Few months have passed and I lay low in the "news" department. I can just say that I did not stop working on the plugin, but I did take some time off due to other obligations, but, I always tried to add or fix bugs in the Mission-X plugin or the Mission-X Editor.
So what is new in the plugin department:
- Metar injection - this should already work, unfortunately I did not published the perl script I wrote to convert few weather site reports to XPlane Metar file. I'll try to upload it in the next few days.
- New statistics screen - This is a simple but nice to have stats screen. Currently It is reachable through the Briefer screen and it only display the time you run the steps in the mission and other "useless" stats, but I thought we should have it in Mission-X and maybe in the future I'll add some more information in it.
- SQLite support - In every mission you fly, some information is written to a SQLite database file. The database only holds the information of last ran mission, there is no history. Right now the feature is not that usable, unless you will use external tool to extract the information. My goal is to allow the designer to "ask" questions based on that information or to use it to display the simmer some stats at the end of the mission.
- Dataref Array support - Added support to datarefs based array. I decided that the name of the key will reflect if this is an array or not (this is not the only way, but it makes designer life much easier).
For example, if your dataref key name is: "engine[3]" then the plugin will try to figure if the "dataref" attach to this key is actually an array and if so it will extract the "3" from the "[3]" part of the key.
Please remember that we start counting from "1" and not "0". So if you want to check engine number 1, you will write: "engine[1]". - Param Expression - I also implemented support for array datarefs in param expression. Unfortunately the param expression feature needs some more work and tests to be fully factional as expected. So please do not use it yet.
- Added 3D Messages infrastructure. This way you can display a cue string to the simmer to assist him/her find their way. For example: When you "roll" your plane to the refuel area a generic message will be displayed that the plane is in the FuelZone area.
This is also true for "Inventory" related areas (stores). - Added the ability to "skip" a step.
When designing procedural part of the mission, you might decide that you do not think that a simmer need to always go over the whole procedure every time. You want to allow him/her to skip this particular step. This can be done with a flag at the step level definition, and briefer will now display a "skip" button when mission is active and step is "skip-able". - Added the ability to timely evaluate a "Dataref" for certain duration. This will allow to make sure simmer has control on the specific situation.
For example, you want to validate that RPM is between 1650-1750, but you want to make sure the RPM is stable and not in transition. You can define the amount of time, in seconds" and a short message (uses the 3D messages) to display the simmer that they are in or out of the test boundaries.
Xplaneuser has assisted in testing a simple engine run up before taking off, and it worked very nicely.
In the Mission-X Editor department:
Unfortunately I did not added complex features to the editor, but I did added some of the new features.
Features added:
1. Step can be skipped.
Features not yet implemented:
1. Time based evaluation.
2. Param + Param Expression
Please remember that features that were not implemented to the GUI editor, can always be directly added to the mission data file. The editor won't erase them.
I hope to finish plugin cleanup and tests next week, and publish the next build.
Until then, Have a great simming
Saar