XPMP2

XPMP2 - Developer’s documentation

These pages, available as GitHub pages, document both usage and internals of the XPMP2 library.

Content and availability status:

• Requirements
• Feature Details
  • Model Matching
  • TCAS Target and AI/multiplayer support
  • Additional map layer
  • Wake Turbulence Support
  • Sound Support, by X-Plane 12 or via FMOD sound library
  • Contrails
  • Shared dataRefs providing textual aircraft / flight information to interested 3rd party plugins
  • XPMP2 Remote functionality
• Coding, Building, Deployment
  • Building XPMP2, and the Sample plugin
  • Brief “HowTo” guide
  • Doxgen-generated code documentation
  • Provide some general “how it works” background, can base on kuronekos wiki (but shorter) and on some of my additions
  • What to ship so that it works
• CSL Packages
  • File format definition for xsb_aircraft.txt
  • CSL model dataRefs supported by XPMP2
  • Copying .obj files on load for replacing animation dataRefs and textures

Requirements

• XPMP2 implements instancing, so it requires X-Plane 11.10 or later
• CSL models in OBJ8 format (ie. older OBJ7 models are no longer supported)
• Potentially an FMOD license if built with FMOD sound support, see Sound Support

Coding, Building, Deployment

These aspects are relevant for developers using XPMP2 in their own plugin:

Building XPMP2

XPMP2 can be included into your projects as GitHub submodule, and into a CMake build plan via add_subdirectory. XCode projects, Visual Studio solutions, and a Docker environment for Linux and Mac OS builds are provided. The details are documented here.

How to Use XPMP2

This part will probably need more attention, but find some first information here and study the working sample plugin available as separate Github repo XPMP2-Sample.

API and Code Documentation

All header (and code) files are documented using Doxygen-style comments. The generated doxygen files are checked in, too, so that the are available online:

• Main Page
• XPMPMultiplayer.h - Initialisation and general control functions
• XPMPAircraft.h - Defines the main class XPMP2::Aircraft, which represents an aircraft. Subclass this class in your plugin!

Backward Compatibility

XPMP2 came into being as replacement for the original libxplanemp and should still be largely compatible. But time has moved on and backwards compatibility is no longer a prime goal. Still, this information on backward compatibility is retained just in case you still find some old plugin that needs libxplanemp replaced with XPMP2.

Deploying Your Plugin

Apart from the binaries that you build you will need to ship the files provided here in the ‘Resources’ folder. Also, users will need to install CSL models. Find more details here.

CSL Models and Packages

These aspects are relevant for CSL model developers and package providers:

xsb_aircraft.txt File Format

The xsb_aircraft.txt file defines the content of one CSL model packages. It´s format is define here.

dataRefs available to CSL Models

To drive CSL models’ ANIMations, a long list of dataRefs is provided by XPMP2. See its documentation here.

Copying .obj files on load

CSL packages come in different flavours. Popular ones for general use are the Bluebell and the X-CSL packages. Both come with different history. For XPMP2 to use all their features it needs to change their .obj files. Performing these changes is built into XPMP2. See here for details.

Links to outside locations

TCAS Override

The TCAS Override approach explains how TCAS information is provided, the classic multiplayer dataRefs are maintained and how 3rd party plugins can access this information. XPMP2 publishes data via the sim/cockpit2/tcas/targets dataRefs.

Wake Turbulence

X-Plane’s approach to Wake Turbulence support for TCAS targets is described in this blog post featuring LiveTraffic screenshots and this article on the dataRef details.

Original libxplanemp

• TwinFan’s libxplanemp fork on GitHub (now read-only and archived, but accessible)
  • wiki explaining differences to the kuroneko fork
• kuroneko’s fork on GitHub, a long-time standard and basis of other important forks
  • kuroneko’s wiki including notes on CSL development

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