This is a release that rewrites the look adn feel of Rewinger, plus enables some basic ATC functions being possible as setting basic targets per aircraft (the targets are only in Rewinger memory, no one else will see them).
Fixes a bug that would have the marker disappear under certain conditions if using FSWidget.
You can find the latest version on Abflug.Cloud
I actually have a small tools which extracts data sets from Aerofly to use in other tools. One of the data sets contains all liveries for all aircraft - an amazing amount.
Uh thank you for the reminder of this awesomely useful data. If you’re around Austria you have a beer or two paid 
Btw I may have something to barter with: Airport (altitudes for now) API (for state detection) powered by Abflug using OurAirport.csv data
Big update today - Abflug reaches version 2 of the API. Now it allows a barebone flight plan to be sent to the network so everyone can see it on Rewinger.
Don’t worry Armitage , still working on the main.mcf integration 
Probably quite a few of the A320s were mine 🫣
Interesting application, I think SageMage has experience in this field, maybe he could be interested to take a look.
Definitely a development that should used the fast shared memory data access
Problem is I have no windows machine to play around with it (actually, I have one, from my employer so I can’t install stuff or code)
But thank you for the shoutout - I will keep in mind to have it as todo if I splurge for a dedicated windows rig in the future
Short update for an additional experimental feature:
Abflug now supports the FSWidget protocol on TCP - opening the door for mobile!
Unfortunately it was a solo flight! But please don't hesitate to contact me if you want more information about the project abflug.cloud, also on discord: https://discord.gg/RjxufsTZ
After more than five years, "Bella Italia - Part 1" had almost ten downloads yesterday. I think there was mass panic!
None of them donated anything, by the way. And that's exactly why the site is shut down. I only received something from one person, and that was someone who had already donated several times over the years. The community should thank people like them; the rest should be utterly ashamed.
Nach über fünf Jahren hatte gestern "Bella Italia - Part1" noch mal fast zehn Downloads. Ich glaube, das war gestern Massenpanik!
Yep - definitely a more “store like” concept needs to arise.
To celebrate the opening of https://abflug.cloud, I want to organize a fly-out.
What is a fly out? It's a party where we meet online, chat, see some icons flying on Rewinger, talk about what we want!
Saturday , December 27th
14:00 UTC Comms and tech support
15:00 UTC Open gates
15:25 UTC Departure
Flight time approx 1 hour
Open chat after arrival
let’s hop into the sim at Graz Airport LOWG - home base of Abflug and fly to Frankfurt EDDF where the servers are.
Voice comms and screen sharing on Abflug Discord - https://discord.gg/cNZEgfsj?event=1452984176772120626
Please follow the instructions on the docs page on how to participate.
Everyone can register and participate - we suggest that you can have your setup ready for voice so we can chat once parked in Frankfurt.
All airplanes are welcome! However, it may be a bit difficult to maneuver a Concorde or Super Heavies in such a short flight.
Don’t forget your API key, enough fuel load (thank you IPACS!) and some party mood.
I will try to do the Master of Ceremonies, some traffic control and flying at the same time - so be gentle with me, it will be my first time!
Beta system, do not use for real flights, not sponsored by IPACS or Aerofly.
To celebrate the opening of https://abflug.cloud, I want to organize a fly-out.
What is a fly out? It's a party where we meet online, chat, see some icons flying on Rewinger, talk about what we want!
Saturday, December 27th
14:00 UTC Comms and tech support
15:00 UTC Open gates
15:25 UTC Departure
Flight time approx 1 hour
Open chat after arrival
let’s hop into the sim at Graz Airport LOWG - home base of Abflug and fly to Frankfurt EDDF where the servers are.
Voice comms and screen sharing on Abflug Discord - https://discord.gg/cNZEgfsj?event=1452984176772120626
Please follow the instructions on the docs page on how to participate.
Everyone can register and participate - we suggest that you can have your setup ready for voice so we can chat once parked in Frankfurt.
All airplanes are welcome! However, it may be a bit difficult to maneuver a Concorde or Super Heavies in such a short flight.
Don’t forget your API key, enough fuel load (thank you IPACS!) and some party mood.
I will try to do the Master of Ceremonies, some traffic control and flying at the same time - so be gentle with me, it will be my first time!
Beta system, do not use for real flights, not sponsored by IPACS or Aerofly.
Quick post to wish you happy holidays... Santa has switched on the transponder!
Really cool project! I have a question, the way I understand this is that the traffic will only be showed on the map, and not inside the game itself right? I was wondering is it possible to somehow tie this server to the in-game traffic feature, so we can see the traffic in the game itself through the simplified traffic models?
Nonetheless I will be watching your project with great interest
Hi, thank you!
I suppose what you’re asking is to have Aerofly show the data from Abflug, am I right?
There is no known method up until now to tell the Aerofly traffic where to go (at least, none on Mac). So for now we have to limit ourselves on what I can do with the server and what you can see in Rewinger.
Was that the question?
Best regards!
Great work. Really, really great idea.
And I am glad to help. I will check if the flight plan is written to the main.mcf before starting the actual flying. If this is the case, I could build a small python library to import the flight plan... or have AI transform my usual stuff from TypeScript to Python.
Will the flight plan also be shared?
And I absolutely love your ideas for future plans.
I will need to come back to you on this regarding the sharing of flight plans. Uhmmm.
I need to find an elegant solution for this, but I promise nothing.
Dear All,
with the demise of flight-sim.org - and having a bit of time during the holidays - I came up with a small project that snowballed (pun intended) into a full blown server.
That’s why I waited a bit to have everything ready as best as I can before creating this thread. Target was, Xmas holidays, people have the time, we can have a flight all together. Meanwhile, the closure of flight-sim.org put sustainability on the vocabulary of everyone building projects for the community.
With some help along the way, the website (and server) https://abflug.cloud is alive.
What is it, you’re going to ask? Well, my relatives described it best - “flightradar for flight sims”. And believe me, bless their heart, they wouldn’t distinguish a 747 from an A320.
Enough with the preambles that I started to sound like a YouTube video sponsored by Raid Shadow Legend - so smash that like button...
I saw a few messages here and there about “when can we have multiplayer” in the forum and decided that there was an opportunity.
The simplified idea is the following: you register, get an API key, use the client, can see all the other pilots participating online on a map, like on FlightRadar24.
How to get up and running:
The semi-technical jargon:
With the administrative parts done and dusted, I want to give you a few screenshots of how it looks:
The scripts that you need to run:
the Abflug Client:
The multiplayer tab in Rewinger:
Now with the eye candy out of the way, a bit more information regarding the features, how it works, what is the plan for the future:
Most important thing to remember is - you do everything with the API key. If you lose it or get shared accidentally, you can easily recreate a new one and the previous one gets invalidated immediately. It's used by the Client, Rewinger and the Server to keep track of you on the system.
The Client and Rewinger polls the server using the key to, respectively, send your position in the network or getting the people around you.
the ICAO Code:
Easy mode explanation: Your API key generates a unique ICAO code and callsign for the network. You can also set your own callsign.
The nitty and gritty - skip if you just want to fly:
Client, Server and Rewinger use the same function to calculate a hashed version of the API key - called the "ICAO code" to keep with the aviation theme.
When the client or Rewinger needs to recognise itself in the traffic, they send a single "ping" ("one ping only, Vasily") at login into the server and checks in the traffic response for its own ICAO code and the callsign.
Why the complex setup?
I wanted to be sure that my logs or any call doesn't return the API key for any reason. The API key is yours and yours only. This enables other tools to interface without getting other users API keys.
if you do not set a callsign, it is calculated using another hash function that returns a string similar to the ICAO - this is to enable a cheap callsign collision on the network without having to check for every user.
If you are using an airline callsign (e.g. LH123) the collision detection is not yet implemented; however, I didn't want to limit people using their favourite callsigns having to abandon it.
The traffic gets returned based on your inflight position and a radius in nautical miles. The server calculates the havesine distance between your position and the radius, returning the traffic inside the "bubble".
Observer mode lets you act as ATC by setting a fixed position to watch traffic. Note: if you start flying (UDP stream active - scramming for an intruder Top Gun-Style?), it automatically switches back to flight mode.
Please be gentle with the server. It runs a puny Oracle Cloud instance with 1 CPU and 1 GB of RAM, 44GB of disk space. If you are reading this on a smartphone, the server has less horsepower than the chip driving your screen probably.
Privacy concerns:
NO, IT DOES NOT WORK ON MOBILE (yet) unless the documentation for FSWidgets gets opened (mobile version has no UDP capability).
Still, you will need a machine to interpret the data and convert it to API calls that the server can understand.
Q: is it free? Will you end up like flight-sim.org?
Currently the costs are pretty minimal and can sustain approx 50 users at the same time. Features that will come in the future may be paid features, but the idea is that basic "FlightRadar24" usage will be free and without ads.
Because it would create headaches with signing the .exe and the .app files. Also, the binaries would be bigger than the entire memory footprint of the server code.
Q: No really - will it work on mobile?
No.
planned for the future are a bunch of features, but feel free to write me here or on the contacts on the website if you have ideas.
thanks to Armitage and Jugac64 for the ideas and the support, the IPACS team for creating Aerofly
Abflug Client (abflug_client.py and abflug_client_gui.py) are released as it is and without any warranty, explicit or implied. It may contain bugs.
Rewinger (rewinger.py) is released under MIT License and contains code from Aircraft Tracker by Jugac64
I do not guarantee that the server will be always running. Maintenance, crashes, lack of funding may cause me to stop the server at any time.
In the first days I will monitor the situation and restart the server when I see that there are issues. Please ping me here or at support@abflug.cloud if something doesn't work.
This is a beta system. It will contain bugs. Do not use for real flights. I assume no responsibility on incorrect usage.
Let me say the last joke: "Cleared for takeoff".
I've commented on this a few times already, but now that we've reached the end of flight-sim.org, maybe we can think constructively about what comes next. Reading comments from admins, users, and reflecting on my own experience, I have some thoughts to share.
In hindsight:
The content distribution model was fundamentally flawed. "Upload or donate to download" seemed fair in theory, but in practice:
I'm not throwing shade at flight-sim.org's admins - you did what you could with the tools available. The burnout in Higgy's posts and the latest comments in this thread was palpable.
As ApfelFlieger said: it started as "from us users for us users" but became "from a few creators to a lot of consumers."
The Mobile Era:
Traditional flight simming required:
People who made those investments understood that quality tools cost money. Heck, look at addon prices on other platforms - some aircraft cost MORE than Aerofly FS4 + the entire addon pack!
The mobile equation is different:
Not worse, just different economics. And don't be fooled - Discord communities still nag you for boosts, nitros, and donations. Everyone's trying to monetize somehow.
Economy of scale were off from the start:
Flight-sim.org had to compete with platforms like GitHub and Discord that distribute costs across thousands of servers and millions of users. A small, volunteer-run site serving one community can't match that economy of scale.
I'm not saying monetization was the only answer. But the romantic idea of keeping a platform "essentially free" doesn't work in the current era.
The numbers don't add up. The cash inflow needed to be systematic and predictable, even for a volunteer project.
Before anyone says I'm wrong: Look at this forum and count the ratio of mobile posts to PC posts. "When on mobile?" is becoming a running gag. The community has shifted, and the infrastructure didn't shift with it.
I've been working on projects in this space, and flight-sim.org's evolution has absolutely influenced my design choices. Sustainability can't be an afterthought - it needs to be built in from the start.
Thanks to everyone who made flight-sim.org what it was. On to whatever comes next.
Dear All,
quick update on the progress:
client for uplink
and Rewinger rewired (ha ha) to act also as observer
Todo:
See you!
A small update on the progress:
Next steps:
best regards,
SageMage
Jugac64 XCSoar and 3D… maybe you can help?
I don’t speak Boeing but… can’t wait!
Just a quick update I'm working on.
I saw some requests from the mobile forum about multiplayer map.
Well... I made it.
Aerofly UDP -> Uplink client -> Server (XGPS to XTRAFFIC)-> Rewinger Traffic visualisation
Currently I'm working to get a free tier Oracle machine to test the cloud functionality...
Wish me luck!
