Sinkrate 2: a ingame-toolbar-panel for the microsoft flightsimulator MSFS 2020

As ingame-panel "Sinkrate 2" shows aircraft-related informations according to the active aircraft.

Tabs contain further aircraft-related informations about departure, cruising and arrival like air-v-speeds.

E.g. clicking the "Departure"-tab will show take-off-velocities and -settings.

For complex models like the Douglas DC-3 additional informations might be shown e.g. for starting the engines.

Like before you may calculate sink-rates and ascend-rates easily with aircraft-based default-values.

Additionally measurement units can be converted, displayed aircrafts can be changed and all aircraft-properties can be listed.

Inside an active flightplan an info-document might show suitable text and images.
Opening the toolbar-panel means trying to scroll to the right place according to an active flightplans position.
You may put own documents in several subdirectories.

"Sinkrate 2" is written in php, javascript, html and css.

All data and structures (aircraft data, elements, entries, defaults and functions) may be changed in simple editors.

Online-Demo

Here is an online-demo showing data for the Cessna 172 Skyhawk or the more complex model of the Douglas DC-3.

Or a flightplaninfo-document scolling to the ED63-airfield-infos of Pleidelsheim (enlarge image via click).

The web-frontend uses javascript-functionalities.

The font-sizes of the ingame-panel may be changed to fit your monitor (see Testing).

Requirements

You might create a directory c:\tools for software tools like PHP, Sinkrate 2, continue-flightplan e.g.

There are no regular installations, because your windows-system will not be touched.
There are only some files in some directories which might be deleted in case of dislike.
None of the mentioned software-tools need a change of settings in Windows or the flightsimulator.

PHP

Required is an "installation" of the PHP programming language (if not done yet).

Get a zip-download of PHP and extract it in any directory (e.g. c:\tools\php).

Sinkrate 2 and continue-flightplan have been developed with PHP 7 and should run even with older or newer versions.

Download

Sinkrate website and ingame-panel

There are 2 downloads: Sinkrate-2.0 as webpage and the ingame-panel for MSFS 2020.

Sinkrate-2.0-webpage 35 kB
Sinkrate-2.0-ingame-panel 5kB

Please have a look at the credits for the underlying work of maximus, RoscoHead und Joseph Fusco.

Country-Subdirectories

The sinkrate-directory contains a "documents"-subdirectory, where several country-subdirectories may reside.

Installation

As mentioned before: there is no regular installation.

You only have to create directories, where some files are to be copied.
A deinstallation might be done with deleting these directories.

sinkrate-2-x.zip

Create a directory for the sinkrate-folder, e.g. c:\tools.
Extract the sinkrate-2-x.zip-structure inside this directory.
The sinkrate-files (in this example) will stay afterwards in c:\tools\sinkrate.

The sinkrate-folder contains a subdirectory "documents", where you may put
- a flightplaninfo-textfile
- or country-related subdirectories.

When flying with an regular flightplan the sinkrate-ingame-panel will show this text-document as default
trying to scroll to a suitable part of the text.

panel-sinkrate.zip

Open the community-directory of your Microsoft Flightsimulator 2020 (How to locate the "community folder").
Copy the panel-sinkrate.zip-folder panel-sinkrate into your community-directory.

By the way: The names of the community-subdirectories can be choosen freely.
The folder-name "panel-sinkrate" has been choosen for a better viewability when listing them in a file manager.

Webserver

The ingame-panel works as a simple webbrowser expecting data at http://127.0.0.1/index.php.

PHP gives you a local webserver, which can be used by the ingame-toolbar-panel.

The local webserver allows to show the ingame-panel without iframe-security-restrictions.

Furthermore "Sinkrate 2" needs access to local files of your flightsimulator, which isn't possible from an external webserver.

Starting the local PHP-webserver can be done (automatically in a batch file) like this:
c:\tools\php\php -S 127.0.0.1:80 -t PATH-TO-SINKRATE-2.

-S starts PHP as webserver (reachable under the given IP-adress and port).
PHP is running as local webserver and therefore not reachable from outside.
-t tells the path to the webservers root directory.
Here are the sinkrate-files and maybe the subdirectories for flightplan-infos.

Common example: c:\tools\php\php -S 127.0.0.1:80 -t c:\tools\sinkrate

Inside a batch-file: start /MIN cmd /c c:\tools\php\php -S 127.0.0.1:80 -t c:\tools\sinkrate

Stopping the local PHP-webserver is done in my case with taskkill /F /IM php.exe (also inside a batch-file).

You may look at the infos about Running in a batch-file.

Testing

After

calling the batch-file develop-web-environment.bat (e.g. in c:\tools\sinkrate)
will automatically start a local PHP-server-instance
(e.g.: c:\tools\php\php -S 127.0.0.1:80 -t c:\tools\sinkrate)
and opens a webbrowser with the adress 127.0.0.1.

Here you should see the info-panel.

In any flight inside the flightsimulator the toolbar should contain an "i"-Pictogram.

Click the "i"-pictogram and adapt the windows size and position if necessary.

The font-sizes may be changed to fit your monitor.

Inside the file c:\tools\sinkrate\formate.css you may edit body { font-size:1.2em; }.

1.2 em might fit for 1920*1080-px-monitors, higher resolutions might be fine with e.g. 1.6 em.

Changes will be visible inside the flightsimulator after minimizing/restoring or reloading the panel.

Usage

You may prefer a computer mouse for the sinkrate-info-panel, because keyboard-signals can execute commands in the simulator.

Tabs

Commons:

common infos for each aircraft
specific annotations
infos about deviant circumstances

Departure:

runway length for starting
v-speeds for starting
infos about "short-field"-starting

Cruise:

v-speeds for cruising
cruise altitudes
range

Approach:

runway length for landing
special infos
v-speeds for landing

Calculations:

Changing field-values in the "Calculation"-tab can easily be done with the mouse
- with clicking the scroll-symbols in the right field-area
- or via clicking into the field and scrolling the mouse-wheel.
Each of 4 fields of the "Calculation"-tab might be choosen as calculation-target.
Changing values of any other field will recalculate the target value.
Also ascend- and sinkrates as well as the needed time will be calculated.
The calculatable fields are "distance in nm", "height difference in ft", "ground speed in kts" und "ascend- and sinkrate in ft/min".
The calculation of e.g. "distance in nm" is a approach to a more complex reality.

model-name inside the flightsimulator
name of a existing (or activated) flightplan-info file
in an active flightplan you may navigate through country-directories and files
and mark an existing textfile as "active"
converting units
show infos of another aircraft
list some aircraft properties to compare

aircraft.ini

Sinkrate 2.0 tries:

to read the simulators current aircraft
and to show its information in the ingame-panel.

Therefor corresponding entries in aircraft.ini are processed.

This file contains all needed information about some aircraft.

Changing values and infos or deleting or adding aircrafts can easily be done with a simple editor.

The file aircraft.ini contains additional informations about the structure of sections, variables and variable-prefixes.

Changes can be viewed in
- a browser with reloading the local URL 127.0.0.1 (with a running PHP-webserver)
- in the flightsimulator e.g. with minimizing and restoring the panel-windows.

Running in a batch-file

The ingame-toolbar-panel "Sinkrate 2.0" contains an URL calling a local webserver,
which i comfortably start (or close) together with the flightsimulator via a batch file.

You may have a look into my batch-file as template for free editing.

Credits

The Sinkrate-Info-Panel is inspired by the cleaned code of RoscoHead based on the work of maximus.

The CSS-Layout of the javascript-free tab-bars is from Joseph Fusco.