American Airlines Virtual

Please help choose the next ACARS we integrate by voting in the poll and posting if needed.

Richard Zepf wrote: I think this VA would do very nicely with it's own custom ACARS. With all the bells and whistles.

I would, and I am sure others aswell, be happy to Donate a little $$$...

Unfortunately, it doesn't take $$$$, it takes time-time-time. BUT it's an option, and if that's what people want, I'll make it happen.

I guess there are about 4 main ACARS programs.
1. FSACARS, the one we have now, seems to work well. Works with FS9 and FSX.
2. XACARS, a little simpler than FSACARS to set up and use. Works with FS9, FSX and X-Plane.
The above 2 are freeware.
Now we get on to the payware.
3. FSFK (Flight Keeper) I have used this, it takes a little more to set up but works well. Works with FS9 and FSX. We may be able to get a price reduction for our pilots as they have discounts for Virtual Airlines.
4. FSPassengers, I have tried this but I have not used it as for ACARS. Works with FS9 and FSX.
It would be nice to have them all, that way we could cater for all tastes.

Christopher Dahlquist wrote:Ok...I'll be the idiot here.

Whats an ACARS and how are we expecting it to use it?

I've used FSPassenger for a long time for tracking flights and Passengers, but Im not sure how you are expecting to integrate it into AAV for FREPS.

Good question Chris. Go see this thread to learn about FSACARS at AAVirtual. http://www.aavirtual.com/forum/viewtopi ... 32&t=15538 To put it simply, it's an automatic flight reporting system, but it also logs many many flight statistics that we'll eventually have available in our on-line pilot log books.

Well I voted I don't use Acars in the poll because to be quite frank by the time I plan my flight and I'm ready to go at the gate I totally forget to open the acars program and I just do my flight, so personally doesn't really matter to me which one we use cause I can't gurantee I would remember to use it in the first place. I would have to go against Jeff though and say I don't want to see a mandation on having to use an ACARS program to file a flight. I think the pilot should have the "Option" to either auto file or manually file like I do.

Two points were made in this thread that I would like to emphasize. First we have talked about adding support for XPlane to our VA at some time in the future. We should keep in mind this is mind for any new software we use.

Second I agree with Jeff that at some point I would like to see our flight recording system required for filing flights. If we do decide to eventually make automatic FREP's mandatory it is best that we have freeware software instead of forcing our pilots to purchase software.