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FSX (Released) M.I.T. - Maintenance and Income Tool

Very cool project! Have you ever thought about other types of immersive tools such as a "Gate Agent Simulator"...things such as simulated oversold flights, issuing seat assignments, boarding, manifests, delayed and canceled flights, etc?
 
In the past few months, I've been rewriting the tool for X-Plane 11's Lua implementation as I've been missing it a lot and none of the existing tools provide what I want and need.
My original estimation was a few weekends of work at best, but all the testing and learning-on-the-go made things very slow. The biggest obstacles were getting a solid file input/output mechanic working to provide persistence, a good flight tracking logic and figuring out random number handling for failure generation. I think I got those nailed down by now and am tackling the failures themselves.

Before you get deluded into thinking that XML gauges can be easily converted for X-Plane: They can't. The only thing you can recycle and adapt is the overall logic and mathematical calculations. Nothing else.
 
I wish someone would create a plug-in that would read and interpret XML gauges, convert L:Vars to datarefs, and communicate with X-Plane. I've been trying to learn X-Plane development and it's all very foreign to me.
 
It truly is very foreign if you're used to the way MSFS does things. The worst aspect is that there is no centrally maintained and updated development documentation as for MSFS/P3D. You get a few breadcrumbs from the developers in blog posts about new things and changes, but that's it. The rest is lots of googling, headscatching, reverse engineering and trial&error.

Don't hold your breath for a MSFS XML interpreter. It will never happen.
 
On the flip side, P3D supports LUA scripting so once you complete the XP LUA you could then transfer it BACK to P3D as LUA: http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv3/LearningCenter/utilities/scripting/lua_scripting.html

Someone one the Helicopter Flight Simulator FB Group recently showed of his basic autopilot gauge that was rewritten in LUA for P3D from XML and once he'd done that he converted the script to XP and had it working in XP fairly quickly!

This has the advantage to make code easier to maintain between the platforms.
 
OzWookiee said:
On the flip side, P3D supports LUA scripting so once you complete the XP LUA you could then transfer it BACK to P3D as LUA: http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv3/LearningCenter/utilities/scripting/lua_scripting.html
Click to expand...

If LM doesn't break any simulation variables and XMLTools stays compatible, the original XML version should work just fine in P3D.

Someone one the Helicopter Flight Simulator FB Group recently showed of his basic autopilot gauge that was rewritten in LUA for P3D from XML and once he'd done that he converted the script to XP and had it working in XP fairly quickly!

This has the advantage to make code easier to maintain between the platforms.
Click to expand...

Cross-platform compatibility is hampered by P3D's lack of an Imgui implementation, which provides the UI assets for the X-Plane/FlywithLUA release.

A simple script without a UI would probably indeed convert just fine after adaption to XP's dataref system.
 
I'd hazard a guess and say that you need the 64bit XMLTools release to make MITool work, but if that one doesn't work in newer P3Dv4 releases, you're indeed out of luck.
 
2020-7-22_22-3-43-115.jpg

Followed the instructions and it worked perfectly. This is P3Dv5.
 
Zero pounds of payload doesn't look right though. Unless you just hopped in and went without negotiating a contract.
 
Heretic said:
Zero pounds of payload doesn't look right though. Unless you just hopped in and went without negotiating a contract.
Click to expand...
Yea I thought that was off too. Might be because the Caribou loads fully loaded. I'll fix the weight stations and try again.
 
1595811954856.png


Hmm so something definately not working as I can't get any Contract payloads even after adjusting the initial weight to just the crew (3).
I might have stuffed something during the install as I'm just trying to set it up for a single aircraft first and then move the MI_Tool to a global gauges folder later (this is P3Dv5)
1595812184217.png

So I've installed it into the panel folder

Code: 
//panel.cfg
[Window Titles]
Window00=Main Panel
Window01=Autopilot
Window02=Radio Panel
Window03=GPS
Window04=Switches Panel
Window05=XML Vars
Window06=BlackBox3 - General
Window07=BlackBox3 - Engines
Window08=MI Tool

//--------------------------------------------------------
// Maintenance Income Tool
[Window08]
background_color=0,0,0
position=8
size_mm=200,600
window_size=0.15
alpha_blend=0.8
visible=0
ident=39146 //NEVER CHANGE THIS!

gauge00=MI_Tool!MI_Tool, 0,0,200,600

//--------------------------------------------------------
[Vcockpit07]
//file=vc.bmp
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=1024,1024
visible=1
pixel_size=1024,1024
texture=$centre

gauge00=Virtavia_Caribou!manifold_pressure1,  281,673,208,208
...

gauge98=MI_Tool_Aircraft!MI_Tool_Aircraft,1,1,1,1
gauge99=MI_Tool!MI_Tool_System,1,1,1,1

There's no errors showing in the ContentErrors.txt file so any help would be great. I'll go back through the installation and double check.
 
1595826763166.png

State files are being written to the root directory so I take it from that the XMLTools DLL is working??
 
Code: 
[error.2]
error=Gauge/Script Error
Type: Gauge
Name: MI_Tool_System
Error: Invalid variable name: "SIMVARS:GEAR TAIL POSITION"
This is the only error I can see in the ContentErrors file.
 
hahahahhaa
OK RTFM is DEFINITELY required here folks. Make sure to set THIS value in the MI_Tool_Aircraft.xml
XML: 
<!-- Set a payload limit for the current aircraft, if desired.
Default: 0 (lbs) = disabled -->
0 (&gt;L:MIT Structural Payload Limit, pounds)
^^^^
now I have it updated to 6000 I am getting contracts for weight as well :facepalm:
1595827569118.png
 
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