This tool generates random flights for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Detailed explanation below.
What this tool does …
It’s a simple way to generate random flights anywhere in the world. Pilots often prefer certain regions or locations, so there’s always some kind of bias in their choices. That’s no issue at all unless you really want to explore and find new locations you’ve never flown over before. The RFG can help with that.
To give you a little bit of control over the outcome (without compromising the randomness) you can choose a distance or a speed/time combination so the generator can make suggestions that fit your time budget. The tool generates new flights each time after you hit the blue “Generate…” button. If you don’t enter any values, it’ll generate a flight with a distance between 20 and 200 nm. Also, it’s only going to select airports with runways which are at least 1000 ft long.
In case you wonder why some regions or countries are suggested more often than others: The reason is the amount of airports/airfields a region has. There’s just a higher probability a country gets picked if it has more airfields. USA will show up a lot more often than Antarctica.
… and how it works
RFG is using the LittleNavmap database as well as publicly available data from OurAirports.com to assemble information about airports (e.g. coordinates, identifiers, runway lengths, municipalities, countries…). Since LNM pulls the airport information from FS2024, RFG will generate flights which should work for everybody. Addon airports are excluded intentionally, because not everybody has them. It’s also pretty easy to update the airport info e.g. after a World Update: I just refresh the LNM database and upload the file from my PC. Done.
In case you find errors with the airport data, blame it on Microsoft. Because that’s where the data comes from.
In rare cases the country/city of an airports isn’t correct because of data redundancy or ambiguity when trying to match information from LNM with data from OurAirports.com. I already have created fallbacks to catch issues within reasonable effort, but I can’t catch them all – I do apologize. If in doubt, simply look at the map.
In case you find other problems or if you have any kind of feedback, please leave a comment below.
DefragDad
In all seriousness I’ve gotten the question why I am not blocking countries like Russia, North Korea, China, Iran or whatever from the generator; probably because I am living in a country or speaking languages which are considered to be part of the “western hemisphere”. The answer is pretty simple: Planet Earth is not interested in petty political struggles and will not take sides besides its own. I do have my own view on things I will gladly discuss personally with anyone who asks. But In the context of flight simming we’re here to explore the PLANET, and ANY country or people on this wonderful Earth have places and culture to discover which we don’t want to miss, no matter if the political or religious leaders have lost it.
tabletop ANDROID
This tool is pretty cool. I love the fact that you have a downloadable flight plan as well. Great work!
DefragDad
hey thanks! if you have any suggestions, feel free. i was thinking about including another option to filter away the countries which have the most airports in the world, to increase the chance to get results from lesser known places. i was researching a little to find out those countries with the most airfields. i was expecting the US to be the top contender in this category, but what i did not expect is brazil to be no.2 on the list…
https://www.worldatlas.com/places/countries-with-the-most-airports-in-the-world.html
Bob
I was looking for the idea to “randomly” fly around the world and found your site on google. This is probably the best way to discover the world. Thank you for it !
DefragDad
Hello Bob, you’re very welcome. If you find any issues or if you have suggestions, please do tell me.
Best, Matt