FSXA - FSX Assistant

1. Introduction

2. How it works

3. Prerequisites

4. How to Install

5. Source code

6. Binaries

7. About

Introduction

FSX Assistant (FSXA) is intended to be a platform to easily build addons for Microsoft Flight Simulator X, it consists of the following projects:

• FSX Assistant Server - It does all the dirty work to communicate with SimConnect (FSX SDK), multiple clients can be connected to this server through its WCF TCP/IP Service.

• FSX Assistant Windows Desktop Client - Sample client that provides the user with Autopilot controls, see the screenshot below:

How it Works

When I first started this project, the intention was to be able to use any PC/smartphone/tablet as a client, take a look at Figure 1.1:

Figure 1.1

FSXA Server would expose a web service (HTTP protocol), so any device featuring a web browser could act as a client. This was a good idea but by that time I was ignoring the followin fact:

1. HTTP/1.0 requests are way too heavy (See: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.0/HTTPPerformance.html).

The sample client makes a request to FSXA Server at least every 30 miliseconds, due to fact #1 the Web Server idea was immediately discarded. Then I thought that by turning the web service into a WCF TCP/IP service then at least I would be able to consume the service from both Windows Desktop & Windows Phone... Nyet! - Windows Phone 8.1 XAML applications do not support the System.ServiceModel namespace, therefore it is not possible to add service references (source). So, currently there is no way to host or consume FSXA outside Windows Desktop, as shown in Figure 1.2:

Figure 1.2

The workaround might be to create custom TCP/IP server/client libraries, but this is likely to be very time consuming (any help on this would be appreciated).

Prerequisites

• Windows 7/8 (my guess is that it works on Windows XP as well)
• .NET Framework 4.0 or later
• Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable Package
• Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2 + FSX SDK or Microsoft Flight Simulator X Steam Edition*

* In case you have the Steam Edition do not forget to run the following installers:

• %SteamFolder%\SteamApps\common\FSX\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK\LegacyInterfaces\FSX-XPACK\SimConnect.msi
• %SteamFolder%\SteamApps\common\FSX\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK\LegacyInterfaces\FSX-SP1\SimConnect.msi
• %SteamFolder%SteamApps\common\FSX\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK\LegacyInterfaces\FSX-RTM\SimConnect.msi

How to Install

1. Unzip the binaries into a simple location, e.g. C:\FSXA-bin\
2. Edit the EXE.xml* file located in %AppData%\Microsoft\FSX-SE\ and add a new Launch.Addon node as follows:
   
   <Launch.Addon>
   <Disabled>False</Disabled>
   <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
   <Name>FSXA</Name>
   <Path>C:\FSXA-bin\FSXAssistantServer\FSXAssistantServer.exe</Path>
   <NewConsole>True</NewConsole>
   </Launch.Addon>
   
   In case the file does not exist, here you have an example: EXE.xml
   
3. Run FSX with Admin privileges* and you will be asked whether you want to run FSXA
   *Admin privileges are needed to start the WCF service
4. If everything goes well you should see a new Console:
   
   
5. Now you are allowed to run the FSXA Sample Client (C:\FSXA-bin\FSXAssistantWinDesktopClient\FSXAssistantWinDesktopClient.exe), once you run it, if you see the following window then you are good to go:
   

Source code

FSXA was released under the public domain, the source code is hosted on GitHub:

https://github.com/leopoldolomas/FSXAssistant

Binaries

FSXA v0.1 can be downloaded from this link: FSXA-bin-v0.1experimental.zip

About

If you would like to contribute to the project or you have any comment/questions, here is my contact information:

Leopoldo Lomas Flores
leopoldolomas@gmail.com
Torreon, Coahuila. MEXICO.