Il2 Flight Planner Alternative

[WWGeezer]

After looking at Frylock's angle calculation, I was wondering if there was something out there that took less math.  If you own an ipad or something similar, I ran into a pretty nifty application for doing angle measurements on a jpeg.  If you make a decent resolution screen shot of one of Cephas's maps, than just save it to your photo library on your document.  This application superimposes three dots on your image and you make a north / south line and than you can rotate the other dots around to very quickly get your angle 

It is free but for $1.99 you can eliminate the ads.  You also can save the image to file once you have plotted the angle.  Does not give you distance, but getting the angle quickly is very handy.

The nice thing compared to the Flight Planner app is you can save start with  the actual mission map with the icons on targets,  so you can quickly calculate the angle home.

 

 

[WWCraven]

Would any of these alternatives be useful?  Flight planner only allows you to plan one flight while Ruler allows you to plane multiple flights.  Both links below are from the GB forums and the Ruler link is still good, just re-downloaded the file.

Flight Planner is an online tool, Ruler is an offline tool, stick it on your desktop and run.

https://www.il2flightplanner.com/

Ruler_2021, https://mega.nz/file/SywEwTZA#TE9JzaLUFDJq4acOKKIM8ZChYnMLYF-YX26UswlIWnc

[WWGeezer]

Both of these are very good tools for early planning.  Sounds like with some future improvements there may be more tools in the Il2 software itself.  But what it doesn't have is the mission icons and the airfields to navigate to.  What I am experimenting with are tools to use with Cephas's sandbox mission maps to plot routes quickly ( without having to do a lot of  math) and give Gold Flight the basic info needed for high altitude bombing on the fly.  It really is taking on the role of Navigator

So far I have found two good applications, one for measuring angles on a jpeg file, the other for calibrating the scale of any map image and giving you distances on a PDF file.  

Will share more as I get my work flow nailed, but it might look something like this

1. Join Mission on Server
2. Take screen shot of Map image, place in Drop Box Folder ( this step would be eliminated if Hi Res Map published ahead of time ) 
3.  Open up file on Ipad, discuss with flight lead the first target, use Angle Meter app to get Bearing for both Outbound and returning, announce to Gold Flight and Escorts
4. Do quick calc for Wind correction 
5. Put the goggles back on and get in the air.  

 

[WWSittingduck]

yeah, it seems to me the simplest solution might be to just have them on the map...(though Cephas might disagree with me)

no issues for VR users, and no second party software for pilots to have to get.  Plus, not all of us have, or have room for a second monitor

 

[WWGeezer]

If all it is is about angles, I think I can do that.   If Cephas publishes the map ahead of time that is good enough.  I like his sandbox and I would hate to force him to put a bunch of angles on it just so we can navigate.  Tis a bit of an experiment

[WWDarkdiz]

What? Someone actually wants to be a Nav?

[WWGeezer]

So I give Angle Meter a big thumbs up.  It was simple enough to use in mid mission, that I could go to level auto pilot, peek out from under the VR headgear and set the points to get the proper angle for the flight home.  It uses the photo gallery on the ipad, so as long as I have  a decent jpeg of the mission map, very easy to pull up, pick a target and go.  Was even taking revised readings on the flight home based on landmarks.  Doesn't give you distances, but the bearing information is what we are usually digging for.

[WWCraven]

Great news, IL2 Mission Planner has been revived by-332FG-ServError and a few others.  Now hosted on Github, read post here https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/77398-il2-mission-planner-revived/

It seems to work ok, did a couple of quick flight paths based from target memory on the RU Rzhev map.  Can we utilize "fetching of a JSON mission plan" off our open servers?
 

Quote

 

I'm making a thread for visibility and issue tracking given that the original pinned thread isn't particularly eye catching since it has been inactive for so long.

So, with many thanks to @curiousGamblerrfor his original project/code base, and @NO.20_Tharian for additional patches, I've taken on the task of reviving his mission planner.

The site lives at https://serverror.github.io/IL2-Mission-Planner/

and its source lives at https://github.com/ServError/IL2-Mission-Planner

Given that this is hosted on Github and has been stripped of all external dependencies, there's a near zero chance that this will go dead in any timespan where it would still be useful.

I've taken the liberty of adding altitude and compensating the travel time with it once different altitude points are edited, as well as adding some new drawing modes and other little details. The source page includes instructions for how to run a map server yourself if you're so inclined.

If you run a game server and have web hosting, and would like to automate the fetching of a JSON mission plan, you can use the

#json-url=

tag and pass it the full URL of your server's mission JSON. Keep in mind that it'll need to be hosted at an https site, and you may need to look into enabling CORS resource usage on your web server (I don't make these rules, web browsers do). If you wanted to have a "current mission" link, you'd have a script running to occasionally link/redirect a reference like output.json to your current map's json file.

Bugs are preferably to be reported on the source tracking page listed above.

 

 

[WWSittingduck]

Great news!

What I did notice is the "share" option is grayed out.  

Quote

The source page includes instructions for how to run a map server yourself if you're so inclined.

this seems to be use full reading

[WWSittingduck]

ok, I just read it, and don't have a friggin clue as to what they are say to do...