Download

Download links for both FlightDesk and Live ATIS are available above; members must login to the page in order to download the software. Please be sure you download and install both FlightDesk and Live ATIS from the two links provided above.

FlightDesk

Overview

FlightDesk is flight planning software that optimizes the environment and community created by controllers, pilots, and observers. By filing flight plans through FlightDesk, pilots allow our controllers to focus on their jobs. Thanks to the tremendous contribution of a few individuals, all of our controllers are able to view information about flights in their airspace, and have a convenient method of passing information about pilots back and forth.

Version History
Version 1.1 - May 2010: Version 1.1 upgrades several internal features of FlightDesk and adds some new elements to the program including enhanced tracking. The most noticeable addition is the Map tab which allows users to track pilots on a moving map.

Version 1.0 - June 2009: After a long period of Beta testing that included more than 150 patches, FlightDesk Version 1.0 is here! Throughout our testing process, member feedback, as well as the voluntary assistance of several BVA members, helped shape FlightDesk into the incredible piece of software that it is today.

One of the major advantages of having Internet Explorer embedded in FlightDesk is that members can write their own internet applications to be published and contained within FlightDesk. If you are interested in creating a useful application for our community, write a web-based application which uses IE or Firefox as a client. If the application works on your preferred browser it will work on FlightDesk's. Please e-mail Bill for more information on how to integrate your program with FlightDesk.

Special Thanks

FlightDesk was created by Bill ("WhiskeySierraOne"), the founder and president of Microvisual, a software company that creates visualizations to assist in analyzing and solving complex problems. FlightDesk has been licensed to BVA by Microvisual.

In addition to Bill's incredibly generous contribution to our community, we would also like to thank Pierre ("Pierul"), who worked tirelessly to collect coordinates and data of thousands of airports to expand FlightDesk's tracking database. Pierre also created "HelpDesk", a collection of web pages that describe the workings of FlightDesk and help pilots file flight plans correctly. Pierre shines not only as a cartographer, but also for his uncanny ability to detect the most subtle bugs.

Great programs are the result of the contributions of dozens of individuals. For example, we must recognize the enormous contribution of Kyle ('MavericksFan412003') throughout the early stages of design. Kyle was instrumental in helping us engineer the difficult compromises between practicality and usability.

We are excited about the features that we'll continue to add to FlightDesk. We are particularly excited about hosting Internet Explorer as an application platform. We look forward to integrating applications written by BVA users who have an interest in programming web applications.

Live ATIS

Overview

Live ATIS represents the culmination of over two years of development aimed at creating a practical, realistic program that reflects the real-world process of listening to an ATIS recording created by an air traffic controller. Live ATIS interacts with FSX to allow users to listen to ATIS broadcasts from controllers through aircraft radios.

Version History

Version 1.0.0.0 - 1 August 2011: Initial Release
Version 1.0.1.0 - 23 August 2011: Minor release fixing a few back-end problems that were noticed after V1.0.

Special Thanks
Thanks go to the following people for their help in making Live ATIS possible:

Bill (‘WhiskeySierraOne’)
Brandon (‘bcarter755’)
Domenic (‘leadbottom1’)
Evan (‘evanet’)
Ian (‘flyin305’)
Pierre (‘pierul’)
Ross (‘Roscoe_P_78’)