During the last cold, dark, dull few weeks, I have been reminding myself about the C programming language (which I last did anything with in 1985) and how to write plug-ins for X-Plane.

I am delighted to have got far enough to write something more than “Hello World”; something that is actually useful. In the Comet cockpit, Flight Engineer’s station, Panel K, there are two voltmeters, one for DC, one for AC, with selector switches to read the voltage from important circuits. I had made them work before, but only by using the most ferociously complicated nested animation. They now use much, much simpler animation, and are controlled by a plug-in.

There are similar fixes to be made elsewhere, but my real aim is to increase the functionality and the realism of the cockpit as a whole. A massively comprehensive and complex systems plugin is a step too far for me at the moment, but I am spending an hour a day on this and learning fast …

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GMM-P (13/03/2013)

Tags: Programming, Plugin