Update on FSCaptain 1.6.2 & 1.6.3

[Travis]

Hello Captains,

We're pushing out a "mostly bug fix" release of FSCaptain 1.6.2 this week, so I'd like to give you a report on the state of what will be FSCaptain 1.6.3.

Nothing really goes "as planned" in such a vibrant environment, but we're making good progress on what we want to have ready for the next release. 1.6.2 will contain a few bug fixes and new interface items (and one new minor feature we will describe later), so if you have any items you would like to have addressed in 1.6.3, please email us (using the link in my signature as a guide) or post here in the Forum.

We are planning to have a 1.6.3 Public Beta Period to begin around the Ides of March - March 15th 2015. If this planned date changes, we will publish a revision accordingly.

For 1.6.3, Dutch is progressing in implementing the items needed to allow for "Contract Flights." We've mentioned this recently - and we aren't ready to give out more details just yet - but when it debuts, each Captain who "opts-in" to making Contract Flights will find that on a specially determined occasion, a Contract Flight will be offered as part of the regular "List Flights" function. A Captain who chooses to accept an offered Contract will be given the details of a "contracted mission" to perform with the Captain's chosen aircraft for a "contracted fee". There may (or may not) be a given time limit or weight limit or distance limit imposed... but the choice to accept a Contract (or to refuse it) will always be up to the Captain.

I've started the implementation of "Hazard Pack Brakes" which currently will fail your brakes and apply gear damage if you have applied Parking Brakes while on the ground at a speed in excess of 20kph. Subsequent versions of FSCaptain will model brake temperatures for all aircraft which do not expose model-driven brake temperatures.

Next, last month we went through several weeks of reworking some core elements of both "Flight Planning" and "Configuration / Override matching" to fix some problems in assigning airports with water runways to amphibious aircraft. And in doing so, we came across fixes for other items such as allowing flights to military airfields & airfields with numerical IDs.

In doing so, I decided to revise the airports database that FSCaptain has used over the past few years to include data that would allow Captains to identify individual airfields as "private use airfields" in order to allow a new feature for FSCaptain - Respect for Private Airfields. How this will work is simple enough. If a Captain launches a flight from a "public use airfield," no private use airfield can be the destination or alternate. My reasoning is that it's not feasible to launch a commercial passenger flight from an American Hub Airport to "Farmer Bob's Two Mile Long Gravel Airstrip" is it? But if you want to fly from "Farmer Bob's Two Mile Long Gravel Airstrip" to "Wolf Pack Thirteen's Hunting Lodge Helipad" for a fee, then why not?

To support this, we're using data obtained from the FAA to cover USA airports, while allowing the possibility of data from other "Governing Aviation Authorities" as well as Captain-entered data. So if you want to designate any given airport as "private use," for your flights you would easily be able to do so by editing a simple text file.

We are planning to use more FAA airport data in future builds of FSCaptain. We have the ability to use data from other "Governing Aviation Authorities" - whether such data would be able to be collected automatically or manually.

There will likely be tweaks to Ground Service items as well as some Runway Contamination updates too, depending on any feedback from 1.6.2.

Finally, 1.6.3 may include an introduction to a new as-yet-unmentioned optional feature which will encourage Captains to keep a comfortably safe altitude....

All of these changes to FSCaptain are designed with a single purpose - to make a more professional simulator environment for all Captains to engage with.

[Travis]

Captains,

"PLN Waypoint Advancer" is a new feature debuting in 1.6.2 Beta 1, with an eye for expansion in newer versions.

First, I acknowledge that this is a horribly poor name, but it's accurate so it'll stand until someone comes up with another one.

The issue first came from a request by AndyDigital last year.

In short, he wanted a way to change the "Next Waypoint" when a PLN is loaded. He cited Online ATC as a reason for needing to change the next target. (Peter - another online ATC devotee - agrees.)

It was a relatively easy initial implementation, but one that I see has some "edge cases" that needs addressing - notes to this extent follow below....

Here's how it works.  If you have a .PLN noted in your Preflight file, when you press the new PLN smartkey (after you've completed loading, and before you reach your destination) you'll see this screen:



The sample flight I've documented here goes from KMER to KGLA - and the routing goes like this:

KMER AWALI HONEZ WRAPS LIN KATSO SPOOK FMG GASSI REO BOI LKT GTF KGFA

That's a series of DIRECTs which works well for us here.

Selecting View Waypoints will show you the currently assigned Next Waypoint along with up to eight additional waypoints. They're numbered 01 to 08. It would be possible to show all waypoints using PREV and NEXT screens, but for now... eight is enough.

Now let's assume that ATC has for whatever nefarious ATC reason that ATC has, decided that we need to go DCT to LIN (Linden VOR). So we'll press the LSK beside the waypoint we'd like to change to - LIN - which then highlights in White.

Also an Activate> command is now available. So pressing it will advance our "next waypoint" to LIN:

We can Return (which takes us back to the flight menu actually) but oh no, our cunning ATC decides to now send us Direct to FMG (Mustang, near Reno), so we press the LSK beside FMG....

And we'll now Activate that change...



And now we see that there are only five more waypoints until we reach our destination KGFA.

These screens work for me in my tests, but when the Beta is released, I would like everyone to pick at this and try to find problems. Throw as complicated a PLN you can at it to make it break. If it does, email us your PLN file along with a description of what went wrong.

Notes:

• You cannot undo an Advance, nor can you otherwise "go backwards."
• Once you select a waypoint offset, I believe your selection will not "clear" even if you Return and come back later.  This is targeted as a possible fix.
• In theory if you select a waypoint, and then the aircraft passes the current waypoint - the same "LSK" would be highlighted although the waypoint would have changed.  This is also targeted as a possible fix.

Thanks Captains!!!