Sky Dolly
The Black Sheep for Your Flight Recordings
About
Sky Dolly is an open source application which records and replays your flights in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS).
Logbook
The flights are stored in a logbook (an sqlite database). The logbook lets you filter your recorded flights by aircraft, date of flight, engine category, departure or arrival and more. Simply double-clicking the log entry will load the flight. That easy.
Advanced users may even browse the data with a database browser such as SQLite Browser and do their own statistics with SQL.
Formation Flight
Sky Dolly also provides a Formation module which lets you record and replay formation flights. You select your relative position to the previously recorded aircraft (distance, bearing and altitude offset) and simply click the record button while in the Formation module.
The trick here is that you see your previously recorded aircraft being replayed while you are recording your current flight, so you know exactly where you fly in relation to the other aircraft in the formation. And all this with a single user interface instance and with the ease of a single record button click.
Replay
The official SimConnect API is used to communicate with MSFS, which exposes the state of the simulation as so-called “simulation variables”. A selected set of variables - for example position, altitude, heading and pitch - is then stored and during replay sent back to MSFS.
Sky Dolly uses “event-based sampling” (values are only recorded when they actually change) with a selectable sample frequency. The recorded values are smoothly interpolated, in case of position and attitude related variables with Cubic Hermite spline curves. But don’t worry: the math is all under the cover
At any time during replay you can:
- Pause
- Rewind and fast-forward (with the timeline or the corresponding buttons)
- Stop the replay and resume your flight
All operations are implemented with usability in mind. For example you do not need to click first the pause or stop button to be able to fast-forward or rewind: you just fast-forward or rewind at any time you want during replay. Also with keyboard shortcuts and variable time intervals.
Import & Export
Sky Dolly provides a plugin architecture. Currently the following import & export plugins are available:
Import
- CSV files (Sky Dolly)
- KML (flightaware.com)
- IGC (flight recorder file format as specified by the International Gliding Commission)
Export
- CSV (Sky Dolly)
- KML (Sky Dolly)
Availability
Sky Dolly is available free of charge:
Source code and binary releases are also available here:
Support
I develop Sky Dolly in my free time and as such can provide only limited support. But please feel free and post your questions, bug issues and feature requests here:
I’ll do my best to give you at least a reply