• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Alternative to Visual Studio

scruffyduck

scruffyduck

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If you are developing in dotNET then you are probably either using a full version of VS2005 or one of the Express Editions. The Express editions are pretty good and have most of the tools that you might need. There is an alternative that you may want to look at called SharpDevelop.

http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx

This is a free open source IDE which has more functionality than the Express Editions. You can work on VB.Net and C# projects in the same IDE (rather than using two Express Editions) and although I have not tried it is seems able to handle ASP.NET as well.
 
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What can .NET do?

Scruffy,

Thanks for moderating this site. What a great resource. I'm wondering if you can paint some broad strokes about the .NET framework (VB.NET in particular) and how it can be used to develop an aircraft add-on for FSX.

I'm brand new to the aircraft add-on realm but I want to create a realistic looking and behaving 3D model/panel of a modern military aircraft with a glass cockpit (the T-6 Texan II). I haven't found any out there that are realistic from my viewpoint so I want to make one. The glass cockpit and functionality is such that I would have to design the gauges and panels and such myself.

I have amateur vb.net programming ability and I use VS 2003 and the 1.1 framework for coding. I can upgrade to 2005 if need be but first I'd like to know what .NET can do for me. Can I use it to create gauges and the functionality behind those gauges? I'm very new, but most discussion I've seen has involved .xml files and C# (which I do not know).

Any help on how to leverage the little .NET I know to tackle this task would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.
 
scruffyduck

scruffyduck

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Hmmm well I can tall you about the dotNET framework and so on but I have to say, for what you want to do you will almost certainly need to use C++. Unless things have changed in FSX addon programming then you will need to use that route. In FS9 anything related to gauges etc either needed to be created using XML or C++ and most of the code behind gauges etc is almost certainly C++. I guess it would be possible to use Visual C++ to create the modules to be used.

I am not the best person to ask about programming 'in sim' addons since all my work to date has been outside the Sim creating separate executables which can communicate with the SimSim. There are guys here who are much more attuned to this area and probably can advise you better.

Personally I think it likely that you would need to understand C++ to do this sort of thing. It may be possible to use C#. In any case these are quite different than VB.Net.
 
W

WannaBeDeveloper

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Thanks Scruffy,

I don't know much about C++ although I'm willing to learn it.

I'm just starting out and don't yet know what I don't know so I appreciate the help. Thanks a bunch.
 
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