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PFPX development has gone stagnant?


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When PFPX was first announced it was a wonderful tool for the flight sim community, but it seems to be like things have been so stagnant over the past year or so with just minor updates which include mainly bug fixes. I want to know or hear from the developer(s) of PFPX are we going to get any updates that will add more features, improve things, perhaps have different versions of PFPX for other platforms such as Mac, iPad, etc?

 

Would be great if we can get some news or updates regarding this. I hope PFPX isn't dead. I would love to see a night mode perhaps and the incorporation of an EFB built in and perhaps a GUI overhaul so that it looks a bit more clean and modern.

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Cloudster,

 

could you list improve things, added  features that you want?

 

do you have a working PFPX on your actual system?

 

what is a night mode perhaps?

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I did mention some of the things I would like see added:

 

Nightmode (where it inverses the color, check out Navigraph Charts or the new Aivlasoft EFB v2) It makes thing dark and easier to look at during the night.

Have TOPCAT builtin for performance calculations

Refine the User Interface and make it cleaner and simplified, modern UI design. It looks outdated.

Incorporate an EFB feature where you can use it as a PDF viewer to load up documents, charts, etc.

Moving map of our plane in relation to the world, and have different types of maps/terrains selectable by the user, Such as satellite, google maps, terrain, etc.

SID/STAR features like in Aivlasoft EFB.

 

Those are just some ideas. I would love to have 1 app that does this rather than buying numerous apps.

 

Thanks to know that development is still going on, but can we get some news on whats being improved or worked on at least? Instead of leaving the customers in the dark like this. It would be nice.

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2 hours ago, Cloudster said:

I did mention some of the things I would like see added:

 

Nightmode (where it inverses the color, check out Navigraph Charts or the new Aivlasoft EFB v2) It makes thing dark and easier to look at during the night.

Have TOPCAT builtin for performance calculations

Refine the User Interface and make it cleaner and simplified, modern UI design. It looks outdated.

Incorporate an EFB feature where you can use it as a PDF viewer to load up documents, charts, etc.

Moving map of our plane in relation to the world, and have different types of maps/terrains selectable by the user, Such as satellite, google maps, terrain, etc.

SID/STAR features like in Aivlasoft EFB.

 

Those are just some ideas. I would love to have 1 app that does this rather than buying numerous apps.

 

Thanks to know that development is still going on, but can we get some news on whats being improved or worked on at least? Instead of leaving the customers in the dark like this. It would be nice.

Adding an EFB section would be amazing, although if that happened, I would imagine we'd have to pay for it. Although I do like the idea of an all-in-one app.

 

As for the moving map, PFPX already has one of these.

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I would like to see simply export options for the latest addons (which are on the market since several years now): Majestic, Maddog, 717, etc.

That would be the minimum I would await, that a software with such features is kept up to date.

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I already know PFPX has a moving map, but it can be done better. It's very basic right now. I mentioned in my post on how the moving map feature could be further improved upon.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

Of course it would be nice to have satellite images or very detailed topographic charts, but you have no idea how much money you have to pay to use Google Maps or any other satellite images using it in a commercial product.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

Yes, but even if they are kind of "open source" there are still technical or mainly licensing restrictions. And it is always easy to say "others use it" when you are not an expert in licensing questions, or are you? ;)

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I never said I was an expert. Don't start assuming things. You're missing the point. I just wanted to add some ideas to the table because there hasn't been any significant changes in PFPX for quite some time now. I feel like it's missing its charm. I mentioned that others have this feature because if they can do it, then why can't PFPX?

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I am still not sure how PFPX is missing it's charm - it's a flight planning program, and it plans flights very accurately and has a lot of powerful tools.  It's got a few bugs that are going to be fixed, for the meantime I use 1.28.8. 

 

People seem to keep wanting new features that don't seem to have a lot to do with a flight PLANNING application.  Didn't even know PFPX had a moving map in fact!

 

If anything, I'd like to see the ability to retrieve FIR NOTAMS and see SIGWX along the flight route.

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And whichever person downvoted what I said: seriously, get a life.  Why don't you try typing a response rather than taking that lazy option? 

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PFPX is a Flight Planning Tool. It takes aircraft performance as input as well as routes, weather and atc restrictions. It is NOT an EFB or moving map tool to be used in flight.  It has a very good aircraft and template capability that allows new aircraft information and performance to be added. We should not expect the authors to provide this for every new aircraft that are released by 3rd parties. Yes, it would be nice to have those supported, but that is outside the scope of PFPX implementation. 

 

One area I think might improve the operational capabilities and flexibility is in flight plan exports. The forum is full of requests to support exporting to various different simulators and formats.  If PFPX took the approach to provide a Export template mechanism similar to the OFP templates, it could have an option to 'transform' the flight plan export using a designated Export Template.  This template could then transform the internal PFPX flight plan format to what format ( and target location ) the user selected.  As new sims or external flight plan formats appear, it would only require a template to be built to transform to the new external format.    I have played with this using the existing OFP templates and created an XML output template that will transform any PFPX flight plan to an xml file. This same technique could be used to transform to PMDG, X-Plane, abc or xyz format.

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8 hours ago, Mathijs Kok said:

And I will ask that person why he downvoted you. 

needs attention and love.

 

Rudy i upvoted and loved you .... hope it will deflect the bad impression you had first from who do not know ...

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8 minutes ago, bcars said:

PFPX is a Flight Planning Tool. It takes aircraft performance as input as well as routes, weather and atc restrictions. It is NOT an EFB or moving map tool to be used in flight.  It has a very good aircraft and template capability that allows new aircraft information and performance to be added. We should not expect the authors to provide this for every new aircraft that are released by 3rd parties. Yes, it would be nice to have those supported, but that is outside the scope of PFPX implementation. 

 

One area I think might improve the operational capabilities and flexibility is in flight plan exports. The forum is full of requests to support exporting to various different simulators and formats.  If PFPX took the approach to provide a Export template mechanism similar to the OFP templates, it could have an option to 'transform' the flight plan export using a designated Export Template.  This template could then transform the internal PFPX flight plan format to what format ( and target location ) the user selected.  As new sims or external flight plan formats appear, it would only require a template to be built to transform to the new external format.    I have played with this using the existing OFP templates and created an XML output template that will transform any PFPX flight plan to an xml file. This same technique could be used to transform to PMDG, X-Plane, abc or xyz format.

the first paragraph sums up all the intention behing PFPX. thanks a lot.

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1 hour ago, bcars said:

PFPX is a Flight Planning Tool. It takes aircraft performance as input as well as routes, weather and atc restrictions. It is NOT an EFB or moving map tool to be used in flight.  It has a very good aircraft and template capability that allows new aircraft information and performance to be added. We should not expect the authors to provide this for every new aircraft that are released by 3rd parties. Yes, it would be nice to have those supported, but that is outside the scope of PFPX implementation.

 

100% agree, perfect summary.

 

"Jack of all trades, Master of none" is what happens to software which tries to do everything. The support of 3rd party aircraft is one area where the developer of flight planning software for the sim world faces a burden not present in the real world (a single standard sim-wide FMC data format would be great lads....) - revenue generating ability is the other, I'm constantly amazed by what some simmers expect; if only they knew what real world airlines actually pay for our flight planning capabilities.

 

I'll keep helping with data as new flightsim aircraft are released, if I felt PFPX didn't have a healthy future I'd do other things with my life.

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2 hours ago, BW901 said:

 

100% agree, perfect summary.

 

"Jack of all trades, Master of none" is what happens to software which tries to do everything. The support of 3rd party aircraft is one area where the developer of flight planning software for the sim world faces a burden not present in the real world (a single standard sim-wide FMC data format would be great lads....) - revenue generating ability is the other, I'm constantly amazed by what some simmers expect; if only they knew what real world airlines actually pay for our flight planning capabilities.

 

I'll keep helping with data as new flightsim aircraft are released, if I felt PFPX didn't have a healthy future I'd do other things with my life.

 

if airlines knew the prices/costs they will all use pfpx ...

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On the topic of possible program 'enhancements', in terms of weather and flight planning, an additional feature I think would be really helpful is the ability to overlay radar returns/satellite images/sigmets/airmets etc on the PFPX planning map in order to adjust 'optimized' routes generated by PFPX to avoid severe wx areas (ie dense CB/TS buildups with tops >FL400). ATM I need to look for graphical deptiction of severe wx areas/advisories from external sources (ie Skyvector), whereas it would be nice if this could all be done interactively within PFPX and its flight planning map.

 

Cheers,

Michael.

 

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On 7/5/2018 at 3:29 AM, phil747fan said:

needs attention and love.

 

Rudy i upvoted and loved you .... hope it will deflect the bad impression you had first from who do not know ...

Thanks Phil haha :)

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