Google Maps added to the latest beta version of Courseplanner.
Added a contact form
Added a contact form to enable users to email me directly if they have any questions.
Finally ordered X-Plane
Finally ordered X-Plane to play with and to start developing a module for Courseplanner.
Adding crash report information to Courseplanner
Adding crash report to Courseplanner.
Installing Wine on ubuntu
How to install Wine on ubuntu, these are just a few basic steps.
Back in the flying seat
I finally managed to get back to flying a little over the week-end, I am working on some new features for Courseplanner, namely the ability to turn into a waypoint, (or past a waypoint depending on the one you want to visit).
All the coding is done, I am just testing with various aircraft if everything works as expected. With all the small aircraft, (Cessna, Mooney and so on), it works well, but it is another story for the heavies. It is just very hard to remain on course without having some wild turns in order to remain on course.
I also added some small features to see where the automatic flight management of Courseplanner is aiming.
But all in all it is fun to get back to flying again.
New bugtracker
I finally got around to implement a new bug tracking system. The main reason for that is because I was starting to loose track between requests and bugs, my roadmap was also starting to look a bit like a bug tracking tool as well. I was also starting to loose track of what I had done when it came time to do releases.
Everybody is more than welcome to create an account and log new bugs, I chose Mantis as it seems to be a fairly ‘up-to-date’ online application.
I am new it, so I might make some mistakes as I go along, so please, bear with me.
I am very keen to do another stable release, but I first have to finish the database import application as it is still a bit ‘clunky’, I want the users to be able to click on one button only to load the database, (a bit like the aircrafts are been imported curently).
Finally completed the courseplanner import function
I finally found some time to complete the database import function in Courseplanner.
The database can be created with data from FSX and FS9. I must admit that I am a bit disappointed with the result, it seems that Microsoft flight simulator relies on graphics a lot more than I thought, the data on the .bgl files is not enough to display nice clean airports.
But I am working on ways of building proper curves in taxipath, (and I am also working on improving the general look of surfaces).
I am very busy at work and sadly I cannot work on Courseplanner as much as I would like. But once most of the bugs have been ironed out of the import function I will be able to continue working on various other bugs/features that have been reported on the forum.
Tackling the map issue
I have finally started working on the map issue we have been having. The problem is that the map is perfect when it comes to looking far away but it is blurry, (at best when looking at it up close)
In courseplanner version 3 the map was actually a set of points of the world that was drawn. The result was a far from picture perfect image but it worked rather well when zooming in really close, (about as close as an airport for example).
So I am going to re-add the outlining and try to ‘marry’ the NASA photo realistic image with the outline drawing.
Another option is to offer the 600Mb map of the world to the users. Maybe ship it to them via CD or something, (maybe allow a download?) This will partly solve the problem and make the image even more realistic, (the definition is 50M or something like that. So the map should be close to ‘perfect’ I hope.
But, before I do that, let me finish the outline. I see that a few flight planners offer the outline to simplify the view, so let me also try it.
As I am on leave for the next few days I will try and get it all done in 3 or 4 days.
New release of Courseplanner, still lots of work to do.
Yesterday I released a new version of Courseplanner, so far the response seems to be positive, but it is still early days.
I still need to make a few changes, especially the map, it is obviously a bigger eyesore than I expected, so I will need to look into it as soon as possible.
As I want to keep Courseplanner as ‘stand-alone’ as possible, (because of future support for X-Plane), I need to think of a simple way to display the map as ‘clearly’ as possible without depending on X-Plane or Flight Simulator.
I think that importing sectional maps might be a good idea, so if people want a ‘high definition’ map of a certain area then they will need to download it from various sites. I might make it flexible enough to upload to this site as well, (so others can download it).
I also want to add support for X-Plane, I am sure it won’t hurt to have more input from such a large comunity.
As alway I am looking for any suggestions/bug reports, anything to improve Courseplanner. So feel free to visit the forum and throw in your suggestions.