Gmap for FLIGHT

[Düsselwings 0]

I went ahead and bought the Alaska Gmap maps, and they work great for me. Plus, it seems I don't have to be in Hawaii to load it, now that I have the maps. Pretty cool (at least on my end).

 

Is this pack just for Alaska and how much is it?

[Guest]

Is this pack just for Alaska and how much is it?

 

http://fswidgets.com...&products_id=55

 

I wonder though how old (or new) they are and if they are really compatible with Flight, because Flight uses old data.

[Bobsk8 12,754]

There is a new beta version of Gmap that was released this morning (6-30-12) to solve the problem of having to start up in Hawaii that some people were still having with the version that was released two days ago . Here is the link.

http://fswidgets.com...gmap_msf_21.zip. It was noticed that at some airports or areas, Gmap would not connect with Flight, and it would work perfectly in other areas of Alaska. I had trouble with Yakutat Aiport where it would not work, and yet Anchorage and some others I tried yesterday worked perfectly. This beta may solve that ( I haven't installed it yet.

 

Anyway, from playing around with this program for a few hours yesterday i found some tips that may be helpful.

 

1. You don't have to run Flight in Windowed mode. You can run flight in full screen, and use Alt tab to switch between flight and the Gmap widget. In the Game Play options of Flight you can have flight under General to "pause when it loses focus" which is the default, in other words when the Flight screen is not on the monitor, the program will pause, and when you switch from Gmap back to Flight, you will have to select "resume" to restart flight, or you can just let it run by unchecking the pause option. I unchecked the pause option, so Flight keeps flying while you are looking at the map. You are not going to look at the map that long, and if your aircraft is properly trimmed, you should have no problem looking at the map for a minute or so, and then going back to flight. This would mimic looking at a sectional in a real aircraft, where you have the aircraft trimmed, and are looking and folding and unfolding a regular sectional in the cockpit.

 

The instructions tell you to start Fight first, go to the map view in flight and then start Gmap. It will then tell you it is connecting with Flight on the Gmap screen. Once Gmap is connected, then it downloads from google maps in Gmap, the map of where your aircraft is. I had a problem connecting with Goggle maps at first, and I got a message that "Gmap could not connect with the internet" displayed on the Gmap screen. It turned out that my AVG firewall was blocking Gmap from communicating with the internet, so I had to go to the firewall settings and set Gmap to be allowed to communicate. I don't know why I had this problem, and you probably won't. Now If you want runways, navaids, and elevations of obstacles, and terrain , rather than just a surface map, you need to purchase the sectionals, and they sell them on the Gmap website. For all of Alaska, which is quite a few sectionals, it is $9.95. (one sectional today cost almost that much and in Alaska you get 30 sectionals which would cost almost $200) They are store in the cloud, so when you start Gmap, and begin flying, Gmap automatically loads the sectional that shows where you are. No folding of big charts, or not having the right one, they are all there and the right one is loaded depending on where you are flying. It is really cool!!

 

Here is the link to the sectionals. http://fswidgets.com...ex.php?cPath=22 I prefer Sectionals to WAC charts, because there is alot more detail in the sectionals and they are much easier to follow.

 

The next problem I had, was that Gmap for Windows, when you purchase it, requires that you write a 2 line ini file in Windows Notepad, in a plain text form and save it as FSWidgetsGMap.ini ( they show you how to do this when you get the receipt for the sectionals) What is in that ini is the code that they send you when you purchase the sectionals and your email address. Now you take this text ini file, and just place it in the same folder as you put the Gmap program in. I just made a folder on my desktop for both the Gmap program and the ini file, but you can put the folder anywhere that is convenient. When you start Gmap, it uses the ini file you made to go and get your sectional maps and they are loaded right into the program and you are set to go. This is where I ran into another problem, when windows saved my ini file it decided it was an exe file and saved it like this. FSWidgetsGMap.ini.exe It added exe at the end of the ini file, but the way my windows explorer was set on my brand new windows 7 computer, I could not see the .exe. I had to go into windows explorer, Organize/ Folder and Search Options/ View/ and uncheck "hide extensions for known file types" When you do that, now that ini that you saved will display the .exe which you don't want, so you can just delete the .exe and save it again without the .exe. Now the ini will work with Gmap and you will get your sectional charts when you start Gmap.

 

I posted this problem with the ini, on the help forum at FS widgets yesterday, after working on it for hours, and within an hour or so I received an email from the developer with the solution. This was at 8PM on a Friday night, so their customer support is fantastic. Here is a link to the forum. http://www.fswidgets...rum/dcboard.cgi

 

Hope that helps.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Can anybody tell me the payment options for this? Credit cards only or can I also use Paypal? Thanks.

 

Best regards.

Luis

[Bobsk8 12,754]

Can anybody tell me the payment options for this? Credit cards only or can I also use Paypal? Thanks.

 

Best regards.

Luis

 

I used Paypal.....

[FrankFasi 0]

The .ini file (I have mine on my desktop, too) also lets you specify an FSX flight plan folder, in case you want to create a flight plan that will show up in Gmap. I have a couple of programs I use (AivlaSoft EFB and/or Aerosoft FSC 9) that will allow you to create a route offline and save it to the folder you specify in the .ini file. You can then retrieve it once you get everything up and running in Flight.