Flight Simulator X Google Earth Flight Recorder (FREE SOFTWARE)

…or “FSXGE Flight Recorder” for short.

On October 10th; I launched our first Flight Simulator X product. It provides away for any player of Flight Simulator X to record their flights and view the path of the plane in glorious 3D within Google Earth.

Google Earth is a killer app; providing a detailed land mesh and satellite imagery for the entire globe. Flight Simulator X provides a simulation which allows a player to pilot a wide range of aircraft around the same globe. FSXGE Flight Recorder simply pulls information out of Flight Simulator and creates a drawing which Google Earth can read. The results, as I’m sure you’ll agree, are outstandingly cool! 

Here’s a flight I just recorded, using an “Ultralight” aircraft at Heathrow. Note the smooth and well controlled takeoff, downwind approach, final, landing and taxing

My first flight over Heathrow…

Use the Google Earth controls to spin around for a closer view…

The controls to the software are simple: record and stop, play (open) and delete. Click record before you fly, and this neat little utility will create you a Google Earth .kml file which you can open on any machine with Google Earth. You can even drag the control/menu bar onto a screen which you can access while in-flight, stopping and starting recordings at will. This is useful for those of us who need to practice take-offs and landings!

It’s easy to create new recordings on the fly

Best of all, FSXGE Flight Recorder 1.0 is FREE.

Yes, you heard me right, FREE. I’m releasing this edition as a gift to the Flight Simming community. It’s the first software product I’ve created for Flight Simulator X, and if you use this, and you like it - please let me know! Alternatively, if you don’t like it, let me know your honest thoughts. You can get in touch with me via my blog comments, or by the contact us form on our website. If you would like to open a support ticket to get help or report a bug, you can also do so here. I would be especially keen to see your .kml flight recordings - maybe they’re better than mine?

Download your free copy of FSX Google Earth Flight Recorder: from our website

If you would like to make a donation, there is a button within the software about page for this. Please consider it, if you like this software and use it regularly.

Comments please! Is this the sort of software you would like to see developed for Flight Simulator X? Do you like it, or not?

A Flight of Fancy

I wouldn’t normally blog about our customers, but we’ve been consulting on some of the technology behind their latest product and I have their permission to mention it :) 

Aerosimulations Ltd is a new startup software vendor formed by Chris Norris (formerly of Xenvision) and Peter Wilding (of Flight Environment). They have just released the first flagship product, Flight Environment X over the weekend and it looks amazing.

My involvement was that Evolved Software Studios Ltd assisted Aerosimulations Ltd in the later stages of their project, providing help with Microsoft technology consultancy, throughout August and September.

Flight Environment X makes Microsoft Flight Simulator X looks like a completely brand new simulator. It is what you would expect from Microsoft, if they had a couple of years of extra development time to work on textures.

The product itself is essentially a pack of very high quality, high resolution textures and a designer which allows different combinations of effects to be applied to them in order to create “Themes”. These Themes can then be used inside Flight Simulator, where they override the existing textures in favour of using the customised ones. Textures are provided for replacement Water, Sky and Clouds. The textures are all original artwork, captured and processed by Peter Wilding and the software itself allows for a truely unique and awe-inspiring flight environment every time. The FEX software is built around an online community, so you can download Themes, modify them and submit your own themes - completely from within FEX - in minutes.

In addition, the way in which these textures are injected actually improves the performance of Flight Simulator X. As much as I’d love to provide you all with code samples, this is top secret!

That’s not to say there aren’t problems with Flight Environment X. My desktop wallpaper is quite dark, and the FEX theme is dark, so can be difficult to make out at times - an ability to change the colour of the interface from within FEX would be helpful. All the choices in the designer are very well laid out, but can be a bit bewildering the first time you see them. A very simple “Getting Started” tutorial or a couple of pre-set “Try Me” themes would be supremely useful, particularly for those of us who are impatient and don’t read manualsÂ

I wonder what we can expect to see next from Aerosimulations. I’ve heard on the grapevine that they are planning to release a free weather engine shortly (retrieves real-time weather from internet sources and configures FEX automatically for your flight). As a new company, I can say from experience that they have done a remarkable thing getting such an awesome product, packed full of technology, finished in good time.

Flight Environment X is published by Flight1 at a retail price of $49.99. You can read more about Flight Environment X and purchase online at: www.flightenvironment.com.

I expect many more great things from Aerosimulations! Well done guys.