This project (formerly known as VFR Map For VR) adds a helpful ingame panel to your flight simulator which brings
- Several different Maps, Waypoint* and Tracks*,
- a Charts Viewer* and
- a Notepad*
right into your cockpit! This is is especially helpful for those of us who like to fly in VR (and thus not being able to look on a physical kneeboard, tablet, or second screen).
Additionally, FSKneeboard adds a very helpful fully automated and configurable Autosave Feature*.
I made this mod for myself and for now, it does exactly what I want. And since the latest release, it does even more stuff that you guys, the community, asked for!
If you like it, please let me know and share it with other VR pilots :-) Also, consider yourself invited to join me and the community on the FSKneeboard Discord Server at https://discord.fskneeboard.com
(*) indicates "premium"-features that are available in FSKneeboard PRO, which is available for a Pay-What-You-Want-Price at https://fskneeboard.com/buy-now
- Screenshots
- TL;DR
- Support Your Modders :-)
- Go PRO
- Getting Support
- Features
- Components
- Installation
- First Launch
- Usage
- Advanced Usage
- Troubleshooting
- Attribution
- Releases and Downloads
- How to Contribute?
- HELP!!! Why Does My Virus-Scanning Software Think This Program Is Infected?
Toolbar Icon
Navigational Data Enabled
Charts Viewer
Notepad
Teleport UI
Dark Mode
Dark Mode (Red Flashlight)
Waypoints with ICAO Identifiers (Old UI)
The Mod consists of TWO PARTS(!): a server and an ingame-panel that you need to install and run BOTH!
Please take the time to at least read the Installation and Usage sections below!!!
It's dead simple! But if you only install the panel to the community folder and ignore the server this mod won't run and may appear "broken" to you!
Some malware- and virus scanners detect FSKneeboard.exe as a virus! This is a false positive and known issue. Please read below "HELP!!! Why Does My Virus-Scanning Software Think This Program Is Infected?" to learn more!
If you enjoy this project, please consider buying me a coffee and/or donating to the guys I mentioned in the Attribution section. It allows us to keep developing addons and mods like these ones and making them available for free. Any amount is welcome! Thank you.
If you want to go above and beyond, you're invited to kindly check out my Patreon, which is another highly welcome way to show your support of and love for the project. You can find it here: https://patreon.com/chrisvomrhein
Alternatively, you may decide to "go pro" at a Pay-What-You-Want-Price! It's really your call! You'll unlock all features of FSKneeboard plus you support the mod development. Also, you'll make a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old very, very happy, as I can buy them more ice cream :-)
If you have any problems, questions or would like to get in touch and stay involved with an active community of like-minded VR enthusiasts, then don't miss out on yoining our community Discord over at https://discord.fskneeboard.com!
- The VFR-Map is a separate panel inside the sim: No fiddling around with virtual desktop browser windows etc.
- Map resolution etc. is optimized for VR use, and fully customizable while ingame
- Hide your own airplane on the map for a fully-fledged "paper map on kneeboard"-VFR navigation feeling
- Toggle to show and automatically follow your airplane on the map for a more "GPS"-ish style of navigation
- Five different map types
- Several different navigation data overlays, including open flightmaps and openAIP
- Dark Mode (adjustable brightness + "red flashlight mode")
- Configurable hotkey to show/hide the FSKneeboard panel while ingame
- Windows Installer for simple installation and configuration
- Add, remove and modify waypoints and tracks on the map*
- Pull the currently loaded flightplan from MSFS into your kneeboard map, including ICAO identifiers*
- Search for any address or POI worldwide right from FSKneeboard and add it as waypoint or even teleport there*
- Watch charts and checklists inside the integrated charts viewer*
- Organize approach charts, checklists, weather charts etc. in separate subfolders*
- Take notes inflight with your mouse on the integrated notepad*
- Automatically create snapshots/savegames from your flights every few minutes so you're able to recover Flight Simulator instabilities and crashes (fully configurable, see Advanced Usage Section for details)*
(*) indicates "premium"-features that are available in FSKneeboard PRO, which is available for a Pay-What-You-Want-Price at https://fskneeboard.com/buy-now
Here's a quick feature breakdown of what features are included in both the FREE and the PRO version, and which features are exclusive for PRO version supporters...
| Free | PRO | |
|---|---|---|
| Highly detailed maps for VFR flying | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Map resolution and UI optimized for VR (and FULLY configurable) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| "Moving Map" (i.e. map follows your airplane position in real time) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Optional trail, showing your recent flight path on the map | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Hide airplane for full "paper map navigation" experience | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Teleport to any position on the planet with a click of a button | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Night mode (Maps) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Configurable Hotkey | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Additional Map Layers with custom API keys (e.g. Bing Maps) | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Waypoints | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Navigation Tools (measure arbitrary distances and angles) | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Load Flight Simulator Flightplan | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Locate ANY address or POI around the world and add it as a waypoint to your flightplan | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Track data (like total distance, per-waypoint-distance and course to next waypoint etc.) | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Charts Viewer for approach charts, checklists, notes etc. | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Notepad for taking notes in-VR without peeking under your headset | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Notetaking with your physical iPad or Android tablet and instant sync into your VR cockpit | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Configurable Autosave function to recover your flights, for example after a system crash | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| YOU actively support the ongoing development of FSKneeboard, bringing Flight Simming in VR to the next level :-) | 😎 Sure! Thanks for giving the mod a shot :-) Spread the word! | 💚 YEAH! You rock!!! |
| TRY FREE | BUY NOW |
The mod project consists of two components:
fskneeboard-server is the webserver that connects to your flight simulator and communicates with it to receive location data etc.
fskneeboard-panel is the actual ingame panel.
There are two ways to install FSKneeboard on your system: With a fully automated installer (recommended) or doing everything manually...
Download the Installer-Executable (Install-FSKneeboard-FREE-vX.Z.Y.exe) from the release section.
Please Note: PRO users will receive a separate download link upon purchasing their license to download the PRO-Version Installer!
Once the download is finished, run the installer from the download directory. Administrator privileges are NOT required!!!
Select a directory where you want to install the FSKneeboard server. The suggested default location is in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\FSKneeboard, but you can change it to whatever you deem fit (like C:\Tools\fskneeboard\ for example). Click Next!
Select a Server Directory
Next, the FSKneeboard Installer tries to locate your MSFS Community Folder, where the ingame panel must be installed to. The automatic location mechanism "should work" (TM) for both the Windows Store as well as the Steam versions of the game and the installer will tell you if it did succeed. Otherwise you will have to locate your Community Folder by hand. Then click Next!
IMPORTANT: Just pick the community folder! Do not add any subfolders. Otherwise the panel will NOT work!
Locate your MSFS Community Folder
At that stage, PRO supporters should have their license ready (usually somewhere in your Downloads folder). Click Browse and select it. Then click Next!
Locate your FSKneeboard PRO license file
Please note:
This step will be skipped if there is already a license file present in the intended installation directory (when updating, for example).
You should now see a summary of what the installer will copy to what folders. Click Next and the installation will begin. At the end, you will find everything you need to start FSKneeboard in your windows start menu.
FSKneeboard Start Menu Items
When upgrading to a new version, you should unistall the old one. You are free to try to simply "update" what you already have, but I don't recommend it. Old files may interfere with new ones and break the mod. Therefore, in case you encounter bugs after upgrading, properly uninstall FSKneeboard and go for a fresh install!
Make sure to backup your license file and your charts folder, though, just to be save :-)
Download the zip from here.
Please Note: PRO users will receive a separate download link upon purchasing their license to download the PRO-Version!
Place the contents of fskneeboard-server file somewhere convenient (like C:\Tools\fskneeboard\).
Server Installation
Afterward, your fskneeboard-server folder should look like this:
Server Installation - Done
If you have purchased FSKneeboard PRO make sure to also place your fskneeboard.lic-License file here! Your finished PRO-installation should look like this:
Server Installation - FSKneeboard PRO - Done
Place the folder christian1984-ingamepanel-fskneeboard in your MSFS community folder (typically C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community)
Panel Installation
When finished, your Community folder should look like this (though there may be more than one extension installed, obviously).
Panel Installation - Done
Please remove all files from the server directory and christian1984-ingamepanel-fskneeboard from your community folder, before installing a new version. Do not "copy over". No excuses! Old files may interfere with new ones and break the mod. Just do it, but keep your license file :-)
In order to launch FSKneeboard, you need to do two things:
- Launch the FSKneeboard local server application by clicking the FSKneeboard icon on your desktop or launch fskneeboard.exe from your command line and...
- ... open the actual FSKneeboard ingame panel inside MSFS.
- Step 1: Run
fskneeboard.exeby clicking either the approprite desktop icon or selecting it from the start menu. This will bring up the FSKneeboard core application's desktop window. FSKneeboard will now wait for Microsoft Flight Simulator and connect to it. - Step 1.1: On the first launch, FSKneeboard will ask you if you want to optimize the ingame panel user interface for VR or "2D". Choose wisely 🧙, and change it/fine tune it in the settings dialog whenever you like.
- Step 2: Start Microsoft Flight Simulator. You can do this by either clicking the appropriate icon on your desktop or by clicking the "Launch Flight Simulator" button on the FSKneeboard Control Panel. This requires you to first configure the version of your copy of Flight Simulator through the Settings Panel, as described here.
- Step 3: Open up the ingame panel once inside the sim (like you would do with other ingame panels like the ATC or weather panel etc.)
- Step 4: Place the FSKneeboard Panel conveniently in your VR space
- Step 5: Click "Center Airplane" to initially center the map on your airplane
In order to open up the actual FSKneeboard panel inside MSFS, first enter VR mode. Next, hit the [TAB] key to bring up the ingame toolbar and click the FSKneeboard icon to bring up the ingame panel.
How to open the ingame panel (old icon)
When you open the FSKneeboard ingame panel for the very first time, a guided tour will introduce you to all the features FSKneeboard adds to your flight simulator experience.
FSKneeboard Guided Tour
Please take the time to take this tour, as it is aimed at providing answers to many of the frequently asked questions and giving you a head start without missing out on some of the "hidden features".
If you would like to skip the tour for now, you can do that and restart it later through the Settings Panel when you are ready for it.
Depending on your personal preference and various external factors (like your 2D screen resolution, your MSFS window size, your supersampling settings) chances are the map inside your FSKneeboard panel may appear too small or to large, or in some cases even stretched in a weird way.
You can change the scale of the user interface from the settings panel on the FSKneeboard core application or from within the ingame panel. This is particularly useful for VR users.
Both ways behave slightly different. Here is how:
You can set the ingame panel scale from the core application's settings dialog. This will affect the entire ingame panel, including the left hand main menu bar.
Set the scale anywhere between 50% an 1000% or click the "Optimize for 2D" (sets the scale to 100%) or "Optimize for VR" (sets the scale to 300%)
Global Interface Scale at 300%
When you start FSKneeboard for the very first time, a popup will ask you if you want to optimize FSKneeboard for 2D or VR.
Global Interface Scale Popup
FSKneeboard's dynamic resolution controls can be accessed directly from the ingame panel and does NOT affect the appearance of the menu bar.
Dynamic Resolution Control
If the map is hard to read and appears too small, no matter how far you have zoomed in or out, click the button with the four arrows pointing outwards multiple times to stepwise increase the size of the panel's content for better readability. If it appears too large, then click the button button with the arrows pointing inwards in the same fashion.
If the map appears to be compressed horizontally, then click the button with the two horizontal arrows pointing outwards multiple times to stepwise stretch the panel in the horizontal direction. If, on the other hand, the panel appears stretched horizontally, click the button with the two horizontal arrows pointing inwards in the same fashion.
The reset button on the very right hand side allows you to reset both your custom resolution and stretch settings.
The map is the core component of FSKneeboard and available to FREE and PRO users alike. It contains several map modes as well as a representation of your own aircraft that you may also turn off so that you can "navigate by hand" on bush trips and the likes.
Owners of FSKneeboard PRO can also access the waypoint feature, which allows you to manually place waypoints on the map:
- A track will be automatically added between waypoints and a flag will show you information about the distance to the final waypoint and the heading of your track.
- You can click any given waypoint you have placed to toggle the visibility of its particular info-flag. The info-flag of the last waypoint of your track is always visible.
- If you get in the proximity of less than 0.5 NM of any given waypoint it will automatically be removed from the map. The last waypoint on your track will not be removed automatically, however, so you can use it to find a mission target or destination.
- You may click your own aircraft to toggle the "rubberband" that connects your airplane to the first waypoint.
The map module provides a variety of controls to manage the module's state. All important functions are accessible either through the menu bar on the right hand side or by clicking or dragging and dropping various icons on the map itself. A general overview of these controls can be found in the following screenshot.
Map Viewer
If the FSKneeboard panel's height is decreased beyond a certain threshold, some of the menu items will be grouped together and moved to "fly-out menus". In order to access these grouped functions, simply hover your cursor over the corresponding icon. The menu will expand and reveal the individual functions.
Map Viewer With Fly-Out Menus
The map can be rotated wither facing north up, track up or manually. Simply select the corresponding option on the sidebar menu or fly-out menu. If you choose manual rotation, you can drag and drop on the little rotation widget in the bottom right corner to manually rotate the map to your liking.
PRO users may also pull the currently loaded ingame-flightplan from their Flight Simulator onto the kneeboard by clicking the "cloud-icon" in the bottom left corner. This will load the flightplan you have created on the Worldmap screen before starting the flight. This will replace all manually placed waypoints on your map.
Please Note:
When you change your flightplan by adding or removing waypoints through your ingame GPS, for example, these changes will not be reflected by the flightplan pulled from the Sim by this feature. For the time being, this is a known limitation of the feature. Please configure your flightplan before taking off on the Worldmap screen of MSFS.
REMARKS:
- This feature is an experimental feature. It's not bulletproof and may require some tweaking in the future. Use it at your own discretion and please provide feedback!
- I noticed that the location finder has a minor glitch when it is showing the results list (see screenshot). It's not perfect, yet, but it gets the job done. I figured it's worth getting it into your hands as soon as possible than to spend another one or two weeks tweaking the final 5% out of the release. I hope you agree :-)
The location finder can be accessed via the search icon on the toolbar and allows you to type in any street address or POI via the onboard keyboard and find it on the map. You can then select to just pan the map there, add a waypoint at this location or teleport there.
Map Viewer Location Finder
FSKneeboard PRO contains a fully-fledged charts viewer for charts in png format. You can navigate the charts by either using the toolbar on the top or by dragging to pan the map around. You can also use your mouse wheel to zoom.
Charts Viewer
You can browse and access your charts folder by clicking the browse charts button in the toolbar. You can also use the left and right arrow buttons on the toolbar to browse the individual documents inside the current directory.
Charts Viewer Document Browser
Make sure to place your charts inside the charts folder inside the server directory. You can also use subdirectories to organize your charts (to checklists from approach charts for example).
Charts Folder
Please note:
Subfolders starting with an '!' will be ignored by the ingame panel's charts browser. This can be used to temporarily "deactivate" charts that you don't need on a particular flight. The
!importfolder (used by the PDF Importer Tool) will be ignored as well.
Your charts folder should look like this:
Inside Your Charts Folder
To add documents to your charts folder, you can simply copy and paste any .PNG image file from your computer into this folder. Alternatively, you can use FSKneeboard's PDF Importer Tool as described here
Notepad is another feature that FSKneeboard PRO users have access to. It allows you to take notes during your flight session by simply drawing on it with your mouse or typing with your physical or a virtual onscreen keyboard.
Notepad
The notepad can be used in one of two modes: Scribble Mode and Type Mode. The two modes can be used on the same note and you can switch back and forth between them any time.
In Scribble Mode you use your mouse to, well, scribble something on the notepad. Just click the left mouse button, hold it down and drag your mouse to draw a line and handwrite notes.
In Type Mode you can either the virtual onscreen keyboard or your physical keyboard (which is still experimental, see remarks below for details) to type information. Here's how:
- Activate the mode by clicking the appropriate keyboard icon
- Now, click to place the cursor where you want the note to appear (default is the top left corner of the notepad)
- Start typing with your keyboard or the virtual onscreen keyboard
REMARKS:
Please note that FSKneeboard DOES NOT intercept Flight Simulator hotkeys when you use your physical keyboard to take notes.
When you type the letter
Gfor example, chances are that your landing gear lever will be toggled! Be aware of that and opt for the virtual keyboard if issues arise.
You can take up to 5 notes at a time and switch between them using the index buttons in the menu bar. The notes will be saved even across multiple flights, until you delete them manually!
You can also connect a tablet computer to FSKneeboard (see Connecting to FSKneeboard With Your Browser, a Second PC or Tablet below) and take notes with your fingers. Notes will be instantly synced across devices, allowing you to take notes with your actual, physical tablet right on your knee and have them transferred over into your VR cockpit!
REMARKS:
Please make sure to FULLY DEACTIVATE the autosave feature when you are planning to go on a bush trip! It seems that once a flight is saved via SimConnect (which is the interface that FSKneeboard uses internally to communicate with MSFS), Flight Simulator falls flat on its face when trying to properly save the Bush Trip progress.
Both MSFS and FSKneeboard will in fact continue to save the flight; but unfortunately as a free flight, not as a bush trip flight, which leads to conflicts when trying to load the flight back up...
MSFS does automatically save your bush trip progress automatically, anyway, so you don't need FSKneeboard's autosave in that particular scenario!
Autosave is a feature that allows you to automatically create "snapshots" of your flights on predefined intervals. This is especially useful if you happen to encounter occasional crashes to desktop (CTDs) with Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR.
Please configure the autosave interval through the server GUI as outlined here.
FSKneeboard automatically deletes older snapshots and keeps only the latest 5.
If you need to restore a flight, you can find your autosaves inside your FSKneeboard-Server folder in the subdirectory autosave, e.g. C:\Tools\fskneeboard\autosave.
REMARKS:
- This feature is an experimental feature. It's not bulletproof and may require some tweaking in the future. Use it at your own discretion and please provide feedback!
- When the panel is hidden via the hotkey it is technically still there in your 3D space. Any attempt to control cockpit instrumentation that is hidden "behind" your invisible kneeboard will not work. The panel still intercepts your 3D cursor. Please make sure to position your kneeboard panel in a way that would allow you to interact with your cockpit instrumentation all the time, no matter if the panel is hidden or not!
You can define a master hotkey to toggle the visibility of the FSKneeboard ingame panel. The hotkey can be configured through the server GUI as described here.
When inside the game, you'll have to open the FSKneeboard panel ONCE by clicking it on the toolbar. For the rest of the flight, you can use the configured hotkey to toggle the panel's visibility as desired.
If you like, you can use your HOTAS configuration software to map this hotkey/shortcut to any button on your HOTAS.
Most features of FSKneeboard can be configured through the server's graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI has five Panels:
FSKneeboard - Control Panel
The control panel offers a general overview over the status of the FSKneeboard server component.
It also allows you start your local copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator as long as you have configured your Flight Simulator version on the Settings Panel. From here, you may also launch the PDF Importer Tool.
The IP address found in the Server Status row can be clicked to open FSKneeboard in your local web browser.
If a new version of FSKneeboard is available, a notification on the bottom of the window will let you know.
The settings panel is where you can configure general settings that control the behaviour of FSKneeboard.
FSKneeboard - Settings Panel
The main sections here cover MSFS autostart, autosave and logging.
- Under "Flight Simulator Version", please tell FSKneeboard if you have installed the Steam or Windows Store version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. This will FSKneeboard tell where to look for and how to start Flight Simulator when you either click the "Launch Flight Simulator" button on the Control Panel or activate the autostart option
- Under "Flight Simulator Autostart" you can enable or disable whether FSKneeboard should automatically launch your copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator when you start FSKneeboard
- Click this button to restart the guided tour inside the FSKneeboard ingame panel. If you missed out on it on your very first FSKneeboard experience (thought, you could figure it all out for yourself, eh?) click here to get a second chance.
- The "Autosave Interval" allows you to configure an interval (in minutes) for creating backup "snapshots" of your flight simulator sessions as described here.
- The "Log Level" will be "Off" by default. If you run into any issues while using FSKneeboard and want to report a bug, it makes sense to set this to "Debug" and then reproduce the bug you want to report. That way, I will have detailed information that can use to assess and analyze what is going on. You will, hopefully, not need this setting on a daily basis :-)
The API Keys section allows you to add your own API keys to FSKneeboard to either replace "global" the "hardcoded" API keys shared by all FSKneeboard users for better performance or to enable additional services within FSKneeboard (like Bing Maps, for example).
For services that you own a custom API key for you can also select to deactivate and bypass the local map tile cache for. This may, depending on your internet connection and/or data volume restrictions enhance your experience with FSKneeboard even further.
Currently, openAIP and Bing Maps are supported with custom API keys.
Replace the "global" API key shared by all FSKneeboard users with your own API key. You can obtain your own API key by creating a new account with openAIP. Then go here and request your API key by clicking the "+ REQUEST NEW API KEY HERE".
Enable the Bing Maps layers in the map module by providing your own Bing Maps API key. At the time of writing this, a "basic" level API key is available for free when you sign up at https://www.bingmapsportal.com/.
-
Browse to https://www.bingmapsportal.com/ and click "Sign in". Sign in with your Microsoft Account login credentials. If you don't have one, create a new Microsoft account.
Bing Maps - Sign In
-
Once logged in to the "Dev Center", hover over "My account" and click "My Keys" from the dropdown menu.
Bing Maps - My Keys
-
Select "Click here to create a new key"
Bing Maps - Create New Key (1)
-
Fill out the form. For the form as shown below. For the application name, type something with FSKneeboard. This is just for you so you'll know what this key was created for. For "Key Type" choose "Basic" and for "Application Type" select "Dev/Test". Then click "Create".
Bing Maps - Create New Key (2)
-
Finally, click the "Show Key"-link to reveal your new API key. Copy it to your clipboard and paste it into the Settings Tab of the FSKneeboard server application. Make sure to close and open the ingame panel for the changes to sync over.
Bing Maps - Import Key
The hotkeys panel allows you to setup hotkey(s) to use with FSKneeboard.
For the time being, hotkeys are still considered to be experimental as described here.
FSKneeboard - Hotkeys Panel
The follwing hotkeys are available,
1.) Master Hotkey: The Master Hotkey enables you to toggle the visibility the FSKneeboard ingame panel inside Flight Simulator. 2.) Maps Hotkey: Use the Maps Hotkey to navigate to the maps page inside the FSKneeboard ingame panel. 3.) Charts Hotkey: Use the Charts Hotkey to navigate to the charts page inside the FSKneeboard ingame panel. 4.) Notepad Hotkey: Use the Notepad Hotkey to navigate to the notepad page inside the FSKneeboard ingame panel.
You can customize your hotkeys by selecting any letter from the dropdown menu and also toggle modifiers (by clicking the checkboxes next to them), so that your custom keyboard shortcut does not interfere with any other hotkeys that may have been configured elsewhere in the Simulator.
Select [Off] to completely deactivate the hotkey in question.
The console window is mainly used for debugging purposes. It shows a bunch of detailed information about the active FSKneeboard session.
FSKneeboard - Console Panel
Finally, there is the support panel which offers some links to the FSKneeboard troubleshooting guide (which is part of this document you are reading right now) as well as to our community Discord.
With the PDF importer you can convert and import any PDF document (be it a chart, a checklist, notes etc.) into your FSKneeboard charts folder. To start the PDF Importer Tool, click the button labelled Launch PDF Importer Tool which can be found on the Control Panel.
FSKneeboard - PDF Importer
The FSKneeboard Importer Tool is a separate application and does NOT come preinstalled with FSKneeboard itself. (This descision had to be made due to licensing implications.) If you are using the PDF Importer Tool for the very first time, you will be prompted to download the required application, which is a separate module distributed under the AGPL license.
FSKneeboard - PDF Import Panel, Download Prompt
- Click YES to allow FSKneeboard to download the required files for you.
- Click NO to prevent the automatic download and abort the import process. Alternatively, you can download the importer from GitHub and then manually place the downloaded files inside the folder /pdf-importer. Then start the import again.
There are 3 buttons on the top that allow you to manage your chart import folder.
- Open Import Directory: Click this button to open the
!importdirectory. This is the folder where you can copy and paste all the PDF documents to which you want to import. Inside the!importdirectory you can also create subfolders to manage your imported documents properly. - Refresh File List: After you have placed your PDF documents inside the
!importfolder, click this button to update the file list below. - Clear Import Directory: After all PDF files have been successfully imported, you can click this button to wipe the
!importdirectory from any documents to make it ready for the next import.
The middle section shows a list of all documents that reside inside your !import folder. If this list stays empty, make sure to click the Open Import Directory button first to verify that your files are in the correct folder. Then click Refresh File List.
Please note: This list only acts as a tool for you to see which files FSKneeboard has detected in your !import folder. You CANNOT select or unselect any files here.
In the bottom section there are 2 more buttons:
- Start Import: Click here to import the files that currently reside inside your
!importfolder. - Open Output Directory: Click here to open the imported directory. You can now grab your files from here and organize them inside your charts folder as you like (or simply leave them here).
REMARKS:
Please note that FREE users may also download and use the importer tool. The tool itself is free software and the tool's source code is open source and available under the GNU Affero General Public License for anyone to tinker with, learn from and build upon. The FSKneeboard Charts Viewer itself, that most people are going to use the imported charts with, is, however, only available to PRO supporters.
You can also connect to FSKneeboard with your browser outside of MSFS or even a second device. When starting FSKneeboard (and after connecting to MSFS) you will receive some information like this in the Console Panel's output:
=== INFO: Connecting Your Tablet
Besides using the FSKneeboard ingame panel from within Flight Simulator
you can also connect to FSKneeboard with your tablet or web browser.
To do so please enter follwing IP address and port into the address bar.
FSKneeboard Server-Address: 192.168.178.5:9000
This IP address and port are also shown on the Control Panel when FSKneeboard is connected.
Simply take that IP-address and port information and type it into the address bar of your browser on your local machine, your laptop or tablet (which has to be on the same WIFI, obviously).
The FSKneeboard server can be started with several commandline arguments to further customize its behaviour. In general, all you need to do is add them behind your "fskneeboard.exe" shortcut.
--log [level]: Set log level and enable logging to file.[level]can be any ofdebug | info | warn | error | off(defaults tooff). Use together with flag--verboseto also log tostdout. This will override/adjust the settings previously set through the GUI. Also, if you encounter issues during FSKneeboard startup, runningfskneeboard.exe --log debugis the way to go!--verbose: Enable verbose mode.--wipemaptilecaches: Remove all cached map tiles from the internal map tile cache.--noupdatecheck: Prevent FSKneeboard from checking the GitHub API for updates every three days.--quietshutdown: Prevent FSKneeboard from showing a prompt after disconnecting from MSFS.--maxramusage [number of bytes]: Set the maximum memory footprint shared across all maptile caches to[number of bytes]bytes (defaults to 8 _ 256 _ 1024 * 1024 bytes, roughly 2 GB).
Quietshutdown Shortcut
There are typically two reasons why this can happen:
- First, make sure that you have opened up MSFS's ingame toolbar. In 2D mode, that happens automatically when you hover your mouse over the chevron on the very top of the window. In VR mode you need to press the
[TAB]key to bring up this toolbar! Now, double-check whether the FSKneeboard icon appears on that toolbar or not. If it does, then click it. Issue solved :-)- Second, if the icon does not appear, it is very likely that the ingame panel was installed to the wrong directory. To identify the proper community folder please read the next section and then come back... Got your community folder location? Great! Now uninstall FSKneeboard and run the installer again. When prompted to enter your community folder location, enter the community folder path that you have just identified. Restart MSFS and the panel should appear.
Here's how to localize your active community folder with 100% certainty:
- Start MSFS and wait for the main menu to be loaded.
- Now click Options > General
- Open the "Developers"-settings-page, which is located at the bottom of the list on the left
- Turn on "Developers Mode"
- A new menu bar will appear on the top of your screen. Select Tools > Virtual File System
- Now you can locate the community folder under "Watched Bases"
This can happen if, for whatever reason,
fskneeboard.execannot writesimconnect.dll. Use your windows search to search for simconnect.dll (or download a copy somewhere on the interwebs) and copy it to the same directoryfskneeboard.exeis located!
That is a false positive and a well-known problem with software written in GO. Please make sure to read the section HELP!!! Why Does My Virus-Scanning Software Think This Program Is Infected? below.
Due to the limited capabilities of the browser engine that is embedded in Flight Simulator, the charts viewer can only display charts in png format. You will have to convert your charts. FSKneeboards PDF Converter does that for you. Also, there is a multitude of pdf-to-png converters available online for free. Alternatively, you may want to take a look at GIMP, which is a freeware that also enables you to convert pdf files to png locally. If you know about other options, please reach out and let me know so that I can add them to this readme file.
If the rate limit of the global FSKneeboard openAIP API key gets exceeded, the openAIP server will refuse to serve more tiles. If you encounter this problem, please create and register your own API key as described here.
You can always reach out to me via Discord, which is the fastest way to get in touch. Please visit https://discord.fskneeboard.com to get support.
Also, you can run
fskneeboard.exe --log debugto make FSKneeboard write a detailed log which will help me to analyze what might be going wrong on your end. Please DO NOT share this log publicly, as it may contain your email address and other license information!
This project was inspired by two amazing community projects. Without them, it would have taken me an incredible amount of time building the initial version of this mod on my own. Hence, I want to thank the two for the "headstart":
- The original server was forked from lian/msfs2020-go.
- The original client/ingame panel was inspired by bymaximus/msfs2020-toolbar-window-template.
Great work, guys! Thanks for sharing your work with us!!!
- Helicopter Icon provided by SVGRepo.
- Other Icons provided by FontAwesome.
- Leaflet JS
- Leaflet Rotate
- Leaflet Nautiscale
- Shepherd.js
- JavaScript-MD
- BoltDB
- fyne
- gopsutil
- go-maptilecache
- go-update-checker
- The Traffic Pattern Sample Chart is in the public domain and sourced from Wikimedia
- The Weather Forecast Sample Chart is in the public domain and sourced from Wikimedia
- The Approach Sample Chart is in the public domain and sourced from Wikimedia
Licenses for 3rd party software and libraries can be found in the license folder
Program zips and installers of FSKneeboard FREE are released and uploaded here.
If you decide to support the development of this mod by buying a copy of FSKneeboard PRO here you will be emailed a link where you can download the FSKneeboard PRO binaries.
If you have suggestions or issues, please feel free to reach out to me or create an issue within the Github repository. You may also add stuff yourself. Pull requests are very welcome!
From official golang website https://golang.org/doc/faq#virus
"This is a common occurrence, especially on Windows machines, and is almost always a false positive. Commercial virus scanning programs are often confused by the structure of Go binaries, which they don't see as often as those compiled from other languages."
Personal statement:
If you don't trust the binary my suggestion would be two-fold:
- Step 1: Upload the binaries to virustotal and see how many scanners throw a positive.
- Step 2: Clone the repository and build the binary yourself. Everything is open-source, hence anyone who knows anything about building software can check the codebase for harmful code...
Generally speaking (and that's true for anything you download from the web): If you don't trust the code, don't execute it! Especially NOT with elevated rights(!!!) I can understand anyone who doesn't want to run the software and appreciate how people ask questions instead of simply running the server...
At the end of the day, it is your call. If you don't trust me and a binary that is flagged by a virus scanner, I do respect that. It's common sense, and I am not happy with the entire false-positive situation either. That is why in the mid-term I am planning to migrate the entire server component from GO to .NET, which should hopefully help to mitigate the issue.
However, here's a virus report from virustotal for the binaries of Version 1.2.0. Please note how many virus scanners do NOT flag the server as a positive. Please upload your own copy of FSKneeboard to virustotal to see the results of the latest version for yourself.
Virustotal Report of Version 1.2.0
If you enjoy this project, please consider buying me a coffee and/or donating to the guys I mentioned in the Attribution section above. It allows us to keep developing addons and mods like these ones and making them available for free. Any amount is welcome! Thank you.
If you want to go above and beyond, you're invited to kindly check out my Patreon, which is another highly welcome way to show your support of and love for the project. You can find it here: https://patreon.com/chrisvomrhein
Here's a list of mods I have published for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Please let me know how you like them and share your thoughts in our community Discord.
- FSKneeboard - FSKneeboard is the All-In-One Solution for VR-Pilots: Maps, Charts and Notes inside your VR-Cockpit!
- FSdesktop - FSdesktop is a tool to monitor and control all your essential desktop applications directly from your Flight Simulator cockpit. Build for VR Enthusiasts!