Here we are with the periodical Super Flight Planner development report. I have not decided yet for a public release as a unexpected uncompatibility between IPC system and Wilco 777 - the modern Airliner package has forced me to do further investigations (still to no luck). Although this aircraft is so demanding in graphics resources to be pratically unflyable with FSX unless you have a Q6600 quadcore (even with the most powerful CPU you have rather low frame-rate), I don't like my routines being involved in system leaks. However here is what's been done so far (since version 4.0.0.640):

• Fixed: Airways are now handled and drawn correctly. This investigation let me fully understood about methods to handle Flight Simulator routes. Therefore, I'll maybe re-introduce airways insertion on auto routing very soon. *** NOTE ***: since the miscomputation lied in the database wizard you have to rebuild database if you want to obtain correct routes.
• Added: Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn are now shown on the moving map.
• Added: when you use a projection different than spherical, SFP now also display the worldwide GMT time difference table on extreme north/extreme south.
• Changed: Vista compatibility - aircraft data file and logbook database are now stored to User folder. Since we need to run the program as Administrator under Vista in order to write to Program Files directory, this is from now on being avoided. It also enhances Super Flight Planner by making it fully multi user. As a matter of fact, each user can now have his own aircraft list and logbook database (and a single the logbook database is already multiuser itself!).
• Fixed: Re-added Islas Baleares map layer to installation package (which I forgot to include in the former release).
• Added: new FSUIPC feature: Tune frequency. If a Vor or an ILS is selected on the moving map, the command gets enabled. In case FS is running, SFP send its selected NAV frequency to FS NAV2 radio. If NAV is an ILS, SFP will set NAV1 frequency as well as align NAV1 OBS to the correct ILS bearing.
• Added: when saving a flight plan, the saved file is written to Recent Flight Plan List (before: wrote only upon opening plans)
• Added: there is a Save Flight Plan and Save Flight Plan As feature now (before = Save As only).
• Added: When printing Flight Plans, SFP now prints ILS courses on closest navaids page.
• Added: Flight Plan Details panel, just under the flight plan listview, now shows the estimated required fuel in LBS . Note, this is approximated. When planning fuel, you have also to take care about pax and baggage load, hold time, alternate, etc. so this value may be totally different.
• Fixed: Super Flight Planner was uncorrectly showing descent rate instead of descent speed while calculating final waypoints.
• Fixed: when unchecking Use Toc/Bod switch, SFP is stripping TOC and BOD (correct routine). It wasn't stripping TOC/Bod, however.
• Added: new IPC link option: the status window, to monitor general flight data, such as speed, location, altitude...
• Added: new IPC link option: the GPS monitor. This is a simple text style-like display which monitors GPS data with waypoint incrementing/decrementing.
• Added: new IPC link option: the Autopilot monitor. This completely replaces the old Fly-To command, as you are allowed to control Flight Simulator Autopilot directly.
• Added: Database Wizard has now logging capabilities. Just to be made clear, this won't solve scan problems. It will help me however to discover offending BGLs or unhandled situations more easily.

As you can see, the list of new additions, fixes and changes is rather long, therefore it's well worth the wait.
Have fun,
Alex

Don't miss to regularly check our new blog: Super Flight Planner Docs, Tutorials and code bank. Whenever I have updated documentation and/or tutorials, I will post an article there. It also turns useful to me to have a blog I can use as a code bank (a repository where to keep my most frequently used code snippets): programmers, feel free to use them as long as you respect the GPL (open source) license. I dunno how frequently I'll be able to update the bank, but trust in me: it's good and well functional code (lot of fast math routines...), and in a good percentage the code is available in both C and Pascal.

Good life.

Hello all,
as usual, I'm here to post the Super Flight Planner periodical development progress which is quite active right now, I think... Several bugs (but they was more like code-lacks) have been discovered and addressed successfully. One in special was in the creation of FSX flight plans. It seems that Flight Simulator GPS doesn't like when second fields in latitude/longitude are equal to 0 or equal to 60. As such, values like E 180:0:0 or N 18:23:60 are driving it crazy. My latitude/longitude routine was lacking a control to clamp second values in a range from 0.01 to 59.99. Now, this check is done so that E 180 will become E 179:59.99 and N 0 will become N0:0:0.1. The same patch has been applied also to the module that exports flight plans to FS2004. Other small workarounds have been added to flight plan recalculation routines in order to avoid less frequent calculus errors. The development continues with the improvements over FS Link system (click on the title to read the rest)...

I will be away for a week starting tonight, therefore I'm forced to delay with Super Flight Planner release. Besides, I have still work left in the scenery scanner, to increase stability when scanning Flight Simulator / X scenery. Please bear with me, sh*t happens...

According to a number of PM I have received, Super Flight Planner OB4 seem stable enough to go for a Release Candidate. There are a few new features I have started to work on meantime:

• Scanning, decoding, extracting and displaying control centers.
• Pilot Logbook.
• Documents and help system (finally).

Dunno when they will be available but they will. I'm going to Thailand next month and I will be unable to keep on the project for a few time, however I'll be able to write some kind of DOC.
Happy flight...

It's been awhile this site was not being updated. Unfortunately I have been facing a lot of problems which kept me away: health problems, family problems, job problems... It's so frustrating to face all of this expecially knowing in a few month Super Flight Planner will be 10 years old! At the moment the so long awaited Super Flight Planner 4 is stopped: this doesn't mean I have let it down. Will I ever abandon my baby? The answer is not. At the moment I'm still busy facing my troubles but I hopefully plan for a Christmas release (even a beta version would do just fine), as of SFP tradition. Otherwise I will plan for a direct SFP 5 release, when MS guys will release FSXI (?). Please bear with me, my friends, the game isn't over and SFP has still something to say!
Alex.