New Utility Release - Aircraft Manager Free

Discussion Hub Tools & Utilities
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There’s a minor conflict with the “Wingman FS2020 Modern UI” mod that changes the standard menu displays. Wingman’s mod prevents the Aircraft Manager table from being displayed, although the option in the sidebar still exists.

The easy fix is just to prefix the Aircraft Manager folder with a “z-” so it loads after and supercedes that part of the Wingman mod.

The more complicated and permanent solution is to delete the World and FlightPlanning folders from the html_ui/Pages folder in the Wingman mod, and rebuilding its layout.json.

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Thanks for the heads up.

I used that for a while but went back to the standard UI after they tweaked it a few releases back.

Are they still updating wingman modern UI?
Checking on fs.to it had a bunch of comments about issues with it, and it hasn’t been updated since June 22. So unless it’s updated soon it may be getting a bit brittle.

That is an issue with UI mods, though I’ve also seen this precedance issue with some of the FMS and plane mods too. It’s not designed as a modular plugin system unfortunately, and a full reskin is probably asking a bit much of it - though it does look great. I like the little parallex views on the standard UI now though, neat design tweak!

I’m trying to limit mine to a very small context at the moment, but it might be an incompatibility issue that’s hard to resolve if they make changes to the same area.

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For the suggestion of overwriting/superseding metadata for display purposes, this can have some unintended consequences as for the example of ‘Rotorcraft’, the meta data value allows placement of the model on a helipad on the world map, so for any model with superseded meta it would show as a rotorcraft but not actually be able to be placed on a helipad. The Tag system marking appropriate models as helicopters would provide user sorting without unintended results.

This is one example that will probably disappear over time as models are updated, but other situations may occur.

Another thing that happens is that livery designers aren’t always using the base model meta correctly and so additional models of the same type show up in the menus. (This is quite common with the H145 where the developer has added several variants and possibly changed metadata of previous variants, side stepping livery makers efforts as a result).

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There’s no problem. You can’t change the actual files anyway, and I’m just modifiying any erroneous data for display in the grid to neaten it up a little. The data that MSFS uses isn’t touched, so there is no risk of breaking aircraft placement functionality. Category I’ll leave as is though, so it’s in synch with the MSFS category filtering display wise, and users can just retag them to whatver they like to filter independantly within the grid.

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I’m not suggesting the app changes the meta data, just an observation concerning displaying alternative data in place of the actual data.

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Sure, thanks for the input.

However, just to be clear, I’m not changing any sim data that affects sim aircraft loading functionality as it currently stands is my point. Any changes I make to information display are restricted to within the confines of the grid, to give you an alternate view of your data depending on how you would like to organise it.

Selection of aircraft just triggers the regular Aircraft Selection as it currently does, so it’s up to aircraft developers to clean up any metadata issues that affect sim aircraft loading functionality (workaround or otherwise), not me.

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@Sonicviz I haven’t had chance to try the update yet. Won’t be able to until Saturday I think. I bet you’ll have another update by then, right? :slight_smile:

Just wanted to ask, if you don’t mind telling. Not that I know much about back end but is this built with HTML, JS and CSS?

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There’s nothing secret about it, it’s well known and discussed in the dev forums.
The whole UI system, from front end to aircraft, is html.

That said, it’s undocumented (mainly) and quite the interesting technical challenge to piece together how it works for both FE and aircraft. One of the harder ones I’ve encountered actually, there’s nothing quite like analysing a complex codebase from scratch to understand how it works, with no docs to guide you.

Never underestimate the importance and value of good documentation, so kudo’s to the SDK team for continuing to improve this area. It’s a critical part of the SDK, and technical writing is part science and part art to do well, having worn that hat a couple of times.


SonantAlpaca commented • Jun 25 2021 at 11:47 PM

Hello,

Our new documentation website is constantly evolving, and while our tech writer has already done a great job on many various topics, he still has a LOT to do (as the SDK is big :wink: ) The HTML/JS/CoherentGT topic has been on his list for quite a while now, but as you may imagine, it’s a massive one and we need time to do something good. We’ll probably have more time this summer to work on that, so hopefully we’ll be able to provide you a lot more information in the upcoming months.

We already added model behaviour documentation on the next update, including the new input events.

I’m not sure they want people poking around in the main interface, so what ModernUI and I are doing is a bit bleeding edge, which is why I’m taking a very tightly scoped approach and trying to limit my changes to one area that can add utility and value in a bigger way without potentially disrupting the wider FE. Also easier from a maintenance & support perspective, which is the big elephant in the room developing things for MSFS.

SU12 will see more documentation coming on the aircraft side of this.

See

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/idea/584/add-jshtml-documentation-to-the-sdk.html

Nocturne avatar image Nocturne Simbol commented · Dec 21 2022 at 6:42 PM

Hello!

Just to update on this… SU12 will see the release of the initial draft of documentation covering HTML/JS/CSS instruments. It’ll be a work in progress, with some things needing fleshed out still, but it will cover the entire panel.xml file, as well as the most important methods from the base JS files (BaseInstruments, coherent, etc…) and the Aircraft Tutorial will have new sections covering creating simple gauges and debugging them. Hopefully this will address some of the primary problems people have been having!

All the best!

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I see. Thanks for the info. Well I’m a website designer (one of my hats anyway, front end design) so it got me thinking. But I won’t go on coz I’m probably doing your head in :wink:

Cheers! :wink:

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All I can say, from my experience so far, is this one has a few gotcha’s, which I’ll continue to work to resolve over time. So from a design perspective, which I do understand the power of good design, I’m also intentionally keeping this as a lean and mean functional UI/UX for now. There’s a few UX glitches I’m not happy with, but I think it’s still functionally usable (sorry UX people!) with them, and hopefully can iron them out over time.

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Yeah, I bet. It’s not like they’ve embedded Internet Explorer engine (or whatever they call it these days) :smiley:

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Well, I’m full stack and this tested the limits of my comprehension at times across the whole stack :rofl:
Still is, to a degree, but I’m starting to get a handle on it, I think!

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You’re a braver and much cleverer man than I! Good luck :wink:

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I’m just a bug magnet :melting_face:, then I figure out the bug!

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Having poked around in the Wingman mod enough to whittle it down to just the few items I wanted (main menu one click access to options menus, persistent World Map filters, and one other I can’t think of offhand), my hat’s off to you for pulling this off. “Quite the interesting technical challenge” indeed! I remember tracing through one of the menus (a code spelunking expedition if ever there was one) and thinking, “should I really be messing with this?” IMO you are spot on with the tightly scoped approach.

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I almost gave up 1/2 dozen times, but my bug hunting experience (my only superpower is bug magnet) persevered me to keep trying. I did have to change direction a few times though, and no doubt will again.

I applaude you for trying though, “code spelunking expedition if ever there was one” is a great and accurate description.

ah, that’s what I should have done. That part is the one I used the most too, but didn’t think to do surgery on it at the time. I did take a quick look at the time, and backed off. Nice job it is though.

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I just implemented a new Favourites system separate from the tagging system, and it will autoload the favourites by default, if you have any set.

Easy to tag/untag favourites, with a quick favourite filter reset and apply as well, just by clicking on any plane name.

Short video explainer on that coming soon.

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New updated video showing all the features, including Favourites and dark mode.

Also updated the OP with new video.

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Ah, brilliant! I’d been working on a mod that lets you hide the stock planes you never fly and still see them in multiplayer, but it’s kind of clunky. Your ‘Favorites’ option looks like it will accomplish essentially the same thing, not only more elegantly, but in-sim as well.

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Dark mode looks way better. Good choice!

I had another idea for you that I don’t know if you had considered.

For the Favourites, as I appreciate that is one of the key features and you don’t want to give it away for free, so how about if the free version lets you add just 2 or 3 (hard limit) as a “taster”, then the Premium is obviously unlimited. Could do the same with Tags, so users (and us testers) can see how it will work but not really utilise it properly?