What is "Virtual Flight Online Transmitter" ?
It is a small Windows application that transmits your position in Microsoft Flight Simulator to an online database where your last reported position is held for 5 minutes. The website then produces a "whazzup" formatted file that can be used by LittleNavMap to plot aircraft positions live on a map.
Why?
If you and your friends want to see each other on mapping software such as LittleNavMap to run your own air traffic control sessions for group flights, you will no doubt have discovered that Microsoft Flight Simulator only communicates AI aircraft to external mapping applications such as LittleNavMap - not users. The Virtual Flight Online Transmitter application addresses that.
How It Works
The desktop application connects to a running copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator via the SimConnect interface, and reads your aircraft's type, latitude, longitude, altitude, and airspeed. It combines the data with your keyed callsign and name, and sends it to a server on the internet.
The server then provides access to data that has updated in the last 5 minutes in "whazzup" format - a data format commonly used with the likes of VATSIM and IVAO - and crucially LittleNavMap. The URL of the server can be used to configure LittleNavMap to show you and your friends aircraft on the map.
Running the Program
- Launch Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- Run "VirtualFlight.Online Transmitter".
- Fill out the text boxes for your callsign, aircraft type, name, group name, and server URL.
- Click Connect
After clicking connect, the application will broadcast your location within the simulator to the internet once a second.
Groups
You will notice you have to set a "Group Name" in the application - this gets saved into the database online along with your location, and can be used as a filter when connecting LittleNavMap - to single out a pre-arranged group of aircraft to view on the map.
Configuring LittleNavMap
If you would like to see everybody broadcasting their position with Virtual Flight Online Transmitter, follow these steps in LittleNavMap:
- Click on the Tools menu
- Click on Options
- Select the Online Flying section within the Options panel
- Choose the radio button for "Custom" within the Online Flying section
- Fill the URL https://virtualflight.online/read.php into the URL field
- Set the update rate to something sensible (e.g. 5 seconds)
- Make sure IVAO is chosen in the format drop-down
- Click Apply, and OK
Group Filters with LittleNavMap
To only pull back aircraft broadcasting a given group name in LittleNavMap, modify the URL in the Online Flying dialog within LittleNavMap to have ?GroupName=xyz (use your group name) on the end of it - which implements the filter.
e.g. https://virtualflight.online/read.php?GroupName=xyz
Who is online?
You can find out who is online at any time by visiting the following URL:
Donations
Operating the web server that supports Virtual Flight Online Transmitter costs a small amount of money each month. If you would like to help contribute, please visit the link below:
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GAF5006
Thank You so much for this littlew piece of software!
Our Group used JoinFS, because JoinFS showed up the Partners as AI, so that they are visible in LNM. But since update 6 JoinFS has problems to show the orientation of the other Airplanes. It look als if they fly sideways - in MSFS and in LNM - this of course looks very strange.
With Your transmitter we can use the native Multiplayer-System if the MSFS without missing an option to control the gang...
Parorng
Nice, LNM needed something like this!
If flighttracker.tech as been able to do this since alpha, there has to be a way for them to get it to work natively. In the meantime, thanks!
KennyPDY
Nice app and feature that MS doesn't bother to implement. Enjoy the group flight more. Hopefully setting LNM to poll every 2 second will not overload the server.
captmatto
Hey, great little app!
I'm currently building my own webapp in PHP to help with flight planning, sharing and recording and your program looks really interesting! Is it possible to send the data stream to my webapp instead of your own php processor?
I'm assuming it's sending $_POST data to the receiving PHP file?
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
It uses very simple GET calls (I kept it very, very simple on purpose) - if you install a packet sniffer you can watch the calls leaving it once a second.
bstikkel
What a great idea, especially the possibility to see groupmembers.
I do know one other addon that should be able to show groupmembers only - FSBlackbox- , but it does not work at my pc.
Would it be possible to devellop your tool in a way it shows group members at the VFRMap in FS2020?
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
I have no idea - this tool is very specific in that it targets the whazzup file format which LittleNavMap can show.
Caspy1Uk
set up as described in the above instructions... boom.. on the map... using the default settings it seems to work as described on the box. look forward to see if anyone ealse shows up as i was the only one flying using the transponder... great job.. look forward to improvements etc
dualznz
Nice idea, but using standard POST php functions are just begging for a expoit hack to bring down the server, possibly look at using node.js over websockets for a realtime tidy json hook would be cleaner and not cause breaks in code
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
It's a simple proof of concept at the moment. Node.js has no inherent advantages over any other web server platform, other than it's fashionable at the moment. There's nothing wrong with PHP for simple applications. At the moment it's a proof of concept built within a day - in time it will of course gain logons, rate limiting, and so on 😊
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
Thanks for the heads up though - I just implemented rate limiting 😊
80zboy
What a great idea! Seems to me, Microsoft should make this a feature of MSFS.
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
To be honest it's a bit of a hack. I'm sure at some point Asobo will make an API available to see nearby aircraft.
frenchsimmer
Wow, a very interessting app ! Thanks.
Is it possible to create our own server?
If yes, how ?
Caspy1Uk 4 month(s) ago
i think it only plots aircraft
Mikeaat 4 month(s) ago
If you know what is inside of read.php and send.php then you can make your own server. But it would be better to just have one server that everyone see each other. 😊
frenchsimmer 4 month(s) ago
Well it depends if you belong to a group and you want to rely on your own server .
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
At the moment no - I only built my own server yesterday. I will eventually open source the entire project.
Caspy1Uk
does this only work with little navmap ?
jonbeckett 4 month(s) ago
it generates a whazzup file in the format LittleNavMap understands. I had a hells job finding good examples of whazzup files, and ended up having to reverse engineer the IVAO output to find out what data was *really* there... So - if you have a program that understands whazzup - then yes, it should work.