• 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.

MSFS Find My Plane open API

H

hankhank10

Resource contributor
Messages
12
Country
unitedkingdom
By way of introduction I'm quite new to this forum, but looking forward to getting involved. I am a contributor to the Python-SimConnect library and the developer of MSFS2020 Cockpit Companion.

I posted earlier in the general forum about my new project called Find My Plane, but I thought I would share here a few more details about how other developers can incorporate the open and free API which comes with Find My Plane for their own projects.

Find My Plane comprises:
  • a client (findmyplane-client.exe) which runs on the user's computer to collect data via SimConnect and post it to ...
  • ... the API server, which accepts data updates from individual plane instances, stores these in a database and and then returns this data upon request, including to ...
  • ... a front end moving map built in HTML and JavaScript which shows the location of an individual plane as well as other traffic - this can run on any device and requires no installation, just a user visiting a website (example: https://findmyplane.live/view/DUMMY)
The end output looks a bit like this:
lost (1).png


The interesting part for other developers it that the server API functionality and the front end functionality can be used independently of my own client. The server runs entirely on RESTful API calls and accepts and delivers JSON. Basically any program that can post HTTP requests (so any program) can request a new plane instance from the server, post location updates for that plane instance, request data about the plane instance back from the server and take advantage of the pre-built moving map all of which runs on my servers with no overhead for your application other than posting the data over http.

So for example, any developer who has an application that already uses SimConnect to get plane data could easily add in moving map functionality by posting its data to the server and showing the resulting moving map or directing your users to the web address. Or you could add "traffic" to your existing application by requesting data of other nearby planes. If you have custom ideas I am very happy to consider them.

All of this is free and open source. No authentication or registration is required. Full Swagger documentation for the API is here: https://findmyplane.live/api

If you have any questions, run into any issues or want to discuss custom integration with your app or tool then I would be very happy to discuss.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top