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Flight Simulator • FS Scenery Design Tools • Creating FlightSim Aircraft • Making FlightSim Scenery

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Tools for Flightsim Developers
Various software and development information


Hovercontrol Developer Forum
Open forum for Addon Development topics


Flightsim Development Articles
News and articles related Addon Development


Developer Screenshot Gallery
Images from developers with Addons in progress


Helicopter Pics for Developers
Photo images sorted by helicopter for developers


Additional Information about FlightSim Addon Development at Hovercontrol.com

About Addon Development

Popular flight simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Flight Simulator 2004, and X-Plane have built-in support for extending the software by means of Addons. This means that users of the flight simulator software can also create and add new Aircraft, Scenery, and other interesting utilities.

Many flight simulator users enjoy the creative process behind making new aircraft and scenery addons for flight simulator. It is hard work but can be rewarding and challenging. Seeing the finished product is quite a thrill!

At first, it can seem daunting to learn what tools and software are necessary to begin participating in flight simulator addon development. Not to mention all of the special tricks and techniques that are required to get aircraft and scenery addons to function as you envision.

We can't make the process easy for everyone. However, we want to do the best we can to offer support, information, and links to resources that will help to answer the difficult questions and to keep new addon developers moving in their creative journey.

We also offer a developer discussion board where flight simulator developers can ask questions and share information with one another. This is probably the most important skill to learn when starting out with flight simulator addon development. Because asking the right question, to the right people can save a new developer a ton of time and frustration.

If you think flight simulator addon development is for you, we hope that you give it a try and learn some of the necessary skills to make it happen and become a productive developer of flight simulator addons and utilities!
 

Recent Articles

FSDS - Creating Virtual Cockpits in FSX


Anyone who uses Flight Sim knows that a virtual cockpit is the 3D version of the aircraft cockpit. Today I am going to use FS Design Studio v3.5 to create a virtual cockpit for FSX. Not only will I make the main cockpit area, I’ll add a panel to it and show you the basics of how to get gauges onto a virtual cockpit panel. Making this tutorial simple while still coverimg all of the major details needed is difficult. So what I’ll do is use the Curtis Jenny that comes with FSDS v3.5 as a starting point. - Read On...

Making a Hard Surface and Using Attachpoints


One of the great new features of FSDS v3.5.1 is the ability to create hard and landable surfaces as well as using attach points to add lights. Today I’m going to create a building and add a helipad to the top of it. Then I’m going to add some lights around the helipad. - Read On...

Adding Parts Names to FSDS


In FS Design Studio, there are a series of standard part names that are used for animation, reference parts and so on. These part names are used when you want to animate a part. You select one of these special part names from the Part Properties dialog by clicking the Browse button by the Part Name and then select the specific part name you want. Did you know that you could customize this list? That’s right, you can add your own list of part names and even your own categories! - Read On...

FSDS - Animating Parts with a Tipped Axis


Previously I covered how to animate ailerons on the Cessna 172. I thought I should cover how to do something a little more complicated and show how to do animation on a part whose axis is not perfectly straight across or up and down. With that in mind, I looked through each project in the Samples folder of FSDS looking for a part that had a rudder that was not already animated for FSX and whose axis was not straight up and down. The only one I found was the Shorts 360, so I’ll use that one in this example of how to animate a rudder that has a tipped axis. - Read On...

Animation for FSX in FS Design Studio


Today I’d like to talk about animation. In the older versions of Flight Sim and FS Design Studio, animation was pretty easy. I could assign a part a specific name and create the model and it would be animated in Flight Sim. More modern Flight Sims like FS2004 and FSX require a bit more work to get the animation to work as desired. My hope is that this post won’t be too complicated. There are some technical terms and procedures that might sound frightening, but really aren’t that bad once you understand them. - Read On...


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