what books do you recomend? and are there cheap compilers one can get?thanksciao!Brian S

How about free?MSVC++ .NET 2005 Express Editionhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/

>How about free?>>MSVC++ .NET 2005 Express Edition>>http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/I really love VS Express, in any flavor. The IDE is pretty robust for a free product.I have some big book called Complete C++ or something, which is a pretty hefty reference, but some people I know have had a lot of luck getting started with one of those "Learn C++ in 21 Days" type of book. Also, after you are done reading the included MSDN tutorials and examples in Visual Studio Express, hit up google and you will find that there are all sorts of getting started tutorials out there that cover everything from your first console "Hello World" project all the way to 3D games with DirectX. That's mostly how I learned.Then, of course, play with it all the time. Whenever you have some free time, fool around with code and see what works and what doesn't.

wow this is great news, thanks for the helpim thinking to really do some hard core mission programming is probably going to take some C++ eventually or if not sooner.ciao!Brian S

Ermm, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the missions simply an XML file? I didn't know C++ was involved.

>Ermm, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the missions simply>an XML file? I didn't know C++ was involved.The missions export to a xml file, yes.However, it has been indicated that you can use SimConnect to expand on the abilities of missions, and I think he just wanted to get a jump start on that.

You could also use the managed libraries for SimConnect as well so could use C#. I've not looked at it yet but Assuming that the managed libraries follow the normal convention then it ought also to be possible to develop in VB.Net as well. I guess that the examples will be in C++/C# which would make things a bit more difficult for a non C programmer. Not sure what the differences between the C++ libraries and the C# wrapper classes are yet but hopefully it is a pretty complete implementation and if anything is missing then it is easy enough to go into unmanaged code and deal with the C~~ libraries directly.

If you were starting out programming today, with little or no past experience, I would recommend C# or Java. Learn those and then backtrack to C/C++ if you must.

oh!! so i dont need to learn c++ in order to do the actual missions? what is xml - my programming goes back to the days of BASIC in the mid 80s' you know10 cls20 etci got pretty good at it but wow the languages today...ciao!Brian S

xml is not a programmming language as such. You cannot create program logic or flows with it. It is a way to describe information in a structured, but human readable form - a bit like html is used to describe web pages. Information about missions is described and stored using sml. Xml is also used to store scenery information in FS for example.Programs created using languages like C, C# VB etc can create, store, read etc xml information and make use of it.

You'll find that learning C++ is no different from learning BASIC. I remember when I learned BASIC back in the 80s I read and copied program fragments until I got the hang of it. I'm now learning C++ the same way.As for books and stuff, you can't do better than:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/If you want to write Windows programs have a look at the section on MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes). There are a lot of samples you can learn from, copy fragments, and pick up bits as you go along.I bought a copy of Visual C++.Net a few years ago, and the IDE is very comfy.Mike.