ETA's counts upwards

[RobertTWF172]

Forgive me if this is covered elsewhere, but I didn't find it in the titles, so I will post it as an original question. 

First of all thank you for filling a much needed gap in FS especially in FSX. 

My question, however, pertains to FS9.  I am using Plan-G version 0.8.1.389 in FS9 with FSUPIC ver. 3.40.  I have built the databases and Navaids and airports appear on my map.  So does my aircraft when I connect.  I have the waypoint announcments turned off as the flicker in FS9 so as to be unreadable.  (Sidenote: the announcements Work correctly in FSX)  What I do not understand is that the ETA Next: and ETA Destination: count up.  It is not the local arrival time.  First of all I did not connect to my FS session until the flight was partially underweigh.  It was an IFR flightplan but included only VOR's and NDB's as waypoints.  I called up my .pln file and it read all the waypoints corrently.  I set my airspeed (for the calculations) to 5 KTS lower than my actual KTAS as indicated by DME and crosschecked by the RKG Fuelstats gauge.  I expected the ETA's would decrease as I was flying faster than the calculations indicated.  It started with the calculated ETA and added my flight time to it as I flew.  I also crossed a timezone (W to E) and the ETA arrival time jumped up an hour.  Shouldn't this be a countdown timer?  Am I doing something wrong?

As a final note, I am extremely pleased that the app is essentially portable.  I carry a copy on my flash drive and plan my flights at work with the odd spare moment.  Being able to see the terrain, helps considerably so that I don't have our multiplayer group (VFR) flying over boaring terrain or climbing above mountains without realizing it.  Thank you.

[tim arnot]

The ETAs are calculated as you fly, based on how fast you are actually going. So if you slow down, they will go up. They are also "time remaining", not "clock time", so if it says 1:50 that means you will arrive in 1 hour 50 minutes, not at 10 minutes to two. They have no knowledge of time zones, nor are they influenced by them. It is simply distance divided by ground speed.

[RobertTWF172]

Your explanation is exactly what I would have expected from the planner.  However it does not always work that way in the execution of the code.  Go figure  :P

This morning I flew from KMLE-KDSM using 2 VOR's as waypoints.  Initially the planner worked flawlessly counting down as you explained.  I shut down Plan-G and waited till I crossed the first waypoint and restarted it.  Again it worked flawlessly.  Then I remembered that I had adjusted the configuration mid flight yesterday.  It was in free mode and sound was off.  I changed this back and everything still worked.  When I reverted the settings to Locked and Sound,  it started working as I had described.  I closed the planner, waited 15 seconds and restarted the planner.  It remained working backwards.

So that you may rest assured that I am not delusional, I captured some screenshots.

http://i635.photobucket.com/albums/uu76/grizzly_bear_usa/Plan-G/PlanG-2009-dec-7-001.jpg

http://i635.photobucket.com/albums/uu76/grizzly_bear_usa/Plan-G/PlanG-2009-dec-7-002.jpg

I hope this helps.

[TangoEcho]

The screenshot time is showing for leg one, plan-g doesn't know you are on leg two and as you are leaving the first wpt the time is counting up.

[RobertTWF172]

That would explain the ETA Next increasing, but not necessarily the ETA Dest.  Assuming both are independent calculations, the ETA destination should never increase unless I have overshot the destination, or turned around (flying away from it).  Even if I were to fly towards the destination at a speed slower than predicted, it should momentarily jump up, then being counting down again.  Is there any error trapping routines that eventually make it recalcuate from the next waypoint (like if I cross over the next waypoint)?  From my experience so far, it seems like if it looses track of waypoint 1, the whole ETA calculations are shot for the entire flight.  One last thing comes to mind after reading other posts, I am running dual monitors LG1952 Widescreen for FS9 (1440x900) and Standard CRT type (1024x768) for Plan-G.  They are configured on my video card as independent monitors stacked vertically.

I don't know if this has any bearing on it or not but I've also noticed that it seems to happen when I have zoomed in on Google Map to look at the names of the towns that I am passing. 

[tim arnot]

It's definitely because you are still on leg 1 (you can see in the pictures its says Leg: 1). The total time is the cumulative time for all remaining legs, so as you get further from your next waypoint, both total time and leg time will increase.

To reset the waypoint counter, open the plan listing, right click on the correct leg and select 'Make Active Leg'.

[RobertTWF172]

OK, I've duplicated the conditions, and yes that seems to solve it.

Thank You.

[tim arnot]

If you can tell me the conditions for making it skip the waypoint, I can fix that...  :)

OK, I've duplicated the conditions, and yes that seems to solve it..

[RobertTWF172]

It varies but the main factors seem to be:
Connecting to Plan G after departure  (before or after 1st waypoint)
high zoom on google map (to see the towns)

You covered it in section 7.3.8 of the manual, I just didn't RTFM close enough.

Thanks for your patience.