RELEASE.md

Flight Logger + Auto QNH plugin for X-Plane 12

Native plugin for macOS (arm64 + x86_64 universal binary), Linux (x86_64) and Windows. Records flights, generates HTML logbook reports, rates landings, and keeps the altimeter in sync with actual QNH.

What's New in v1.7.1

• General improvements of performance and stability
  • Fixed: Helicopter support useful parameters in landing rate for helicopters
  • Fixed: Position Save Window position and size is saved now after close

What's New in v1.7.0

• The track map is now a real map — the logbook's route view used to be a bare line on a flat background. It now draws the flight over geographic and aeronautical context, entirely from local data: no network connection, no API key, and it works with the sim offline.
  • Airspaces are read from X-Plane's own database (Resources/default data/airspaces/). Violet outlines mark controlled airspace, red marks restricted, prohibited and danger areas.
  • Water and borders come from a Natural Earth extract bundled with the plugin (data/coastlines.dat): lakes as filled shapes, coastlines and country borders as lines.
  • Place names (data/cities.dat) label the route largest-first. A label is skipped when it would collide with one already drawn, so names stay legible where cities cluster — a Pacific crossing no longer stacks ten Californian suburbs in one corner. Departure and arrival labels are reserved first and always win.
  • What appears depends on the distance flown. Airspaces are drawn only on local flights; beyond roughly 330 km a leg crosses several hundred of them, almost all irrelevant at cruise level, so the map switches to geography — which answers "where did I fly" far better at that scale.
  • The track ramps from orange to near-white with altitude, so a climb reads at a glance, and a scale bar plus ICAO labels for departure and arrival were added.
  • Loading runs on a background thread, so a long route never stalls the window.
• Fixed: the track map squashed north-south flights — positions were stretched linearly from latitude and longitude into a fixed-aspect box, so a leg flown north distorted more the further it was from the equator. The map now uses Web Mercator with the aspect ratio preserved, and pads the shorter axis instead of deforming the route.
• Fixed: airspaces surrounding the route were missing entirely — an airspace was kept only when one of its outline points fell inside the visible area. A control zone enclosing the airport you departed from has all its corners outside a short flight's bounds, so it was discarded: EDNY showed no airspaces at all, while nearby LSZG happened to sit close enough to an airspace edge to show some. The view centre is now also tested against each outline.
• Fixed: flights crossing the date line rendered as a world map — longitude wraps at ±180°, so a Pacific crossing steps from 179.99 to -179.99 and the bounding box read that as "from one edge of the planet to the other". Auckland to Los Angeles drew the entire globe with the track jumping between the two sides. Longitudes are now expressed continuously across the date line.
• Fixed: long flights could corrupt the map — Dear ImGui indexes vertices with 16 bits, and a long-haul route with all its coastlines exceeded that limit, which silently turned the map into noise. Points that would land on a pixel already covered are now skipped, and the overlay works to a fixed vertex budget. An eight-hour flight samples about 2,900 track points, of which some 650 are actually distinguishable at map resolution.
• Report maps moved from CARTO to OpenFreeMap — CARTO's basemaps are licensed for enterprise customers and non-profit grantees, which xp_pilot is neither, so the previous usage was never properly covered. Reports now use OpenFreeMap, which is free for any use, needs no registration and no API key. Because the switch requires vector tiles, the report's map library changed from Leaflet to MapLibre GL JS. Existing reports keep their old map until you press Rebuild All Reports in the logbook.
  • No API key is involved anywhere, which also means a report you share with someone can never carry a credential of yours.
• Fixed: the logbook window could be scaled out of reach — at 200% UI scale the window asked for 2120x1440 pixels regardless of your display. On any smaller screen its title bar and resize grip ended up off-screen, leaving no way to move or shrink it — and no way back to the scale setting that caused it. The window is now capped at 95% of the screen in both directions, and a large scale simply shows less at once.
  • Reset from outside the window — Plugins → xp_pilot → Reset UI Scale & Window Size restores 100% and recentres, deliberately placed in the plugin menu so it stays reachable no matter what the window is doing. Also available as the bindable command xp_pilot/ui/reset_layout, and as a Reset button next to the setting itself.
• Redesigned logbook window — the window no longer opens on a row of tabs. It opens on a home screen of four large icon tiles (Live, Logbook, Archive, Settings), with a live status bar pinned above them that stays visible on every screen.
  • Status bar — aircraft type and tail number, departure airport and current position with true heading, and the live figures as labelled cells: altitude, indicated airspeed, vertical speed and running block time. A red REC indicator marks a flight being recorded; between flights it reads IDLE and the figures show placeholders, so the bar never changes height.
  • Home screen — each tile carries an icon and a live subtitle: whether a flight is recording, how many flights are in the logbook, how many are archived, and whether Auto QNH is on.
  • Navigation — every screen has a ‹ Home button. Esc steps back to the home screen and only closes the window from there.
  • Typography and icons — the window now uses Roboto instead of Dear ImGui's built-in bitmap font, with Font Awesome icons on tiles, buttons and section headings. Both fonts are subset and compiled into the plugin (21 KB total), so nothing is loaded from disk or the network.
  • UI scale — a new setting scales fonts and spacing from 80% to 200% for high-DPI displays and TV-distance setups, in 5% steps via − / + buttons. It was a slider at first, but the scale applies live: dragging moved the slider out from under the cursor, which made overshooting to the maximum almost unavoidable. Stored as ui_scale in settings.json.
  • Flight lists are real tables — the logbook and archive lists use aligned columns with alternating row backgrounds instead of space-padded text, which no longer depends on a monospaced font.
  • Every action from the previous window is unchanged and in the same place: refresh, rebuild all reports, select all / clear, batch archive, batch delete, single archive / delete, open report, and the SkyVector link.
• Fixed: a phantom pause of one second — flights that were never paused reported a one-second pause. The pause total was the difference between a whole-second wall clock and a continuously accumulated active time; because the two terms had different resolutions, the difference oscillated between 0 and 1 every second. In the live view this made the time row and the track map legend appear and disappear in a steady rhythm, and on a finished flight it wrote paused_sec: 1 into the flight JSON while the pauses array stayed empty — so the HTML report showed a Total / Paused / Block Time breakdown for a flight that was never paused. Both counters are now fed from the same per-frame delta, so an unpaused flight reports exactly zero. Present since v1.5.5.
  • The time row now always shows all three figures; an unpaused flight simply shows a dash for the pause, so the layout no longer shifts when a flight crosses into a pause.
  • Existing flight logs keep their stored paused_sec. A spurious one-second pause in an older file disappears from the report when it is regenerated only if the flight is re-flown — the stored value itself is not rewritten.
• Open a position on SkyVector — coordinates are now one click away from an aeronautical chart instead of something to copy by hand.
  • The Live screen has a SkyVector button; it opens the current aircraft position on skyvector.com in the default browser.
  • Every landing card in the HTML report gained a Touchdown position row showing the touchdown coordinates as a link to the same chart. Landings recorded before touchdown coordinates existed simply omit the row.
• No file format change; flight logs stay at version: 4.

What's New in v1.6.3

• Live tab — watch the flight while it is still running — the Logbook window has a new first tab showing the flight in progress instead of making you wait for the report. It shows the departure airport, aircraft and off-blocks time, the running block time (pause-aware, exactly as the finished report counts it), the current position, altitude and AGL, indicated airspeed, vertical speed and true heading, the maxima reached so far, and the route flown from takeoff up to this moment on the same track map the logbook detail view uses. Landings already made during the flight — a touch-and-go en route — appear with their full rating.
  • The position line updates every frame; the track map follows the 10-second sampling grid, so the first line segment appears after about 20 seconds of flight.
  • Nothing is written to disk and no HTML report is generated — this is a read-only view of what the recorder already holds in memory.
  • When Write flight logs to disk is switched off the recorder keeps no track, so the tab says so instead of showing an empty map. All other live values still work.
  • Between flights the tab reads No flight in progress.
• Replay no longer pollutes the flight statistics — entering X-Plane's replay mid-flight and leaving it again used to feed the replayed frames into the track and into the Max Speed and Max Altitude tiles. Replay time is now excluded from the active flight time, exactly like a sim pause, which also stops the track sampler for its duration. Flights ending in replay were already discarded and still are.
• Implausible speed samples are discarded — a repositioning, an aircraft reload or a single bad frame could hand the logger one garbage airspeed reading, and the running maximum kept it for the rest of the flight. Readings outside 0–1000 kts, or jumping more than 150 kts from the previous 10-second sample, are now dropped instead of recorded.
• No file format change; flight logs stay at version: 4.

What's New in v1.6.2

• Fixed: the landing card's "AGL at 50ft gate" row never showed a 50 ft gate — it always read 1–2 ft, and rightly so: the value was sampled in the touchdown frame, so it showed the height of the aircraft datum above ground at the moment the gear touched, not the height on approach. The gate itself was never recorded — only the label claimed it. The row has been present since the first release.
• The 50 ft gate is now real — the flight logger detects the crossing of 50 ft AGL on descent and records the approach state there, interpolated between the two frames that straddle the gate so the reading does not depend on the frame rate. The landing card shows it as Speed at 50ft gate with indicated airspeed and descent rate — the numbers a landing is actually flown against, and a useful comparison with the Touchdown Speed row just above it: crossing the gate fast is what turns into float.
• Float time now starts at the same gate — its timer used to trip at 15.0 m (49.2 ft); it now uses the exact 50 ft (15.24 m), so float time and gate reading describe the same segment of the approach.
• Stored as gate_ias_kts and gate_fpm in the flight JSON. The file format stays at version: 4 — the fields are purely additive. Existing flight logs stay readable and simply omit the gate row when their reports are regenerated; the old agl_ft field is still written and parsed, it is no longer displayed.

What's New in v1.6.1

• Fixed: indicated airspeed was recorded about 1.94× too high — the flight logger treated X-Plane's indicated_airspeed dataref as metres per second and converted it to knots, but the dataref already reports knots. Every IAS-derived value was therefore inflated: the Max Speed tile, the IAS chart in the HTML report, the Touchdown Speed row, and the landing popup's TOUCHDOWN IAS cell — which is why indicated airspeed read far above ground speed. Ground speed and all wind figures were never affected.
• Existing flights are corrected on read — flight logs written by earlier versions keep their stored values, but their inflated speeds are scaled back when the file is parsed. Regenerating an older report from the Logbook window makes it show the correct speeds. No migration and no manual steps are required.
• Flight logs written by this release use version: 4, marking the corrected airspeed scale.

What's New in v1.6.0

• Touchdown speed — every landing now records the airspeed at the moment the gear touches: indicated airspeed and ground speed. Shown in the landing popup, the Logbook detail view and the HTML report. Stored as ias_kts and ground_speed_kts in the flight JSON.
• Runway analysis — xp_pilot now knows where on the runway you touched down, not just how hard.
  • Runway identifier, touchdown point (distance past the threshold in metres and feet, plus the percentage of runway used), runway remaining, and centerline deviation (how far left or right of the centerline).
  • The runway is picked from the airport layout by touchdown position and true heading, so parallel runways are told apart correctly — verified against EDDF and KJFK. Displaced thresholds are honoured, so the distance is measured from the actual landing threshold rather than the start of the pavement.
  • The layout is read from X-Plane's global airport database. The lookup runs on a background thread during the approach, so there is no frame hitch in the touchdown frame.
  • Landings that cannot be matched — grass strips, water landings, helicopter set-downs, or airports missing from the database — simply omit the runway rows. Airports supplied by Custom Scenery add-ons fall back to the global layout, which may differ slightly for heavily modified airfields.
  • Can be switched off with the Analyze touchdown point toggle in the Settings tab.
  • Stored as runway_ident, runway_distance_m, runway_offset_m and runway_length_m in the flight JSON, alongside the touchdown position (lat, lon, heading_true) and the airport of that landing (airport_icao).
• Redesigned landing popup — a colour-coded rating banner, metrics laid out in labelled columns, and a plan view of the runway showing exactly where you touched down relative to threshold and centerline. The same runway diagram appears in the HTML flight report's landing card.
• Replay the landing popup — the popup can now be summoned at any time via the new command xp_pilot/logbook/show_last_landing, which can be bound to a key or joystick button in X-Plane's control settings. Also available from Plugins → xp_pilot → Show Last Landing Rating and from a button in the Settings tab. If the current session has no landing yet, the most recent landing from the logbook is shown — useful for reviewing or capturing a landing after restarting the sim. It works even when the automatic post-touchdown popup is switched off.
• Configurable popup position — the landing popup can be placed in any of seven screen positions (the four corners, top or bottom centre, or dead centre) via a new dropdown in the Settings tab. The default placement is unchanged. Stored as popup_position in settings.json.
• Flight logs written by this release use version: 3. Existing flight logs stay readable and their reports render exactly as before — the new fields simply stay hidden for landings recorded with earlier versions. No migration and no manual steps are required.

What's New in v1.5.5

• Sim pauses no longer count as flight time (#3) — pausing a flight and picking it up later used to produce impossible block times, because the block time was a plain wall-clock difference between takeoff roll and shutdown. The flight logger now accumulates only unpaused simulation time (sim/time/paused), so the block time reflects what was actually flown.
  • Flights that were paused show the full calculation in the HTML report and in the Logbook detail view: Total (gross), Paused and Block Time (net), down to the second so the three values visibly add up. Flights without a pause look exactly as before.
  • The block time starts with the takeoff roll, not with engine start. A pause before that — waiting on the runway — lies outside the block time and is therefore not counted; there is nothing to subtract it from.
  • Pauses are marked on the route — a yellow dot on the HTML report's map (hover for the duration) and on the track view in the logbook window, with a legend below the map. Flights recorded before this release have their pauses reconstructed from the gaps between track points, so older reports gain the markers when regenerated.
  • The pause total is stored as paused_sec in the flight JSON, alongside the exact active time in block_time_sec and a pauses array holding each pause with timestamp, duration and position; the file is now written as version: 2. Existing flight logs stay readable and unchanged — they simply report no pause, and their block time keeps its minute resolution.
  • Every pause is noted in X-Plane's Log.txt (Sim resumed after N s), so an unexpected block time can be traced without picking the flight JSON apart.
  • Track sampling pauses along with the sim, so the report's altitude and speed charts keep a true 10-second time axis instead of stretching across the pause.

What's New in v1.3.2

• External volume support on macOS — fixes flight log and HTML report writing when X-Plane is installed on an external disk mounted under /Volumes/. Earlier versions converted the SDK's HFS path by hand and silently dropped the volume mount prefix, so all plugin file I/O ended up pointing at the read-only system root. xp_pilot now requests POSIX paths via XPLM_USE_NATIVE_PATHS and resolves the data directory consistently on every platform.

What's New in v1.3.0

• Bounce detection — the flight logger now distinguishes a bounced landing from a clean one. When the main gear touches down, lifts off, and touches again before the nose gear settles, each additional touchdown is counted as a bounce.
  • The landing rating reflects the hardest touchdown, not the cushioned final settle — a bounced landing is judged by its worst impact.
  • A short low-altitude rebound (AGL < 5 ft) counts as a bounce; a higher hop is ignored, and a real climb above ~50 ft AGL still triggers a separate Touch-and-Go entry as before.
  • The bounce count is shown in the post-touchdown popup, in the Logbook flight detail list, and in the HTML report's landing card. Flights without bounces look exactly as before.
  • Stored as bounce_count in the flight JSON.

Features

• Automatic flight tracking with state machine (Idle → Rolling → Airborne → Landed → Shutdown)
• Flight data stored as JSON in <X-Plane>/Output/x_pilot_reports/flights/
• HTML logbook reports with track map, landing details, wind, and block time
• Landing quality rating with aircraft-profile-specific thresholds (ultra_light → heavy_jet), auto-selected by ICAO code
• Touchdown speed (IAS and ground speed) and runway placement — runway identifier, distance past the threshold, runway remaining, centerline deviation
• 50 ft gate — indicated airspeed and descent rate recorded as the approach crosses 50 ft AGL
• Bounce detection — bounced landings are counted and the rating reflects the hardest touchdown
• Touch-and-go support
• Auto QNH: silent altimeter sync + optional on-screen warnings for mismatches and pilot/copilot disagreement
• Manual QNH commands: xp_pilot/qnh/set_qnh, xp_pilot/qnh/set_flightlevel
• Bindable logbook commands: xp_pilot/logbook/toggle, xp_pilot/logbook/show_last_landing
• In-sim ImGui logbook window — tablet-style home screen with a live status bar, plus Live, Logbook, Archive and Settings screens
• Live screen — position, altitude, speed, running block time and the route flown so far, while the flight is still in progress
• Track map with airspaces, water, borders and place names — drawn entirely from local data, no network and no API key
• Adjustable UI scale (80%–200%) for high-DPI displays, with a reset reachable from the plugin menu
• SkyVector links — open the live position or a recorded touchdown point on an aeronautical chart in the browser

Installation

Download the xp_pilot.zip from the release assets, unzip it, and copy the xp_pilot folder into your X-Plane Resources/plugins/ directory. The ZIP contains all three platform binaries (mac_x64/, lin_x64/, win_x64/) — X-Plane 12 will load the right one automatically. See the README for setup.

Requirements

• macOS 12.0+ (arm64 / x86_64 universal binary), Linux (x86_64), or Windows
• X-Plane 12

Known Limitations

• The plugin must be validated in X-Plane 12; unit tests cover logic and parsing only
• Flight data JSON format may change between minor versions; regenerate reports after upgrades if needed

Release process

Versioning: Dev builds (make build) embed SNAPSHOT as the version string. Only release builds show the real version number from VERSION.txt.

1. Ensure all changes are committed and pushed to main
2. Run the release command:

   make release VERSION=1.3.0

   This will:
   • Write the version to VERSION.txt
   • Create a commit (release 1.3.0)
   • Create an annotated git tag (v1.3.0)
   • Push the tag to origin
3. On GitHub, create a release from the pushed tag
4. The CI pipeline detects the release event and builds all three platforms with the real version number
5. The resulting xp_pilot.zip (containing macOS, Linux, and Windows binaries) is automatically attached to the GitHub release

Local release build (e.g. for testing before release):

make release-build