X-Plane: Which Operating System do you use?

[Jesco Freund]

Dear all,

Behind the scenes, I started to work on a replacement for XACARS. Originally I was intending to use Python, but taking into consideration that the Python Interface plugin has been abandoned, and creating a new one takes probably years of code work, I'm now evaluation other options (FWL, Gizmo and SASL among them).

However, some of these technologies are platform-specific, and at least for some functionality (e. g. SSL/TLS), platform-specific libraries are required. Therefore, I'd like to know what operating systems you're using for X-Plane.

If you're using more than one OS, please vote for the one you're using primarily with ACH.

Thank you for supporting me by answering to this survey.

Kind regards
Jesco

 

[Martin Laengle]

Hi Pilots,
just a litte strange question, but we have some colleagues who work in the background to improve the quality of our airline like Jesco.
Why the hell don't you answer such surveys to help them?
Thx

 

[Christopher Bennett]

Martin,

that is a fantastic question however I don't think that anyone really reads the forums anymore. At least not the way it was once meant to be. It is a shame I know but what is there anyone can do about it ... unfortunately we cannot force everyone to read the forum.

 

[Jesco Freund]

Thanks Martin for pushing this - indeed, too sad the forums are only used by a couple of people. Chris, by any chance does XACARS submit information on the OS (a build tag or similar), so we could use ACARS data submissions to answer this question?

 

[Christopher Bennett]

Thanks Martin for pushing this - indeed, too sad the forums are only used by a couple of people. Chris, by any chance does XACARS submit information on the OS (a build tag or similar), so we could use ACARS data submissions to answer this question?

I just checked the script used to transmit the pirep via xacars. Unfortunately it does not submit OS information.

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[Rene Pankow]

I use only Linux, Opensuse Leap 42.3 and propietary Nvidia drivers.

 

[Jesco Freund]

Just to give you a little heads-up on the status of this project: FlyWithLua and Gizmo are out of the game - FWL doesn't have any network capabilities, and I would have to maintain LuaSocket and SSL binaries for every platform used. Gizmo only works on Mac and Windows, not on Linux - and it's not really made for global plugins. SASLv3 is the only one remaining; if that fails me as well (e. g. due to licensing restrictions), the only fallback remaining would be either a custom Python engine, or a plugin written in ANSI C (C++ doesn't belong to my skillset). Both are rather scary prospects, and would require more resources than I can pour into this. So let's keep our thumbs squeezed for SASLv3 to work...

 

[Rene Pankow]

Uuuh Jesco,

c++ sounds really good for me, low impact of x-planes fps seems to be most of the time, but now thumps up for SASL V3!

 

[Jesco Freund]

Some time has passed, and research has gone on. I'm considering a completely different option now - an outside of the sim ACARS client. There are various reasons to do so - here's a short list:

• In Sim user interfaces are still a pita to code - despite of the new SDK, it's mainly bricolaging them manually in OpenGL.
• Platform independence is still a huge issue - Windows OpenGL code won't necessarily work on Mac and Linux, and vice versa.
• Ben is about to migrate X-Plane to Vulcan - not sure what it means in terms of graphics programming in X-Plane, but potentially it breaks compatibility with some hacks now widely used...
• In Sim graphical user interfaces are heavy fps-wise - each frame some cycles have to be spared for the plugin to be computed, and the slimmer it is, the lighter it is on frames
• people more clever than I am have already written interfaces making X-Plane data refs accessible from outside.

Apart from XPUIPC (which was so far Windows only, and seems to not be maintained and downloadable right now), there are some other interesting interface projects, one of them

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by the NASA, which is actively maintained. Some others may be rather considered conceptual studies, e. g.

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, written by none other than Ben Russel (author of Gizmo), and

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.

To me it currently looks most appealing to use the NASA software, which is actually maintained, works without further fiddling, and provides already nice libraries to build a client around them - e. g. a desktop app running outside of X-Plane. Now however we're approaching another problem - what desktop app would run on all three operating systems without too many ugly duct tape solutions? Currently, I can think of two potential solutions - Java and Electron. While Electron might be the more recent, modern solution, it would require me to code a complete UDP client library for XPlaneConnect - Electron apps would much more easily talk to a REST api, which is what would be native for them. Java on the other hand side might not be that appealing, but provenly works on all three platforms, and has a defined client library I could use. And HTTP communication with Java is not as bad as doing it with C natively...

Of course it would be the hight of cool if I could revamp Ben's old code, make it compliant with the 3.0 API, and serve a nice, shining HTML5 one-page app (Vue.js, Angular, ... you name it). I could even ship an Eletron based wrapper so it feels like a desktop app...

Now tell me what do you think about all that?

 

[Tom Howlin]

An external desktop app is something that FlyUK use as their ACARS client, so there's definitely a precedent for such a system to work for us as a VA! Most of this stuff is a bit over my head but I've got a grasp of the basics, and seeing as XPUIPC is seemingly unavailable now we'll need to come up with something if new X plane pilots want to log their flights with us

 

[Jesco Freund]

After several months of silence, I thought I'd report back on this one... with some good news for a change. The FylWithLua development team decided to include LuaSocket into their next release of FWL. With that, we'd have a solid, well-maintained, open source platform to implement our custom ACARS on - without getting locked into license problems (hello SASL), breaking our necks (custom C/C++ stuff) or getting trapped in obsolescence (hello Python). As soon as the new version of FWL is publicly available, I'm ready to start implementing a new ACARS script. For that to succeed, it would be extremely helpful if those already using X-Plane could let me know what they find difficult about XACARS, or what they're missing in terms of functionality.

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

The FylWithLua development team decided to include LuaSocket into their next release of FWL. With that, we'd have a solid, well-maintained, open source platform to implement our custom ACARS on -

Is this a multi-platform solution or is your initial OS question still relevant? Can we simply use their app or do we have to adapt it to our VA?

 

[Jesco Freund]

FlyWithLua is multi-platform; builds for Windows, MacOS and Linux are available. However, it is not an "app", but only a development kit, which allows to write plugins more easily (by writing a LUA script) than the traditional way (writing everything from scratch in C or C++ and compile it for every platform). There are a couple of "off-the-shelf" ACARS solutions, but the only platform-independent one is XACARS, as far as I know. Other free (and even paid) ACARS systems such as

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are based on FSUIPC / XPUIPC and are thus Windows only, excluding Mac and Linux users (that's why I initially asked that question).

 

[Ricardo Rementería Troncoso]

...it would be extremely helpful if those already using X-Plane could let me know what they find difficult about XACARS, or what they're missing in terms of functionality.

Well, it's simple... Where can I find it? I mean XAcars.

 

[Christopher Bennett]

Usually xacars.net but apparently there is an issue with the website.

I have uploaded the Archives and added links in the Personal Files Section of your Profile

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then click Personal Files on the right side of the page

 

[Hans Schuhwerk]

I just returned from several weeks of self-induced "sim aversion" and found this forum post.

I voted Linux, even though I'm still on Win 7, because that will become my target system in the next few months. Currently I'm thinking Lubuntu, however, I'm usually an openSUSE Leap guy.

Hope that helps, and thanks for the effort. Another German VA just rolled out a new ACARS client, unfortunately, it's not for Linux.

 

[Matthias Hoffmann]

I use Debian 10