OP updated, website is up, final polishing stage in progress.
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These will be great! Looking forward to it.
Free version of Location Manager is available now.
OP updated with more info, please give it a run through and let me know of any issues. Thanks.
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Wrote a short blog post on the LM development process: Location Manager for MSFS - Development Overview - Sonicviz
Barring any major showstopper bugs that block release, on the roadmap for future enhancements are:
-
Import/export of location data (can also use the export for Aircraft Manager)
-
Toolbar widget to list saved locations and teleport to them
-
[insert here]
Sounds good man.
Is āInsert Hereā your feature name for the teleport? 
No, thatās the replacement feature for when you canāt get the previous ones working 
@Sonicviz Iāve had a little tinker with this and like it a lot. I can see myself using it regularly. Great idea and good implementation so far mate!
Some small things (well, itās me, of course there is!):
- I would like a Confirm Delete modal rather than instant on-click
- Can a COUNTRY column be extracted and added, or not really (assuming co-ordinates as saved rather than a name ICAO airfield location, then it wonāt really have a good way to know the country)?
- If I select a specific runway at a designated airport and Save that as a location, then I select a DIFFERENT runway, and save that, the entry is added to your table but it looks exactly the same. Could RWY number be added as an extra column? (or I suppose, ramp / gate number in those cases).
- BIGGEST ISSUE: When I recall a location that was saved on a runway or the ground, when it loads that location back to the map, it sets it as a Custom Departure and at 1500ft. The location was saved with zero Altitude so I was hoping/expecting it to recall the same thing?
- Maybe donāt show the TAGS column on the Lite version if you intend not to allow any?
- Would it be possible to change the āSAVE LOCATIONā button (on main map) to another state if you have already saved that location? I am thinking add a TICK icon to it, or change colour, or words to LOCATION SAVED.
- Not sure if this is only an issue in the Lite version, or how it will be in the full one, but with the NOTES column, itās pre-filled with a link to your site. I canāt click in to edit that column (I know in Lite I am not allowed, but how will that work if the data in there is already a URL in the full version?).
They are just my first thoughts after a couple hours flying (not using it solid for that time haha). Everything works good.
I will write more if anything comes to me but itās looking really solid already and those things above are just tiny things.
Point 4 is probably the biggest thing I donāt like, but at least it pulls the map to the right location so I can then select the needed runway or ramp from there, but ideally I would want to start on the ground (or have the option to, toggle, whatever you can do) so I can set up off-piste starting points. I donāt ever like to start in the air.
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Good feedback. I had similar thoughts and questions on most of these points.
Hey @Baracus250
Thanks for the detailed feedback.
- I would like a Confirm Delete modal rather than instant on-click
Yes, very naughty of me to skip UX convention there!
Will see if I can dig up a modal from the depths of the MSFS UI framework, or spin one up.
A hangover from testing, clicking modals is a pita when doing functional tests, unless youāre testing the modal!
- Can a COUNTRY column be extracted and added, or not really (assuming co-ordinates as saved rather than a name ICAO airfield location, then it wonāt really have a good way to know the country)?
No, the info isnāt available via the sim. I did do some prelim work into doing a rough geo match to country but it didnāt make it into this test. It is a useful field to sort/filter on though, so Iāll be looking at this again.
3 If I select a specific runway at a designated airport and Save that as a location, then I select a DIFFERENT runway, and save that, the entry is added to your table but it looks exactly the same.
Could RWY number be added as an extra column? (or I suppose, ramp / gate number in those cases).
4. BIGGEST ISSUE: When I recall a location that was saved on a runway or the ground, when it loads that location back to the map, it sets it as a Custom Departure and at 1500ft. The location was saved with zero Altitude so I was hoping/expecting it to recall the same thing?
I answered these together as they are related.
Iām not sure if my reply will be a dealbreaker for a lot of people for the utility of it, so I would appreciate more feedback on the following.
This is due to a lack of expectation management and miscommunication on my part.
Location Manager is intended to be a generalised location manager for storage and retrieval of locations, to act as a starting point for your next flight. The intent is to zoom back to the saved location, THEN you manually select what you want to do for the flight by another click as per normal map use: start in the air in the general area, select a specific parking spot for a cold and dark, select a runway, or select the airport and let the sim decide the runway. While thereās a use case for doing fine grained location saves like the latter examples, similar to the start of a flight plan depature setup, LM is not intended to do that. At least in this iteration.
This is partly due to the constraints I came across, & partly solving for specific use cases. Getting it to zoom back to the map was an interesting workaround in itself. While LM is saving the altitude, thatās intended to be used as a location sort/filter attribute only in the grid if you want to find locations in a specific height band, for example.
When it zooms back to the map, itās only using lat/long because thatās the only solution I could implement at the moment. It took some creative thinking to get it to work, as I canāt hook into the same mechanism that MSFS is using for itās stored locations. At least, atm I canāt.
As such, youāll always get a custom marker back when you click āGoā, whether it was intially saved from an existing POI, Airpoirt, city, or from a custom marker. Iām also offsetting that custom location āGoā marker from the original lat/long so the new zoomed āGoā custom marker doesnāt obscure the original maker in the case of it being a POI/Airport/City etc. I found that to be a problem, so again, a little creative thinking. But confusing initally.
That said, if I get the toolbar extension to this working (currently in prototype phase), then teleporting to a saved location in that case will use that starting altitude (+ a height buffer) as otherwise youāll be buried. Different use case though, from MapFLY.
Let me know if you all think this is a dealbreaker, and/or other thoughts.
- Maybe donāt show the TAGS column on the Lite version if you intend not to allow any?
K. See point 7 answer below.
- Would it be possible to change the āSAVE LOCATIONā button (on main map) to another state if you have already saved that location? I am thinking add a TICK icon to it, or change colour, or words to LOCATION SAVED.
Another demerit for bucking UX feedback convention!
Yes, youāre right, added to todo list to see what I can do there.
- Not sure if this is only an issue in the Lite version, or how it will be in the full one, but with the NOTES column, itās pre-filled with a link to your site. I canāt click in to edit that column (I know in Lite I am not allowed, but how will that work if the data in there is already a URL in the full version?).
Pro version will not have open browser enabled on text in the notes column. I left tags/notes in as a reminder for what is available for Pro, but will revisit what to include in the demo/lite version.
Thanks!
No not a deal breaker - I assumed it wasnāt possible or youād have probably done it that way already.
As I said, they are small things - it will still be a super useful utility just to jump the map to favourite places and then go from there. Of course if it can be expanded later all the better but definitely not a deal breaker for me. Depends a bit on the price of Pro though I suppose
Iām also mindful of not making the grid with too many columns, so I actually cut a few in this intial release.
People use all sorts of screen resolutions, and on 1080P the number of columns there now seems ideal without having to horizontal scroll to see more. By the same token, that goes the other way on high resolution screens.
Iām not a fan of horizontal scroll in this case, as I want all the working info up front as itās key for compare scanning when sorting/filtering. Having offscreen columns breaks this functional UX.
So Iām still trying to balance this. Maybe Iām wrong?
No, youāre right
Something I didnāt do is make the name editable.
Still thinking about the pros/cons of this due to it being a bit of work vs real value (distinguishing custom waypoints from āofficialā one).
Tags/Notes cater for this, but maybe an issue for free version, or maybe not.
Any thoughts?
3 If I select a specific runway at a designated airport and Save that as a location, then I select a DIFFERENT runway, and save that, the entry is added to your table but it looks exactly the same.
Could RWY number be added as an extra column? (or I suppose, ramp / gate number in those cases).
4. BIGGEST ISSUE: When I recall a location that was saved on a runway or the ground, when it loads that location back to the map, it sets it as a Custom Departure and at 1500ft. The location was saved with zero Altitude so I was hoping/expecting it to recall the same thing?
I answered these together as they are related.
Iām not sure if my reply will be a dealbreaker for a lot of people for the utility of it, so I would appreciate more feedback on the following.
This is due to a lack of expectation management and miscommunication on my part.
Location Manager is intended to be a generalised location manager for storage and retrieval of locations, to act as a starting point for your next flight. The intent is to zoom back to the saved location, THEN you manually select what you want to do for the flight by another click as per normal map use: start in the air in the general area, select a specific parking spot for a cold and dark, select a runway, or select the airport and let the sim decide the runway. While thereās a use case for doing fine grained location saves like the latter examples, similar to the start of a flight plan depature setup, LM is not intended to do that. At least in this iteration.
This is partly due to the constraints I came across, & partly solving for specific use cases. Getting it to zoom back to the map was an interesting workaround in itself. While LM is saving the altitude, thatās intended to be used as a location sort/filter attribute only in the grid if you want to find locations in a specific height band, for example.
When it zooms back to the map, itās only using lat/long because thatās the only solution I could implement at the moment. It took some creative thinking to get it to work, as I canāt hook into the same mechanism that MSFS is using for itās stored locations. At least, atm I canāt.
As such, youāll always get a custom marker back when you click āGoā, whether it was intially saved from an existing POI, Airpoirt, city, or from a custom marker. Iām also offsetting that custom location āGoā marker from the original lat/long so the new zoomed āGoā custom marker doesnāt obscure the original maker in the case of it being a POI/Airport/City etc. I found that to be a problem, so again, a little creative thinking. But confusing initally.
That said, if I get the toolbar extension to this working (currently in prototype phase), then teleporting to a saved location in that case will use that starting altitude (+ a height buffer) as otherwise youāll be buried. Different use case though, from MapFLY.
Let me know if you all think this is a dealbreaker, and/or other thoughts.
Thanks!
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Thanks!
[/quote]
Re the response you gave on Baracusās points 3 & 4 ā¦
Not a deal breaker for me, rather the opposite in that I favour using this to go back to a general location rather than a specific flight start point.
I may not want to start from the same runway or apron location; and perhaps even want to save a location that could be for either land or float/sea planes, to have the choice of e.g. a Kodiak in either configuration.
So, saving a general location is a plus for me, rather than a negative!
You canāt please all of the people all of the time ā¦!
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Great, thanks for the feedback. Good points, different use cases, but hard to solve for them all at once.
You might want to edit that message to remove the duplicate quotes though, itās long!
Update on the Toolbar extension:
Banged together a quick toolbar widget framework, and have successfully pulled in the locations into a grid in a toolbar widget. Had some issues finding the data due to a different loading sequence in flight mode, but found it in the end.
Next step: teleporting!
The Location Manager Toolbar extension will be a pro only feature. Itās a little more complicated process developing one and I want to minimise workflows for maintenance/updates.
Flow loads any toolbar widget so should be able to load/launch this one as well.
Update: Teleport works, so the basics of a Location Manager toolbar widget are in.
You can edit tags and notes still, and Iāll test out enabling adding new locations in flight mode.
It wonāt have all the features of the map UI grid because I want it to be a bit smaller, but it will do a few useful things in flight mode if you find a location you havenāt already saved, and want to quicksave and maybe jot some thoughts down to edit later.
Any other ideas/uses come to mind?
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The Alt column doesnāt seem to be correct for any airport Iāve tried. In your screenshot the Alt for LOWZ says ā745 ftā but the elevation is actually 2470 ft.
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Good catch!
Yes, I noticed this too, and had been puzzling me, and I finally figured out what was going on.
As thereās no documentation on any of this itās a little tricky!
I was assuming it was ft because thatās what I was seeing on the UI with settings as US imperial.
In the aircraft selection the values you get back are in imperial or metirc depending on your system settings, and they also have a unit type to let you know which system the value is referring to.
With location data, it seems that internally location heights are stored as metric, but theres no unit type info that lets you know if the figure is imperial or metric. 754 m = 2475 ft
I nutted this out while I was figuring out the teleport altitude setting, of which there are also some issues Iāve come across (and other devs have it seems).
I asked Asobo devs for some more info on all this as part of my ongoing thread on the dev forum @!
Iā've already updated the code to display altitude in both systems, like in aircraft manager, and will push a new release soon.
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Actually, I was wrong (again, sort of!). There was another data object specifically altitude with measurement unit linked to the MSFS Units of measurement settings. The one I was using is always metres, whatever that is set to it seems.
Ola!
Update 2/2/2023
- New free version release of Location Manager, no version number change.
- Fixed saved height unit measurments
- Includes alpha test release of Location Manager toolbar widget to test teleporting to saved locations.
Teleports to the saved location at speed 100kts, Heading 360, pitch/roll level, @ 1500ft agl.
You will probably need to adjust the size of the LM toolbar panel the first time you open it, just drag the corner/side out to fit the columns and to the page controls. The LM toolbar widget is also easily accessible from Flow under MSFS Panels, iirc, just search for Location Manager.
Shock Ultra is good to test the teleport with. If you have any settings such as flaps on be aware you will spawn from the teleport in that state. Also, when you Teleport I set the local time to midday as I was jumping around the world and sometimes couldnāt see where I was sometimes. Made it easier to spawn in daylight. ymmv!
Download from the project page link in the OP.
I still havenāt decided if Iāll release the toolbar widget with the free version yet, as it has a lot more work to do on it, but maybe a light version of that too. I think I figured out how to optimise the workflow, so not so bad. I have some ideas for the toolbar which involve FUN, so stay tuned!
Iāll be out of contact for about 4 days on a trip, have fun with it.
Please leave feedback on results.impressions etc and Iāll reply you when Iām back.
Thanks!
Love these two new utilites and waiting for their release. 
While your are at it: have you considered making something similar for time and weather? As an example: I allways like to set my time to June 1.st at 12:00 oāclock with a few clouds. I allways wanted to save those settings so I donāt have to set those settings each time I start the sim.