The FSZwever Flight Viewer 2 (Viewer for short) is a small fs2002 utility to make the life of a virtual soaring more interesting and/or challenging. Designed to setup tasks for you to fly with a CAI-set equipped sailplane and to study the flights afterwards.

On the screen you see three windows: the top view - displaying the waypoints and the recorded flight... the profile or altitude window - displaying the recorded flight's altitude... the waypoint list window - displaying the loaded waypoints file... At the top of the screen are a Menubar and a Toolbar - both giving access to more or less the same functions. I'll try to explain it all by listing the Toolbar - it's the easiest to use 'cause the Menubar might have some items for test purposes only - here we go: Polars... - for experimental use only - due to other time consuming business (like writing a thermal generator) the related project has been delayed... Load data from flight - loads the fs2002 recorded flight and the DAT file used into the Viewer, calculates and displays the results. Open any previously saved flight... - loads any previously saved flight into the Viewer. An option to show more then one flight simultaniously might be in the works... Open any *.IGC file... - loads any previously saved IGC formatted flight into the Viewer - this hasn't to be a Viewer generated file - files from alternative sources can be viewed too. In the future the IGC format might be the only format used... Open any *.DAT file... - loads any DAT formatted file from the archives. DAT files are the waypoints lists used to setup your tasks from. You either write your own or use and edit files downloaded from the internet. The largest collection of DAT formatted files can be found at Worldwide Soaring Turnpoints - search look for CAI downloads. Send data to GPS-NAV - sends the waypoints list - with or without a task - to fs2002 for the GPS-NAV to read. IMPORTANT: without this file the GPS-NAV won't work at all and fs2002 will crash - don't complain I didn't warn you 'cause I just did... Save flight data to file... - save the recorded flight's data and the waypoints file used for later use. These are the files you mail to SOAR's race director to prove you are the best - or at least among the best (don't forget to zip them first though or you might block his mailbox...). Save flight data to IGC file... - saves your flight in the international recognized IGC format so it can be read by other - professional - flight viewers. Cristian Fumey wrote a utility that creates 3-D bgl files from this data - that way you can see your flight in fs2002 again and even try flying it again... Create a new waypoints file - more on this later... Edit the loaded waypoints file - same... Edit any waypoints file... - same... Save the waypoints file... - same... Save the waypoints file as... - same... Close the edit mode - same... Task - to setup a task. Double clicking a waypoint from the waypoints list will add this point to the task. Double clicking the last entry again will remove it from the list. Clicking "Task" again will clear the task to setup a new one. The leg length and total distance will be displayed on the screen. This should be practiced a little to get the feel of it... Toggle Profile window - switch the Profile (or altitude) window on & off to make more room for the top view... Toggle Waypoint List window - switch the Waypoint List window on & off to make more room for the top view... Toggle Timestamp - displays small timestamp windows over the recorded flight at one minute intervals... Switch Units Metric/British - for those of us not used to the worldwide metric system...<g> Toggle Altitude windows - switch the altitude windows at the profile window on & off to have a better look at the logged results... Toggle Pen width - change the flight line's width - for better visibility... Toggle results display - changes the results display - show seperate leg results with a total result line or show the legs on aggregate... Adjust circle around taskpoint - the circle around the taskpoint has been set to a 0.5 km radius like in the GPS-NAV. When a point is past outside the circle the results won't be calculated - if you re-adjust the circle you can still judge the flight - it can't be entered for a competition though but you can still study it... Display data... - to study parts of the logged flight - there's a choice of three modes: Chris - Chris Gordan liked to know how... Roland - Roland Stuck preferred it like this... Max - I ? I just didn't care that much...<g> as we couldn't decide on the best mode you take your pick - just enter the timestamps and display the partial results - great to study thermals or discover cheating - very useful to see how others flew... Validate data... - another mode to check the data - click start to display all the logs inside the file - use the buttons to scroll the data and calculate averages. Any wrong log will show up - just another way to prevent cheating - yeah, it's a tough game... Keyboard functions switch [NumLock] off use numberpad [4], [8], [6] & [2] to move the top view,[center] to center, [+] to zoom in, [-] to zoom out and [*] to reset. How to create a waypoint file: Creating and/or editing waypoint files can be a tricky job - one typo (typographical error or just the wrong character in the wrong place) and it's no go. Here are some useful tips. comment lines start with an asterix, like: ******************************** * copyright 2002 Max Roodveldt * ******************************** and will be ignored by the GPS-NAV... here's the default line format with seven, comma seperated, entry fields: 0001,53:11.000N,004:51.180E,0,AT,Vuurtoren,118.50 where the seperate fields has the following content number, latitude, longitude, altitude, attributes, name, remark and are defined like this: number - 4 (four) digit number 0001...0250 - never use the same number twice... latitude - DD:MM.mmm = 52:10.000N or 25:09.123S - just like fs2002 longitude - DDD:MM.mmm = 5:02.146E or 110:10.987 - same altitude - 2312M or 7585F - without character is meters... attributes - a point can have multiple attributes - up to 9 (all)... A - Airport L - Landable Point S - Start Point F - Finish Point M - Markpoint T - Turnpoint H - Home Point R - Restricted Point W - Waypoint name - Vuurtoren (max. 24 characters - only first 12 visible in GPS-NAV) remark - text (max. 24 characters - only first 12 visible in GPS-NAV)

©2002 - Max Roodveldt - FSZwever