FSSI SimIn SDK Open Beta Launched

October 21, 2018 | FSSI, a new company formed by several veteran Flight Sim software developers, is delighted to announce an Open Beta of their first product: the SimIn SDK.

The SimIn SDK is an advanced development kit for Prepar3D V3 and V4 that provides oft-requested functionality past the capabilities of both SimConnect and the PDK. The SimIn SDK can be used by aircraft developers via a C gauge or using the included C to XML bridge, or even by scenery or tools developers via a dll.xml-loaded plugin. It is easy to get started, with sample projects and documentation included, and community support provided in our forum.

The SDK, using this revolutionary SimIn engine, is designed to interact with the simulator in a way that proactively handles future upgrades to P3D. Developers can ship products using SimIn technology with the peace-of-mind that upgrades of their product should not be necessary for every single new build of P3D that is released in the future.

In the Open Beta, their initial functionality includes:

• Terrain Service: Reads terrain raster (DEM, LandClass, Population, WaterClass, etc.) data in-sim, for any place in the world. It also contains APIs to read vector data (Roads, Water, etc.). You can query a grid of cells for each type via an asynchronous callback.

• Facilities Service: Reads all airports, runways, taxiways, airways, scenery objects, and any other facility data present in the simulator. Similarly to the terrain service, queries can be issued for any point on the earth in realtime, as a grid, radius, or even at the user location.

• FDE Service: Allows the user to read and change fixed AIR data in-sim, on the fly creating dynamic air tables from any field present in the .air or aircraft.cfg files.

• Effect Service, Allows the user to change, as in the FX Tool, many different effect parameters dynamically at runtime. A sample is provided that shows the basics of dynamic lighting.

• Core Functions and G2D Service: Exposes several internal simulator methods programmatically, included access to set a screen color effect, set the sim volume sliders, and read and write the Ground Friction physics coefficients.

With the SimIn SDK, any developer can build addons once thought impossible, such as an airport moving map gauge in a modern jet, a high fidelity GPS or TAWS based on actual data, dynamic lighting based on SimVars or UI input for Scenery or Aircraft, or even an entirely new flight model by dynamically modifying AIR tables at runtime. Backed by the power of the SimIn SDK, the possibilities for developers are endless.

The Open Beta contains an information box that is shown at sim startup, but is otherwise unlimited. The SimIn SDK will be free for developers of freeware projects when shipped as a shared DLL.  We will also support commercial licenses, with more flexible license terms and the ability to compile your code together with SimIn provided as a .lib. Any commercial developers that are interested are encouraged to contact FSSI for more info.

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