Happy New Year 2023!
Dear all, I wish you a Happy New Year 2023, health to you, your family and friends, and most of all peace to everyone!
Just before Christmas the Sky Dolly downloads crossed the 30’000 download mark. Thank you so much, to each and everyone of you! To clarify: I am not measuring the success of Sky Dolly in download numbers. I develop Sky Dolly for my own needs, in the hope that it might be useful to others, to keep up with “modern C++ development patterns and language features” - and most importantly for the fun of it!
So each comment of encouragement, or even a simple “Sky Dolly does exactly what I need!” means so much to me! So thank you again.
A Bit of History…
Sky Dolly is pretty much exactly 2 years old now - that is, development started with the first “commit”, like:
Commit: 11380a0652d5ab760983d5b007ec82ca398cdd69 [11380a0]
Date: Tuesday, 22. December 2020 13:35:36
The first v0.1 was released shortly thereafter on flightsim.to (end of February 2021).
The first year 2021 mainly focused on adding new SimConnect / recording / replay related features and already introduced a database (“SQLite”) based persistence and other unique features:
- The “logbook” with automatic flight storage (v0.6)
- “Formation” recording and replay (v0.7)
- Import/export plugins (v0.8)
the second year - 2022 - mainly focused on architectural aspects, driving forward the “plugin-based architecture” and applying it not only to the connection with the flight simulator (yes, also the communication with MSFS is plugin-based ;)) and the various import/export plugins, but also the “modules”:
- A module system, with currently three modules (logbook, formation, location), reducing the RAM usage to a minimum (only around 9 MiB when launching Sky Dolly in “minimal UI” mode) (v0.10)
- “Under the hood” performance improvements by applying "modern C++ coding patterns and features (v0.11)
- And finally a new “Location” module, allowing to capture, edit and teleport to any location (v0.12), including import/export plugins (v0.13)
And while I certainly take some “shortcuts” every here and there, especially in the “user interface department”, each feature is implemented with “ease of use” in mind. For instance you can simply seek forward and backward at any time, without having to click on “pause” or “stop” first. Or you can start replaying right after recording, without having to “load a file” first. And for pretty much every action exists a keyboard shortcut, including access to all UI elements.
… And a Quick Outlook
As mentioned in various replies to comments on flightsim.to I don’t generally promise any concrete features, let alone making any commitments of any sort. This is simply because Sky Dolly is developed in my spare time, for fun and mostly for my own needs.
While this may sound selfish this is actually a good thing, for two reasons: first, whenever something annoys me, be it “too many mouse clicks required” or a “missing feature” you can be sure it ends up on my internal “to do” list. While this does not guarantee any timely implementation it is “in my own interest” to eventually implement or improve on it.
Second, most “community wishes” are pretty much aligned with my own wishes. Perhaps not with the exact same priorities, but so far I never encountered a suggestion where I had to completely say “no, that totally does not make any sense at all” 
That being said, I can reveal the “top three annoying things” that I intend to fix / improve next:
- Support (as far as feasible) for 3rd party aircraft (e.g. the A320 by Fenix and the PMDG Boeing 737)
- Smoother replay, specifically when it comes to “formation flights” (AI aircraft), keyword: “aircraft jitter”
- Properly align imported flight paths on the ground (e.g. when importing real-world flight paths from flightaware.com or flightradar24.com, but also IGC flights etc.)
I made already some developments with regards to the first bullet point, but while I had some success with my ideas in some cases, there were “setbacks” in other cases (notably with the A320 by Fenix - what’s more, the latest 1.0.6 Fenix release makes matters even worse, in that this version does not even properly report the “simulation variables” correctly anymore, specifically “flaps” and “thrust lever position”).
But I am not giving up just yet 
Once those things are implemented there is a plethora of other new features that I have in mind, but again… shhht!
I will now leave and visit my family and celebrate the 2023 a little bit and again wish you all a very happy 2023 as well!
Best, “Steeler”
P.S. A small bug fix release v0.13.1 has just been released. The most important fix is probably the “typo fix” in the location CSV export in Little Navmap format (“airport” is now spelled correctly, letting Little Navmap properly assign the correct icon to it).