Version 1.19 of Flightplan Visualizer released

[pellelil 59]

Version 1.19 have just been released, and it can be downloaded from AVSIM using this link:
https://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=msfs20util&DLID=221824

 

Here below is a link to the video recorded for the 1.19 release explaining what have been added and what have changed, and below that there is a full list of changes. To mention a few this version can now connect to the simulator using FSUIPC and show your location on the map. Also I have once again decided to include all of the biz-jet flights (each prefixed by "Bz_" so they are easy to identify, in case you want to put them in a separate folder). A lot of airlines have been updated/added including a lot "fictitious" (for companies without official ICAO/IATA-codes). And for you Bernd, you can now filter your Leg-searches on weekdays

 

 

Here is a full list of changes in versions 1.19:

• The release-version of the application is now aimed at 64-bit (granting access to more memory if needed). Enabling 64-bit adds a memory overhead of approx 50% compared to 32-bit, but its the "price to pay" to have access to more memory (for those of you with many active flightplans loaded into memory at the same time).
• FV can now connect to your simulator using FSUIPC (tested both with P3D and MSFS). By default you will have to manually connect/disconnect (using new menu-items in the File-menu). However in settings you can choose to do it automatic. When automatic-connection is selected the connect/disconnect menu-items becomes inactive.
• When connected to a sim, the location/heading of your aircraft can be displayed on the map, using an orange aircraft-marker, and hoovering the mouse over this marker will display some key data (GPS-location, altitude, heading, speed and so on).
• Added ability to playback audio-files. In settings you can choose which audio-device to use, and set the volume at which these files are played (defaults to 50%). If volume>0 these files will automatically be played back whenever FV connects to/disconnects from the Sim.
• Added additional icons that are automatically selected to indicate when the program is connected to the simulator. Hence the icon in the main-form will indicate if FV is connected to a simulator or not.
• In the form for editing (user)-airlines and in the form for searching airlines the context menu now have a menu-item called "Show usage". When selected, it will generate a report showing all the (active) flightplans in which the airline is used.
• Added a new "Manual" check-box next to the load-factor when editing user-airlines. This check-box needs to be checked if you want to manually enter a load-factor. When not checked (default) the load-factor will automatically be set to the default value of the selected country.
• When editing user-airlines, the airline just added/edited will be visible and selected in the list-view. Likewise when deleting an airline, the previous item will be be visible/selected (in stead of always scrolling to the top afterwards, as in previous versions).
• The Insert/Delete keyboard-keys can now be used as shortcuts adding/deleting user-airlines and user-aircraft (both owned and types).
• The gate-map context-menu (Airport Info), now allows you to re-center the map (in case your have been panning the map, and can't locate the airport again).
• Added a new menu-item/form to calculate head/cross-wind from manually entered flight/runway-heading and wind-direction/speed. Don't forget the runways tab-page in the Airport-info form already calculates this for each runway (and wind-direction/speed is automatically obtained from METAR).
• Added a new menu-item/form to convert plain-text into morse-code. There is also a button that lets you listen to the generated morse-code, so you can practice your morse-code listening skills (e.g. entering an ILS/VOR-ident, to know which morse-code to listen for in the aircraft, to verify the correct ident is received).
• The "Cruise speed" column have been removed from the aircraft tab-page of the Edit Flightplan form to make more room for the Carrier/Operator-columns. In the past these simply contained the ICAO for the airlines. Now it both contains: ICAO, IATA (if not blank) and Name.
• The criteria in the leg-search window now allows you to filter on departure/arrival week-days (e.g. only include flights departing a particular airport on a Saturday or Sunday).
• When using the flightplan-filter on the main-form, it will favor the current active flightplan (as in previous versions), however if not able to, it will select the first flightplan included in the filtered list (in stead of choosing "[None]").
• Improved import of AIGFP-flightplans where the airport is not contained within the embedded airport.txt file and is using a different ICAO-code in route-files (observed for "AIG_UTair_Summer2018v6" and "AIG_S7Airlines_Winter2019-2020v3").
• Added runway-info (for both Departure/Destination-airports) to the flightplan leg-report. For ILS-eqiupped runways its lists the ID (both as text, as morse-code), frequency and ils-slope.
• Morse-code also added to ILS-ID column on the "Runways" tab-page of the airport-info form. Above the list-view there is also a label showing the morse-code (using a larger font), and next to it there is a button that lets you listen to the morse-code.
• Traffic-pattern direction (for take-off and landing) are now displayed for each runway. These data are extracted from the scenery by MakeRunways, hence the info can't be "better" than the info in the scenery (hence most default airports simply shows 'Left').
• Current/peak- memory usage is now logged at various stages while running, and when closing the program. These values can also be observed opening the about-box, which will also forcefully append these values to the log.
• When using MkRwy with MSFS it can't obtain the country-name, hence these are taken from the airport-database embedded with FV. However the name for USA ("United States of America") is too long to be shown together with state-name, hence code have been added it to shorten it to "United States" (which was the default country-name used in FSX/P3D).
• Changed font in Comments-box for user-aircraft to a fixed font, in case some users what to enter text "in columns" (e.g. if you make "tables" with speed-restrictions).
• Changed the color of the splitter-bars in the Airport-info and leg-search forms to a darker color, to better indicate where it is.
• The build-part of the version-number can now be ignored when performing the automatic version-check at start-up. This new setting is by default disabled. If enabled it will ignore changes from version 1.x.0 to 1.x.1 (e.g. an update from 1.19.0 to 1.19.1). However major/minor versions-updates (e.g. from 1.19.x to 1.20.x) will not be ignored.
• Fixed: Excessive logging while importing AIGFP flightplans removed (leftover from fixing a bug before the release of version 1.18).
• Fixed: When using kg in the leg-info report, the weight of Luggage incl. pax weight (shown in parentheses) was wrong.
• Fixed: Button to open filter-manual on Gate-page of the Airport-info form was not visible/position was not fixed.
• Fixed: The wind-speed obtained from the METAR and used to calc head/tail-wind on the Runway tab-page of the Airport-info form, did not consider the unit (e.g. Khp or meters-per-second).
• Data: A VERY BIG THANK YOU to Bruce Nicholson for assistance updating the Airline-database, both with new/missing entries and marking defunct airlines as such.
• Data: A lot of "fictions airlines" was added as well. These are used for companies without official ICAO/IATA codes. To indicate they are fictions the ICAO-code is set to "---" and the IATA-code is used to indicate the kind of traffic (e.g. the combination "---/BZ" is used for biz-jet flights).
• Data: Also thanks to Bruce for pointing out that a few aircraft were not being detected as they should. So this version should do a better job with Cessna T206H, Cessna Citation SII/S550 and Global 7500.
• Flightplans: The bundled AIG flightplans have been updated to the latests versions/revisions available from AIG (there were a few defunct that was removed, a few new versions that was added, and a lot of new revisions being updated).
• Flightplans: Eric Steinmetz's Bizjet (AI) flightplans that have previously been available as a separate download are once again bundled with the installer (they are only installed if you choose the option during installation). These have all been updated to use the new "---/BZ" airlines (for companies without official ICAO/IATA-codes), and the Author/Provider have been set to "Eric Steinmetz"/"ESAI" (the previous/separate download was created before adding author/provider to the software).

 

[pellelil 59]

Forgot to mention in the video, if you absolutely hate the connected/disconnected-sounds, you can put your own two audio-files in the UserData-folder, using the same filenames. When the program needs to play the connected/disconnected sounds, it will first try to locate these in the UserData-folder, and only it not found there, it will look for them in the Data-folder.

 

However if you in stead replace the files in the Data-folder it will only work until you install a new version, as the installer will simply overwrite the files in the Data-folder (while it will NOT overwrite those in the UserData-folder).

[KevyKevTPA 29]

I managed to get this downloaded, I've only briefly looked at it, but it looks very useful, especially the transfer to Simbrief function.  Thanks for posting it.  Do you plan to add routes in the US, and for that matter, from around the whole world?  That one thing alone would increase the utility of this by 10,000%.  (An estimated amount, of course...)

 

KKT

 

PS...  Does it auto-update when new versions come out?  If not, I'd like to request that you tag me when you make future announcements so I don't miss any updates!  Thanks much...

[pellelil 59]

Thanks for the kind words KKT. Not sure that you mean with routes in the US? The installer for version 1.19 comes bundled with +1000 flightplans of which +380 are biz-jet flights with only routes in the US. All of these flights are based on the AI flightplans produced by AIG (Alpha India Group), and a few individualists (like all of the Biz-jet flightplans by Eric Steinmetz). The flightplans bundled with version 1.19 contains no less that 780112 different "legs" (a leg is a single flight performed by a specific aircraft). So plenty of flights all over the globe.

 

To see flights in the states you can either choose a flightplan for an American airlines (like) "Southwest" using the drop-box in the bottom of the main-form, or press CTRL+L (or choose "Search legs" form the menu) and enter criteria of flights to search for (e.g. based on country/region/sub-region, which aircraft to include, legth/duration of flights and what not).

 

FV will not automatic download/install new updated versions. However when I release new versions of the software you will be notified the next time you start the program. This notification will contain a link to where it can be downloaded (like this):

 

Please login to display this image.

[KevyKevTPA 29]

On 5/13/2021 at 3:41 AM, pellelil said:

The installer for version 1.19 comes bundled with +1000 flightplans of which +380 are biz-jet flights with only routes in the US

 

You are absolutely correct, kind sir, and thank you for the tip.  You just made the product much more useful for me.  The reason I didn't think they were there is because when loading the program, it only showed routes in Europe, and it seemed like a low number of those to me, but I could be 100% wrong about that.  Is there any way to show all the lines on the map when the app starts?  Perhaps by putting an [ALL] option under Flightplan?  So people (like me) could have the option to fly every plan that exists on the planet if they have no idea where they want to go, not that picking one from the firehose of data would be all that easy.  'Course you could just grab something random and go fly that LOL...

 

On 5/13/2021 at 3:41 AM, pellelil said:

However when I release new versions of the software you will be notified the next time you start the program.

 

Automatic would be (a little) better, but this is perfectly good enough for me!  Good to know!!  I have some addons that make you actually go and LOOK for updates to see if there are any, which is just obnoxious.  And I'm talking about payware options from people who are proud of their product (meaning it ain't cheap!)...  I'm not going to call them out by name, because that, too, would be obnoxious, but I do wish they wouldn't do that.

[pellelil 59]

KKT, you can have the program display all legs at the same time. If you use the "Search Legs" feature (CTRL+L) and do not setup any criteria (e.g. having pressed the "Reset" button) it will select ALL legs (flights). However I would advice not to do this. As the program will become slow, and the map will look like this:

 

Please login to display this image.

 

Here I have even removed the airport markers so you only see the routes. For the next release I have imported even more flights so the above screen-shot is the result of showing +800000 legs, utilizing no less than +46000 routes (naturally some legs are using the same routes). So in stead I would suggest that you use the the Search-leg feature and filter your search on what you want. E.g. if you only want flights inside the US, then set the criteria to only include legs (flights) with the sub-region (both inbound/outbound to "Northern America [NAM]". Likewise if you only feel for flying flights 4 hours or less, then set this as a criteria also (min/max flight-time). Also I am sure you don't have all of the aircraft as flyable aircraft in your sim, so again a good idea to filter on aircraft, to reduce the number of legs in the result.