reports a missing flight plan file with nothing to say why. It now tells you out loud that it guessed, so you can fix the cause instead of hunting the symptom.

  • The usual cause is that aircraft’s own options file missing its SDK section. TFM offers to switch that on when it starts, and asks only once.

First Officer

The First Officer no longer talks about the wrong item

On a page where items check themselves off quickly, the voice fell further and further behind — by the time you heard “battery, checked” the flow had moved on several items, and nothing told you which one it was really on. It now waits for each callout to finish before moving to the next item.

  • Pages where a lot of switches are already correct now take as long as they take to say, rather than racing ahead of the voice.
  • Safety callouts — V1, rotate, minimums, go-around — are not paced, so they are never held back waiting for the voice to settle. They still take their turn in the queue like everything else.

The empty tab is gone

The First Officer window had a ninth tab containing nothing but the words “session preferences”, left over from an edit. It has been removed; the window is back to its eight real tabs.

Clearing the speech queue

Press the First Officer key then space to drop everything waiting to be spoken. It is the same gesture as your screen reader’s control key: not a mute and not a pause, just a clean sweep of whatever is queued at that instant. The First Officer keeps working, nothing is skipped, and the next thing it says comes through normally.

  • It answers with silence. A confirmation would be the one sound that survived the request for quiet.
  • ⚠ You only need this if you use the SAPI or Azure voices. On the screen-reader setting — which is what TFM ships with — your own control key already does it.
  • ⚠ Not on the 737 yet; it arrives with that aircraft’s First Officer keys.

Master warnings are no longer muted during First Officer flows

If you have “mute other TFM output” on, TFM used to silence everything while a flow ran — including master warnings and fire warnings. Those now come through.

  • Fire, overheat, APU, electrical, fuel, hydraulics, engines and the rest — sixteen warnings on the two aircraft.
  • Everything else still respects your mute. Only master warnings are exempt.
  • ⚠ GPWS, traffic and runway callouts are not exempt yet.

The log records why the 737’s APU faulted

When the 737’s APU faults, the log now records its temperature and switch positions at that moment, which is the only evidence the aircraft offers about the cause.

  • ⚠ The spoken half — the First Officer saying “it is faulted” rather than “it is starting” — arrives with the 737 First Officer in the next version. It reaches you through the checklist engine, which does not run on that aircraft here.

Checklists

The First Officer now opens the First Officer checklist

If you had not opened the Electronic Clipboard, the First Officer used to fall back to the clipboard checklist — which is mostly items for you to read and confirm, not items it can fly. It now opens the First Officer checklist instead.

  • Those two checklists are different in kind. The 777’s First Officer one is 68% things it does for you; the clipboard is about half.
  • The clipboard checklists are now called “PMDG 737 Clipboard” and “PMDG 777 Clipboard” in the pickers, instead of “Default” — they were never the general-purpose one.
  • ⚠ This is a 777 change. The First Officer is switched off on the 737 in this version, so it opens nothing there — use the Electronic Clipboard.

Reading a display with Claude works again

If you had picked Claude as your display-reading service, every request failed — TFM was asking for a model that was retired in June. It now uses a current one.

  • ⚠ This does not fix “it doesn’t read my display properly.” That is a separate problem with how the screen is captured, and it is not fixed in this version. This only fixes requests failing outright.
  • There is now a “Test display reading” button in Settings, Vision API. It sends one small picture and tells you what came back, so you can check the service works without loading a simulator. It uses your API key, so it costs a fraction of a cent, and it only runs when you press it.
  • Failures now say what is actually wrong. A retired model, a rejected key and a busy server used to all read as “API error” and a number, which sounds temporary. TFM now tells you whether to try again or report it.
  • Retries after a busy or failing service now actually retry. They could not before — this affected all three services, not just Claude.

Your checklist ticks now save reliably

Ticks sometimes stopped persisting between sessions, with nothing said about it. TFM was writing the same file from several places at once and colliding with itself; whichever writes lost were logged and forgotten. On a preflight checklist you are using to keep your place, that is the worst possible thing to be silent about.

  • Saves are now queued and written one at a time, so they cannot collide.
  • Your ticks are written out when you close TFM. Nothing did that before.
  • Ticking an item no longer writes the file twice.
  • If a save genuinely fails, TFM now tells you once, instead of only writing it to the log.
  • If your saved ticks are ever unreadable, TFM says so and keeps the old file rather than quietly starting you from blank.

“Restore default checklist” now actually restores it

The button replaced the file on disk, said “restored successfully” out loud, and then kept flying the old copy. It has never worked, on either aircraft, since it was added. The only way to get the restored checklist was to restart TFM — and nothing told you that.

  • It now reloads the checklist you are actually using.
  • The checklist dropdown no longer goes blank afterwards. Same for Ctrl+F5 (refresh) and, on the 777, changing the aircraft filter — all three had the same fault.
  • If the First Officer window is open, its phase and page lists now follow the change too. Before, the window kept running pages from the checklist you had just replaced.

Your 737 and 777 checklists can receive updates again

TFM only refreshes a bundled checklist when it can prove you have not edited it, by matching your copy against a list of every version ever shipped. Both 777 checklists — including the First Officer one — had fallen off that list, so recent installs were treated as edited and would never have received another checklist update. All four bundled checklists are listed again.

The 737’s APU start switch works properly

Starting the 737’s APU needs the switch moved twice — to ON, then to START. TFM only ever made the first movement, so the APU did not start. It now makes both.

  • This reaches you through the overhead panel’s APU button in this version.
  • ⚠ The checklist item that used to do it belongs to the First Officer, which is switched off on the 737 here, so no checklist starts the APU for you until the next version.

PMDG 777

TFM can switch PMDG’s data broadcasting on for you

Without it, a PMDG aircraft is completely silent in TFM — no switches, no readouts, no callouts — and nothing said so. There are two separate switches inside it: one for the aircraft’s panels and one for the FMC screens. Turning on only the first gives you a working aircraft with a dead FMC, which is easy to mistake for a broken FMC. TFM now checks every PMDG airframe on both simulators at startup, names any that have it switched off, and offers to turn it on. It always asks first, backs up each file before changing it, and changes nothing else in them. The setting is per aircraft and per simulator, so a working 777-300ER tells you nothing about the 777-200LR beside it.

  • ⚠ If TFM set this up for you before 25 August it switched on the panels but not the FMC screens. It will offer to finish the job next time it starts.

TFM now tells you when the 777’s data feed is missing

If PMDG is not broadcasting its SDK data, every panel readout on the aircraft is inert — and TFM used to say nothing at all, so the airplane simply appeared dead. It now says so fifteen seconds after connecting. Usually the airplane simply is not loaded yet; if it is, the log names what to check. That setting is separate for each 777 variant and each simulator, so a working 777-300ER tells you nothing about your 777-200LR.

The First Officer no longer confirms flaps it never moved

Three ways the flap items could report success without the lever moving, all of them silent — you would hear the item confirmed and find the flaps where you left them.

  • If the flap lever cannot be read — no data from PMDG at all — it used to report up rather than unknown, so the First Officer skipped the flap items as already done. It now says it cannot read the lever and leaves it to you.
  • If your flight plan has no takeoff flap setting, the First Officer now tells you to set the lever yourself instead of confirming the item and moving on.
  • If the plan asks for a flap setting the 777 does not have, it now names the setting it refused rather than passing over it in silence.

The First Officer raises the flaps for you on the ground

Three checklist items waited for you to raise the flap lever instead of doing it: cockpit preflight, de-ice setup and the shutdown checklist. They now raise it, the same way the after landing flow already did, and say so.

  • If the flaps do not move — a hardware flaps axis holding them, for instance — the First Officer says so instead of waiting in silence.
  • ⚠ The after takeoff and go around checklists still wait, on purpose. Flaps come up on a speed schedule in the climb, and those items are there to check that it happened, not to do it.

Five more items that used to wait now act as well: the alternate pitch trim levers, the parking brake, both air conditioning packs and the emergency lights.

PMDG 737

The First Officer is switched off on the 737 in this version

The 737 First Officer is being built the way the 777’s was — the whole flight, gate to shutdown, as one piece. Only the first two ground pages exist so far, and shipping that much on its own would give you something too incomplete to judge. It arrives properly in the next version.

So on the 737, this version behaves the way it did before this work started:

  • Use a third-party First Officer, or the Electronic Clipboard for checklists.
  • TFM’s automatic announcements still work. Several of them were fixed this version — the flaps readout, the GPWS inhibit switches, the meters and the autobrake are all described further down.
  • Panels, readouts, hotkeys and ground position all work as normal.
  • TFM will not move a control on the 737 by itself. That includes the automatic taxi and logo lights, which are off for now — they were the last thing TFM did on its own on this aircraft.
  • If you open the First Officer window on the 737 it now says it is not available. The lists in it are empty, which is why it says so rather than leaving you guessing.
  • ⚠ Runway awareness and taxi guidance are not affected by this, because they have never run on the 737 — they are 777 features. Nothing was taken away.

The 777’s First Officer is untouched by this. The other 777 changes in this version are described in their own section above.

The 737 reads its panels straight from PMDG now

The 737’s MCP, electrical, APU and forward panels used to get PMDG’s data by way of FSUIPC. They now read it directly. Nothing changes for you — it is the same data over a shorter path, and PMDG has to be broadcasting it either way, which it already was or FSUIPC could not have shown you those panels before.

  • If any of your aircraft do have broadcasting switched off, TFM offers to turn it on at startup and asks once.
  • Readouts with no data now say “unknown” instead of guessing a position. See below.

Two 737 readouts now come from the MobiFlight module

The speed brake position and the ground power light used to be read through FSUIPC. They now come from the MobiFlight module, which TFM bundles and offers to install when it starts.

  • If you told TFM not to ask about that module, those two readouts will say “unknown” until you install it. Everything else on the 737 is unaffected.

Guarded switches on the 737 now really are guarded

⚠ This one changes what you have to do. Four switches — battery, both IDG disconnects and bus transfer — sit under a guard on the real aircraft, and TFM used to let you operate them directly. It now refuses and says the guard is closed, so you open the guard first.

  • Standby power sits under a guard too, but is chosen from a list rather than pressed, and lists do not yet check the guard. It still moves without one.

  • ⚠ TFM cannot read most of these guards from the aircraft; it tracks what it believes the guard is doing. If one gets out of step, open or close it again to resynchronize.

The flight control switches moved the wrong way

Choosing a position in the FLT CTRL A or B dropdown walked the switch in the opposite direction — toward the far end of its travel instead of where you asked. Fixed.

TFM can work the 737’s flap handle, but nothing uses it yet

TFM can now command all nine of the 737’s flap positions and confirms the handle actually traveled before reporting success. This is groundwork for the First Officer, which is switched off on this aircraft in this version — so nothing calls or moves the flaps on the 737 today. It becomes useful in the next version.

  • The flap positions are available in the checklist editor’s control picker, so you can use them in a checklist of your own.
  • Asking for flaps 20 says the 737 has no such position instead of waiting silently. Its detents are up, 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 25, 30 and 40.
  • If a flap command does not take, TFM re-sends it once and then says so out loud.

The 777 is unchanged — its flap calls and handle work exactly as before.

The flaps readout gave landing speeds on a takeoff

With Enhanced Hotkeys on, pressing the flaps readout at flaps 10 or flaps 15 spoke the landing VREF instead of VR. Both are ordinary takeoff settings on the 737, and this is the readout you use to check your takeoff speeds.

The flaps callout can be turned off

The flaps position callout ignored its own setting, so it could not be silenced. It now obeys “Left flaps needle” on the verbosity page — and that setting, which used to ship off, now ships on, so nobody loses a callout they had.

The GPWS inhibit controls are named more briefly

They now read “GPWS terrain, inhibit” rather than “GPWS terrain inhibit inhibit”. Same for the flap and gear inhibits.

The GPWS inhibit switches were reporting the opposite of the truth

The flap, gear and terrain inhibit switches said “normal” when the warning was suppressed, and “inhibit” when it was live. All three are corrected. The buttons also now read as “pressed” when the warning is inhibited, which matches what their names imply.

The autobrake no longer reports a position it never read

If the simulator’s panel data was not arriving, the autobrake selector reported “RTO” — armed for a rejected takeoff — and the N1 set selector reported position 2. Both now say “unknown”. This also affected two preflight checklist items, which could tick themselves off against the invented position without the switch ever being read.

Blank meters now say so

With the battery off the electrical meter displays go dark, and TFM used to announce the label with no reading after it — “DC amps”, then nothing. It now says “blank”, which is distinct from “unavailable” (that means TFM has no data from the simulator, which is a fault).

The AC meter was reading volts as amps

The AC meter announced the bus voltage as amperage and vice versa — “AC amps 115” when the 115 volt bus came alive, and “AC volts 0” beside it. Both numbers sounded reasonable for the units they were given, so there was nothing to catch it by ear. Now corrected. The DC meter was checked at the same time and was already right.

The IDG #2 button disconnected the left drive

Pressing IDG #2 on the electrical panel disconnected the LEFT integrated drive generator, while the button still read out the right one’s state — so you heard “left drive disconnected” from a button called IDG #2. Fixed.

The panel now tells you when it has no data to show

The 737’s electrical and APU readouts now come from the simulator’s PMDG data feed. If that feed is not arriving, TFM says so instead of reading out default values that happen to sound healthy. It says it once when the data goes, and once when it comes back.

Announcements can be turned off per reading

Unchanged, but worth knowing if the electrical panel gets talkative: Settings, PMDG 737, Overhead, Electrical has separate checkboxes for AC volts, AC amps, DC volts, DC amps and both meter selectors.

Your settings file no longer carries your keys

The Export settings file — the one we sometimes ask you to email us — contained your API keys in plain text. It listed every setting TFM has, credentials included.

  • Exported settings no longer contain your TFM API key or your Azure Speech key.
  • Importing a settings file no longer restores keys from an older export either. If you move TFM to another machine, enter your Azure Speech key there once.
  • An old export you have already sent still contains them. If your Azure Speech key is in one, regenerate it in the Azure portal; that key is billed to you.
  • TFM also clears a leftover copy of your API key that an older version stored and nothing used.
  • Importing a settings file no longer overwrites what TFM knows about your license.

Checking your license

TFM used to check your license with the server once, then trust the stored renewal date for as long as it lasted. It now confirms that date every few days.

  • TFM confirms your license with the server if it has not done so for three days.
  • If your simulator PC has no internet, TFM still starts and tries again next time.
  • Nothing changes for you when you are online. You will not be asked for anything.

Checklist items that quietly did nothing

Some checklist items named a control that was never built. The First Officer looked it up, found nothing, and the item failed without a word.

  • The 777’s air demand hydraulic pump items now work, in both checklists that use them.
  • If a control will not reach the position asked for, TFM now says so instead of failing quietly.

The 737’s share of this — the trim air item, and the windshield wipers, which had never been moved at all — is fixed in the same way, but reaches you in the next version: these are First Officer items, and the First Officer is switched off on that aircraft here. The controls themselves work from the panels now, including setting either wiper to intermittent, low or high.

The clipboard was reading the wrong control on most manual items

TFM guesses which cockpit control a checklist line is about by matching the wording, and the match was far too loose — it would settle for a single shared letter. So “Flap Lever” was reading the autopilot’s COMMAND A light, “APU FAULT light” and “CABIN ALTITUDE light” were both reading a flight control switch, and “ADF radios” was reading COMMAND A as well. Measured on the shipped checklists, 203 of the 737’s 207 guessed lines and 110 of the 777’s 117 were pointing at an unrelated control, and nothing on screen or in speech revealed the swap.

  • A line now only takes a control when the whole name matches, and says nothing when it does not. Across both aircraft that turns 377 mostly-wrong readings into 47 correct ones.
  • Around six lines that used to guess correctly now say nothing instead, among them the 777’s ALTERNATE GEAR switch. Those want the control named on the item, which is a later fix.
  • A short generic word no longer swallows a longer specific control: “APU” no longer reads APU BLEED, “Fuel” no longer reads FUEL CROSSFEED, “Trim” no longer reads TRIM AIR.

Writing your own checklists

  • The control picker no longer offers controls that do not exist on your aircraft.
  • Picking flaps on the 777 now gives you the seven lever positions, and they work.
  • The 737 no longer lists cabin and flight deck temperature, which it could never set.
  • Picking a 777 warning light now offers the words that light really uses. Forty-three of them — the fire bottles, the cargo fire warnings, the hydraulic pumps, the fuel low pressure lights and the window heat lights among them — were offering “on” and “off”, which none of them ever says, so an item built from one of those lights could never tick.
  • Picking a two-position switch now offers the two words that switch really uses, where they are known, instead of always ON and OFF. Several of the broken preflight items came from that seed: it was not possible to build a working item for those switches from the picker. The 737 fire test items came from a different list, which was corrected for the picker in 8.1.0 and never carried into the shipped checklist until now.
  • Validating a checklist now warns when an expected value is not a position the control can report, which is the check that would have caught every one of them.

Talking flight monitor 8.1.0 release notes

by

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.

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”.

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.

Summer work on version 7.1.0

by

Hi everyone!

At TFM we have been very busy creating new features and working on new aircraft support. So, what exactly have we been working on? Well, first, I ended up getting a new flight stick. It is portable, has less buttons/controls on it, and fits what I need more than the one I used to use. Anyways, down to what we have been doing.

New Aircraft support on the way

We have been working hard on new aircraft support. One is almost finished, and the other is in early development stages. Here is the list below.

  • Fenix 3xx series – should be done by end of summer.
  • C172 – In early development, so we don’t have any release date.

Aircraft redesigns

We have also been working on performance improvements on our PMDG series of aircraft. At this point, we have removed FSUIPC support for the PMDG777 series of aircraft. It now uses pure simconnect to access everything it needs in the sim. This should work for 2024 and 2020. From our testing and flying around, it is much faster and stable. Besides, it is one less dependency you have to use just to fly it. Since the PMDG777 on pure simconnect is so beautiful, we are going to convert the PMDG737 series into pure simconnect as well. The Fenix 3xx support will also be in pure simconnect when it lands in public release.

A new first officer

We have created a friendly first officer who is still training. So, he will still be in priority boarding until his training finishes. He is accommodating to new BVI pilots as well as advanced ones. He is able to complete full flights and makes them more enjoyable by guiding you on what to do next. He has so many features that we can’t list them all here, but we will say again, he is ready for full flights. He comes with an advanced checklist editor, a dedicated TFM chorded key set for most features, and will even program your FMC completely. Yes, this even includes SIDs, STARs, transitions, and runways. He hopes to meet all of you soon.

Taxi guidance

In the next release, you will have access to taxi guidance. It is available for any airport, but the best success will be with 3rd party or pay ware scenery. Milage will vary with default scenery quality. Taxi guidance will help you know when to turn, when you fall off route, and help you stay on the taxiway centerline. As an added bonus, first officer will help you taxi when doing so yourself proves difficult or impossible for some reason. Look for it in priority boarding in the next release.

Traffic radar

A new feature in TFM’s next release is a complete redesign of its existing traffic radar or TCAS. TCAS is a system found on most aircraft that allows a pilot to see what traffic is around him/her. You can set a range of distance, turn it on/off, and decide how much traffic to see. The new traffic radar is in real time, so if an aircraft enters your given range, TFM might tell you something like ‘5NM, 500 feet above at 9 o’ clock Delta 1515’. You can sweep the radar or target specific aircraft on the board. When you found an aircraft of interest, lock on to it and follow its movements. Expect traffic radar to be in the next release under priority boarding.

New aircraft chooser

We took care to make choosing an aircraft a better and more accessible experience. So, we created an aircraft chooser dialog that features groupings, favorites, recently used, and an indicator on how long you have used the aircraft. This new chooser will replace the old menu based chooser, and will be implemented as a permanent replacement for the old chooser system. This means it won’t be in priority boarding.

We hope you will enjoy these new features when they come out. Not all features are listed here because the release notes are so large, we couldn’t sensibly put them all here. The release notes will come out here on the blog when the update comes out. So, keep an eye or ear out for the blog post with the new release notes. Have fun flying, and we will see you when the next release lands!

Talking flight monitor 7.0.2 release notes

by

Hi everyone!

This release doesn’t have much to explain, so this will be a quick one. The release notes are below, at the end of the blog post. The one thing to note is the web FMC for the PMDG aircraft has been removed for 2 reasons. (1) technical reasons beyond our control, and (2) overwhelming feedback from users stating they don’t like the web version of the FMC. So, we pulled it out, replaced the original one, and gave it a serious modern upgrade. Most of the keyboard commands we use with the ‘TFM key’ dealing with distances, ETAs, time remaining, etc have been modernized with info coming from the FMCs. They will always fall back to default values in the event the PMDG isn’t the loaded aircraft, or the FMC becomes unavailable for some reason. We also added some new hotkeys to the list. As always, if you need help with something, feel free to get in touch.

  • Quick navigation in TreeViews now works as expected. Previously, searches always started from the top of the tree, defaulting to the first match found. Now, searches continue from the current position. For example: when browsing PMDG777 panels with focus on the panel tree, typing ‘el’ for electrical takes you to the Overhead Maintenance/Electrical panel. Typing ‘el’ again will now move to the next electrical panel (in the overhead), rather than jumping back to the first result.
  • Improved error handling for MSFS2024 database builds. Previously, users were only notified if a build crashed. Now, users are notified when a build fails and informed that TFM will automatically attempt two more fixes. If both attempts fail, TFM will offer the option to send a bug report to AATools/Nav Data Reader, our underlying data provider. TFM also now backs up your previous scenery database if one exists, so you won’t lose it if something goes wrong. Note: You must be at the MSFS2024 main menu (where the Start and Accessibility options appear) before building the database. Going further into the sim before the build completes may cause issues later.
  • Improved panel and settings search performance. Multiple search terms are now supported at the same time — for example, entering ‘electrical, startup’ will return results matching any or all of those terms. The ‘>’ path separator has been replaced with a comma for better screen reader and braille display compatibility. Search results now announce a count when found (e.g., ‘4 results found’). Pressing Escape in the search field clears and resets the results.
  • F3 in aircraft panels has been changed to F6 and is now a toggle between the panel tree and content, matching the existing behavior in Settings.
  • Fixed the runway count in the MSFS2024 database window. The count was previously reported as just over 47K. It now correctly shows just over 97K runways — more than the 83K airports in the database, as expected.
  • Removed the web FMCs for PMDG737/777 for technical reasons. The original set of FMCs has been restored.
  • Several fixes and improvements to the classic FMCs:
  • Screen titles now only announce once when changing pages.
  • The display is now color coded (themes coming later).
  • Labels appear above their data cells and automatically reposition based on the data entered.
  • Data cells now include cell markers such as 1L, 1R, 2L, 2C, 2R, etc., placed in the data row.
  • Cell markers can be turned off for a more realistic experience — data cells will reposition themselves to maintain proper alignment with their labels.
  • When cell labels are off, a row identifier appears in the left margin. When cell markers are on, the row identifier is hidden.
  • PMDG shared FMC settings have been combined and moved to Settings > PMDG > Shared FMC Settings.
  • TFM now automatically announces changes made in the FMC and any related values. This can be toggled in PMDG Shared Settings.
  • SimBrief uplink now works with the classic FMC.
  • Added the 777-200LR to SimBrief uplink.
  • Fixed the PMDG777 GPUs — they are no longer reversed.
  • PMDG777 bus ties now work correctly in First Officer, Clipboard Editor, and Checklist Editor.
  • Enhanced hotkeys now respect the settings found in TFM Settings > Enhanced Hotkeys.
  • Added various settings to customize next waypoint, weights, and distance to destination/descent commands.
  • Added 8 new on-demand hotkeys (TFM keys):
#HotkeyDefault KeyAction NameOutput Example
1Radio AltitudeERadio altitude“RA 450”
2Pitch & BankPPitch and bank“P +3, B L12” or “Level”
3Gross Weight / CGShift+WGross weight“GW 245300 lbs, CG 28.5%”
4Time SummaryKTime summary“1423z, elapsed 2h 15m”
5Cabin AltitudeShift+ECabin altitude“Cabin 6200, diff 7.8” (737 only — 777 returns “not available”)
6MinimumsQMinimums“Mins 200 BARO” / “Mins 200 RA” (777 has values; 737 shows mode only)
7FD BarsShift+FFD bars“FD P +3, B L5” / “FD centered”
8Parking BrakeShift+PParking brake“Parking brake set” / “Parking brake released”
  • Added 2 fallback hotkey implementations for when PMDG is not the active aircraft:
  1. / — Speed brake: “Spoilers retracted” / “Spoilers armed” / “Spoilers 72%” (PMDG uses its own existing format)
  2. Shift+B — Auto brake: “Autobrake OFF” / “Autobrake 3” / “Autobrake MAX” (PMDG uses a similar format)

Talking flight monitor 7.0.0 Release notes

by

Hi again everyone!

It has been a few weeks since we last had an update. This update is going to be a huge one! So, let’s get started shall we? This update sees a few priority boarding members move into a stable state, there are some new priority boarding members, and an update on first officer flows. I would also like to make a note that as of TFM 7.0.0 (this release), we will no longer actively participate in developing new features for MSFS2020. We now consider support for it end of life. Watch the video.

Stable priority boarding members

The following priority boarding members have been moved to a stable release.

  • GSX – Ground services
  • SimBrief – Create a SimBrief flight plan
  • SimBrief – View a SimBrief flight plan
  • MSFS 2024 – All MSFS 2024 features

New priority boarding members

The following are new priority boarding members and can be enabled or disabled by going to TFM settings, priority boarding, then checking/unchecking the features and pressing the save button. NOTE: you must restart TFM for the newly enabled features to take effect.

  • Advanced PMDG737/777 FMC – An html-based FMC with new features, tutorials, context sensitive help, and easier to read layout.
  • Enhanced on demand hotkeys – Requires the new PMDG FMC above. A new set of on demand hotkeys with new features. Most hotkeys in this set are situational hotkeys: distance to destination/TOD, next waypoint. Other hotkeys reuse the same data as before.
  • SimBrief uplink – Requires the new PMDG FMCs above. An automated workflow to configure the FMC with your current SimBrief flight plan.

New FMCs and on demand hotkeys

We took the time over the past few weeks and rewrote the entire PMDG737/777 FMCs. They are HTML content, so you can use your assistive technology’s web content reading commands to navigate and read the FMC. It is a better format to use than our now dubbed ‘classic PMDG FMCs’, which will remain the default in any new TFM install until the web versions become the default. Features for our new PMDG FMCs include the following.

  • WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.
  • Read and navigate the screen with web reading commands in your assistive technology.
  • Context sensitive help screens.
  • A tutorial or walkthrough for most pages.
  • A section where all FMC settings live.
  • * Different themes, font sizes and layouts to pick from.
  • Easier to read layout of FMC and settings screens.
  • New scratchpad
  • New indicator/annunciators bar
  • New FMC message announcement system.

The new enhanced hotkeys are the on demand hotkeys found under the TFM control key (the TFM key). These situational awareness hotkeys have been modified to include information from the web version of the PMDG FMC to enhance situational awareness. For example, next waypoint hotkey will now give the waypoint name, distance to that waypoint, and ETA. Remaining fuel reports current load, fuel burn, and landing fuel (EG: 8.1). Distance to destination reports total distance, ETA, and landing fuel. Now, the distance to top of descent hotkey will report distance to top of climb if not at cruise yet, then the distance to descent when past top of climb. Most other hotkeys use the original data but have been formatted better. EG: Auto pilot altitude in the PMDG aircraft reports current AP altitude and cruising altitude. The Auto pilot status hotkey now reports (PMDG only) MCP status: auto pilots, flight directors, auto throttle. There are 14 of these revised hotkeys, so have fun taking a look at them. Be sure to let us know if there are problems or if you have any feedback.

SimBrief uplink for PMDG aircraft

To complement our first officer, we created SimBrief uplink. It is a feature that will automatically configure the FMC for your PMDG aircraft. Note: You must have a generated flight plan for your desired PMDG aircraft and have chosen that aircraft from the TFM menu before using SimBrief uplink. Navigate to TFM’s main menu, then aircraft, then FMC, then SimBrief uplink. When the view appears, TFM will notify you if the flight plan was loaded. If so, press OK to continue to the uplink view. In this view, you can either start the uplink or choose what sections of the FMC the uplink will pre-configure. Any unchecked boxes are the pilot’s responsibility. When ready, press the start uplink button and wait for the status reports to mention that uplink is complete. With this new uplink, you will never have to manually program the FMC again!

First officer checklists

It is our intent to create default checklists for first officer. They can be used as a regular set of checklists, or until you can create your own in the checklist editor. We were unable to finish the flows before this release. However, when they are done, we will put them on the website as a different download.

Bug fixes

The following are bug fixes in this release.

  • 739 – TFM can now see extra fuel tanks when they are enabled.
  • PMDG737/777 – To convert between LBS/KGS for fuel and weights, use the metric setting in TFM’s user interface settings.
  • SimBrief flight plan viewer – You can now navigate the read only edit controls with your cursor. All other text selection functions work.

This is about all we have for this release. If you have any comments, questions, or feedback, don’t forget to send them to info at talkingflightmonitor dot com or in your support portal. Until then, happy flying!

New 6.9.5 release this weekend

by

Hi everyone!

This blog post is more about features we were able to put into priority boarding (preview features) since the last blog post. In the last one, we talked about priority boarding as a feature itself. Well, we can’t add priority boarding to itself, so it goes into the official release as a stable feature. Since the clipboard and checklist editor were buggy, we also put them into priority boarding. The rest of the blog post will cover some basic info about the features included in priority boarding and some website features we promised to talk about in this blog post. So, without delay, say welcome to our new priority boarding members!

New priority boarding members

GSX Ground Services Integration

This feature was largely based on an app that TFM’s founder Jason Fayre had created called access GSX. Thanks to him for allowing us to use his idea directly in TFM. Below are his originally implemented features.

• Fully accessible interface to GSX Pro ground handling services

• Dedicated GSX view under Tools menu with real-time connection status monitoring

• Press F5 to open the GSX menu, then use number keys (0-9) or letter keys (A-E) to select services

• Context-sensitive tooltips spoken aloud for each menu option

• Independent toggles for “Speak menu” and “Speak tooltips” speech output

• Auto-reconnect: if MSFS isn’t running at TFM startup, GSX retries automatically every 5 seconds

• Pop-out window support

First Officer

• Automated checklist execution system that sets switches, buttons, and systems to their correct states hands-free

• Select a flight phase (Preflight, Before Start, Before Takeoff, Approach, etc.) and run procedures with one click or F5

• Real-time voice announcements of each action as it executes (“Battery Switch, on”)

• Smart skip: detects controls already in the correct state and announces “checked” without toggling

• Pause (F6), Resume, Stop (Escape), and Skip Item controls for full user control during execution

• Supports wait conditions (e.g., “Wait for APU to be available”), timed delays, and voice-only announcements

• Data-driven: uses the same checklist JSON files as manual checklists, so community checklists work automatically

• Currently supports PMDG 777 and PMDG 737

SimBrief Integration

As users of assistive technology, we can find the SimBrief website clunky to use. So, we brought back the SimBrief feature in TFM. Only thing… It’s much better than the last one. The following should make your simbrief flight plans easier to create and navigate.

• View Flight Plan: Browse imported SimBrief plans with organized sections — Overview, Navlog, Fuel, Weights, Performance, and Weather (METAR/TAF)

• Create Flight Plan: Fill out a form in TFM (origin, destination, aircraft type, cruise level, passengers, etc.) and generate directly in SimBrief

• Search within flight plan data (F2 to search, F4 to clear)

• Full keyboard navigation and assistive technology support throughout

• Supports 17+ common aircraft types (Boeing 737/747/777/787, Airbus A319-A380)

SayIntentions.AI Integration

This is one of the highly requested features in the past year. When will we put Say intentions into TFM. Well, here it is. Below are our initial set of features. However, we need your help with this one. We need users to drop us a line on their support portal letting us know what additional features they would like in Say intentions support. When giving us your feature, try and make it directly related to something the Say intentions platform already does. Below is what we already have.

• Real-time connection status view showing flight info: callsign, route, assigned gate, taxi path

• Monitors takeoff and landing clearance status from ATC

• Automatic telemetry reporting (airspeed, altitude, position, engine data) to SayIntentions

• Works in the background — initializes automatically at TFM startup

FS2024 Support

This is probably the most requested feature of all time. We did it, and it is now here! Airports database for Flight simulator 2024, but wait… Is that all it is? No, it’s more than an airports database! The ‘Airports database’ for FS2024 is extensive compared to the old make runways used in FS2020. The scenery in FS2024 gives us the ability to extract more information about gates, runways, taxiways, terrain when available, etc. Our extraction method also extracts the currently installed Navigraph cycle and combines it with the scenery information, making a complete solution for FS2024. Below are the initial features.

• Full Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 compatibility

• Build scenery database: One-click database generation from FS2024 scenery data with real-time progress display

• Browse runways: Search any airport by ICAO, view runway length/width/surface/heading/ILS details, filter by ILS-equipped or surface type

• Browse gates/parking: View all gates and parking positions, filter by type (passenger, GA, cargo, military), size, and jetway availability

• Jump to location: Press Enter to teleport aircraft to any runway threshold or parking spot

• Ground position detection: TFM identifies your exact location — runway, gate, or taxiway — in real time

• Full ILS data: frequency, magnetic course, glideslope angle, category (CAT-I/II/III) (more on this in another section)

• Automatic simulator detection (FS2024 vs. MSFS 2020) with separate databases

Electronic Clipboard & Checklist Editor Bug Fixes

Many users have reported problems with the clipboard and checklist editor in the last update (initial release). So, we moved them into priority boarding until we can verify that everything works as expected. Given that, we fixed a lot of problems while working on first officer, and think we             have things fixed. Note that for first officer and the clipboard to work, any checklist files you already created are no longer usable. You will have to recreate them again.

New ILS detection system (FS2024 only)

Since there is more info available in the FS2024 database, and things are easier to find, we were able to completely revise TFM’s ILS detection and announcement system, which is included in the FS2024 support. Turn it off in priority boarding, and you will have to turn it on again to get the new ILS system. There aren’t many points to cover, so we will forget those for now.

The new ILS system currently works as before. Turn it on when needed, turns off automatically on touchdown. The new part is how it provides ILS indications (announcements) to you. There is a new mode called ‘dots’ that provides glide slope and localizer alignment in dots. The dots mode uses new calculations and directly makes use of the NAV1 and NAV2 ILS indicators on the aircraft to provide TFM with the required info. In the ‘dots’ mode, an announcement might sound like the following: 4.8 miles. 1.1 dots high/low. Left/right 0.4 dots. High = too high, low = too low, left = to the left of, right = to the right of, and center line = perfectly on path. The format is distance, glide slope, localizer. This new system is more accurate than the current feet/meter and heading calculations. So, we recommend using the dots method whenever possible. In fact, the dots method is used in the real world as well.

New website features

Help center

When released, the help center will be available to everyone. It will be much easier to navigate documentation ‘books’ and find content. Along with the new help center, we are rewriting all the documentation, so it matches TFM, and is more user friendly. There isn’t any word at this point when help center will release. When it does, you can go to the help center and find the help you need.

New support portal

At least a few times today, we have mentioned the support portal. It is a new tab in your store account. Activating the support tab will take you to the support portal where you can create, manage, and delete tickets, reply/add information to a ticket, add attachments when needed (up to 10MB in size). The best part is that you aren’t required to have multiple accounts on the TFM platform. Only your store account username/password is required. So, the next time you need help, send in a support ticket and one of us will get back with you ASAP.

Well, we covered a lot today. When TFM 6.9.5 is out, don’t forget to turn on the priority boarding features you want to use. Don’t forget to give us feedback on them through your new support portal, and look for the new help center soon. Until next time, happy flying!

Organizational shift, priority boarding

by

Hi everyone!

Welcome back to the blog! A lot has been going on lately. Eventually, we will talk about all of our updates, but for now, let’s just focus on the most recent. In this post, we are going to cover a few logistical/policy updates and an update on the task force. We are also going to cover a new upcoming feature and provide an update on our clipboard and checklist editor. So, without delay, here we go!

Task force resigns

Everyone in the task force had to leave because they had other responsibilities outside of TFM that demanded all of their attention. So, they are no longer representing us in any official capacity. We thank them for their valuable time and effort and wish them well in the future.

Logistical/policy updates

Normally, we don’t put these types of updates on a blog post, but this is an exception. As we try to be more transparent with the general public and our users, the way in which we conduct ourselves has changed. Even though Talking flight monitor (TFM) is closed source, we also try to be more open about what we are doing to create features, and a little about what goes into making those features (EG: design choices, etc.). Here are a few design choices we have made at an organizational level.

  • No more private preview – This means that users are not required to follow or sign an NDA. Preview features are available to anyone who wants to try them out.
  • Starting on 02/20/2026, anyone with access to an active license will have to pay the normal subscription price (TFM pricing).
  • Anyone who contributes to TFM such as documentation, source code, etc., is a paying user (see above).
  • All preview licenses and subscriptions will be discontinued after the new terms of use go into effect.

Now that the boring part is out of the way, let’s get on to something more fun.

Priority boarding

Starting at TFM 6.9.5, priority boarding will be available for features not yet ready for production use. We came up with the idea after several popular apps such as Visual studio, Chrome, GitHub, and Gmail have found success with this style of ‘preview’. In TFM settings, you will be able to go to the priority boarding section and check/uncheck the preview features you want or don’t want to use. Everything is unchecked by default. Once a feature in priority boarding is released, it will be removed from the priority boarding program and will be made available to everyone.

Clipboard

Since the release of the clipboard, we have seen some confusion about what it does and how it works. We will try to dispel the confusion here. However, if you still need help, feel free to contact us at info (@) talkingflightmonitor (dot) com.

In the PMDG aircraft, there is a clipboard that you can drop down from the yoke if the feature is turned on in settings. On the clipboard, there are checklists and flows you can follow. A green check means the item is done, and a red X means it is not done yet. Clicking on a red item will perform the task and mark it as complete. TFM’s clipboard does the same thing, just in an accessible format. Pressing enter/space on an item performs the task and marks it as complete. However, there are items that are set to ‘set as required’, ‘verify’, or some other language that indicates the clipboard doesn’t know what to expect for that item, or the item changes based on flight conditions. Examples are autobrake, MCP altitude, heading, speed, etc. Those items are ‘manual’ items that require you to set the values in the panels.

We had quite a bit to say today, so, we will go for now. Next time, we will talk more about some of our upcoming web features, the checklist editor, and anything else TFM throws our way. Until then, happy flying!

Preview 2024.1, updates, and spring feedback form results

by

Welcome back to this week’s blog post. Last time, we played catch-up and let you know about the spring 2024 feedback form we posted. This week I want to cover a few things, so this post may be a little longer than normal. We are going to cover preview builds, Talking flight monitor updates, project priorities, project restructuring, a new partnership, and results from the spring 2024 feedback form. So, let’s get started!

Preview builds

It has been a little over a year since we posted a preview build. Since then, Talking flight monitor has been going through growing pains in the form of a complete conversion from dotnet 4.8 to dotnet 8.0. We also started converting the windows and dialogs in Talking flight monitor over to a newer, more accessible user interface library. The conversion is going well. However, many people have been anxious, wanting to know when the next preview would be posted. We then posted a poll late last week, asking whether or not we should bring back the preview builds before the conversion was complete. The pole indicated that 99.9% of the respondents wanted the preview builds to return, even if the conversion wasn’t complete. In response to this interest, we brought back the preview builds. Preview 2024.1.503 is available for downloaded, and can be found on this website under the preview releases link. Make sure you read the entire release notes before downloading and using. By using the preview builds, you agree that Talking flight monitor and all of its associates, developers, and partners aren’t responsible for damage caused by the preview. The preview will be released around the 15th of each month.

Updates

After the preview release, the only updates are that the PMDG 737 overhead/anti-ice panel and the main area of the overhead panel are complete.

Project priorities

The BVI pilots communities have been talking about Talking flight monitor project priorities over the past week or so. It has come to our attention that a projected feature, ‘flows and checklists’ be implemented as soon as possible. This is because many of the community members feel that they would lose access to a first officer feature (provided by another developer) if we don’t act fast. Our official position is that we need to finish the PMDG 737 panels before attempting to create flows and checklists for it. Among other things, we are in the middle of a conversion/restructuring project at this time and might find it difficult to respond to the request quickly.

Project restructuring and new partnership

While we go through the conversion process, we will also go through and implement a modular approach to Talking flight monitor development. This means that when portions of source code can be isolated from the rest of the codebase, it should then be isolated and packaged so it can be reused in other projects. Doing this will make the software faster and more reliable. It also gives users the ability to download components or modules they are interested in using. For example, why force everyone to download Talking flight monitor with PMDG 747/777 support when they will never use it? So, while we work through the conversion process and other items on the table, we will work on the modular design for the project. This modular redesign will not require a redesign of what is already finished or planned, so no worries there.
On the restructuring side of things, I recently started a software development company that focuses on supporting other software developers in their journey of becoming a professional software developer, student, or other professional in the field. It develops accessible software tools for those students/professionals so they can independently complete their work tasks. Inspiragon (my company) and Talking flight monitor agreed to a partnership. The terms of the agreement are Inspiragon will provide me at no cost as a three-quarter time contractor to work on Talking flight monitor. It will also cover Talking flight monitor’s development related expenses, if any, in exchange for revenue on paid addons. This also means that Talking flight monitor’s website will change throughout the rest of this year. Inspiragon will add a new feature request form, a new contact form, and potentially a new bug tracker. This way, there is no need to create an account on GitHub. Just fill out the form and submit it, and you are done. Now, coming out of this partnership is the requirement that Talking flight monitor develop paid addons to be sold on Inspiragon’s website. So, at some point in the future, we will start working on those paid addons. At this point, I don’t know much about the paid addons, other than they will be on a monthly or yearly subscription rate. When the time comes, we will release more details. You can visit Inspiragon’s website at www.inspiragon.com. At the time of writing, the website is nearly empty. It is just getting started. Bare with us as we go through growing pains together.

Spring 2024 feedback form results

In the spring 2024 feedback form, we got some interesting results. Some we were expecting, others were a surprise. To start, Most participants use P3D. However, most of them also voted for us to drop support for it. Next, everyone used payware aircraft and voted to consolidate features, preserve the state of the trim toggle, and convert the automatic detection of aircraft into a manual selection process. Finally, most of the participants voted to have the left and right bracket (command keys) separated from the TFM virtual keyboard while providing a way to turn them on and off without affecting the TFM keyboard. There may be follow up polls or feedback forms throughout the year to further narrow down the interest of the communities that use Talking flight monitor.
This has been a long post, so I will end it now. Keep watching YouTube for new videos, the website for new content, and the TFM communities for support in your flying adventures. Until next time…

Catching up, spring 2024 feedback form

by

Welcome back to the blog. It has been a while since we last posted here. In the last post, we mentioned that we would start vlogging on YouTube. We also mentioned that any significant amount of text updates would come here instead. Well, here we are with a text-based update.

TFM progress

We would have to write a novel to cover the updates and things that happened since the last update. Some of them are listed below.

• TFM is now running on dotnet 8.
• We now recommend people build from source.
• * At this point, focus is on MSFS, not P3D.
• We are waiting for the upcoming PMDG 777 for MSFS.
• … and more.

We will be getting back to our text-based updates with more PMDG 737 development. It will be an exciting time for TFM/PMDG users!

Spring 2024 feedback form

There have been some technical problems with the fall 2023 feedback form. As a result, not very many people had the chance to fill it out. Besides, end of the year feedback forms might have a conflict with the end of year holidays. So, we decided to try our feedback forms at the start of the year. The spring 2024 feedback form is now available. We are seeking feedback from the BVI pilots community and others with a vested interest in TFM’s direction. This feedback form focuses on keyboard commands, consolidating similar/related features into a single feature, and removing legacy (no longer used) components. Feel free to fill it out. We are looking for solid direction, so be sure to follow the directions at the beginning of the form. You can find the link at the top of any page on this website.
This is all we have for this week. Stay tuned for more posts here and on YouTube. Until next time, have fun flying!

Post surgery update/P3D support

by

In last month’s blog post, we covered the heartbeat of Talking flight monitor and what it will take to address existing bugs and to do an in-place upgrade of the entire system. This week, we will update everyone on my surgery and provide some important news about supporting P3D and Navigraph.

 

Surgery update

 

Surgery went well. The doctor wants me off my feet for at least four weeks. This means I can do light weight activities inside. He put a limit on how long I can be on my feet, including how long I can sit at a desk during the day. As a result, I had limited time with my laptop, until my wife found a workaround. Now, I can “sit at my desk” as long as possible. This still means limited times because sitting on the couch with my feet up on my desk chair stresses out my back after a while. At least it is as many times during the day as I want. Doing flights is easy because I can be at my desk until autopilot takes over, then move to the couch. I will keep everyone updated on the next stage of recovery with the next blog post.

 

Navigraph support

 

Talking flight monitor is now added to the Navigraph HUB. Anyone with a subscription should be able to add the current cycle. This is only for the source builds though. If you would like to build from source to test bleeding edge code, follow the directions found at Building TFM from source. We are currently adding support for the database, so no new features will arrive until this is finished and tested.

 

P3D support

 

P3D 6 was released sometime last month. Some significant changes were made to improve the P3D framework and scenery. However, these changes broke support for the PMDG line of aircraft. In other words, PMDG aircraft do not work in P3d6. PMDG announced that after trying to add support for P3D 6, they had deeper problems than just changing some installer files. In the same announcement, they stated that revisiting this problem wouldn’t happen until the 777 and 747 were added to MSFS. This puts the timeframe sometime in mid or late 2024. As reported in the announcement, PMDG most likely won’t continue support for P3D if the changes require too many resources or too much time. Since MSFS arrived on the scene, the market share for P3D 4 and later has significantly declined. Even though more addons and scenery exist for P3D than MSFS, more addons are being altered or newly developed for MSFS. This brings us to Talking flight monitor’s placement in the market.

Talking flight monitor strives to support as many simulators as possible. However, we are also limited in time and resources. Since market value of P3D is declining in favor of MSFS, and PMDG doesn’t support P3d 6, we are not supporting P3D 6 nor continuing new development on P3D 5. Any new development in Talking flight monitor will be focused on MSFS. Keep the following in mind.

 

  • When features are identical in both simulators, we will support P3D5 and earlier.
  • If Talking flight monitor works in P3D6, it is at your own risk.
  • As long as the PMDG SDKs are the same or close to the same, we will support the P3D versions.
  • When the PMDG SDKs are drastically different, the MSFS versions take priority.
  • Navigraph support is independent of a simulator, so works in both P3D and MSFS.
  • We will not support Aerosoft products.
  • We do not support FS2Crew or similar products.
  • We do not support the PMDG DC6, TS4xxx, or similar aircraft.
  • Support for Osobo aircraft requires an evaluation.

Again, we will do our best to keep P3D5 and earlier support going. However, we can’t make promises to the effect. We hope everyone understands our decision to back off on P3D support. In the event PMDG does support P3D 6, we will reassess the situation.