Category: Flight Simulator

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.

New beta version

3 days behind schdule I have finally released a new version of Courseplanner. This is an important release because all the framework has been layed and now it is only a matter of fixing the remaining bugs.

I know there are still some problems with flight following and the flight plan does not seem to be 100% as I would like it, but those are more ‘cosmetic’ changes than anything.

The module is also working nicely now and I refactored a lot of code in the background to enable suport for multiple version of Flight Simulator. Given that Microsoft has droped their design team, and the fact that most people still seem to prefer FS2004 I think it is in Couseplanners own interest to support FS2004, (at least), as soon as possible.

I also really want to release some open source code so that others can start using the module/dll and design their own add-on.

But I think for now the main worry is to have a stable version that supports FSX.

Microsoft axes flight simulator dev team

It looks like the power that be decided to drop the entire development team, (ACES), for the very popular flight simulator franchise.

Personally I think that it is a mistake as I doubt that the Ace team was not showing a profit. I also suspect that they are just using the whole recession to ‘cut some fat’.

Some articles actually claim that Microsoft is only restructuring and that they have no real plans to drop Flight Simulator

On my side this is not really going to slow me down as I enjoy what I do. In fact I am planning on adding support for older versions of Fligth simulator.
I might even add support for x-plane as I have no doubt that if Flight simulator does not make a comeback x-plane will be the next favorite amongst enthusiasts, (plus I think it would be nice to support more than one simulator).