Hello @Sulenor, maybe not exactly what you‘re looking for, as the SimConnect API (still?) does not give access to actual „multiplayer“ aircraft instances (the same reason for which you e.g. don‘t see multiplayer aircraft in Little Navmap).
But the latest Sky Dolly v0.16 release offers extended flight import/export plugins, with automated time synchronisation functionality based on real-world timestamps (*).
So essentially:
Every multiplayer records her flight
One pilot collects all exported flights and imports them all at once into a single „formation flight“
How does SkyDolly handle weather during replay?
I recorded one with Live weather which obviously changes the wind speed/direction, so wondering exactly what happens on replay?
What weather setting should I set the sim to for replays?
There is the option to load a “saved flight” via SimConnect, but I haven’t looked into this just yet. And I would anticipate that it would require to “load the flight” each time the user pushes the “play” button in Sky Dolly (just like you would start a flight from the “in-game earth map”) - at least initially for any newly loaded recorded flight. So not sure how I would like the fact that one has to “load a flight” (in MSFS) each time as well - at least I would make the “restore flight settings” optional, and I have definitively thought about this possibily already. I do understand that such “saved flights” (as in “saved in MSFS”) also store some “environmental settings”, so I would expect that at least weather presets are stored (and restored) as well.
I thought about at least (optionally) restore the date/time of flight (that data is already recorded with Sky Dolly flights, but currently only “for your information only” - see the “Flight” dialog, together with other “flight conditions”.
What weather setting should I set the sim to for replays?
Any weather settings/time of day that you like, as a matter of fact: as “flight physics” (at least those that would affect the aircraft attitude in any way) are disabled during replay anyway Sky Dolly will stoically steer the recorded aircraft through any weather, be it heavy rain showers, snowfall or even a tornado - exactly just like you’ve recorded it
Recorded takeoff with 737-800 by PMDG. When I load and start the replay from a cold and dark state the airplane follow the replay without sound (engines are off) and with all cockpit hardware off.
You are not doing anything wrong. It is just that not every 3rd-party aircraft - specifically those with custom simulation logic for hydraulics, electrics etc. - does (can) support the official SimConnect API that allows other 3rd-party apps such as Sky Dolly to query and set the aircraft state.
Sky Dolly does try to:
Detect when the engines are powered up/down and
Start/stop the engines during replay accordingly
This „cold and dark“ start works for a range of aircraft - but unfortunately not for all.
This is a frequently asked question. For more details about those „simulation variables“ (and why not every one is supported by each and every aircraft) have a look at the Frequently Asked (sic!) section at:
Yes I think that should work. I use the Fenix A320 with Flight Control Replay which has the same limitations because it’s an MSFS limitation not the tool, and the same approach works for me. I either start on the runway from the world map, which gets everything ready, or I use the built in option to set the plane to the ready state which on the Fenix is on the EFB. After that it all works properly, I’m sure it’s the same with PMDG and SkyDolly.
I need your help: I received reports that for some (few? many? all?) users Sky Dolly won’t launch on Windows 11, without any obvious error message.
The workaround seems to be to enable “Windows 8 compatibility mode” for the SkyDolly.exe exceutable.
So in the current v0.16.3 that has just been released I added a “crash handler” (and some small fix related to CSV import) that will - hopefully reveal the root cause. Read about it in the official announcement here:
As I am “stuck” on Windows 10 I cannot reproduce this myself on Windows 11, but my current working assumption is that the issue is releated to “user access control” (UAC) that bites Sky Dolly when trying to access the default “Documents” location.
(I will try to see whether UAC can be enabled on Windows 10 “Home” as well and try to reproduce this situation)
You can provide your crash reports preferrably on github, e.g. paste your “error report” in this existing issue:
Note that the “crash report” will contain the path to your logbook, e.g. c:\Users\Your User Name\Documents\Sky Dolly. You may edit this before pasting it anywhere, in order not to reveal your real-wold name (especially not here in the forum!).
Thank you and happy flying!
P.S. If you are on Windows 11 and Sky Dolly is working “out of the box” for you (as it should) then this information would also be helpful Note that you should never run Sky Dolly “with administrator rights”: it is expected to run with “normal user” access rights.
I’ve been using it with Windows 11 with no problems with Sky Dolly.
I have had Little Nav Map crash with SQL errors a few times while using Sky Dolly. I haven’t had it crash when not using Sky Dolly. I know they both use SQL databases but I can’t see how they would interfere with each other. It’s probably just a coincidence.
Thank you so much for all your feedback, very much appreciated! The fact that Sky Dolly launches flawlessly on Windows11 „for some of you“ without any further ado tells me that whatever issue caused the original problem is not a „systematic problem“.
To conclude the topic here on this forum: the original reporter wrote that even with the „crash handler-enabled“ v0.16.3 no error dialog would show up (specifically not the new „crash handler“ dialog). So the issue must be „deeper in the system“, something that prevents any Sky Dolly related code to be run at all.
As previously mentioned the original reporter was able to run Sky Dolly in „Windows 8 compatibility mode“. More interestingly Sky Dolly then continues to launch successfully with the Windows 8 compatibility mode turned off.
I still intend to follow up on this issue, you can watch (and comment on) any new findings and progress here:
Both apps indeed use SQLite as database: SQLite is a „single file database“ (Sky Dolly calls it „the logbook“), and since each app uses its completely own database and (apart from CSV file exchange) there is no other inter-process communication) (IPC) I can say with certainty that the „SQL errors“ that you have encountered are purely Little Navmap related.
Today I used Sky Dolly to line up my five war-era Grummans on the deck of the Lexington for a photo shoot. From left to right, the group consists of FlySimWare’s G44 Widgeon, Virtavia’s F7F, FlyingIron’s F6F, Got Friends’ F4F, and Aeroplane Heaven’s F3F.
Three of them exhibited some unexpected and occasionally amusing behaviors on the deck, I’m assuming because those parameters aren’t (understandably) being recorded by Sky Dolly:
The F3F’s tail slowly rises and falls repeatedly.
The F7F’s wings don’t show as folded unless it is the “active” plane.
Best of the bunch: the F4F’s wings don’t show as folded, the guns fire continuously, and the emergency flare goes off every 10-15 seconds if it’s not the “active” plane (as it is in this pic).
Very, very good add-on. A great effort and a nice gift to the community. Thanks! I wish it worked for me.
Everything appears to work correctly except that I never see any other plane in the formation besides the “current” one. I can jump from cockpit to cockpit and I can set a drone and watch any one of the planes in the formation, but I never see more than one plane.
Have you or anyone else seen this behavior? Hopefully I’m doing something wrong and the problem is easily fixed.
This is because a) the multiplayer code runs “within” the flight simulator (“same process” - so no delays due to “lost frames” due to the asynchronous nature of the SimConnect communication) and b) most importantly it works somewhat differently: multiplayer positions are only infrequently (relatively speaking) exchanged between each MSFS instances. So MSFS actually calculates velocity vector predictions and moves the aircraft autonomously while no further position updates are received.
In fact, I am thinking about a similar solution to b), but there are some drawbacks (e.g. “no animations”) for the solutions have thought so far (e.g. enabling “slew mode” for aircraft - that has been done back in the days of FSX already, as the “jitter problem” is as old as SimConnect itself).
There seems to be something going wrong when trying to spawn the other “AI aircraft”.
Does this happen with all aircraft, or only with certain types (liveries)? And to make sure: we are not talking about helicopters, with the new “helicopter model” that was introduced in SU 11 or SU 12? Because unfortunately helicopter with this new helicopter model cannot be spawned as AI aircraft: “not supported”. There is even a ticket open on the developer forum about this - but won’t fix anytime soon.
And it sounds like it might take a while even for the upcoming MSFS 2024 to support “helicopter traffic”, and hence “spawnable helicopter models”.
You may also create an issue here (free github.com account required) and provide more info:
I will look into this: while I do not own those depicted aircraft I do have some in my hangar with foldable wings, too.
There is some specific code in Sky Dolly that actually tries to not only reliably animate flaps and spoilers (for those aircraft that actually report proper “simulation variables” values via SimConnect in the first place - e.g. the Fenix A320 is notoriously “stubborn” in this regard, unfortunately) for the “user aircraft”, but also for the AI aircraft (as those require a different technique).
Now “visual effects” such as smoke, afterburner effects etc. are somewhat special: I am not an “aircraft builder” (I am not familiar with the MSFS SDK in this regard), but I think I read that those visual effects are “global”, that is they are not aircraft-specific: so if you enable e.g. smoke for the “user aircraft”, it will automatically show for all AI aircraft of that same type. Or so I understand.
So “effects” for AI aircraft is a bit “hit and miss”. But let’s see what can be done.
Actually I always enjoy seeing people use language well: such a rare event in the internet era.
Note that you should never run Sky Dolly “with administrator rights”: it is expected to run with “normal user” access rights.
