Right then. I had some free time this week. And apparently, when you give someone with absolutely no business developing software a week of free time and a dangerous sense of curiosity… they make a MSFS add-on.
Let me be crystal clear upfront: I am not a developer.
But I had an idea and I’ve given it a go. (If there’s already something like this out there than I may have just wasted a week of my time.)
It started with a simple thought — wouldn’t it be cool if your passengers could leave a review of your flight? You know, like TripAdvisor meets Volanta, but a little more dramatic. A virtual Karen in seat 18A who’s just a bit miffed that the seatbelt sign stayed on too long. A business commuter lamenting a bumpy descent into Schiphol. A holidaymaker who got the window seat and saw the Alps and now believes in magic.
So that’s what I’ve done.
It’s still a work in progress, but here’s the general idea:
The app connects to your SimBrief flight plan (so it knows what was supposed to happen),
and it pulls live telemetry from SimConnect during your flight (so it knows what actually happened).
Once you’ve parked at the gate and shut down the engines, it sends all that juicy data to ChatGPT/OpenAI — and asks it to write a full passenger review of your flight based on that data…and asks for their opinion and thoughts based on that data.
It takes everything into account:
– Was there a delay?
– Did you taxi for 28 years at Denver?
– Was the seatbelt sign on so long their virtual bladders cried for mercy?
– Was the weather stunning or stormy?
– Did you bounce the landing like a Ryanair intern?
– Did you divert from your planned destination or nearly pull Gs worthy of a Blue Angels demo?
All of that feeds into a custom-written review, in the voice of a fictional passenger, reacting to the flight like a real human. Sometimes grateful. Sometimes annoyed. Always personal.
Think: “Returning home on the red-eye after a long week” or “Family holiday to Malaga derailed by thunderstorms” — that kind of vibe. (Yes, if you divert, it knows where you were supposed to go and where you’ve actually landed - so the review will reflect that.)
A few important disclaimers:
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It’s 100% free from my side. I have no intention of charging for this.
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The only thing you might need to pay for is your own OpenAI API key (it uses ChatGPT to write the reviews). That starts at around $5 from OpenAI. I’m not clever enough to bake the model into the app (or afford to host it), and frankly, trying to do that would melt my brain.
I have never ‘coded’ much of anything before, so, ironically, I actually used ChatGPT to help me through making this ChatGPT leveraged add-on.
But at this point, I’ve got a working prototype that’s functional enough to test. I’m still tweaking and fine-tuning, and I’d love to know:
Would this be something you’d use?
Would anyone here enjoy a fictional passenger roasting or praising them post-flight?
Or have I once again spent a week building something no one asked for?
Either way, if there’s any interest, I’ll tidy it up and share it properly.
Also, sorry if this is the wrong place to post this — there are many forums to this forum and I panicked and just posted it here.
Cheers,
A non-dev who built a thing instead of working.
P.S, I’ll attach some nifty looking screenshots and an info deck.
