We recently (FS Ideas subscribers) got this e-mail (name name of sender omitted). I think it was thoroughly enjoyed by many of us on the team; my favorite part, I think, is the reference to astrology at the end. From: <A rabid fan>...

Based on the lack of references to "process_shared_event_out()" and "GAUGE_HEADER_FS1000" in a popular search engine and the fact that I've gotten a few questions on the subject, I'm guessing that the understanding of how to share data between two instances...

I hate to break a long silence with an unhappy note, but here you have it: http://pc.ign.com/articles/947/947737p1.html?RSSwhen2009-01-23_103300&RSSid=947737 Yes, the studio is closing and development on Flight Simulator 11 is being "indefinitely...

It's been over a year since I mentioned text in XML gauges (an area where we don't do a good job of documentation) and a while since I posted anything truly useful on this blog, so I guess it's about time... A coworker and I were looking at some XML...

It looks like a common mistake made by people creating XML gauges is to use too many percent signs (%). For example, I saw this in a 3rd-party gauge recently: %{if} % (On)%{else} % (Off)%{end} The underlined percent signs are unnecessary, and the...

Pretty exciting stuff...

After mentioning which types of variables can and can't be set in my last post, I was feeling a little guilty. In the FS2004 SDK we didn't actually define which types of variables CAN be set. So here's an improved table of variable types, since the SDK...

Someone e-mailed tell_fs over the weekend asking if the G1000 in Flight Simulator (deluxe edition) had a bug: they couldn't get glideslope information. It is indeed possible to get glideslope information using the G1000. Do make sure that "LOC1" is visible...

Someone was asking about this earlier today, and now that we're not busy getting XPack out the door, I finally have time to answer it. We made some changes to the XPack code base to allow this. And we added a flag to gauges.h: IMAGE_ERASE_ALWAYS...

I've gotten some questions about Shared Cockpit over the past months, and I believe that a response is well overdue at this point. I plan to cover the topic in several posts, focussing on the aspects of shared cockpit that apply to 3rd party add-on developers...

Hal recently posted a couple of e-mails sent to FS Ideas that he thought were, um, interesting... So I can't resist sharing my all-time favorite. (OK, I've been in this group for less than two years, but this one is over a year old and really stands...

I like this video because it demonstrates what I expected to see in FS when I started using it years ago: the ability to walk around and into an airplane. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly0eo2cuT6g

So, you'd think that STRUCT EYEPOINT DYNAMIC OFFSET might have something to do with the camera position as set by SimConnect_CameraSetRelative6DOF(). But you'd be wrong. FSX doesn't actually have any way to query for the current camera position from SimConnect...

I attended GDC 2007 the week of March 5-9; it was my first time there and was pretty excited about it. I tried to attend a variety of sessions, from the very technical (some of which were way over my head) to the general (those that were part of the game...

IIRC = "If I remember correctly". And I thought it might have something to do with IMC . :)

From the FAA : "Runway threshold markings come in two configurations. They either consist of eight longitudinal stripes of uniform dimensions disposed symmetrically about the runway centerline, as shown in FIG 2-3-1 , or the number of stripes is related...

Well, it's certainly been a very long time since I posted anything here, so here we go... For the last 3 days, Microsoft hosted a "Women's Conference." Well, to say that it hosted it might imply that women from other companies attended, which isn't...

In the XPack SDK we added more documentation about the enumerations relating to the GPS, but it looks like we left out some, too. Some people were investigating what each meant based on trial and error, but I think I can help out a bit here. For example...

There's a little-known CustomDraw element (you may or may not already be familiar with the fs9gps:map customdraw element) you can add to your XML gauge pretty easily. Someone asked me about fs9view:view recently, and since I was adding to my knowledge...

Warning: I'm not a technical writer. I just play one on TV. There are no guarantees that the following instructions will work for you. Sometimes a gauge author/developer will want to add a (static) shadow element to a gauge. This is pretty easy...

The Flight Simulator SDK describes a method of using FAILURE_RECORDS to fail gauge elements via an enumerated list of failure types (freeze, zero, and no_draw). See the "Programming C Gauges" section of the SDK for detailed information. But what if...

It's hard to not get a little morale boost from any kind of nomination: http://www.gamecriticsawards.com/nom.html

Yeah, Lacey already posted this one, but in case you missed it . My housemate is currently addicted to Battlefield , so I can definitely relate, but I think that anyone would enjoy the hilarity of this music video. Now that I think about it, I'm...

FOD = "Foreign Object Damage"

I thought this might be of interest to some people out there: You can use the %{if}, %{else}, and %{end} constructs to choose which text to display. Note that if, else, and end are case-sensitive and must be typed in lowercase. The syntax for usage...