Plugin for real-time and mission generation

    Hello,


    I have been working for sometime on a small plugin (which I intend to use together with my custom scenery for HEMS). Currently, it supports setting real-time (according to current UTC time) inside the simulator session (using button in the plugin UI). Below is a link to a short video demonstrating its use. I intend to develop this plugin further, supporting mission generation for HEMS, and also add possibility to change weather parameters such as visibility and wind inside the sim (based on e.g., METAR).


    In-development Aerofly FS2 plugin for real-time and training mission generation
    Demo of in-development Aerofly FS2 plugin for real-time and training mission generation #aeroflyfs2 #hems #simulator #simulatortraining
    youtu.be

    Great Idea to set the time, so there is no need to guess a setting with the keys T and R.

    Can you also include the date, so the sun angle can be influenced?


    I assume to change the weather, AFS2 needs to be restarted?


    Also have a look to the work of Armitage:

    Aerofly Wettergerät - Flight-Sim.org
    Copy METAR weather information into IPCAS' Aerofly FS 2. The Aerofly Wettergerät will copy the following METAR weather information from remote sources to your…
    flight-sim.org

    Cheers, Thomas


    Hi Thomas! :)


    Yes the idea is that you can make the adjustments to time (real-time, and possible later any time) in the simulator, without the need to restart the simulator.

    Some of the weather parameters that Aerofly Wettergearet (great application btw) sets requires the sim to restart, but I intend to implement at this point parameters that can change dynamically without restart, such as visibility and wind speed. I am not sure the date part can be adjusted, will check it out (would be cool feature to have).


    The missions part is still under planning, but intention is to be able to generate random missions which are appropriately located based on type of e.g., accident.

    So now I have finally had some time to finish up the first version of my small Aerofly FS2 plugin (Mission Control Center) for setting some simulator parameters in real-time using a custom UI.


    This version also includes support for setting the current real-time, aircraft transponder code, and injecting visibility data based on current METARS. Hope it can be useful:) The plugin can be downloaded from https://flight-sim.org/filebas…mulator-parameters-in-re/

    Thank you for this interesting plugin.

    I tried it with the EC135.


    However I have a problem to synchronize the time by pressing the "Set realtime" button:



    the time is also not set in the main.cfg file.



    Maybe I do something wrong?

    Cheers, Thomas


    Hello Thomas,


    Glad that you like the plugin :) Where do you have the AeroflyFS2 main.mcf file located? The plugin currently assumes location is C:\\Users\%USERNAME\Documents\Aerofly FS2. So this could cause problems if the location differs. Will do an update so it will be possible to override this default location.

    Assumptions are always risky in real life and with such pluggins.

    Regards,

    Thomas


    i7-6700K @ 4.0 GHz, Geforce GTX 1080, 32MB RAM, 500GB SSD M.2, 1TB SSD M.2, 2TB SSD M.2, 1TB HD, 32" Monitor 4K, Oculus Rift

    Quote from TomSimMuc

    My main.mcf is located in USERNAME\Documents\Aerofly FS 2



    Is there any other log, which would be useful for you?

    This issue should now be solved, a new version 1.01 is available for download. The problem was related to accessing the localized version of the configuration path in this particular case. I had initially planned to allow manual configuration of this path, and if the need arises I will add the possibility to manually override the location. But in most cases the automatic detection should be sufficient :)

    Quote from TomB

    Assumptions are always risky in real life and with such pluggins.

    Yes normally that can be the case. In this particular situation, the assumption about the pyshical location (user's documents folder, which is used by default by Aerofly FS2) was correct, however, the issue was with retrieving it in a localization independent way. The new update 1.01 should take care of this issue.

    Quote from TomSimMuc

    Thank you for adapting the path to main.mcf


    Hi Thomas,


    Glad you got the time functionality to work :) That East Frisian Islands scenery looks really great, will need to test it out :) If you have any suggestions for other useful shortcuts / utilities that could be added to the Control Center plugin, just let me know :)

    Time for yet another plugin update; version 1.03 should now properly set the visibility value (the current SDK has a very complicated way of dealing with parameter changes; hopefully this will be improved in forthcoming Aerofly FS4). Also, the esc key should not accidentally close the UI window anymore.

    Just a heads up; I tested the plugin with the new Aerofly FS4. The real-time and transponder functions seem to work, but the visibility setting does not, so seems some update is needed. Hopefully the Aerofly FS4 SDK will provide a fix for this.


    Also, the current plugin version is not compatible with FS4 as some variables need to be updated.