Myoddweb.com

Google maps in Courseplanner

After many, many, complains about the maps that Courseplanner offers as a default, I finally decided to add support for Google maps.

Actually adding Google maps itself is fairly straight forward, I spent a bit of time adding all the overlapping drawings that are required for the moving map.

There is also the small issue of not been connected to the internet, (’cause you can’t use Google maps properly without the internet).

I am also working on a small application that offers only Google Maps and Courseplanner moving map.
Currently the Google Maps version is only available in Beta, (but you can get it here), but I am planning on releasing it soonish.

Google Maps in Courseplanner

Google Maps has a very, very easy API to work with, they have almost no restrictions to using it in an application.

I did send them an email to make sure that I am on the right side of their terms and conditions.

While I wait, I still need to add a couple of things, (to the Google Maps tab).

• Moving map.
• Current flight plan and,
• De-clutter.

Please visit the forum and let me know if you can think of any new features that would be nice to add.

I finally got around adding a proper crash report to Courseplanner, I do get a couple of reports every months and every time I am faced with the same problem of not having enough information. Thankfully it does not happen very often, but when it does I need to gather as much information as possible.

I am looking at CrashRpt, I used that piece of software a while ago, (when they were on Codeproject) and I was quite happy with it.
Because it is open source and written it C++, it makes it very easy to incorporate in Courseplanner.

I am also looking at other kinds of Crash handling software, especially Google and Firefox, not because I think they are better, but simply because I would be foolish to ignore such big names.

One of the most attractive option they have is the possibility to send the report directly to the website, in the past users were reluctant to send an email, or, in worse cases the emails would be trapped in some spam filter.

I also created a privacy policy page, it basically says that I have no plans to pass any information to any third party. Currently the policy is limited to the crash report, but at some stage I will have to update it to include registration and the forum.

I am planning on releasing it to the beta team later today, (my ftp server is down for some reason).

I finally found some time to complete the database import function in Courseplanner.
The database can be created with data from FSX and FS9. I must admit that I am a bit disappointed with the result, it seems that Microsoft flight simulator relies on graphics a lot more than I thought, the data on the .bgl files is not enough to display nice clean airports.
But I am working on ways of building proper curves in taxipath, (and I am also working on improving the general look of surfaces).

I am very busy at work and sadly I cannot work on Courseplanner as much as I would like. But once most of the bugs have been ironed out of the import function I will be able to continue working on various other bugs/features that have been reported on the forum.

I have released a new version of Courseplanner with support for FS9/FS2004 this effectively placed me a month behind the original release date of Courseplanner 4 but a lot of users have been asking for it.

So, feel free to download version 4.0.0(152) and report any problems you might come across.

I will now concentrate on some of the other requests that have been sent to me and to make Courseplanner as stable as possible. Feel fee to send me as many requests as you want.
I am also looking at adding support for X-Plane, I can’t promise anything but seen that it took a month to add FS9 I am guessing it should take about the same amount of time.

What also took a bit of time was re-uploading almost all the missing images that I deleted by mistake, (and I also updated the new version of MediaWiki, (1.14.0), for the online document).

3 days behind schdule I have finally released a new version of Courseplanner. This is an important release because all the framework has been layed and now it is only a matter of fixing the remaining bugs.

I know there are still some problems with flight following and the flight plan does not seem to be 100% as I would like it, but those are more ‘cosmetic’ changes than anything.

The module is also working nicely now and I refactored a lot of code in the background to enable suport for multiple version of Flight Simulator. Given that Microsoft has droped their design team, and the fact that most people still seem to prefer FS2004 I think it is in Couseplanners own interest to support FS2004, (at least), as soon as possible.

I also really want to release some open source code so that others can start using the module/dll and design their own add-on.

But I think for now the main worry is to have a stable version that supports FSX.

After a week of trying to complete coding for the setup I was able to release a new version of Courseplanner. Nothing is really new apart from a new log tab and the network functionality has been enabled, (technically speaking it was always present but the installer did not offer that option).

I will not be updating anything for a week or so to give a chance to the beta testers to test the networking functionality properly, I then want to ask the bigger forums to help with testing the new beta version before I do a first ‘proper’ release.
In any case, I still have some work to do with loading the Aircraft from the user’s own hangar as well as a problem with flight following. I also want to offer ‘normal’ users the option to download the beta versions if they want to.

As always, updating the documentation has not been that easy. My internet has been down for the past week so I wasn’t really able to do much.

I have finally released the beta version of Courseplanner, this version is open to all.
Because of time constraints this version does not support Networking.

On the other hand the website has been giving me endless headaches, I am hopful that by the end of the week everything will be  running smoothly.

I have also been working on the courseplanner documentation, I realize that a lot of work still needs to be done, but I will slowly add more and more information as time goes by.