Hi,

There seems to be a plethora of different flightplanner tools emerging these days, but this one caught my eye.

This is a new add-on (freeware) called Preflightly has just been launched which looks to be quite useful. MSFS2024 is supported, but stand-alone version of MSFS2020 is not. It looks pretty nice with lots of different features. Have not tried it yet, but plan to do a flight this pm to try it out.

https://preflightly.app/

This addon has Symlink-based activation to build a central library outside the std Community folders (Community, Community 2024), smart grouping and activation of airports based on regions you are flying in (reminds me of the Lorby addon tool for P3D), has GSX profile handling that identifies airports you have installed in your Library and does some checking that you have a GSX profile installed for those airports.

Also provides checking of departure and destination airports to make sure all addons are installed and identifies possible airport conflicts and a Route Finder that first scans what aircraft and airports you have installed in your sim and will then search for real-world routes (~70,000 available) based on selected aircraft, airports and flight time of your choice.

Simbrief integration is also included so those real-world routes can be transferred to Simbrief with real world fight numbers and schedule times populated.

The other beauty of this (claimed) is that you only need an Internet connection at the start to build the flights database, but after that the flight planning and central library are all functional offline.

I think this one is definitely worth taking a look at based on the various features it has going for it if you are a tubeliner captain.

Cheers,

has some really nice functions, but the symlink stuff kills it for me, I use AddonsLinker and I certainly do not want to be forced to use it. Can it be used without this? Otherwise I have to say no sadly...

Coming from MSFSAddonsLinker or another add-on manager? Preflightly is a full replacement, not a companion. Before installing, move all your add-ons back into Community/ so Preflightly can start from a clean baseline. The previous tool can then be safely uninstalled.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. all of my addons, except for aircraft sit on a separate drive and I use addonlinker to create the sym link. The above instructions are suggestions are saying I should put all of my addons back in the community folder and preFlight is going to do what.. Copy them back out to some other folder then create a sym link? Seems like double work.

Unless I'm not reading this correctly.

If I am understanding correctly though, I think the better approach is for this program to allow me to designate my addon folder, scan my community folders and detect what is a symlink and what is not. So the transition from addon linker to this program is WAY more seamless..

I'm actually going to try it out and see if my understanding is wrong. cause I especially like the addon checklist for a route. A few times I've forgotten to activate an airport for my route and this would be nice.

The route/add-on check is the part that interests me most too. Once you have a pile of airports, liveries and GSX profiles, it is very easy to forget that one scenery is not active before starting the flight.

The Addons Linker transition would have to be really clean though. A lot of us already keep the Community folder almost empty and let symlinks do the work, so I would want Preflightly to detect that setup instead of asking me to rebuild the whole library from scratch. If it can handle that gracefully, the flight-planning side looks quite useful.

Ok I tried it. tldr; uninstalled, vibe coded software that needs more time in the oven.

• Upon downloading the app it requested that I signed up. I cannot imagine why I need an account to organise my addons but whatever, I persisted to fully give it a chance. This isn't even mentioned on the FAQ page of your website, that's hugely annoying.

• My initial assumption was correct, It scans your community folder, then will copy everything from your community folder to your designated mod folder and will create a sym link. I'm sorry but this is an idiotic approach. Not really sure how it even makes sense

• Of course the copying failed, because this approach doesn't make any sense, everything in the community folder is encrypted and doesn't work when copied outside of it (If you're using MS store version). It didn't say why copying failed.

• Since nothing was copied, nothing worked and it attempted to scan my community folder again

• This program require administrative rights, why? Addon linker doesn't

• I proceeded to uninstall the program.

This has all the hallmarks of someone with an idea and a claude subscription but no actual engineering experience. It's a very pretty app but functionally flawed.

However, as this is an early access product I'll see what it's like in a few months cause I like the look of it as-well as the addon checklist feature.

If the developer is reading this forum post, my tips are

• Remove the account sign up requirement, there's no tangible need for it though if you have future plans, make the account requirement optional. If you do decide to remove the account requirement, delete the details of those who've signed up in accordance with GDPR.

• The initial setup approach is abrasive and doesn't make sense, it should be a drop in replacement for addon linker meaning, let me select my mods folder then you scan it as-well as my community folder. Detect existing links as-well as external links like those made from GSX. Do not force me to move everything to a mod folder as there's certain addons like aircraft which default installing in the community folder.

• Let me be in control much like addon linker does.

• Your uninstaller leaves registry and prefetch items on my machine. You need to fix that.

I realised they have a suggestion box, I've left my feedback there.

5 hours ago, Lucky38i said:

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. all of my addons, except for aircraft sit on a separate drive and I use addonlinker to create the sym link. The above instructions are suggestions are saying I should put all of my addons back in the community folder and preFlight is going to do what.. Copy them back out to some other folder then create a sym link? Seems like double work.

Unless I'm not reading this

You are reading this correctly. I ran the program and it asks you to define a new folder to host your library. In the FAQ it does say that you should put all your aircraft and sceneries back into the Community folder (if they are located elsewhere) so it can scan them all. It then does the symlink stuff and then deposits all files into the new library location.I agree it would be nice to skip this step if you already have a designated folder and symlinks already created.

That's as far as I got but then the program ran into an issue as it failed to either create the symlink for one of the AIGOCI folders or failed to move it from the Community. Unfortunately I could not move forward through the remaining configuration steps so was unable to proceed any further.

I have to report this issue to the Dev.

7 hours ago, AnkH said:

has some really nice functions, but the symlink stuff kills it for me, I use AddonsLinker and I certainly do not want to be forced to use it. Can it be used without this? Otherwise I have to say no sadly...

I don't believe so Chris. I was not able to skip that step so it lacks some flexibility in that regard.

Based on @Lucky38i 's report, I'll give this one a miss.

The account requirement - it wouldn't surprise me if this tool is a front for the collection of data for marketing (spamming) use.

What other Earthly reason could there be to require an account to use something like this.

Ok, forced symlink and account needed, I skip this one as well