How to do it in Flight Simulator: The SimHow.com way

SimHow.com is a welcomed raising project of "How-To" database which contains several guides in the scope of Flight Simulator activities. Or as it said in the web site:

"...support to all the Flight Simulator fanatics".

Fanatics is the most precise word I guess.
Thus, it presents an arranged downloadable how-to manuals such as

• How to Build Hardware for FS
• How to perform professional repaints
• How to stay align with the runway
• How to fly online in a virtual airline
• How to fly the 737

And more (currently over 50 manuals).
All of the manuals were created and contributed by personal users. You should register for free to be able to download the various stuff.

The more the merrier!

FSX SP1 and SDK SP1A has been released!

Both Flight Simulator X SP1 and it's SDK SP1A has been released this week.

• Download FSX SP1 from here.
• Download FSX SDK SP1A from here.

I think that I don't need to say that those updates are a must have...

Here are some of the main enhancements, according to PTaylor's WebLog. Click here.

FSX SP1 is approaching

According to PTaylor's WebLog, the Flight Simulator X SP1 is now in final test.
The SP1 is very promising since it about to contain several bug fixes and some essential improvements. Rumors says that the SDK SP1A (note the "A") will be released together with the FSX SP1 package. We'll see.

According to FSInsider.com, the SDK SP1A should contain something I'm waiting for a long long time: The Modeless Dialog API (part of the SimConnect component) that will give the

"ability to utilize an ATC-like XUI menu to allow modeless interaction with a SimConnect client. This was the last remaining feature of SimConnect required to meet the needs of FSUIPC interaction without binary offset manipulation. Supports both native and managed interfaces, and includes ability to manipulate a subset of the text format. Documentation and samples are also provided."

If I do understand what it says, it means that we will finally have a fixed and straightforward method to create child windows inside the main Flight Simulator window!
No more guessing games about "what is the best way to create a window inside the FS window" or "how do I make the window to work properly in full screen mode"...

This thread for exmaple, demonstrates the frustrating and work-around attitude for such operation.

If that so, complex add-on modules creation will be simple and flourishing. I hope.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that this feature of creating a modeless dialog via the SimConnect is no more than a set of wrapped exposal calls to the Flight Simulator UI-related functions which lays down in the "xuipc.dll" (unattached to the FSUIPC...), and "fsui.dll" files located in the main FSX directory. Apparently, the "FSCreateModeless" (one of billion undocumented functions inside the fsui.dll file) is a prime method for creating modeless windows (this post strengthen my suspect).

In the last few days I hardly tried to decipher the fsui.dll file in order to use some of its functions, but without any luck (I could only read the function names...), and to this moment the purpose of the functions in this file has left under the title "the occult"...

Oh, by the way - I took the picture above in Ruzyne Airport, Prague, about two years ago...