SPAACARS Version 6.0 is released.

Pilots,

I'm putting the reworked SPAACARS program out for downloading. Note, this is a separate download in the "Utilities" area of our downloads - listed as SPAACARS 6.0. This program can still be installed over the old version if you wish by copying all the files in this zip-file over the top of the current files in your SPAACARS folder. This program has been tested on FSX and P3D v4 and 'appears' to be working - at least on my simulator setups. I've left the old version of 5.6 out there as a last resort, but will plan on eliminating uploads from older version at some point in the future.

You may wish to read the first page of the manual that highlights changes to this reworked version of SPAACARS - including how to handle sim crashes and flight-reloading through FSUIPC. Otherwise much of the remaining code and function is the same and most pilots will be able to install and run without additional reading.

Hightlights:

* No need to have sim running or ini file configured to start SPAACARS
* SPAACARS should automatically reconnect and continue flying if FSUIPC connection is lost and reestablished (as with a Sim crash or other interrupts).
* Updated sound files and implemented the "4-passenger" suggestion from Bill to remove many sounds from GA flights.

Let me know of issues and questions.

Enjoy <img src="tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-squidder.gif" alt="squidder">,

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Aug 27, 2017 - 04:33 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

Thanks for the feedback Bill!

I worked on this for a week - pretty much non-stop, cleaning out a lot of poorly coded logic and recoding most of the connection monitoring. It's still not perfect the way I'd like it, but I think it's a vast improvement over the past versions.

As for the sound files...well, I'm still not happy that there can be a delay in the sim when loading the sound file - especially related to the after-landing message. I've shrunk the size of these wav files by more than 50% in many cases and still a delay at times.

Several things I'm thinking about (again for yet another update), will be to try moving the playing of the sound files out of the sim altogether and play them directly from SPAACARS - don't know why I didn't think of this sooner - just tunnel vision in programming through FSUIPC I guess.

Lastly - I again looked into the restarting a flight after a simulator crash (which I expect we'll see a lot less of with the more stable sims now replacing FSX). Again - I'm an idiot, coding in the various FSUIPC offsets to move the plane around in the sim rather than just programmatically saving the current flight at intervals and allowing a reload of that last saved version before the interruption. This would have been easier coding and a lot less flawed approach than the last attempt. Basically this would do what FSUIPC's auto-save already does, so for most pilots who already have the registered version of FSUIPC it's not necessary. That is the currently suggested method to restart a crashed simulator flight in SPAACARS 6.0. Once your flight is reloaded from the FSUIPC saved flight, SPAACARS will just reconnect automatically and pick up right where it left off - provided you left SPAACARs running while you restarted your simulator.

I also looked at adding the Xplane flight plan loading for this version, but - from what I read, Xplane doesn't use FSUIPC and Pete Dowson has no plans on adding Xplane compatibility to FSUIPC. I could still have SPAACARS load the flight plan by having the path set through SPAACARS settings menu, but I'm not sure the compatibility of SPAACARS for Xplane anyway since SPAACARS utilizes FSUIPC offsets extensively to communicate with the simulator.

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Aug 30, 2017 - 03:08 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

Thanks Jim,

The SPAACARS download has been restored along with the other website changes. SPAACARS can continue to be used by pilots as an ACARS option for uploading their PIREPs to the website.

John