What is - most likely - included in FV 1.10

[pellelil 59]

In this topic I plan to describe the features that are most likely coming in version 1.10. Some of the items are fully implemented, some will be work in progress. Everything is subject to change, and I can't offer a deadline. Feel free to comment, ask questions and suggest other features. 

 

The other day I put a link to where new/additional (AI) flight-plans can be downloaded (to be imported into FV), so if interrested go have a look:

 

During the initial development of FV I simply displayed the gates using the same balloon-markers used to mark airports on the main map, and you had to hover the mouse over these markers to have a hint-window pop up showing the gate letter/number of that gate. I was never happy with this solution as it was difficult to locate a specific gate, and it was also difficult to see the type/size of each gate. However the map-component allows me to add polygons to the map, hence the colored/round gate polygons were born. These allowed me to put correctly sized gates on the map, and the color of these gates inform us of the type of the gate. But you still had to hover the mouse over these polygons to have a hint-window pop up showing the gate letter/number. I then got the idea to use a "segment-display" as known from old-school calculators, where each display element is build from 7/14 segments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen-segment_display). Each segment can then be calculated/scaled to GPS-coordinates and be displayed as polygons on the map, hence gate letter/numbers were added into the gate-polygons. The following screen-shot is from version 1.9 of FV, showing a close up of some of the gates in Aerosoft's Frankfurt scenery:

 

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The gate letters/numbers can at this zoom-level be read easily, however as each "char" has the same width no matter which segments are "lit" there is a "gap" between the chars. E.g. gate "F213" looks more like its saying "F2" and "13". The size of the letters/numbers inside the gate-polygons are automatically scaled to be as large as possible (still leaving some margin to the edge of the gate-polygon). Hence if the gap between "F2" and "13" can be made smaller, it is possible to write "F213" using bigger "segments", hence more easy to read. Also I have tweaked the relation between width and height of the segments, so in version 1.10 of FV it will be come more easy to read the letters/numbers in the gate-polygon. The screen-shot below is (more or less) the exact same location as the previous, however rendered in version 1.10:

 

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Since the segment-polygons are drawn using GPS-coordinates the segments appear different near equator than further north/south. Here is a screen-shot of the gates as they are rendered in version 1.9 at PANC (using the default-scenery):

 

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As I said I have tweaked the relation between segment width/height in version 1.10 to have the segment font appear more uniform regardless of if the airport is near equator or further north/south. This next screen-shot also shows the gates at PANC, however this time rendered in version 1.10 and using Aerosoft's PANC scenery. Therefor the gates are no placed at the same locations, nor do they use the same letters/numbers. Anyway I hope you agree they are more easy to read (e.g. look at the magenta "N3"):

 

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[pellelil 59]

The gate-letters/numbers as visible in the previous post, these are written with segments. In version 1.10 you will be able to write these gate-letters/numbers using a 5x7 matrix "font" as visible below. The program still defaults to use the segment-letters/numbers, so to switch to matrix-letters/numbers you need to change the settings-tag "UseMatrixGateChars" from false to true:

 

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[pellelil 59]

Fixed a bug where the IATA and ICAO -columns in the "Choose favorite aircraft" form were swapped. Added support for additional aircraft (Boeing 777-8/9 and Airbus A220-100/300):

 

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The combination of aircraft-IATA/ICAO must be unique (there cannot be 2 different aircraft with the same IATA- and ICAO-code) so the 2 new Airbus (A220-100 and A220-300) are listed with the Bombardier CS100 and CS300. If any of you have had any problem importing flightplans due to missing aircraft let me know.

[pellelil 59]

Many of us have many aircraft we likes to fly every now that then. In FV you can mark which aircraft you consider being among your favorites (e.g. the aircraft you own as 3rd party aircraft in your sim), and many places in FV you are able to filter the result to only show e.g. routes served by your favorite aircraft. But it would be nice if you were able to "group" your favorites. E.g. you might think today I only want to fly a Freight flight, or today I only want to see routes served by my favorite Airbus'es. Prior to version 1.10 you had to open the "Choose favorite aircraft" form and manually alter your selection of favorites, but what was worse was you had to reselect everything again in order to revert to the full favorite selection:

 

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As visible in the enclosed screen-shot above the "Choose favorite aircraft" form now have a "Load..." and a "Save..." button which lets you load and save selections of favorite aircraft.

 

[pellelil 59]

The Favorite sets you make as outlined in the previous post, can be loaded as selections into "Search legs" form. Here you see the result of loading a selection of Freight aircraft:

 

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Loading the "selection" into this will not change the current choice of Favorite aircraft.

[pellelil 59]

Gate info (favorite gate/comment) now contains a bit more info regarding the gate: type, size and if available airlines:

 

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Hovering the mouse over the airline text, a tooltip window will appear listing all the airlines for which this gate have been marked in the scenery. For each airline it will list the ICAO-code, the name and the call sign.

[pellelil 59]

In version 1.10 a new form have been added to assist enabling/disabling various flightplans:

 

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Also the help-menu have had some new menu-items, which link to the Tutorial Videos on YouTube. As of today 2 new videos have been added which show how to update the Airport Info to match your installed scenery, and how to import new/additional flightplans:

 

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I hope/expect being able to release version 1.10 during this week