Getting Flight Plans by software

[Jayce]

Hi,

I'm looking forward on a way to get the list of way points (lat,long,alt) from a flight plan in FS2004, all by software (C programming).

Is it possible do do this via FSUIPC ? and how ?

another question : how did you manage do set the list of the data and the corresponding offset in FS ? do you collaborate with Microsoft ?

thanks

Jayce

[Pete Dowson]

I'm looking forward on a way to get the list of way points (lat,long,alt) from a flight plan in FS2004, all by software (C programming).

Is it possible do do this via FSUIPC ? and how ?

No, sorry. All I managed to find is the GPS stuff mapped to offsets 6000 onwards -- you get the previous and next waypoints only there.

another question : how did you manage do set the list of the data and the corresponding offset in FS ? do you collaborate with Microsoft ?

No, they don't help at all. The data is found by hacking through the code. I use a disassembler (IDA Pro) and a powerful debugger (Soft-Ice) to track things down. It takes many many hours and often leads nowhere.

By the way, the "offsets" are mostly not memory offsets into FS at all. Regard them more as tokens for the data. FSUIPC maintains the illusion that these things are all in memory ready to read and write simply to keep faith to the original interface which was actually like that in FS98. Since FS2000 things have been moved all over the place, and often FSUIPC has to call procedures or follow pointer chains to get the data. It tends more and more to be private data in C++ type class objects.

This is even more the case when you write -- most writes are really just commands for FSUIPC to do something to something somewhere deep in FS.

Regards,

Pete

[Jayce]

Thank you for all these precisions.

I'm very disapointed as i can't retrieve the complete flight plan. Do you have contacts with the team that develops the "FS Navigation" software ?

I won't enjoy it, but i'll have to use X-plane...you can program and retrieve flight plans there, and the API is quite well documented....

what do you think of X-plane, though it is far less beautiful than FS2004 ?

Jayce

[Pete Dowson]

I'm very disapointed as i can't retrieve the complete flight plan.

Well I suppose you can read/write the .PLN file. I think that's what most programs do.

Do you have contacts with the team that develops the "FS Navigation" software ?

What Flight Navigation software? If you mean the Microsoft FS team, then, yes, but only as a Beta tester. If you want to make suggestions for future versions of FS, then now is the time to do it. The feature lists for each new version tend to get frozen a good 18 months before scheduled release. Check the Microsoft FS web site(s), there should be a way of sending messages to them someplace.

what do you think of X-plane, though it is far less beautiful than FS2004 ?

I looked at a much earlier version, hoping to adapt it to my cockpit requirements, but found it too inflexible at that time. And as a Windows developer I ran into something of a brick wall with Austin, who was determinedly Apple-centric back then. I expect it has all changed considerably now, but I have too much invested in MSFS to change horses now, and not enough time to ride more than one. :wink:

Good luck!

Regards,

Pete