EuroScope plug-in API upgrade

Sorry for not reporting more often. I m doing my best on the code using nearly all available time. There are lots of progresses.

On the other hand as I started changing things for the new plug-in API, I realized that I had to dig quite deep. And if I do so, probably it is high time to make chnages that are not required by the API change, but was already requsted several times. That - at least - doubled the changes I have to do.

What you can see by now:

It is now clear that I will not finish by the end of the year. But surely there will be a version that can be used for testing.

16 Likes

Thank you so much for your incredible work! The progress looks absolutely stunning, and I really appreciate the effort you’ve put into this. I have a couple of questions and suggestions that might help refine things further:

  1. Pole Coordinates & Sector Lines
    Could you confirm that the pole coordinates won’t cause any issues when drawing sector lines, as shown in the image below? Ensuring compatibility with these coordinates will avoid a need to set magic coordinates to draw it normally.
  2. Planned Changes
    It would be fantastic if you could share a list of planned changes or upcoming features. This will help us ensure that nothing crucial is missing from our perspective, especially if there are any foundational elements that may not be immediately obvious but are essential and long awaited.
  3. Development Experience
    Regarding the new API, I’d like to suggest improving the development experience. Right now, the workflow feels a bit cumbersome—reloading the plugin, making tweaks, and dealing with crashes can be quite frustrating, especially when the cause isn’t clear. A debug mode would greatly help, making the process smoother and more transparent.

Additionally, I’d love to see the option for Lua scripting to be integrated into the plugin development process. Lua is lightweight, easy to use, and would lower the barrier for less experienced developers. It would make creating plugins more accessible and foster a broader range of contributors. We’ve had some success experimenting with Lua for the interface, and it could be a super enhancement if the bridge between Lua and EuroScope was officially implemented.

  1. Open-Source EuroScope
    Lastly, I’m curious if there are any plans to make EuroScope an open-source project in the near future. Opening it up could accelerate development, inviting the community to contribute fixes and new features. If this isn’t on the horizon, would it be possible to establish a more streamlined platform, like GitHub Issues, to track bugs, new feature requests, and their status? The old forum isn’t as efficient for these kinds of things anymore, and having a more modern tool could improve collaboration and communication.

Thanks again for all your hard work. I’m really looking forward to trying the 64-bit version of EuroScope! Your commitment to improving the platform is highly appreciated, and I’m excited to see where it goes next :star_struck:

3 Likes

Awesome, especially the custom windows!

If I understand correctly, you mean it is possible to hide the windows title bar.

Would it also be possible to disable/hide Euroscopes green menu bar, and changing those settings through plugins (RWY in use, logging in/out etc), or at least have it only showing when hovering the mouse or pressing an assigned button?

1 Like

Any updates, Gergely?

Hi,

You surely noticed that I missed the end of year deadline. I am progressing, but still behind my scedule. So, please, try to keep calm for a bit.

I can send you screenshots of the updates:

  • METAR area can be removed from the toolbar have more place for other things:

  • You can even close up the whole toolbar with only a small button to drop it down:

  • The command and message area can be moved from the bottom and resize as you like, detach some message hendlers for important chats:

  • Or even move all these things to the secondary window, making your main screen completely empty:

And of course hundred of things under the hood to make the code cleaner and more maintainable.

I will come back with updates as they are available.

11 Likes

Thanks for the update, looks really interesting!
If you don’t mind me asking, are we going to see any change to the calculation of Transfer conditions ?

Hey Gergely,

it’s less API request, more than feature request, but considering plugins will now finally may have access to dynamic sector ownership edit, I’d like to ask for possibility of multiple segments sectors named as one. Now, if you create something like this in ESE:

SECTOR:EPWW:10000:22500
OWNER:AWA:EPWW
DEPAPT:EPWA
ARRAPT:EPWA
BORDER:EPWA_APP

SECTOR:EPWW:0:10000
OWNER:EPWW
DEPAPT:EPWA
BORDER:EPWW
ARRAPT:EPWA

The ES is assigning the data slightly crazy (takes primary ownership from latter), Display Settings > Sector shows single position “EPWW”, aircrafts are correctly recognized within both sectors, and Ownership setup dialog looks like this:

Interesting thing is, that editing first line of Ownership setup dialog (1st “EPWW”) and clicking OK does not changing the ownership. However, changing the last line only, and pressing OK, changes ownership to all “EPWW” at once.

The image below shows current sectors recommeded way (option 1), and drawing intention in multisegmented sectors (vertically as well; option 2).

Hi Gergely,

One more thing to add, please. Can you look into fleshing out CSectorElement? At the moment it is missing some very obvious functionality. To take one example, one is able to iterate over the SIDSSTARS but there is no way that I can see to tell whether the CSectorElement is a SID or a STAR. This seems like a fairly glaringly obvious omission.

Good morning, Gergely,

Whilst I am very pleased to see Euroscope getting lots of attention, I am disappointed that the scope of this project appears to have expanded. I had originally understood that you were focussed initially on refactoring the plugin architecture, but now we seem to be seeing a root-and-branch overhaul of Euroscope, including things like window management and co-ordinate parsing.

Is it possible that we can see an improved release with the plugin architecture changes and the rest can follow on later? There are a healthy group of people trying their best to develop plugins for Euroscope but the architecture is currently challenging to work with. We are massively struggling in my development team, because information that should be readily available to us is simply not.

I would certainly prefer, and I suspect others would as well, frequent, smaller updates rather than releases every 6 or 12 months. Is it possible to deliver improvements to the plugin architecture soon?

Many thanks,
Adam Arkley

1 Like

Hi Gergely,

The update looks very promising. Would it be possible to have a hotkey to increase and decrease the PTL/Leader Line? I have looked for this in the settings and documentation, but found nothing.

Keep up the good work!

2 Likes

Would support this idea. In Switzerland, the RL system allows you to use the mouse scroll for this, too. Zooming is done with keys (like ES supports as well), as changes of the visible area (moving or zooming map) are not used that often, at least on the main screen. Could this be considered, too? Especially in ACC sectors, this makes it very convenient to check manually for possible conflicts by just scrolling up and down the leader lines.

2 Likes

Another RL option would be to have quick access buttons for 1, 2, 4 and 8 minutes leader lines.