Anyone who flies online, or simply likes to run a full approach briefing, knows the little scramble that comes with copying a clearance. The controller reads out a taxi route, a frequency, a squawk, and you are suddenly looking for somewhere to write it down before it slips away. Pen and paper does the job. So does alt-tabbing to a notepad. Neither feels great, and for anyone in a VR headset, both are more hassle than they are worth. That everyday friction is the problem Flight Notes wants to take off your plate.
Flight Notes is a new in-sim utility from BoliviaVFR, published by SoFly. It arrived on the Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace last week for both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024, priced at $9.99.
BoliviaVFR is known in the community for scenery, particularly Latin American airports such as El Alto in La Paz, so a cockpit notepad is a step in a totally new direction. Pairing with SoFly on the publishing side puts it alongside a catalog that already includes several in-sim tools, from Weather Preset Pro to the SimBrief-focused OpsBrief Viewer Pro.
So what does it do? The idea is a notepad you can pull up over the cockpit and write on without pausing or leaving the sim. BoliviaVFR says you can type notes directly or switch to freehand drawing with a pen and eraser, pick from several ink colors, and spread everything across multiple note pages that you can rename. The screenshots the developer supplied show the sort of thing it is built for: a taxi clearance jotted as “TAXI RWY10 VIA A to B, HOLD SHORT RWY10,” an approach brief with the ILS, headings and a missed-approach plan, a departure copied down with its SID and initial altitude. There is a light theme and a dark theme.
Interestingly, BoliviaVFR says notes are saved between sessions, so a page does not wipe itself the moment you end a flight.
On price, $9.99 puts Flight Notes in familiar territory for a small utility. It is worth being clear about scope, though. This is a notepad, not a full kneeboard. Tools such as FSKneeboard cover moving maps, charts and flight plans on top of notes, while Flight Notes concentrates on the writing surface alone. If that focus sounds refreshingly simple or a little thin will probably come down to how you fly, and how much you already rely on other tools in your setup.
Flight Notes is available now on the Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace for MSFS 2020 and 2024.
