START HERE

New to Plan-G? This short guide will get you up

and running.
Plan-G v4 quick start
www.tasoftware.co.uk

QUICK START
GUIDE
Plan-G v4
Requirements
Windows 7 or later
8 GiB disk space
4 GiB system RAM
DotNet Core v3.1 (x86) https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-
core/current/runtime

Installation
Download the zip, and unpack it to the folder of your choice. It’s recommended that you do
not overwrite any previous installations of Plan-G.

The first time you run Plan-G, you will be prompted to install DotNet Core v3.1 (if you have
not already done so). Please be sure to install the x86 version.

Plan-G runs as a standalone app. If you are running it on the same PC as your flight
simulator, you may need to set your simulator to windowed mode.

Network Installs: Plan-G can communicate across a network, making it ideal to install on a
spare PC or laptop. You should also install it onto your simulator PC, as this will make it
much easier to build your navigation database (see next section).

Uninstalling Plan-G: To uninstall, delete the Plan-G folder and all its contents.
Plan-G also stores user data in My Documents\Plan-G Files\, and settings in
AppData\Local\TA_Software\. These should be manually removed.

Building a Navigation Database

Plan-G v4 will run quite happily without a navigation database, but in order to get the best
out of the program, and see the airports, navaids, airspaces etc. provided by your sim, you
will need to build and activate a database.

Network installs: you will need to do this on a second copy of Plan-G installed on the
simulator PC.

Go to the Data tab, and click Build Navigation Database to open the Build Database dialog.
Here you can select one or more databases to build.

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 1

Simulators that you don’t have installed (or Plan-G can’t find) will be greyed out.

X-Plane users: don’t worry, you just need to tell Plan-G where your sim is. Click on the
Settings button to bring up the Build Options panel and browse to your X-Plane.exe.

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 2

Once the database(s) are built, there is one final step. To activate the database, click on the
Display button for your simulator. The navigation data will appear.

The Display buttons act as a toggle: click on the button again, and the database is
deactivated.

Network installs: once the build process is completed, find the Plan-G Files\Data folder and
copy it, along with all its contents to your network PC. If you are asked whether you want to
overwrite existing files (which might be the case if you have already run Plan-G on both
PCs), select Yes.

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 3

Whenever you add new scenery to the simulator, or update it, or the base simulator is
updated, you should re-run the database build process.

Making a Plan
To start a flight plan, simply right-click on the airport you wish to depart from, and select
Start Flight Plan From Airport. To continue the flight plan, right-click on the next navaid in
sequence (or any place on the map) and select Add to Plan. The first leg of the plan will be
shown as a white line with magenta edges. Subsequent legs will be shown as a solid
magenta line.

You can manipulate the flight plan from the plan list view. If the Plan List view is not visible,
you can open it from the View ribbon.

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 4

Select (highlight) a leg of your plan and right click for a list of things you can do (delete,
reorder etc.) Also, while a waypoint is highlighted, you can click on the map and insert
waypoints before or after the highlighted one.

You can also edit a plan by clicking the Edit button on the Home ribbon. This will give you
grab handles on and between each waypoint that you can drag around the map.

To delete a plan and start over, select New Plan from the File menu.

Saving and Exporting

You need a minimum of two points before a plan can be saved (departure and destination).
Select Save As from the File menu to create a file in Plan-G’s native format (.plg). This
contains all the annotations, cross references, bearings etc you may have added to the plan.
By default, plans are saved in My Documents\Plan-G Files.

To use a flight plan in a simulator, you will need to export it. Select Export from the File
menu, and you will see a list of the currently supported simulators:

Prepar3D / FSX / MSFS (.pln)

FS2004 (.pln)
X-Plane 9/10/11 (.fms)
Garmin GTN 650/750 (.gfp)

When exporting, you should select a folder that is easily accessible by your simulator.

Connecting to a Simulator
When Plan-G is connected to the simulator, you can see your aircraft and nearby traffic on
the map, generate breadcrumb trails, get current weather, log your flights, and so on.

Your simulator should always be running when you attempt to connect Plan-G.

Single PC operation.
You may need to run your simulator in Windowed mode, and/or move Plan-G to a second
monitor.

For FSX and MSFS/FS2020, you should be able just to click the Connect button and Plan-G
will connect to the sim.

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 5

For other sims, some configuration is required. Click on the small launcher button to open
the configuration panel.

For FS2004, select FSUIPC

For Prepar3D, select SimConnect (P3D), or FSUIPC
For X-Plane, select XPUIPC

You should not need to change the other parameters.

There are two SimConnect options for FSX/MSFS. They have slightly different connection
methods behind the scenes. Option 1 currently has problems connecting on some PCs.

Networked PC operation

For X-Plane: Install and run XPUIPC on the client PC as well as the sim PC
Select XPUIPC as the connection method (see above)
Ensure that XPUIPC is running, and click Connect.

For FS9, FSX, P3D, MSFS, connection via SimConnect: Setting up a SimConnect connection is
a two-stage process. First, on the sim PC we need to set up SimConnect.xml. The location of
this file depends on the simulator:

FSX: %AppData%\Microsoft\FSX\
P3Dv4: %AppData%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\
P3dv5: %AppData%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v5\
MSFS (MS Store):
%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\
MSFS (Steam): % AppData %\Microsoft Flight Simulator\
PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 6
Where %Appdata% = C:\Users\(me)\AppData\Roaming\
And %LocalAppData% = C:\Users\(me)\AppData\Local\
Y
ou may need to enable ‘Show Hidden Files and Folders’ in Windows in order to see the
AppData folder.

Open or create Simconnect.xml from the above location, and add the following:

?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?>

<SimBase.Document Type="SimConnect" version="1,0">

<Descr>SimConnect Server Configuration</Descr>
<Filename>SimConnect.xml</Filename>
<Disabled>False</Disabled>

<!-- Example Global (remote) IPv4 Server Configuration-->

<SimConnect.Comm>
<Disabled>False</Disabled>
<Protocol>IPv4</Protocol>
<Scope>global</Scope>
<MaxClients>64</MaxClients>
<Address>192.168.0.106</Address>
<Port>4504</Port>
</SimConnect.Comm>

The address value needs to be the IP address of your sim PC. Port can be any number, as
long as it’s not used by another application.

It’s recommended that you assign your sim PC a Reserved Address, so that it doesn’t change
each time the PC is booted (a changed IP address would bean Plan-G can no longer
connect). See your network router’s documentation for how to do this.

On the client PC, for P3D and FSX/MSFS Option 1, we need to set up a SimConnect.cfg file.
This can be located either in My Documents\ or in your Plan-G program folder. (if you put
the file in My Documents, it will be used by all programs that use SimConnect.)

Open or create the file and type the following:

[SimConnect]
Protocol=IPV4
Address=192.168.0.106
Port=4504
MaxReceiveSize=4096
DisableNagle=0s

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 7

The address and port numbers must match the values that you set in the xml file.
If you already have a SimConnect.cfg for another program, you can add this entry to that
file. You will need to change the header for the first entry to [SimConnect.0] and the second
to [SimConnect.1] and so on. In this case you will also need to set the Config Index value in
Plan-G to match.
Now you can go ahead and click Connect.

On the client PC, for P3D and FSX/MSFS Option 2, we set the values that we would have put
into SimConnect.cfg directly into the Connection Parameters dialog.

Set FS Computer = 192.168.0.106

Set Server Port/Pipe = 4504

(The address and port numbers must match the values that you set in the xml file.)
Now you can go ahead and click Connect.

For FS9, FSX, P3D, MSFS, connection via FSUIPC: Install and run FSUIPC on the sim PC. There
is a separate version of FSUIPC for each sim, so be sure you are running the correct one.
On the client PC, install and run WideFS7.
Select FSUIPC as the connection method (see above)
Ensure that WideFS is running, and click Connect.

FSUIPC and WideFS are available from http://www.fsuipc.com/

XPUIPC is available from http://www.schiratti.com/xpuipc.html

Troubleshooting
If, after configuring a network connection for MSFS, you’re unable to connect, try the
following:

If you are connecting with SimConnect 1, try SimConnect 2 or SimConnect (P3D).

The connection may be blocked by your firewall. Opening the port for SimConnect often
helps in this situation.

Plan-G writes a log file: My Documents\Plan-G Files\Plan-Gv4_Log.txt

The log file can help in figuring out what has happened when something goes wrong.

Plan-G clears its log file the first time it’s run each day, so if you need to keep a particular
log, be sure to save it in another location.

Additional support can be found in the Plan-G forum: http://www.tasoftware.co.uk/forum/

PLAN-G V4 QUICK START 8