USER GUIDE

Contents
Entries marked with  are only available in the registered version.

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 5

Requirements ............................................................................................................................................................................ 5

Features .................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Copyrights and Licensing .......................................................................................................................................................... 6

Further Reading ........................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Support .............................................................................................................................................................. 8

Installation .......................................................................................................................................................... 9

Installation with FSX .................................................................................................................................................................. 9

Check Object Placement Tool Installation......................................................................................................................... 10

Installation without FSX ........................................................................................................................................................... 11

First Run .................................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Vista Oddities .......................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Run as Administrator ......................................................................................................................................................... 12

Setting up a safe Missions folder ...................................................................................................................................... 12

What’s in a Mission? ......................................................................................................................................... 14

Using the Mission Wizard ................................................................................................................................. 15

Getting Around ................................................................................................................................................. 19

Layout ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

Navigation.......................................................................................................................................................................... 19

What’s displayed ............................................................................................................................................................... 20

Error Highlighting ............................................................................................................................................................... 22

Changing the layout........................................................................................................................................................... 23

Changing the appearance ....................................................................................................................................................... 26

General Layout .................................................................................................................................................................. 26

Names and Colours ........................................................................................................................................................... 27

Editing.............................................................................................................................................................. 28

Basics ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 28

Using the Action Palette .......................................................................................................................................................... 28

 Attribute Editor ......................................................................................................................................................................... 32

Condition Editor ....................................................................................................................................................................... 34

Condition List ..................................................................................................................................................................... 35

Test Editing........................................................................................................................................................................ 35

Reward Criteria Editor ............................................................................................................................................................. 37

Advanced Editing  ......................................................................................................................................... 38

Recipes.................................................................................................................................................................................... 38

Using a Recipe .................................................................................................................................................................. 38

Creating a Recipe .............................................................................................................................................................. 39

Checking Compatibility ............................................................................................................................................................ 41

Starting from Scratch ........................................................................................................................................ 42

Changing the Template ........................................................................................................................................................... 42

Setting the Title ....................................................................................................................................................................... 42

Creating Synthetic Speech ...................................................................................................................................................... 43

Voices ................................................................................................................................................................................ 43

Saving the Mission ........................................................................................................................................... 44

Rewards .................................................................................................................................................................................. 44

Compiling to SPB .................................................................................................................................................................... 44

Backups ................................................................................................................................................................................... 45

Working with Models and Areas ........................................................................................................................ 46

Information Dialogs........................................................................................................................................... 47

All Errors .................................................................................................................................................................................. 47

Error-checking Rules ......................................................................................................................................................... 47

Dialog Script ............................................................................................................................................................................ 48

All Comments .......................................................................................................................................................................... 48

Debug Events .......................................................................................................................................................................... 48

Debugging your mission  ............................................................................................................................... 49

Adding Trace Actions .............................................................................................................................................................. 49

Monitoring the Mission ............................................................................................................................................................ 49

Tuning the Trace ..................................................................................................................................................................... 51

Keeping the Trace ................................................................................................................................................................... 51

Debugging Techniques ........................................................................................................................................................... 51

Creating MSI packages  ................................................................................................................................ 52

Simple Missions ...................................................................................................................................................................... 53

Extra MSI Services .................................................................................................................................................................. 57

Advanced Missions ................................................................................................................................................................. 58

Checking the Install ................................................................................................................................................................. 59

Licencing your Mission ............................................................................................................................................................ 59

Creating the Lock .............................................................................................................................................................. 59

Creating Keys - GUI .......................................................................................................................................................... 59

Creating Keys – Command-Line ....................................................................................................................................... 61

Patching your Mission ............................................................................................................................................................. 62

Getting the Patch Creation Tool ........................................................................................................................................ 63

Advanced configuration ................................................................................................................................ 65

Defining the properties ............................................................................................................................................................ 65

Dynamic Controls .................................................................................................................................................................... 67

Named Lists ............................................................................................................................................................................ 68

Named List Examples........................................................................................................................................................ 69

List of Lists .............................................................................................................................................................................. 71

Menu Quick Reference ..................................................................................................................................... 72

File ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 72

Edit .................................................................................................................................................................................... 73

View ................................................................................................................................................................................... 74

Layout ................................................................................................................................................................................ 75

Mission .............................................................................................................................................................................. 76

Debug ................................................................................................................................................................................ 77

Windows ............................................................................................................................................................................ 77

Help ................................................................................................................................................................................... 78

Context Menu .................................................................................................................................................................... 79

Keyboard Shortcuts ........................................................................................................................................................... 80

 FSX Mission Editor

I NTRODUCTION
With the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X, the new Missions feature looked like a great way of adding
customisable scenarios. However, as Microsoft pointed out in their SDK docs, the supplied ‘Object Placement
Tool’ – the mission editor – is far from easy to use.

This program is an attempt to cover what I felt to be the shortcomings in the default tool. It is designed to help
you create and test your mission logic without worrying about the technical details, while still using the original tool
for what it does best - placing scenery.

R EQUIREMENTS

- Microsoft Flight Simulator X (Original or Steam Edition)

- FSX SP1 or higher to use debugging features

- Microsoft Windows 7 or better

- 25Mb Diskspace

F EATURES

- Visual interface instead of list-based

- Drag-n-drop connections for linked nodes

- Full error-checking

- Configurable layout rules, to follow your expected mission flow

- Create synthetic speech for dialogs, for quick testing

- Add comments to the display

- Based largely on Microsoft’s own configuration files

- Mission Wizard to create simple point-to-point missions

... plus, for registered users ...

- ‘Recipes’ – collections of related nodes that do a single job

- Mission Wizard will create a mission based on a FlightPlan

- Runtime monitoring and debugging of missions

- Creates installable missions using MSI

- Create mission patches also using MSI

- Create error reports

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 FSX Mission Editor

- Create scripts for voice-actors

- Extendable using XML files to allow SimConnect extension authors to use visual editing with their
custom actions

- Unlimited nodes; the free version is limited to 50

- Paste function works with unlimited nodes; the free version will only paste one node at a time

C OPYRIGHTS AND L ICENSING

Most software has some kind of licence restrictions, even if nobody ever reads them! This is no exception.

Let’s get the 'small print' over with first. We know that anything in this big bad world can be reproduced within
minutes, no matter the copy protection, no matter what we write or how much we threaten, so the following text is
just meant for decent people to read. The ones we know that will take it to heart. The ones that have just
PURCHASED this product! In other words: YOU! (And, by the way, thank you for that!).

The intention is that the editor will be usable for free, but limited.

If you choose to buy a licence (thank you!) you get all the features, and also some more entitlements. To
enter your licence, use the “Help→Enter Licence...” menu item and paste the licence key into the box.

The mission system command extension (simvar.exe) may always be used in any mission for free. It should
not be distributed on its own, only with a mission you have written that requires it.

It may also be made available as a separate download, which you can refer to in your installation instructions.
However, it may only be distributed with your missions provided you are entitled to distribute the mission itself:

● If you are using the free version of the editor, you may use it to create missions which are themselves
distributed for free. You may distribute the command extension with your missions.

● If you as an individual have paid for a licence for the editor, you may use it to create missions which will
be sold as shareware for a small fee (less than $10 / €10). You may distribute the command extension
with your missions.

● If you are producing missions commercially, either for your own company or contracted to another
company, you need to approach JKCC for commercial licensing permission. This explicitly includes the
use of any feature, including debugging, error reporting and packaging, and is not limited to actual
mission script creation.

Only when commercial licensing is agreed can you distribute the command extension with your missions.

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 FSX Mission Editor

With the exception of simvar.exe as described above, no part of the editor may be copied, reproduced or
disassembled in any way, nor published in any way and by any means, without written agreement from JKCC.
The same holds true for any registration or license key or any other means of product protection.

The product is provided 'as is' and the publisher, author(s) and distributor(s) do not accept any liability for any
damages of any kind resulting from the use of the product in any way.

This product is not certified for real-world training or other real-world usage of any kind.

You may install and use the editor on more than one computer provided that only one copy at a time is in use,
except when agreed additional terms via a Commercial License.

FSX Mission Editor software and manual is copyright of JK Custom Coding Ltd.

‘Flight Simulator X' is copyright of Microsoft Corporation and Dovetail Games.

F URTHER R EADING

What this document won’t do is teach you how to build missions. There are others which will give you a
headstart, not least the SDK “Mission Creation” document, as well as two ‘getting started’ guides available on
http://www.fsinsider.com written by Microsoft:

http://www.fsinsider.com/developers/Pages/MissionBuildingTips.aspx

It is also extremely useful to look at others’ missions, in particular the example missions that are supplied with
the FSX Missions SDK. Any mission downloaded from e.g. http://www.flightsim.com or http://www.avsim.com can
be used for learning too.

For more mission-building tips, there are some particularly useful places:

https://fsxmissionshangar.com

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=59

http://fsxmission.com/live/modules.php?name=Forums

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mission_Creation

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 FSX Mission Editor

S UPPORT
If you need any support in installing or using the FSX Mission Editor, you can get it in different ways:

Register on the FSXMissionsHangar forums (https://fsxmissionshangar.com) and search. This is a community

of people who know everything there is to know about creating missions, including with this editor.

For technical issues only, contact us at https://www.lightroom-plugins.com/support/index.php?/p3d . Please

only do this if you are experiencing a confirmed bug or crash!

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 FSX Mission Editor

I NSTALLATION
Installation is like most other Windows programs – double-click the MSI file and it will check that you have
everything you need, then install the editor.

Before you can use it, it must have access to some of the FSX configuration files. This means that it must be
installed at least once on a PC with FSX installed.

I NSTALLATION WITH FSX

The first time it is run, and anytime after that it detects changes, it will offer to correct some errors in a number
of files provided by FSX. Normally you should allow these changes to be made. They don’t affect the operation of
the simulator at all.

The editor will work without these changes being made, but you will lose the ability to use drop-down lists in
a number of places and you will get unnecessary warnings or errors when loading missions created using the
default FSX Object Placement Tool.

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 FSX Mission Editor

C HECK O BJECT P LACEMENT T OOL I NSTALLATION

If you are having trouble getting the Object Placement Tool (OPT) set up correctly, choose the 'Help→Check
OPT Setup' menu item in the editor. This will verify that you have the right version of the SDK installed, and that
it is registered properly with FSX. If it isn't, it will register it for you.

It will check that:

• FSX is installed

• The SDK is installed

• The Object Placement Tool DLL is in the correct place

• The version of the OPT matches the version of FSX

• It is correctly registered and enabled in dll.xml, and will create a new one if it is damaged or missing

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 FSX Mission Editor

I NSTALLATION WITHOUT FSX

You can also install this on a machine without FSX available, for example if you want to continue your mission
design on the move but your laptop isn’t up to running FSX.

Install FSXME as normal by double-clicking ‘Setup.exe’ and following the prompts. Next you need to copy a
folder from your main PC, having already run FSXME on it at least once.

You will need to find your ‘Common Application Data’ folder. Likely locations are:

C:\Users\<Your Account>\AppData\Local\JKCC\Mission Editor for FSX

Once you have found it, you will need to copy this folder to the equivalent place on the PC without FSX
installed. Note that this folder isn’t in a fixed location, so take care if you are copying between different versions
of Windows.

You can also find the location of this folder on the Paths tab of the ‘Edit→Preferences’ dialog, as ‘Fallback
Path’. If you’re unsure about where to copy the folder to, run the editor, ignore the various warnings that appear
and check this dialog.

This folder will contain copies of some of your FSX configuration files. These can’t be included in the FSXME
setup program because they are owned by Microsoft and can’t be redistributed. It also contains other files that are
generated from any third-party BGLs, such as scenery addons, that you may have. These two sets of files are
used extensively for error-checking, providing drop-down lists and default values.

F IRST R UN

There are two things you need to do the first time you run the FSX Mission Editor.

The first time you run FSXME it will offer to create lists based on your particular FSX setup. It will work without
this, but you will not be able to use drop-down lists when selecting models or airport, or use the Wizard to create
new missions. These lists can be recreated later if need be. This should be done if you add new model BGLs
which you want to use in the editor.

When it is scanning the scenery files, it uses the FSX scenery library to work out where to look. Any files you
have visible to FSX should be indexed, with some exceptions; specifically, any BGL file which starts with “OBX”
will not be read. This is because FSX contains a large number of these files, each of which contains a large
number of generic – that is, boring – buildings. Reading these files would take a very long time, and generate a
list of tens of thousands of objects, most of which would be almost useless for designing add-on scenery and
missions.

If you are using Vista and have done a default FSX installation, it will also offer to create a safe place to write
new missions to. See below for an explanation of why this should be done.

V ISTA O DDITIES

Although the editor works with Vista (it was developed on Vista) there are some things which may cause
confusion. This is because of the way that Vista tries to protect system files.

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 FSX Mission Editor

If you have done a default installation of FSX, it will be stored under “C:\Program Files” or “C:\Program Files
(x86)”. This is a protected area in Vista, and the system will not normally let you write any files there. Unfortunately,
that's where the missions need to be stored if FSX is to see them.

Vista is one step ahead; if any files do get written there, they will be quietly stored somewhere else and the
filesystem will make them appear to be where you originally saved them. This means that you can almost ignore
the file protection that Vista has in place. If the intricacies of the Vista filesystem don't interest you, just move right
along to the next chapter!

The problem is that not every program will see the corrected - or 'virtualised' - version of the filesystem, with
those files in place. Notably, Explorer doesn't show them in-place. It does add an extra button called “Compatibility
Files” to show that there are virtualised files present, but this button doesn't appear if there are only virtualised
folders. This means that your mission folder won't be visible from Explorer. Also, any virtualised files won't be
visible to other users on the same computer, including the administrator.

There are two ways to deal with this. First, you can ignore it; most programs will read the virtualised files
without realising it, provided that you run them both as the same user.

The other way is to effectively bypass the virtualisation so that files really do exist on disk. The easiest way
to do this is to run the editor as an administrator, although this is not recommended because you will forfeit the
numerous protections that Windows offers to non-administrator users.

R UN AS A DMINISTRATOR

To force the editor to be run as an administrator every

time, using Windows Explorer go to “C:\Program Files
(x86)\JKCC\FSX Mission Editor 2”. Right-click on
“MissionDisplay.exe” and choose “Properties”, then the
“Compatibility” tab. Tick “Run this program as administrator”
and click “OK”. Every time you run it, you will first be given
the UAC permission dialog.

The other way to make the files be actually stored

where you put them is to fool FSX into reading a different
part of the disk when reading missions. They will then be
visible to all users on the computer. This is both cleaner and
safer, because Vista's file protection is still being used. It
does take a little effort to set up though.

S ETTING UP A SAFE M ISSIONS FOLDER

Since Vista doesn't approve of people writing files into

protected parts of the disk, we would ideally store our edited missions somewhere else. The problem is that FSX
only looks in it's own Missions folder. We can fool it by inserting a symlink into the Mission folder which points to
a part of the disk which can be written by everyone on the computer. A symlink can be seen as a fake directory
which is actually stored somewhere else.

The good news is that the editor can set this up for you. When you run it the first time, it will check to see if
this problem will affect you and if it will, you will be asked if you want to fix it.

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 FSX Mission Editor

Alternatively, you can do it yourself using a DOS window which has been run as an Administrator:
> cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Missions"
> mkdir "%PUBLIC%\FSX Missions"
> mklink /D "My Missions" "%PUBLIC%\FSX Missions"
symbolic link created for My Missions <<===>> C:\Users\Public\FSX Missions

Either way, this will create a new folder in your FSX Missions folder called “My Missions”. FSX, Explorer and
all other programs will see this folder exactly as you would expect. However, the folder really exists on disk at
“C:\Users\Public\FSX Missions” - and will appear in Explorer's “Public” folder.

As long as you store your new missions in “[FSX]\Missions\My Missions”, they will appear both in the public
folder (which is safe to write to) and under “[FSX]\Missions\My Missions”. If you store them under any other
subfolder of “[FSX]\Missions”, Vista will virtualise them, meaning they won't appear in the correct place in Windows
Explorer. They will instead be stored in:
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\ 
Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Missions\

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 FSX Mission Editor

W HAT ’ S IN A M ISSION ?
Chances are you’ve already got your storyline ideas. Putting them together into something that tells that story
is the next step. So what do you need?

The main part of the mission is stored in an XML file. You don’t need to be able to read that yourself, although
you can if you want to. That’s not as important as the logical structure of the mission.

There are three main types of thing you will use to create a mission. First, there are Triggers. These wait for
something to happen – a timer, a counter, the player’s plane reaching a certain altitude or entering or leaving a
certain location etc. – and when it does, they make other things happen. These are what you use to tie the events
in your mission to what the player is doing. Triggers can also be deactivated so that they don't do anything until
you tell them to.

Second are Actions. These are what triggers will use to make things happen. For example you can start and
stop timers, change counters, and – most importantly – activate and deactivate triggers.

Already you have the basics of how a mission would be put together. You could, for example, set up a Trigger
which waits for a few seconds and then calls an Action which displays a message. Another Trigger might wait for
the user to reach 1000ft AGL then display another message and enable a third trigger which will check for a safe
landing at a given position or airport. Your story gets told by creating Triggers which test for everything you want
the player to do, linked with Actions which provide feedback and activate the next Trigger in the story sequence.

The third type of thing you can use is scenery, both static and mobile or even AI (artificial intelligence) aircraft,
cars, boats or animals. These can also be used to tell your story by placing visual clues for the player to follow.

It will probably help if you plan your mission out on paper first. You can get a clear idea of what happens when
and what the conditions are. Scribbling away with an old-fashioned pencil and paper is a more intuitive way of
experimenting without having to worry about working out how a new computer program works. Once you’ve got
your plan, it should be fairly simple to translate that into sequences of Triggers and Actions to tell your story, and
Scenery and AI objects to give your story somewhere to happen.

You will need some other files before your mission will work. Along with the XML mission description, you will
need a starting location (.FLT), weather (.WX), some pictures and some HTML mission briefings. The FLT and
WX files come from a saved flight, and the HTML briefings can be copied and modified from another mission or
designed from scratch if you prefer. These are all described in the SDK’s Missions document.

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 FSX Mission Editor

U SING THE M ISSION W IZARD

This is the quickest way of getting off the ground with a new mission. Instead of worrying about the different
bits that are needed before FSX will let you start flying, you can get the computer to sort it all for you. The Mission
Wizard will let you create a simple mission, either flying a circuit of an airport or flying from one airport to another,
and fill in all the bits that FSX will look for. You can then edit them, and add bits to the mission, without having to
worry about the mechanics of how it works.

To use the wizard, return to the Welcome page if need be by selecting 'File→New' or using the 'New
Document' button on the toolbar. Now select the 'Create a basic tutorial mission' button.

A standard introduction page appears; click Next to get into the main part of the Wizard.

For registered users, the first page gives you the option to load a flightplan and create a mission based around
that. The flightplan must have been generated using FSX; older ones won't be read correctly.

Each of the waypoints will be used to create a Point of Interest, a dialog and a trigger that activates the next
waypoint. If you don't want to load a flightplan, you can select the 'From Airport to Airport' option to create a point-
to-point mission. The 'Proximity Trigger Size' option allows you set the dimensions of the AreaRectangle used,
between 10m and 5000m, and you can choose to have the waypoints marked as regular PointOfInterest items or
by showing the size and direction of the entire waypoint.

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 FSX Mission Editor

For freeware users, the first page is for the starting location; that is, the airport that you want to take off from.

You can use the lists to narrow your choice down, or if you know the ICAO code for the airport you can just
type it in. Because some airports can have many different starting points, such as Heathrow in London, you can
narrow down the types of starting points shown using the tickboxes on the right. Basic information about the
starting point you've chosen is shown at the bottom of the dialog.

Click 'Next' to go to the Destination Airport page. This starts with the same airport you just chose on the
'Starting Location' page, but you can change it to any airport you like.

The next page is the date and time for the flight to start. Simply choose the date you want and click Next
again.

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 FSX Mission Editor

Now you choose the aircraft to start in. This is the same list that FSX offers.

Use the Manufacturer list to narrow the choice down, or choose '_All_' to show all aircraft from every
manufacturer.

Finally, you can change the mission title and description if the default ones don't suit.

Click 'Next' then 'Finish' and your mission will be created, ready to use. FSX should recognise it the next time
it is started, and the mission is already complete and ready to use. It won't be very exciting at this point though –
that's up to you!

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 FSX Mission Editor

To spice things up a bit, you will need to use the other features of the program to add new triggers and actions,
and link them together in a way that tells the story you have in mind for your mission.

When it's putting together the bits for your mission, the Wizard makes use of the 'Create Template Files'
feature. This means that if you've customised your template files, your personal versions will be used for Wizard
missions too.

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 FSX Mission Editor

G ETTING A ROUND
This section is a simple tour of the main features available to you. If you’re the enquiring type this may be
enough to get you going, ready to write or edit your own missions. Instead of using a Wizard-generated mission
which only has a few different types of actions, this will use the 'Congo' mission that is supplied with the FSX SDK.

L AYOUT

There are many layout options and it can take a while to work out how you want things to be displayed. The
easiest way to describe many of these is to use one of the FSX example missions.

Some layout options work globally, and others work on single nodes. A node is simply any entire instruction,
whether that is a trigger, an action, a model etc.

Run FSXME by double-clicking “FSX Mission Editor.exe”. The initial display should look something like this:

Choose the second option on the Startup window, “Open an existing mission from disk”. From the FSX SDK
folder, load “Mission Creation Kit\Mission Samples\Backcountry\Congo\Congo.xml” .
You could also do this by using the “File→Open” menu item, or just by dragging the XML file onto the main
window. For now, close the small window called “New Types” – that’s used for modifying a mission – and also
open the Overview window using the “View→Overview” menu item. You can arrange these windows however
you want them.

N AVIGATION

First, take a look in the Overview window, on the left in this screenshot. This can be used as a quick way of
getting around the mission once it gets larger than a few nodes. At the top left is a small blue box. This shows the
place in the mission that’s being displayed in the main window. You can click on the overview window to change
the view in the main window.

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 FSX Mission Editor

Try zooming out in the main window, either by clicking on the “-” button on the toolbar and then clicking
somewhere in the window, or more easily by pressing “-” on the keyboard. The blue square in the Overview
window will get larger. You can zoom in again using the “+” button, or by pressing “+” on the keyboard. You can
also zoom to a particular area using the magnifying-glass button and then dragging a box round the area to zoom
to, or by pressing Ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel. Select the Arrow toolbar button to get back to normal mode
from magnify mode.

There are three predefined zoom levels, each of which have buttons on the toolbar:

Zoom to entire mission.

Zoom to page width.

Zoom to 1:1.

You can re-centre the main window by clicking in the Overview window, or by simply using the scrollbars as
with any Windows application. Holding down the middle mouse button and dragging will move the display around
too.

Other keyboard shortcuts are “Ctrl+Home” for going to the very top of the mission and “Ctrl+End” for going to
the end.

W HAT ’ S DISPLAYED

The overview window, on the left in the screenshots above, can’t be used for anything other than getting
around the mission. All of the real mission data is shown in the main window. Assuming you’ve still got Congo.xml
loaded, reset the zoom to 1:1 and go to the top of the document.

There are lots of coloured boxes on screen, each of which is a single

node. Each one has a grey header, which has the which has the node type
displayed above the node name. The main part is coloured according to
what type of job the node does, and contains a list of properties and their
values. Which properties are shown will depend on the type of node, and
some of the settings.

To try and keep the main display clean, not all properties will normally be shown. Only the ones which are
most used are shown by default. You can change this using the “View→All Attributes” menu item. Choose this,
and now on the node called “TimerCount” - the first red one in the display - the “Latched” and “Counter” properties
are shown. To switch off the full display, select “View→All Attributes” again.

Another set of properties are also normally hidden. These are used by FSX when it's saving a mission that's
in progress, to keep the current state. In a new mission they're no use. You can have these shown, if you need
them, by using the “View→Private Attributes” menu.

Most of the nodes have lines linking them to others. These show the associations between nodes and should
be read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. For example, the “CountAction” node is linked to the “TimerCount” node. The
exact meanings of the nodes are detailed in the FSX SDK, but in this case it’s saying that the “CountAction” node
will add one to the “TimerCount” TimerTrigger.

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 FSX Mission Editor

It is possible for a node to be linked to more than once; for example, a trigger may be referenced by two
ObjectActivation nodes, one to enable it and one to disable it. Only one copy of any node will be shown in full; that
is, including any child nodes. All other copies will be shown using a paler colour, and will not have child nodes.

For example, “FailFastEmptyTimer” is shown in the screenshot below in deep red while “FailFastHeavyTimer”
beneath it is lighter. This shows that “FailFastEmptyTimer” is shown in full here, while “FailFastHeavyTimer” is
shown in full somewhere else. That is, the visible copy does not have any child nodes shown.

Last, in the top left corner of the window is a small grey box with the word “CountAction”. Coming out of this
is a paler grey box which covers a large area, which you can see on the Overview window extending about three
quarters of the way to the bottom. This pale grey box surrounds a group of linked nodes and takes its name from
the first one in the tree. Ideally this would be arranged so that the first node shown is the first thing that happens
in the mission.

If you double-click on the group title, all the nodes in that group are selected.

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Group name for all nodes linked to the first one Node type and name

Bright node with children displayed

Pale node with no children displayed

Link between two nodes
Property names for this
Property
node values for this node

E RROR H IGHLIGHTING

Next let’s have a look at the error highlighting. Press Ctrl+F or select the “Edit→Find” menu, and find the
node called “OffAirportLand”. Double-click the item in the list to centre the main window on it, then close the Find
dialog. You should now see this:

The node that you found, “OffAirportLand”, is surrounded by a dark blue box. This shows that it is currently
selected. However, there is also a pale blue line around that node, and the name is also shown in pale blue. These
colours show that there is a problem with this node. In this case, the blue colour means it’s only a “style” error, or
something which may well be correct but is worth pointing out. Find out what the error is by right-clicking on the
selected node and selecting “List Errors” from the context menu or using the keyboard shortcut, Shift-F6. You
should get a single error:

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For style errors, it is up to you to decide whether or not they are a problem. Other errors may be marked as
“Warning” or “Error” depending on how severe the problem is; warnings are yellow and errors are red. A warning
means that something is almost certainly wrong, and an error shows that something is definitely wrong. Ignoring
a warning may mean that your mission may not do what you intend. Ignoring an error may mean that it will probably
not work at all, or even that FSX will refuse to load the entire mission.

List the errors for “TurnOffPOIGisenyi”, just below and right of “OffAirportLand”, which is marked in yellow
and has a warning.

In this case, the warning is saying that a Point of Interest is being activated with a regular
ObjectActivationAction; this works, but is not what is recommended in the SDK documentation.

Search for the node called “AdjustPayloadEquip” using the Find dialog (Ctrl+F). It is outlined in red, showing
an error that must be fixed. In this case, 492 pounds are being added to an aircraft, but it is not specified to which
aircraft the payload should be added.

C HANGING THE LAYOUT

Now that the nodes, their contents and colours, and the error highlighting are clear let’s see how to rearrange
them.

The layout has taken into account which nodes are connected to others, and which are activated by default.
If there are many triggers which are active though, it can’t know which ones come first. It has chosen “CountAction”
as the first node, but this isn’t a good choice. However, it will recalculate the layout if it is told to, based on hints
you give on individual nodes.

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Find the node called “KatUnloadTrigger”, and right-click to bring up the context menu. Select “Allow Parent”,
which should be ticked, to de-select it. This means that “KatUnloadTrigger” will never be shown with a parent
node, making it always be used as the first node of a group. Find it again, and it should be in its own small group.

Let’s separate some more areas. Search for “AshTrigger” and de-select “Allow Parent” on the context menu.
Note that “AshTrigger” is activated by default – the “Activated” attribute is set to “True” – which means that if you
were to fly straight to that area instead of following the instructions in the mission, it would still fire.

Do the same for “EnrouteKatTrigger”, “KatApprRadTrigger” and ”KatTrigger”, all of which are also activated
by default. Looking at the overview window now, the mission is split into two big sections and several small ones.
Let’s try and simplify it a bit more.

Search for “FailTimer”. If you look down the list of child nodes, it starts with two GoalResolutionActions which
cause their goals to fail, and then a load of ObjectActivationActions which switch things off. “FailTimer” is failing
the mission after a set time – 73 minutes, or 4380 seconds – and then switching everything off. It’s a simple action,
but it’s taking a lot of screen space. Right-click on “FailTimer” and select “Hide Children”. This will collapse all the
child nodes to a single, small box:

Note the small, grey box on the right with the “+” symbol. This shows that there are
hidden children. We’ve just made things look much simpler. As a reminder though, you
can add a comment to this node. Press “;” or select “Edit Comment” from the context-
menu. A new dialog appears where you can type anything you like. Add something like
“Fails mission and cleans up triggers” and click “Ok”. You should now see this:

The comment has been added to the bottom of the node, in the yellow box.

There are several other triggers which do a similar thing. Find “GomaLand” and
look at its children. It enables two goals for safe landings, fails them, and marks
“GoalLandSafely” as complete. Again, this completes the mission and switches off any
active triggers so let’s clean this one in the same way. Right-click on “GomaLand”, select
“Hide Children” and then add a comment like “Land safely but fail to drop cargo at Katale
and land at Lubero”.

“GisenyiLand”, “RutAshLand”, “RwinAshLand” and “LubAshLand” are all similar, so hide and comment them
to make the main display even simpler. “FailSlowHeavyTimer”, “FailFastHeavyTimer” and “FailSlowEmptyTimer”
are similar; lots of object activations and deactivations, and some dialogs. Add a comment of “Engine 1 fails, head
for Rwindi” and hide the children. Last, find “OffAirportLand” again and hide it’s children. Once again, it is simply
deactivating lots of objects and setting goals to finish the mission.

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Now that all these changes have been made, you should save the mission. Note that the actual mission itself
hasn’t been changed at all, it’s just the layout. This is saved in a separate file which is automatically created when
you save the main mission. You can also just save the layout by choosing the “File→Save Layout Only” menu
item.

Now that a lot of the mission ‘housekeeping’ is hidden, the overview should look like
this. You can see the overall shape of the mission fairly clearly now. The first big grey
box has a lot of nodes all coming from a single parent, meaning that that parent is
particularly important. The next big group has a nice clear tree of events, showing that
the mission has a well-defined structure. There are also some smaller groups which
aren’t yet linked to anything.

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C HANGING THE APPEARAN CE

There are some settings that can be changed which make the entire display look different. These can be
found by using the “Edit→Preferences” menu item.

G ENERAL L AYOUT

The values here should mostly be self-explanatory. ‘Maximum node width’ controls the largest size that a
single node can reach. This is important for things like Dialog nodes, where the dialog text may be quite long.
Without a width limit, these nodes could get very large. “Distance between groups” sets how much space to leave
between the big groups of connected nodes; this may help make the overview window clearer if it is set to larger
values.

The ‘Fonts’ section controls the fonts that will be used in different parts of the display.

“Scroll Speed” controls how fast the mouse-wheel will scroll the main display, and “Zoom Speed” controls
how fast the mouse-wheel will zoom the main display when Ctrl is pressed.

“Frame Look” changes the appearance of the window border areas.

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N AMES AND C OLOURS

As you have seen, each type of node has its own colour to make it easier to identify. Both the colours and the
‘friendly names’ that can be shown in the Action Palette can be changed.

The quickest way to do this is to choose a display theme from “Light” and “Dark”. However, you can also
design your own colours and names.

To change the name for a node type, double-click on the item in the “User Name” column. An edit box will
appear, and you can change the name to whatever you wish. Similarly, to edit the colour double-click in the
“Colour” column and pick the new colour.

You can also choose the colours that will be used to show errors, warnings and style warnings by clicking on
the buttons under “Error Notification”. The 'Highlight' tickbox controls the black 'shadow' text that is used to make
error messages stand out from the background. If you prefer to use have the coloured text with no shadow, you
can turn it off here.

These settings will be used for all missions. If you want to change back to the original names and colours,
press the “Reset” button.

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E DITING
We can now start to make some small changes to this mission. For now, let’s just fine-tune the structure to
make it look better on screen. This may also help in performance tuning. If you have, say, ten active
ProximityTriggers then FSX will need to check each of them with every pass through the mission. If they are
structured so that you can’t reach one without passing through a previous one it may help to switch the later ones
off to begin with. It’s faster to check for something being activated than it is to make the actual property check.

B ASICS

Earlier we went through several triggers which were activated by default, setting them as group headers by
switching off “Allow Parent”.

Search for “IntroTimer”. This is active by default, and fires after three seconds. Not much else is going to
happen in that time, so let’s assume this is the first trigger to fire. In fact there is an earlier one but it only starts an
effect, so we can ignore it.

There are some other active triggers that look as though they fire early, “V1Trigger”, “100AGLTrigger” and
“300AGLTrigger”. You’re not going to get to V1 speed in 3 seconds, so that one fires after “IntroTimer”. Similarly,
the “100AGLTrigger” must come after “V1Trigger”, and “300AGLTrigger” after “100AGLTrigger”. Let’s link these
to show that logic.

U SING THE A CTION P ALETTE

Open the Action Palette using the “View→Action Palette” menu. This window should appear:

This is where you create new nodes. All of the available nodes
are listed here, and split into different categories to try and make then
easier to find. You can choose which category gets shown in the main
list, or choose to show every available type.

Beneath the list is a short description of what this node does.

Last, there is a tickbox at the top labelled 'Friendly Names'. This

switches the list from showing descriptive names for the various node
types to showing the 'official' names – the ones defined in the SDK.
You can edit the 'friendly' names to suit your own preferences using
the 'Defaults' tab in the Preferences dialog.

Let's add a new action node. Change the Category list to “Actions”
to shorten the list, and then select “Change Node Activation” from the
list. A description of the action’s effect is shown at the bottom of the
window.

On the main display, double-click in the red area of “IntroTimer” to

bring up the Attribute Editor. Halfway down the list of attributes is
“Actions”, showing “3 refs”. These are the actions that get performed
when this trigger fires.

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Now, on the Action Palette, double-click “Change Node Activation” to create a new action. You will get a new
ObjectActivationAction. The white square in the top right tells you that this node has not been saved, and the red
border and text show that there are errors. In this case, the error is simply that it doesn’t activate anything.

Next, select this node and drag it over the Attribute Editor, then drop it on
the box to the right of the “Actions” attribute. The display will change, showing
the new node with “IntroTimer” as its parent. “IntroTimer” now also has the
white box showing that it has changed since the last save. Now double-click
on the coloured area of “New Change Node Activation” to show it’s attributes. Note that the ObjectReferenceList
attribute is shown in red, indicating an error. Next, find “V1Trigger” and drop it on the “ObjectReferenceList”
attribute of “New Change Node Activation” to link it. The only thing left to do is switch “V1Trigger” off by default –
double-click it and untick the “Activated” attribute.

If the nodes you’re working with are a long way apart in the main display, it can be awkward to relocate them
when you’re trying to connect them. To make this easier, you can drag nodes from other dialogs, like the Find
dialog, and link them that way. You can also link nodes by dropping them directly on the ObjectReferenceList item
on the main display, without using the Attribute dialog at all.

You can rename “New Change Node Activation” using the context menu (right-click and select Rename) or
by double-clicking in the grey header area. To follow the naming convention of the rest of the mission, rename it
to “TurnOnV1Trigger”.

Looking at “IntroTimer”, you can see that it now has four Actions to perform. The new one, “TurnOnV1Trigger”,
is the last one, after three dialogs. Since the dialogs will be on-screen for several seconds each, “V1Trigger” won’t
be activated until about ten seconds after IntroTimer has fired. In this case it’s not really a problem, but sometimes
that delay may be important. You can re-order the Actions by simply selecting “TurnOnV1Trigger” on the main
display and dragging it to the top of the list. A black bar will appear to show you where it’s being dragged to.

At this point you might want to save the changes, so – since we’re modifying one of the demo missions – use
the “File→Save As…” menu to give it a different name. The white ‘modified’ flags should disappear once it has
been saved.

You can follow the same procedure for “100AGLTrigger”; create a new ObjectActivationAction, rename it to
“TurnOn100AGL”, link it to the “Actions” attribute of “V1Trigger”, link “100AGLTrigger” to the “ObjectReferenceList”
attribute of the “V1Trigger” and deactivate “100AGLTrigger”. “300AGLTrigger” should then be linked to
“100AGLTrigger” in the same way.

The start of the mission is beginning to come together, but then stops after passing through 300m. To find
what happens next, bring up the Find dialog, change “_Any Type_” to “ProximityTrigger” and search for “Kat”.
There are five triggers found, four of which are Activated.

Ignoring “KatTakeoffTrigger” – you can’t take off until you’ve landed, so that must happen last – double-click
on each of the other triggers. Looking at the Areas associated with each, they are all centered on almost the same
place, but with different values for Width, Length and Height. The one with the largest box must come first, in this
case “EnrouteKatTrigger”.

In the same way as before, link that to “300AGLTrigger” via a new ObjectActivationAction, making sure that
“EnrouteKatTrigger” is changed to being inactive by default. If you want to avoid some of the interaction with the
main display, you can drag the node reference straight from the Find dialog to the Attribute dialog. This time
though, when “EnrouteKatTrigger” is linked to the new ObjectActivationAction, it still appears as a pale pink copy
instead of as the full node. This is because it has “Allow Parent” switched off. To switch it back on, you need to go

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to the real copy of the node. Right-click on “EnrouteKatTrigger” and select “Referenced by→EnrouteKatTrigger”.
This will centre the display on the real copy of the node. Now you can re-enable “Allow Parent” - right-click, “Allow
Parent” - and it will link properly.

Judging from the sizes of the AreaRefs attached to the other three triggers, the correct order is
“EnrouteKatTrigger”, “KatApprRadTrigger”, “KatTrigger” and finally “KatUnloadTrigger”. If you link these together,
using new ObjectActivationActions attached to the “OnEnterActions” attribute of the previous trigger, most of the
mission will be linked correctly.

Let’s clean up the last few sections. Again from looking at the AreaRefs, it appears that “RutCarTrigger” must
happen after “RutApprTrigger” so create a new ObjectActivationAction and link those.

At the top of the mission are a handful of actions which aren’t referenced by anything. If they’re not referenced,
they’re not any use so we can delete them. Select them – just the blue actions, not the goal or triggers – by either
dragging a box round them or by using shift-click to select them individually. You should have
“ResolveRutGoalFail”, “TurnOffSafeNorth”, “TurnOffSafeSouth”, “TurnOnLubFailLand” and “TurnOnPOIKatale”
selected. Now just press “Delete”, or use the context menu’s “Delete” item. Confirm that you want to delete the
five nodes, then save the mission again.

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Now your overview should look like this, showing three clear sections. It should be much easier to follow the
mission storyline simply by following the flow from the start of each group.

When you design your own missions, you can make your job much
easier by only activating things as they are needed and then just
following the flow. You can prove this by using the “Layout→Allow
Parent on all Nodes” and “Layout→Clear all Preferred Parents” menu
items. This clears every layout decision and allows the layout to be
based purely on the mission structure. With the exception of
“AshTrigger”, which gets reattached, the layout is almost identical.

In addition to creating new nodes using the Action Palette, you can
copy and paste nodes from the main display. The node contents, and
any links between copied nodes, are also copied. You can also paste
the XML for any copied nodes into a text editor.

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A TTRIBUTE E DITOR

Almost all the detailed editing is done using the Attribute Editor. This is where you change the details of a
selected node to make it do what you want. This appears when you double-click on the attribute area of a node.

At the top of the window, the “Locate” button will

simply re-centre the node in the main display. All the
other items are different depending on what node you
are editing.

The last item at the bottom will show a description

of the current attribute. These are read from
Microsoft’s own configuration files and although most
are defined, there are some which are not.

In this screenshot, the first three items (Latitude,

Longitude and Altitude) are part of a group called
“World Position”. This is shown by the extra border
round the group. It has some extra buttons, including
Grab and Send, which we’ll ignore for now.

The other items mostly correspond to the

attributes that are listed in the SDK for this node type,
a LibraryObject. You would edit these to have
whatever values you want, just as with the standard mission editor. There is an extra item here though, “Model
Category”, that isn’t a part of a LibraryObject. These extra items are sometimes used where long lists of values
are available, to narrow down the list.

The next item, MDLGuid, is part of a LibraryObject but unlike the default mission editor, there is a combo-box
available. (If you have no combo-box, just a standard text field, make sure you ran “Regenerate BGL Data Lists”
on the File menu). Where you would normally have to accurately type in a long GUID like “{36D99924-A3B8-
420E-A3FD-83ABC2DB6206}”, you can just pick the name of the model from the list. This does depend on having
the name available though, so it may not work for all models. Most of the models provided with FSX do have
names.

The Attribute Editor also helps with error checking. If one of the attributes has a problem, its name will be
shown with a colour instead of being black. These are re-checked with every change, so you can see immediately
if the new value has corrected the problem. If an attribute is shown with a white title, it means it is an internal
attribute meant only for use by FSX when saving a mission in progress and shouldn’t usually be edited.

Most importantly, this is where you link nodes together to form the structure of your mission. Many node types,
especially Triggers, are only useful when they are linked to others. To create a link, open the Attribute Editor for
the parent object (i.e. the trigger) and then drop the child node onto the box which reads “drop more here”.

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Sometimes an extra button, labelled “P+”, appears to the right of a link item. This means that the link will
accept the Player – that is, the plane being flown in the mission – as a target. Although you can use the main
display to locate the special node for the player and drop it, as with any other, this button acts as a shortcut.

Normally the main display would be the right place to find the nodes you want to drag into the Attribute Editor
to be linked. However, you can also drag them from any dialog that shows a list of nodes, such as the ones used
for “Find” and “All Errors”.

You can unlink nodes directly from the attribute editor, by right-clicking on the link item and selecting the node
to detach. You can do the same thing from the main display, by selecting the node you want to unlink and using
the ‘Detach’ command on the context menu.

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C ONDITION E DITOR

Some triggers make use of Conditions, a way of checking a small subset of the things that FSX knows about
both the player and other AI aircraft. For an example, find the “RutParkTrigger” node in the Congo sample mission
and open the Attribute Editor. The condition is the last attribute:

Conditions can be very simple, like this one, or much more complicated including groups of multiple conditions
combined using Boolean (And, Or, Not) operators such as this one in the “RB_MP_Istanbul_Advanced” sample
mission:

To open the Condition Editor, click the button labelled “…” to the right of the Condition in the Attribute Editor.
The following dialog will appear.

This looks complicated! It’s not as bad as it seems though. Let’s split it into sections.

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C ONDITION L IST

At the top, the list of conditions shows all of the individual parts that make up the entire set of conditions that
will be tested. The one above is a simple, single-entry condition ([GroundSpeed] < 100). The next example
shows a more complex condition:

This one has several groups, shown using ‘Or’ and ‘And’ operators. The members of the groups are shown
by the level of indenting in the list. In this example the first ‘And’ group requires Bank to be between 100 and 170,
the second ‘And’ group requires Bank to be between -170 and -100. The ‘Or’ group requires one or the other of
the two ‘And’ groups to be true. This is summarised at the bottom of the Condition Editor:

The buttons to the right of the list of conditions let you create, remove and rearrange the conditions. “Add
Cond” creates a new condition, which allows you to perform some kind of test. “Add Group” creates a new Boolean
group, where you can combine the results of several tests. Any new items of either type get added to the end of
the list.

You can delete either a single item or an entire group of items at once. For example, if you were to select one
of the “And” groups and press “Delete”, both the group and it’s contents would be removed.

Last, the “Change Order” control rearranges the conditions. This can take a little getting
used to, because the ordering is partly shown by the position in the list and partly by the
level of indenting. A condition being moved up the list may be added to a previous group,
leaving it in the same place in the list but with increased (or decreased) indenting to show
the changed grouping. The best way to learn this is to do it; create a complex condition and
move elements around to see what happens. Remember that the summary of the overall
condition is always shown at the bottom of the window.

T EST E DITING

The next section of the window is the main part, where you can change the conditions being tested.

This is split into two halves, left and right. Each half describes a value which can come from an AI or user
aircraft property, or a reference to an AI, or a constant value. Between the two halves you can choose what
relationship to test; in this example, the left hand side must be greater than the right hand side for the condition to
be true.

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By changing the list boxes you can choose what to test for. There are many different combinations, but most
are available under “Property” and usually you will be comparing a property with a constant, as shown.

Any errors found while you are changing the values here are shown immediately at the bottom of the Condition
Editor window.

If you choose “Reference” for the property source instead of “User”, an extra control appears which allows
you to drop an AI object onto it in the same way that the Attribute Editor does, when linking nodes.

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R EWARD C RITERIA E DITOR

Rewards can have restrictions assigned to them to make them work with 'Free Flight' mode. When all the
requirements have been achieved, FSX grants you the reward.

When you edit the attributes of a Reward, there will be an attribute called “Criteria”. Clicking the small button
to the right of this will open the Criteria Editor.

The two values at the top apply to the entire Reward. In this case, they are saying that you have to land twice,
anywhere, for this reward to be granted. However, there's another restriction in the list below.

The list can have as many restrictions added as you need. They must all be satisfied for the reward to be
granted. You can add restrictions based on the airports which must be visited, the number of hours that must be
flown under a range of different conditions, or that another reward must have been granted first.

Rewards are saved in a separate file from the rest of the mission, because FSX requires them to be compiled
into a .RWD file. Normally the editor will use a single XML file for rewards for each mission, but it is possible to
make it share one XML file for multiple missions. If you are designing a mission pack, you may only want to deploy
one .RWD file. You may want to grant a single reward from more than one mission.

To change this, use the “Mission→Set Reward File” menu item to choose the XML file you want this mission
to store it's rewards in. When you choose an existing file, any rewards already in that file will be loaded. Any
existing rewards are not changed.

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A DVANCED E DITING 
Although the mission system is powerful, it can sometimes take a combination of several nodes to achieve a
certain effect. You may also simply have a group of things that always get done together.

R ECIPES

To save some time with groups like this, you can define your own ‘Recipes’, or collections of related nodes,
which can then be created all at once. You can even customise them every time they are created.

U SING A R ECIPE

For an example, create a new mission (File→New), open the Action Palette if need be (View→Action Palette)
and choose the ‘Recipes’ category. Double-click on ‘Mission Intro’ and a dialog will appear.

These are customisable features of the ‘Mission Intro’ recipe.

Change the values to whatever you want and click ‘Ok’. You will get
a single node in the main display called “Timer_Intro”, with the small
grey box on the right showing that it has hidden children. Show those
children using ‘Right-click→Hide Children’ and you will see five
connected nodes.

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C REATING A R ECIPE

Of course, you can define your own Recipes easily. In brief, you need to select all the nodes you want to
include, select ‘File→Save Selected as Recipe’ and state which attributes you want to be customisable. Let’s try
it.

Load the ‘Congo.xml’ sample mission and find “TurnOnForgotGear”. This enables three other nodes, two of
which are tests that you might want to do every time the player takes off. Let’s turn this into a Recipe.

We don’t want ‘EnrouteKatTrigger’, that’s specific to the Congo mission. Select ‘TurnOnForgotGear’ and the
two PropertyTriggers (Forgot…Trigger) and their dialogs. Remember you can just drag a box around them to
select them easily.

Now use the ‘File→Save Selected as Recipe’ menu item and a new dialog will appear.

The first two items are for display. ‘Title’ is what this recipe will be
called in the Action Palette, and ‘Description’ is the more descriptive text
that appears at the bottom of the Action Palette and is also set as the
comment when this recipe is used. Set these to ‘Takeoff Checks’ and
‘Check landing gear and flaps after takeoff’. The filename can be anything
you like, but it must go into the default Recipes directory.

For now ignore “Entry Point” and “Exit Point”.

Next comes “Mandatory Categories”. This is a way of separating

recipes in the Action Palette. By entering one or more categories here, you
will separate this recipe off into a separate, named part of the recipe list
making it easier to find.

The bottom half of the dialog shows a list of attributes, and which
nodes they belong to. If you tick any of the boxes, that attribute will be
prompted for when the recipe is used. The attributes in bold text are those
ones which are most often used.

You can also rename the attributes so that they make more sense.
This works the same way as Windows Explorer; select the attribute, pause
and click it again to turn it into an edit box. For this example, rename
‘DiaForgotFlaps→Text’ to ‘Forgot Flaps’, and tick the box. Do the same
for ‘DiaForgotGear→Text’, renaming it to ‘Forgot Gear’. The dialog should now look like the screenshot above.

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 FSX Mission Editor

When you click ‘Ok’, this recipe will be saved and can then be used from the Action Palette. You can check it
by clearing the mission (File→New), and then loading the ‘Takeoff Checks’ recipe. You will be asked for the new
messages for ‘Forgot Flaps’ and ‘Forgot Gear’ and then the ‘TurnOnForgotGear’ node, with hidden children, will
be created.

Once it has been created, you can-reuse a recipe as many times as you want in the same mission. The node
names and InstanceId values, both of which must be unique, will be changed for you.

Recipes can be easily copied too, so why not make some of your favourites available for others to download?
They are stored in “C:\Users\<Your Account>\AppData\Local\JKCC\Mission Editor for FSX\Content\Recipes”. The
exact location can be found on the Paths tab of the Preferences dialog (Edit→Preferences).

If you were to redefine this test recipe to include a PropertyTrigger, firing at 300ft AGL, it could be dropped
into any mission in a few seconds and be useful straight away.

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C HECKING C OMPATIBILITY

With the Acceleration Pack for FSX, there are several new types of actions and triggers available for use in a
mission. Of course, these won't work if they are used with standard FSX. When you create a new mission, it will
have a compatibility level set to the highest supported version of FSX that it can find; if you have the FSX X-Pack
installed, it will assume you want to create missions for X-Pack. You can choose to create missions for older
versions of FSX by using the “Mission→Set Compatibility” menus.

Before doing this, you can see what will happen by using the “Mission→Show Compatibility” menus. This will
highlight anything that will cause a problem in whatever version of FSX you choose. So, if you have developed
your mission against X-Pack and want to see if it will run on SP2, set the 'Show Compatibility' level to SP2.
Anything that is not available in SP2 will be shown in purple, and will be listed in the Errors dialog (F6).

A list of all the scenery models and SimObjects available in each version is included, so these will be
highlighted too. Using a model which isn't available will make the mission simply not load in older versions of FSX.

If you reduce the compatibility level, it is possible for some data to be lost. For example, if you have used
some of the Race triggers provided with X-Pack, or set the “TargetPlayer” attribute which has been added to
several actions, and then decide to reduce the compatibility level of the mission then those triggers and attributes
would no longer be available. You will see a warning that some things are going to be deleted and, if you accept,
any attributes or nodes which require a newer version of FSX than the one you have chosen will be removed from
the mission. Any affected nodes, or those which were parents or children of one which has been deleted, will have
a comment added to show that they have been affected. This comment will be searched for automatically so that
you can see immediately what has changed.

When a mission is loaded, the compatibility level is calculated from the types of nodes and attributes it uses.
So, even if you had the compatibility level set to “XPack” when doing some work on a mission, it may show
compatibility as being “RTM” when it is reloaded if you haven't used any XPack-specific features. You can always
increase the level again by using the “Mission→Set Compatibility” menus.

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S TARTING FROM S CRATCH

If you’re creating an entirely new mission, there are several files you will need before FSX will recognise it.
Apart from the mission file itself, you must create files for the mission’s default flight, the briefing and some images.
These must all be located somewhere under “[FSX]\Missions”.

To make this easier, there are a set of template files supplied with FSXME. First you need to create an empty
mission, add a ScenarioMetadata node and save it in a new folder under “[FSX]\Missions”, for example
“[FSX]\Missions\New Missions\Demo”. You will get a warning about a .FLT file not being found. Clear
this warning and select ‘Mission→Create Template Files”. The following files will be created for you in the same
folder that you saved your mission:

- Briefing.html

- Images\Overview.jpg

- Img_complete.bmp

- Img_incomplete.bmp

- Mission.FLT

- Mission.WX

- Kneeboard.htm

These are enough to get FSX to load your mission, so all you need to do is start writing it! Of course, you will
probably want to change all of these default files to suit your mission but at least these will give you somewhere
to start.

This option can also create template images for any rewards you have created.

You must save your mission first so that FSXME knows where to put the template files.

C HANGING THE T EMPLATE

The first time you use the ‘Mission→Create Template Files’ menu, the default files will be written to the
Application Data area in a folder called “Template”. (You can find the location of this on the 'Paths' tab of the
‘Edit→Preferences’ dialog box). You can change any of these files to suit your own needs. The next time you use
the template files to help set up a new mission, your edited files will be used instead.

S ETTING THE T ITLE

Your mission will need to have a title and description set, which appear in the Missions screen in FSX. The
Title is also used as the package title when creating an MSI installer. You can set these values using the
‘Mission→Set Description’ menu item.

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C REATING S YNTHETIC S PEECH

You can record a set of WAV files for your mission using the Windows speech synthesis facilities. They are
obviously not as good as recording real speech, but if you are not in a position to record it yourself or you think
the speech may change during development they will give you at least an idea of what the mission will be like.

The “Mission→Create Dialog Speech” menu will show this window:

You can select the voice and change the pitch and rate
of the speech. Press the ‘Test’ button to see what the voice
sounds like.

Not all voices support changing the pitch. Also, there

appears to be a problem with the default voices on Vista x64
since they do not work even from the 32-bit Control Panel.

The recording rate defaults to 22KHz ADPCM on Vista,

as recommended in the Mission SDK. However, you may
wish to record at other settings. The GSM610 and ADPCM
modes listed are compressed; they will sound slightly worse
but will take up much less disk space.

When you have tuned the voice, press either 'Selected' or 'All' to start recording the speech. 'Record Selected'
will only cause speech for any dialogs that are currently selected to be recorded. If any of the WAV files already
exist, you will be asked if you want to overwrite them. If you choose ‘No’, only those files which don’t already exist
will be created.

It can be easier to manage the recorded speech if you add a prefix to your dialog nodes, showing who is
speaking. If you are using the synthetic speech, this allows you to easily choose to re-record all the speech for a
single character. You can simply select all the WAV files for that character using the 'Find' dialog and then re-
record them with the right voice settings.

V OICES

There are many different voices available. Windows comes with some example ones, but commercial voices
will also be usable if you have any installed.

Microsoft provide some slightly more usable free voices online. They also list many voice engines but all seem
to be aimed at companies, with corresponding price-tags. However, most of the voices are available cheaply from
NextUp.com as part of their 'TextAloud' package.

Make sure that any voice you get is compatible with SAPI5, not SAPI4. Also, on 64-bit operating systems you
will need to use the 32-bit control panel to set up the default voice. This is found under “32-bit Control Panels”,
under “Additional Options” in Vista x64.

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S AVING THE M ISSION

When you save the mission, there are several different things that happen. First of course, the mission itself
is saved to disk as an XML file that FSX will load.

The mission layout is saved as a separate file. This contains all the things that relate to the visual display of
the mission, and which FSX doesn’t expect to see. Node colours, comments and parent/child relationships are
stored in here along with other settings like the MSI details.

Last, any .FLT files that are in the same folder as the mission file are modified if necessary to have the correct
title and description. They also have an entry called “ObjectFile” changed. This is how FSX determines what
mission to load; the .FLT file provides the descriptions and the starting details, and points to the XML (or SPB) file
that contains the mission logic.

If you are saving a new mission, there will be no .FLT file and you will get a warning message. You can create
a default .FLT file (and all the other necessary files) using the ‘Mission→Create Template Files’ menu option.

R EWARDS

Any rewards that are used will get saved to a separate file. By default this is called
“<Title>_MERewards.xml” but this can be overridden using the “Mission→Set Reward File” menu. If the BGL
compiler is available, the rewards are compiled into a .RWD file automatically.

If the rewards don't compile properly, it could be that there are no images. These need to exist before the
reward can be compiled. You can create default images using the “Mission→Create Template Files” menu option.

If the compiler (bglcomp.exe) can’t be found, you will need to compile the rewards yourself before FSX will
find them.

C OMPILING TO SPB

FSX will load a compiled mission faster than a non-compiled mission. However, both versions should work
identically. If you want to test your mission as a compiled version, you can use the “Mission→Compile to SPB”
option to do this.

This does mean that if you make further changes to the mission, which is stored in XML form, there may be
some confusion about which version of your mission is being used by FSX; the SPB or the XML. To help avoid
this, you will be warned if an SPB file exists when you save the mission.

If you want to include an SPB with an MSI installer package, use the 'Compile to SPB' tickbox on the MSI
settings dialog instead unless you are combining many missions into a single MSI package.

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B ACKUPS

You can optionally back up the key mission files every time you save. This is enabled by default, but you can
change the settings using the `File→Preferences’ menu. The third tab on the Preferences dialog covers several
details including backups.

The mission itself, the definitions of any rewards you have created, the layout and the .FLT file(s) associated
with the mission are all backed up into a single .CAB file when you save. Old backups are automatically deleted
when there are too many; you can change the number you want to keep.

A CAB file is used instead of simple file copies to stop FSX from picking the backed-up files as a different
mission. CAB files can be opened simply by double-clicking on them using Windows Explorer.

If you do end up having to remove nodes to find out why FSX isn’t loading something, it may be useful to
switch off the auto-backup. This will stop you from losing a ‘good’ backup if you’re only keeping a small number
of the most recent ones. When you persuade FSX to load the mission again, you can turn auto-backups back on
and make the changes you need.

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W ORKING WITH M ODELS AND A REAS

Almost every mission will need to use some scenery models, or define some Areas. The standard FSX Object
Placement Tool (OPT) already works well for manipulating these, so there are very few similar features in FSXME.
It was always intended to be a partner to, rather than a replacement for, the OPT.

Inside FSXME, you can of course create and edit all kinds of scenery and areas. You can also get their
locations from FSX, using the ‘Grab’ button in the Attribute Editor. For more detailed editing though, it is easier to
use the OPT as described in the SDK documentation.

The OPT uses exactly the same mission file as FSXME, and you can easily use both tools at the same time.
The only thing you need to remember to do is to save the mission when you are finished using one tool, so that
the other can see the changes.

FSXME will notice when anything else saves the mission, and will offer to reload it automatically. This makes
it easy to swap between the two different tools. The recommended way of working is this:

1) Create as much of the mission as you can in FSXME, including any AreaDefinitions you need. Get rough
placements for these by using the ‘Grab’ button on the Attribute Editor, which gets the plane’s current
position from FSX.

2) In FSX, open the OPT and load the mission. Use the interactive tools to visually fine-tune your areas,
and to place any scenery objects you need.

3) Save the mission from the OPT. FSXME will offer to reload it, allowing you to continue editing.

The only thing to beware of is that while the OPT is running inside FSX, the ‘Grab’ button will often return
incorrect values. You can keep swapping between tools as often as you like, as long as you remember to save
your work in one before using the other.

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 FSX Mission Editor

I NFORMATION D IALOGS
There are several dialogs which show general information about your mission. They are available from the
‘Mission’ menu, and all open a window like this:

Each dialog has some common features. The ‘Copy’ button at the top places the main list into the clipboard,
so that you can paste it into a text editor. 'Copy Selected' does the same, but only for the rows of the dialog that
are currently selected. You can change the order of the items by clicking on the list headers, and you can drag
nodes from the list onto the Attribute Editor to link them to other nodes. This can be useful for example in the
Errors dialog, where an action has no parent. Finally, you can double-click the items in the list to centre them in
the main display. If the node you double-click is not currently visible, typically because it is hidden for some reason,
you will be warned and asked if you want to make sure it is displayed.

A LL E RRORS

This dialog shows all nodes which have an error, no matter what kind of error it is. You can use this to quickly
identify places which may need your attention.

E RROR - CHECKING R ULES

There are four classes of error; Errors, which are potentially serious, Warnings which are less serious, Style
warnings which are probably OK and Compat warnings which show you that you have used a feature which will
not work on a specific version of FSX. These have been based on the Mission SDK, common sense and
observation of the mission system at work.

You may find, particularly when loading the sample missions, that some things are listed as Errors when the
mission clearly works without any problems. The sample missions are prone to this because they were written
early on, and the rules of the mission system changed slightly after their creation. One example, again from the
Congo mission, is that all of the AdjustPayload nodes are marked with “Error : ObjectReference is required”.
Originally an empty reference was taken to mean “The Player”, but this was later changed so that the player had
a special, fixed GUID which could be properly linked to. Rather than writing all these special exceptions in, they
are left as errors because they don’t match the final rules even if the mission system will ignore them.

This means that a mission with errors may well work correctly. The error-checking is deliberately more strict
than it might be, because one of the greatest frustrations of the default mission editor was that it offered no

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indication of what was causing a mission to go wrong. In some cases FSX would not even load the resulting
mission, forcing you to slowly and painfully delete nodes one by one, reloading the mission with every change,
until it started working again.

D IALOG S CRIPT

This lists the text in every DialogAction in your mission, along with the name of the WAV file that is used. You
can use this to produce a script for the voice-actors who will be recording the speech. Use the ‘Copy’ button to
create the script, and simply paste it into Notepad or an e-mail. The script will also have the node names, which
they might use along with a list of node comments to get additional direction.

A LL C OMMENTS

Use this to list all the comments you have assigned to nodes. Since the comments are not used for anything
explicit, this can be put to any use you can imagine. As described above, you could add a comment like “Sound
excited” to a DialogAction and pass this list to your voice-actors along with the script. You could add ‘TODO: Fix
something’ comments as notes to yourself, explanations of why things are hidden or done in a particular way or
anything else you can come up with.

D EBUG E VENTS

This shows the progress of your mission in real-time, as you fly it in FSX. This is covered in detail under
“Debugging your Mission”.

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D EBUGGING YOUR MISSION 

For more complicated missions, it may sometimes be difficult to tell exactly
what is happening when you are testing it in FSX. You could put extra Dialog
messages in the mission to show you what’s happening but this still isn’t ideal.
Unfortunately there’s no way of getting access to the mission internals while it’s
running.

To try and work round this, FSXME can alter your mission so that every
trigger reports back information on when it fires, and where the user’s plane is at
the time. This information can be recorded so you can see the exact sequence of
events, hopefully allowing you to work out what is not happening in the way you’d
expect.

A DDING T RACE A CTIONS

To make this change, select the “Debug→Patch All Triggers” menu item. Every node that can call an action
will have a new action added to it which reports back to the editor when it is used. Every trigger will be monitored
in this way, but RandomActions are not. Since only one item in a RandomAction’s Actions list is used, adding a
trace action here may change the way your mission works.

Once these trace actions have been added, the display will change so that every trigger with a trace action
attached will have a small red dot. As you fly the mission in FSX, these indicators will turn purple when the trigger
fires.

You can also set breakpoints on nodes. These also allow you
to trace the mission, but when a breakpoint is hit, FSX will be paused.
Use Shift+F9 to set a breakpoint. Trace indicator

Remember to save your mission after adding these trace

actions, otherwise they will not be present when you load
the mission in FSX.

When you are done tracing, selecting “Debug→Unpatch All Triggers” will remove the trace actions.
Remember to do this before you give your mission out. Leaving the trace actions in place won’t stop it working,
but it will be much larger than it needs to be.

If you place a trace or a break on some items, in particular MenuItems, you will get a notice when the mission
is re-loaded that it has been changed. If you are not planning on using the debug features, you can ignore this
warning. However, if you do intend to run the debug monitor, you need to re-save the mission before loading it
into FSX. This is because for some items, the GUID that uniquely identifies it can't be written into the XML. A new
GUID must be allocated every time it is loaded, and the debug actions need to be updated to match.

M ONITORING THE M ISSION

Once you have patched and saved your mission, you can reload it in FSX and start to fly. As each trigger
fires, the trace actions will call back to FSXME showing you what is happening in real-time. To enable this, select
“Debug→Monitor”. You would also normally open the debug dialog, using “Mission→Debug Events”. As the trace
events come in, this dialog and the main display will both be updated.

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If the Monitor command is greyed out, it was not possible to load SimConnect. This will be the case if you are
running on a machine which doesn’t have FSX, or the SimConnect standalone package, installed.

The list of events shows you the name of the trigger that has fired, and the name of the attribute which was
used. Normally this will be ‘Actions’, but some triggers such as ProximityTriggers have more than one list of
actions. It also shows the time that the event happened, as the local time in the simulator.

As with the other similar dialogs, you can double-click on the list to show the trigger on the main display. This
allows you to follow the mission’s progress in your own time, tracking the sequence of events and hopefully making
it easier to correct problems in the mission’s logic.

If you have placed breakpoints as well as tracepoints, FSX will pause when a breakpoint is hit. However,
because of the way that SimConnect works, the sim may not pause for a short time after the breakpoint is hit. If
you have several triggers which fire in a very short period of time, the mission will have continued a little way
before it is paused. You should be able to use the debug event dialog, or simply follow the mission flow in the
main window, to find out what events have fired.

If the mission is restarted, the list of trace events will be cleared.

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T UNING THE T RACE

You may find that you have some triggers which you don’t want to monitor, such as short-period recurring
TimerTriggers. You can turn monitoring on and off for each trigger individually using the ‘Set Trace’ item on the
context menu, or by pressing F9.

K EEPING THE T RACE

You can save the trace along with the mission by using the “Debug→Save Trace” menu item. It will be saved
along with the main mission, by default with “.trace.xml” appended to the mission’s filename although you can
change the name if you wish. You can reload this trace later using “Debug→Load Trace”, or you can view it as a
single list by double-clicking on the trace file in Windows Explorer or opening it in a browser.

D EBUGGING T ECHNIQUES

The debugging feature is meant to allow you to follow the mission flow through, to see which triggers are firing
and then hopefully to work out what isn't happening in the way you'd expect. However, once you've flown your
mission for the thirtieth time, trying to get something working that only happens after forty minutes, it can get a
little repetitive.

One way round this is to use a menu at the start of the mission which allows you to skip the earlier parts,
perhaps by enabling triggers which only normally get activated late in the mission. Typically, a well-designed
mission will have at least a few places where all the possible story threads come together, and these places are
ideal for jumping into from a debug menu.

To help with this, there is a CustomAction provided called “Debug Relocate”. This works with the Debug
Monitoring mode of FSXME. When this is active and this CustomAction is used, the plane will be moved to the
location and orientation set in the CustomAction.

If your debug menu command enables all the necessary triggers and objects for the part of your mission you
want to test, using the Debug Relocate action will put the plane in the right place to start the debugging run.

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C REATING MSI PACKAGES 

Once you have finished with your mission, you will probably want to give it to other people so they can fly it.
While the more experienced users will be happy to manually unzip or copy folders around, many others will
struggle or simply not bother. By creating an MSI package they will have a familiar way of installing and removing
new missions.

The MSI creator included is fairly simple but should be enough for many situations. By default it will copy the
entire folder, including subfolders, where your mission is kept. In other words, if your mission is saved as “ C:\My
Missions\Demo.xml” it will take everything under ‘C:\My Missions’ and put it in the MSI to be installed on
the users’ computers.

There are some files that won’t get included in any MSI. These are the layout and trace files that may be
created by FSXME, and any temporary batch files. Reward files (.RWD) are also treated differently. Since these
must be in a ‘Rewards’ folder under FSX, and not in the mission folder, they can’t just be installed in the same
way as other files. Any .RWD files which are found in the mission folder are put into “[FSXHOME]\Rewards”
instead. Last, the ResourcePath value in any .FLT files is changed during installation to the relative path from FSX
to the .FLT file. This assumes that the .FLT file is in the same folder as the other mission files.

After creating an MSI, the mission is automatically saved, because several of the MSI settings are stored
alongside the mission. If you later need to issue an updated MSI, or a patch, the version number of the MSI must
be correct. Saving automatically helps to enforce this.

If you decide to copy your mission XML to use as the basis for a different mission, it is important that you also
delete and recreate the ScenarioMetadata node. This node is used as a key to the entire mission by the MSI
system, and if you don't recreate it then MSI will think you are reinstalling the original mission even if you change
the name of the MSI itself and the location it gets installed to. In effect, when someone installed your new mission
they would either get an error or would have the original mission uninstalled. Simply doing a copy/paste of the
ScenarioMetadata, then deleting the original one, is enough to solve this.

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S IMPLE M ISSIONS

Let’s try the simple case first. Load up the ‘Congo.xml’ sample mission and then select the ‘Mission→Create
Installation’ menu item. This dialog will appear:

There are lots of options here, but the default values will create a working mission installer. They are:

• Source: The folder which contains all the files you want to include with your mission. For a simple installer,
the default value is correct. Whatever folder you set as the source, it must contain the currently loaded
mission somewhere beneath it.

For example, if your mission is at “C:\FSX\Missions\MyMissions\Test.xml” then the default path would be
“C:\FSX\Missions\MyMissions”. You could also have “C:\FSX\Missions” or even “C:\FSX” because both those
paths contain the mission XML. Using “C:\SomewhereElse” would not work because the mission XML is not
included.

• MSI Name: The full path to the MSI that will be created.

• Banner: A 500x70 image file, one of .BMP, .PNG or .JPG, which contains the image that appears at the
top of the installer. If you leave this blank, a default one is used.

• Author: This appears as the Publisher in the Windows Add/Remove Programs control panel. By default
it is also used as the folder name to store your mission under.

• Title: The name of the item that appears in the Add/Remove Programs control panel.

• Version: Also appears in Add/Remove Programs. If the ‘Increment’ tickbox is set, the last digit of this
version number will be increased after the new installer is created. It is important that you increment the
version number, otherwise if you release updates to your mission they will be more complicated to install.

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 FSX Mission Editor

• Homepage: Only appears in Add/Remove Programs.

• Install To: This is the default location to install the mission to. The special value ‘[SIMHOME]’ will be set
to the FSX installation folder on the user’s PC. The other special values, ‘ [Manufacturer]’ and
‘[ProductName]’ are set to the values for ‘Author’ and the mission’s title. The title can be set using the
‘Mission→Set Description’ menu.

• Licencing: You can optionally decide to release your mission with a simple key-based licencing scheme.
One is provided – shortkey – which will allow you to generate licence keys which are unique to this
mission. Once you have switched licencing on, however, it should not be switched off.

• Comments: These will appear in the Add/Remove Programs window.

• ReadMe: The name of a file to show at the start of the installation. This can be any text you want to show,
usually a readme or a licence agreement. It must be in RTF format; this can be created best with
Wordpad. Create your text file and when you save it, change the 'Save as type' selection from 'Text
Document' to 'Rich Text Format'. MS Word and OpenOffice can also produce RTF documents but they
are much larger - up to ten times the size - than those produced by Wordpad.

• Compile to SPB: Once you're finished with the mission you can produce a compiled version which will
load faster and may stop people from reading your code quite so easily. Tick this box to compile your
mission before packaging it.

If you are compiling more than one mission into a single MSI (see Advanced Missions) then only the current
mission will be compiled. If you want all your missions to be compiled, you will need to compile them separately
using the 'Mission→Create SPB' menu item.

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 FSX Mission Editor

• File List: This button allows you to include or exclude specific files. By default all files are included except
for ones that are known to be used only for development; backups, batch files etc.

In this dialog, files which are known to be required are shown as 'Needed', with a green tick. Files which are
known to be not required are marked as 'Avoid', with a red cross.

You can tick or untick individual files to include or exclude them from the MSI. Note that if you use the 'Untick
Unsure' button, it is likely that any images you have used in your briefing or overview HTML files will be unticked,
so you need to find and enable them.

'Needed' files are those which are explicitly referenced by the mission, such as audio (WAV), the mission
briefing and bitmaps. 'Avoid' files are those which match these patterns:
● *.bat
● *.xml.layout
● *.trace.xml
● *.msi
● *.rewards.xml
● missiontrace.xsl
● backup_*
● *.tmp

All others are marked as 'Unsure'. These are enabled by default; if you disable them all using the 'Untick
Unsure' button, you need to make sure that you include any other files your mission needs. These will include any
images used by the mission briefing HTML, and additional scenery, effects or aircraft etc.

Back in the main MSI dialog if you now click ‘Create’, you will get an error message:

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 FSX Mission Editor

FSX will not load a mission without a corresponding .FLT file. Since this is a copy of one of the default missions,
you can just copy that one. Go to ‘[FSX]\Missions\Backcountry\Congo” and copy the entire folder, except
for ‘Congo.spb’, to the folder with your edited version of ‘Congo.xml’. You should now be able to create the
MSI, and it can be run just like any other installation.

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E XTRA MSI S ERVICES

If the MSI were just deploying files there wouldn't be much benefit over using a simple zip file. In fact it tries
to complete as much configuration editing as it can.

If your mission uses a new category this will be created when the package is installed. It is not removed if the
package is un-installed, in case it’s in use by other missions. After all the files have been installed, the FSX
category files are checked to see if they contain all the categories that are used by this mission. If not, a new
category file called [Manufacturer].xml is created, containing the new categories. The associated bitmaps are
copied into place too.

Any scenery areas found are added to the scenery database automatically, and removed if the mission is
uninstalled. A scenery area is any folder included in the MSI called “scenery” which has a parent folder. If you
create an advanced MSI and put your scenery in “[FSX]\Addon Scenery\scenery”, this is not removed from the
scenery database if the mission is uninstalled.

If you include any .dll or .exe files they are assumed to be FSX extensions. If they don't already exist, they
will be entered into the dll.xml or exe.xml files as appropriate, so that they are started automatically with FSX.
They are removed only when the last mission that uses them is uninstalled. The dll or exe file itself is copied into
“[FSX]\Extensions”.

Any .FLT files, which are the starting point for FSX to load a mission, are edited on install. The ResourcePath
value which tells FSX where to look for the mission files is changed to it's actual location. Also, the location of any
flightplan file in the GPS_Engine section of the FLT file is changed. The flightplan is assumed to be in the same
folder as the FLT file itself.

New categories and their banner images, and rewards are all left in place if your mission is uninstalled. This
is because other missions may be using them.

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A DVANCED M ISSIONS

The simple, default behaviour of the MSI creator can be changed. You can choose both the source and
destination folders so, if you have other files to copy such as effects or models, you can include those. Be careful
though, because any file that you install will be removed when the MSI is uninstalled! This means that if you copy
a new version of ‘[FSX]\Categories\FSCategories.xml’, for example, it will be deleted if your mission is
uninstalled – breaking FSX.

You shouldn’t need to include any of the default files anyway; the installer should handle setting up categories,
scenery, extensions and editing the FLT file.

To put together an advanced installer, you will need to prepare a folder to act as a staging area, containing
all the files you want to deploy. However, for the advanced installer you would include all the files you need to
copy, typically starting from the FSX home folder. You may have extra scenery, models or effects to include. The
mission itself and all the other associated files should be put in the appropriate location, something like “[Mission
Source]\Missions\adventure\MyNewMission\MyNewMission.xml”.

In other words, you are preparing a folder that reflects the FSX file structure but with only the new files you
need for your mission. This is often how missions are distributed, except that they will be packaged as a zip-file
instead of an MSI installer and may still need manual editing of categories and scenery.

On the “MSI Details” dialog, you would change the “Mission Source” to the folder that contains your complete
set of files, and “Install To” to [FSXHOME]. Note that in this advanced mode, any Reward files will not be moved
and so must be in the correct place (i.e. [Mission Source]\Rewards).

The “Mission Source” you choose must include the mission file that is loaded. Without this, there is no way to
check the current mission's required files are include, or to compile the XML to SPB if required.

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C HECKING THE I NSTALL

Just because the MSI installs correctly doesn’t mean it’s correct! There are some things you should check for
before posting or selling your missions.

• Install it on a clean FSX installation to check for missing scenery or models.

• Fly the entire mission or, better, get someone who hasn’t seen it before to fly it.

• Uninstall the mission and check that FSX still works. If you’ve included any FSX configuration files in your
installer you’ll probably destroy the users’ FSX installation when your mission is uninstalled.

• Reinstall, just to make sure it can be done.

L ICENCING YOUR M ISSION

You've finished your mission and decided it's a masterpiece, ready to go on sale to the world. You probably
don't want people to be able to copy it around too easily. This works in much the same way as most software
today; the installer asks for a licence key and won't install if it isn't given a valid one. For any given mission, you
create the lock once when the mission MSI is created, and the keys as often as you need.

C REATING THE L OCK

In the dialog that creates the MSI, you can set the 'Licencing' box to switch on a licencing key system.
Currently there's only one method available, but FSXME is designed to allow other systems to be plugged in.

With a licence provider switched on, whenever the resulting MSI is run the user will be asked to enter a
licence. Without this entered correctly, the MSI will refuse to install any files.

There are many ways to work round this system! Simply giving the MSI to a friend along with the licence key,
as with any software, will work every time. A little persistence and technical knowledge of the MSI structure will
allow someone to extract the files anyway. However, it does give people the feeling that they've got a personalised
product and are perhaps a little more likely to keep it to themselves.

Once you have selected a particular licence provider, you must be very careful about changing it. The licence
details are stored in the .layout file that accompanies the mission, and if these are changed or removed then there
is no way to generate any more licences. You would need to create a new lock, which would of course mean that
any existing keys would no longer work.

When you click 'Create', the lock for this mission is created. It is the details of the lock that get put into the
MSI; there is no need to rebuild the MSI every time you create additional keys.

If you do need to remove the lock, you can use the 'Remove' button next to the list of security providers. Only
do this if you want all the existing keys for your mission to become useless in a new MSI installer!

C REATING K EYS - GUI

Once your mission is locked, you will need to generate keys to give to people you want to be able to install it.
With the “shortkey” security provider, these are partly random and so many keys can be created for a single
mission. After creating a locked MSI, the 'Create Licence Keys' item on the 'Mission' menu will become available.

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 FSX Mission Editor

Select this, and click 'Generate' on the dialog. A new key will be created. You can paste this into the MSI installer
for your mission, or into an email to send to someone else.

You can check keys using the same dialog; paste a key in and click 'Verify' and you will be told whether the
key is valid or not.

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 FSX Mission Editor

C REATING K EYS – C OMMAND -L INE

You can also create keys on the command-line. This is particularly useful if you have to provide a list of valid
keys to an online retailer who is selling your mission pack.

In the same folder as the main editor program, there is another program called “Mission_Keygen.exe” . This
has no icon on the Start menu because it is a DOS program and expects to be run from a DOS prompt.

It can be copied and run from anywhere, or you can open a DOS prompt and change directory to where it is
installed to:
C:\Users\Jim>cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\JKCC\FSX Mission Editor 2"

C:\Program Files (x86)\JKCC\FSX Mission Editor 2>Mission_KeyGen.exe

Mission_KeyGen.exe -n Provider ConfigFile.xml

=> Generate a new lock, storing the values in ConfigFile.xml

Mission_KeyGen.exe -g ConfigFile.xml [Count]

=> Generate a new key, using the values in ConfigFile.xml
The optional Count parameter generates multiple keys in one pass.

Mission_KeyGen.exe -b ConfigFile.xml [Count]

=> Generate a _bad_ key, using the values in ConfigFile.xml
This is for false-positive testing. A real key is generated, then
between 1 and 4 characters are changed at random.

Mission_KeyGen.exe -v ConfigFile.xml XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

=> Validate a key using the values in the ConfigFile.xml
ConfigFile.xml must exist, having been created using -n or FSXME.

Mission_KeyGen.exe -v ConfigFile.xml -f Filename.txt

=> Validate a list of keys contained in Filename.txt .

Normally you will create the lock using the Mission Editor; however, the “-n” switch will create a lock and
embed it in any XML file. The editor will only use a lock embedded into the .layout file.

The other switches are explained in the help message, shown above. In brief, the most common command
would be:
mission_keygen -g D:\MyMission\MyMission.xml.layout

This would generate a single key for your mission. To generate a list of valid keys to send to a retailer:
mission_keygen -g D:\MyMission\MyMission.xml.layout 1000 >KeyList.txt

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 FSX Mission Editor

P ATCHING YOUR M ISSION

Even with all the testing you can get, the sad fact is that you - or more likely other people - will find problems
with your mission after it's been released. Instead of re-issuing the entire mission MSI which may contain large
elements like sound files or scenery, you can issue a patch containing only the differences.

When you create a patch, the previous MSI will be used as a baseline. It must be in the location it was
originally created in, and all the settings from the previous MSI build will be re-used. The version number is
particularly important for MSI to work properly.

Selecting “Mission→Create Patch” will show this dialog.

The “File List” button works in the same way as for a full MSI. It should show the entire list of files that you
want to be on the users' machines, not just the files you want included in this patch. Any files which were included
in the original MSI but which are excluded from the file list for the patch will be deleted when the patch is applied.
In other words, only untick files which you want to be deleted.

If you are running Vista, there may also be a UAC shield on the “Create” button if the baseline MSI requires
privilege elevation to install. This is because the first stage of creating a patch is to extract the files from the original
MSI.

Next it will create a new MSI using the existing settings, so that a patch can then be created containing only
the differences between the two. This is why the file list must contain all the files, not just the modified ones. Finally
it will use a Microsoft tool to create the patch itself.

Unfortunately that tool is not allowed to be included with this editor. It is however a free, if awkward, download.

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 FSX Mission Editor

G ETTING THE P ATCH C REATION T OOL

The patch is built using a Microsoft-provided DLL called “patchwiz.dll”. However, this is not included here
because unfortunately the licence states that it can not be distributed. This is the procedure for obtaining this DLL.

1) Visit Microsoft's “Windows Platform SDK” site at

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa370834(v=vs.85).aspx

2) Validate your copy of Windows and click “Download”.

3) Once “Setup.exe” (400Kb) has downloaded, run it. An installer window will appear. Click “Next” on the
first three pages until you reach the component selection page. De-select all items except “Win32
Development Tools” as shown here:

4) Click “Next” another two times and wait for it to finish.

5) Using Windows Explorer, open “C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86”.

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 FSX Mission Editor

6) Copy “patchwiz.dll” and “mspatchc.dll” to the same folder you installed FSXME to; it should
contain “MissionDisplay.exe”. By default, this is “C:\Program Files (x86)\JKCC\FSX Mission
Editor 2”. Again you may get more UAC requests here.

7) Re-run “Setup.exe” and remove the SDK.

The file details are as follows; older versions will not work.

– patchwiz.dll, 260,608 bytes, V4.0.6000.16384, 30/10/2006 01:43

– mspatchc.dll, 61,952 bytes, V6.0.6000.16384, 30/10/2006 01:29

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 FSX Mission Editor

A DVANCED CONFIGURATION 
One of the most potentially useful commands available in a mission is the "CustomAction". This allows
external code, working with FSX using SimConnect, to do almost anything. It only has two attributes, one of which
is the one that tells the SimConnect extension code what to do. This attribute, the PayloadString, can be set to
anything.

If you have written a SimConnect extension, you may well be able to create a template for your new mission
commands to allow them to be added to the mission as though they were one of the predefined commands. This
will make the command easier to use for other mission writers.

Template-based CustomActions appear in the "New Types" palette as "Special Actions". To add a new one,
you need to create an XML file describing your new command. For example:
<Mission.CustomDef Name="Debug Relocate">
<Description>
When debugging with the Mission Editor, move the aircraft.
</Description>

<Properties>
<Constant Value="Debug:RELOCATE"/>
<Property Display="Position" Type="LLA"
Default="N60° 0' 0.00,E130° 0' 0.00,+000100.00"
HelpText="Position to relocate to."/>
<Property Display="Orientation" Type="PBH"
HelpText="Orientation of the plane."/>
</Properties>

</Mission.CustomDef>

The header information is straightforward. The "Name" attribute of the "Mission.CustomDef" node is the name
that appears in the "New Types" palette, and is used for new nodes created using your template. The "Description"
node is the description of the command that appears at the bottom of the palette.

D EFINING THE PROPERTI ES

The next section, 'Properties', defines what fields you want to appear in the Attribute Editor. Each of these
fields is concatenated to form the PayloadString, with a space between each entry. Note that, as with all XML,
these values are case-sensitive.

Within Properties, you can define "Property" and "Constant" nodes. The "Constant" is a bit of text that will get
copied into the PayloadString without being altered. The other type, "Property", is where you define the fields that
the user will see as editable.

A Property description contains several attributes:

● Display is the label that appears to the left of the editable control in the Attribute Editor.

● Type defines the datatype to expect (see below).

Optional attributes are:

● Default sets a default value.

● Helptext defines the text that appears at the bottom of the Attribute Editor for this field.

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 FSX Mission Editor

● DisplayOnly should be “True” or “False”. If “True”, this field is not added to the PayloadString; the default
is “False”.

● Enabled can be set to the name of a Bool Property, to dynamically enable or disable this control
depending on the state of the Bool property's tickbox. This is especially useful with DisplayOnly Bools.

● Prefix specifies a bit of text that will be automatically put at the start of this property when it is added to
the PayloadString. This, and Suffix, can only be used with Text and Named List items.

● Suffix is the same, but the text is added to the end of the property.

Several datatypes are supported:

● Float is a floating-point number, and will show a standard edit control.

● Int is an integer (whole) number, also showing a standard edit control.

● Bool is a true/false field and will be shown as a tickbox.

● Text is free text.

● LLA is Latitude/Longitude/Altitude. This gets added to the PayloadString as a single quoted string.

● PBH is Pitch/Bank/Heading. This gets added to the PayloadString as a single string, with the three values
separated by commas.

● ObjectReference is a box that will accept a dropped item, and puts the GUID of that item into the
PayloadString.

● A named list, shown using a drop-down list. See Named Lists, below. If the list can't be found, a text-box
is displayed instead.

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 FSX Mission Editor

D YNAMIC C ONTROLS

You can change which controls are available dynamically by adding a Bool property. This would normally be
set to "DisplayOnly", meaning that the value of the Bool isn't added to the PayloadString. To make other controls
only appear if the Bool property is true, add the name of the Bool property in the Enabled attribute. For example:
<Property Display="Else?" Type="Bool"
Default="False" DisplayOnly="True"/>
<Constant Value="ELSE" Enabled="Else?"/>
<Property Display="Else Do" Enabled="Else?" Type="ObjectReference"/>

This creates a Bool property called "Else?". The following two entries, the constant "ELSE" and the Property
"Else Do", are only used if the tickbox for "Else?" is ticked.

You can use this to disable controls by prefixing the Bool control's name with "!". For example:
<Property Display="Use Option 1?" Type="Bool"
Default="False" DisplayOnly="True"/>
<Property Display="Option 1" Type="Text" Default="One"
Enabled="Use Option 1?"/>
<Property Display="Option 2" Type="Text" Default="Two"
Enabled="!Use Option 1?"/>

When the "Use Option 1?" tickbox is ticked, "Option 1" will be shown. When it is not ticked, "Option 2" will be
shown.

You can also use the value of one Named List control to choose the name of a list in another Named List
control. This is usually used to narrow down large lists, with the best example being the list of SimObjects. These
are split into categories, and all of these are read by default and are already available as lists. You can, of course,
define your own.

This code would create a Named List control asking for the category name, and another which depends on
the value of the first. Enclosing the first control's name in {braces} in the second control's Type attribute makes it
dynamically set. If for example the data value selected in the first list was "aircraft", the second list would show
the contents of the list "SimObjects_aircraft".
<Property Display="Object Type" Type="SimObjectTypes"
DisplayOnly="True"
HelpText="Select the type of object to list."/>
<Property Display="SimObject" Type="SimObjects_{Object Type}"
HelpText="List of objects of the selected type."/>

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 FSX Mission Editor

N AMED L ISTS

If one of your fields is expected to be one of a set of fixed values, you can use a listbox control to show these
rather than have the user type one in manually. By setting the "Type" attribute of a Property to be the name of a
list, that list is used instead of having a free-text box. There are many lists already defined, mostly coming from
the files under "propdefs" in the FSX directory. You can define your own lists too, so you aren't limited to using
the predefined ones.

A list is defined using a description of how to read it from an XML file. These instructions need to be in the
CustomDefs file you are creating to contain your command template, but the data it uses can come from any XML
file. It can even come from more than one XML file. You will need at least a little knowledge of using XPath pattern
matching to create these instructions. The list builder is very flexible, and so can be fairly complex. However, if
you're writing your own SimConnect extensions this shouldn't be too taxing!

There are several good XPath references available online, including:

● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath

● http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms256471.aspx

This is a summary of the method that's used to read lists:

Create a list called {Name}
For each file that matches {FilePattern}
Find the node which matches {Parent}
For each node that matches {ForEach} under {Parent}
Add the attributes or node values for {DataValue} and {DisplayValue}
to the list
End For
End For

A list is defined using an XML node called "Enum". This contains various attributes which describe how to
read the list:

● Name sets the name of the list. This is what you would use as the "Type" attribute of any Property that
uses this list.

● FilePattern is the filename that contains the list data. This can be a single filename, or a pattern e.g.
"list*.xml", or the special value "." which means "this file". The current directory is the FSX installation
directory. Using absolute paths is usually not a good idea, since the path may well be different on other
people's PCs.

● Parent is an XPath filter that selects a single node which contains all of the items in the list.

● ForEach is the XPath filter that will select each of the list items under the Parent.

● DataValue sets the value that is used when building the PayloadString. If it is prefixed with "@", it is
assumed to be the name of an XML attribute. If prefixed with "." or "/" it is assumed to be an XPath
pattern, and if the prefix is "$", or there is no prefix, it is assumed to be a constant.

● DisplayValue works the same way, but defines the text to be visible in the list. This may, of course, be
the same as the DataValue.

● Default is an XPath filter that defines the default value, again beneath the Parent. It uses the same
prefixes as DataValue and DisplayValue, so you can set the default to be a constant, or the contents of

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 FSX Mission Editor

a node or an attribute. If you are reading from more than one file, the Default value must be a constant.
If no Default is set, the first list item becomes the default.

● Description sets a textual description of this list. This is only used when displaying the 'List of Lists' inside
the editor.

N AMED L IST E XAMPLES

Let's run through a specific example and see if it becomes any clearer!
<Enum Name="SV_WPT_Approach"
FilePattern="."
Parent="//Enum[@Name='SV_WPT_Approach']"
ForEach="./Value"
DataValue="@data"
DisplayValue="@display"
Default="./Value[@default='True']/@display"
Description="Set once or updated once per second"
>
<Value data="INTERCEPT" display="Maximum speed"/>
<Value data="STATION" display="Maintain position" default="True"/>
</Enum>

The FilePattern is set to ".", so the list data is expected to be in the same XML file as the list definition.

Parent is "//Enum[@Name='SV_WPT_Approach']". This selects the first node, anywhere in the XML, which
is called "Enum" and has a "Name" attribute set to "SV_WPT_Approach". ForEach is set to “./Value”, which in
this case selects all "Values" nodes under the list definition itself. Each "Value" node is expected to have a
"data" attribute for the DataValue, and a "display" attribute for the DisplayValue.

The Default value is also an XPath filter, because it starts with "./". It finds the first "Value" node under the
list's Parent node which has an attribute called "default", which is set to True. The value of that node's
"display" attribute is used as the default value for the list. In this case, the second list item has a " default"
attribute set to "True", so the list's default value is set to "Maintain position".

So, from this XML a list would be created called "SV_WPT_Approach" and would contain two items:

● "Maximum speed", for which the text "INTERCEPT" would be added to the PayloadString

● "Maintain position", for which the text "STATION" would be added to the PayloadString. This is the default
value for the list.

Here's another example:

<!-- Category Descriptions -->
<Enum Name="CategoryDesc"
FilePattern="Categories\*.xml"
Parent="/SimBase.Document"
ForEach="./SimMissionUI.ScenarioCategory"
DataValue="@id"
DisplayValue="./Descr"
/>

This one creates a list called "CategoryDesc", which reads all XML files under "Categories". Inside each of
those files, it will use every node called "SimMissionUI.ScenarioCategory" under a Parent node of
"SimBase.Document" as a list item. The "id" attribute will be the data item, and the "Descr" subnode will be the
displayed text. Here's a modified extract from one of the category files that this list definition will read:
<SimBase.Document>
<SimMissionUI.ScenarioCategory
id="{93290E1B-CDE3-4263-B7AE-B8F87F99D901}">

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 FSX Mission Editor
<Descr>Pick up where you left off in Free Flight.</Descr>
<Title>My Saved Flights</Title>
<PreviewImage>banner_allcategories.bmp</PreviewImage>
</SimMissionUI.ScenarioCategory>
<SimMissionUI.ScenarioCategory
id="{89A043AF-EB9E-4248-8A3E-D645309542B9}">
<Descr>Fun and games as you master the basics.</Descr>
<Title>Tutorial</Title>
<PreviewImage>banner_tutorials.bmp</PreviewImage>
</SimMissionUI.ScenarioCategory>
...

So, this list definition would create a list of all mission categories that FSX knows about with the category
name used in the dropdown list box, and the category ID put into the PayloadString.

This method of list building should let you gather list items from any XML file. If you are defining your own
lists, putting them in the same place as the list definition will keep things simpler, with only one file needed. Most
lists defined by FSX are already available, so check the List of Lists before defining your own.

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 FSX Mission Editor

L IST OF L ISTS

As mentioned above, there are many lists which are already defined and are used as part of the editor. You can
use any of these in a CustomAction template without having to redefine them yourself. To see the existing lists,
press F12 or use the “Mission→List of Lists” menu item.

Double-clicking on any list here will pop up another dialog containing the items in that list, so you can use these
to check exactly what is available for your CustomAction templates.

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 FSX Mission Editor

M ENU Q UICK R EFERENCE

This simply lists all the menu items along with a very short description of what they do. Why not print these
pages to use as quick-reference cards? Acrobat Reader will do this using Ctrl+P and then enter “71 - 75” in the
Page Range section.

F ILE

NEW Create a new mission document

NEW WIZARD MISSION Clear the current mission and run the Wizard

OPEN… Load an existing mission from disk

SAVE Save this mission using the same name

SAVE AS… Save this mission using a different name

SAVE LAYOUT ONLY Save only the layout file, but not the main mission data

SAVE SELECTED AS RECIPE Create a Recipe from the nodes that are currently selected

SAVE AS TEMPLATE Save the current mission as a new full-mission template.

EXPORT SCENERY Save only the scenery objects from this mission to create a BGL.

PRINT… Print this mission using the current settings

PRINT PREVIEW Show on-screen what would be printed

PRINT SETUP Show the standard Windows printing dialog

PAGE LAYOUT Set the scaling rules for printing this mission

Scan your FSX installation and create XML lists of all the models, AI
REGENERATE BGL DATA LISTS
objects and their attachpoints

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 FSX Mission Editor

E DIT

COPY Copy any selected nodes and their XML to the clipboard

Create copies of copied nodes to either paste into the mission as a

PASTE
new node, or to paste into a text editor as XML

FIND Search for text in all nodes in this mission

PREFERENCES Change the application settings and layout method

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 FSX Mission Editor

V IEW

LOGIC NODES ONLY Choose whether to show just logic or all nodes

Choose whether to show visible objects like scenery which aren’t

UNATTACHED MODELS
referenced by anything

AREAREFS Choose whether to show area definitions

PLAYER REFERENCES Choose whether to show the special ‘Player’ node

TITLES ONLY Choose whether to show any attributes at all

Choose whether to show all attributes or only those that are most
ALL ATTRIBUTES
commonly used

UNDEFINED VALUES Choose whether to show undefined attributes

Choose whether to show the mapping of colours to node types in the

LEGEND
main display. Useful for printing.

COMMENTS Choose whether to show comments beneath nodes

ICONS Choose whether to show icons in the node headers

Choose whether to show attributes which should only be set by FSX

PRIVATE ATTRIBUTES
when saving a mission in progress. Off by default.

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 FSX Mission Editor

L AYOUT

ALLOW PARENT ON ALL NODES Reset all nodes which have had ‘Allow Parent’ switched off

CLEAR ALL PREFERRED PARENTS Reset all nodes which have had a preferred layout parent set

Reset all nodes which have been explicitly hidden, or which have had
UNHIDE ALL NODES
their children explicitly hidden

Where more than one DialogAction has been used by a single parent
HIDE CONSECUTIVE DIALOGS
node, hide all but the first

HIDE WAYPOINTS Hide all visible waypoint nodes

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 FSX Mission Editor

M ISSION

Don’t raise errors for files such as images which are referred to but
IGNORE MISSING FILES
can’t be found

Don’t raise errors for rewards which are used by GrantRewardActions

IGNORE MISSING REWARDS
but which can’t be found

IGNORE STYLE WARNINGS Ignore the least serious type of errors

CREATE INSTALLATION Create an MSI installation package for this mission

Create a patch containing only the differences from the most recent
CREATE PATCH
full MSI

Produce a compiled version of the mission, if you have the FSX SDK
COMPILE TO SPB
installed.

Show a dialog which allows you to create or check licence keys for a
CREATE LICENCE KEYS
protected MSI

CREATE TEMPLATE FILES Create a set of default FLT, WX and HTM files

Create a set of WAV files containing synthesized speech for all of the
CREATE DIALOG SPEECH
Dialogs

Change the Title and Description values, which are used on the
SET DESCRIPTION
Mission screen in FSX

For versions of the editor which support multiple simulators, choose

SET SIMULATOR
which one you are developing for.

Change which version of FSX you want this mission to be checked

SHOW COMPATIBILITY
against.

Change which version of FSX you want this mission to be for; one of
SET COMPATIBILITY
RTM (original), SP1 (ServicePack 1), SP2 or Acceleration.

SET REWARDS FILE Choose the XML file in which to load and save reward definitions.

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 FSX Mission Editor

D EBUG

Start waiting for debug messages to come from FSX when flying a
MONITOR
debug-enabled mission

Choose which method to use when connecting to FSX via

SIMCONNECT PORT
SimConnect

SAVE TRACE Save any debug data already collected to an XML file

LOAD TRACE Reload an XML-based debug trace file for this mission

CLEAR TRACE Remove any debug data already collected for this mission

PATCH ALL TRIGGERS Modify this mission so that every trigger reports debug data

UNPATCH ALL TRIGGERS Remove any debug reporting actions from this mission

W INDOWS

TOOLBAR Show or hide the toobar

STATUS BAR Show or hide the status bar

Show or hide the model placement bar if the current simulator

MODEL BAR
supports it.

ACTION PALETTE Show or hide the window that allows creation of new nodes

OVERVIEW Show or hide the window that shows the entire mission at once

LEGEND Show or hide a list of the node types in use, in a separate window

MISSION DESCRIPTION Open a dedicated attribute window for the mission metadata.

MISSION START DETAILS Open a dedicated attribute window for the flight file.

MAP Show an interactive map if the current simulator is supported.

RECENT EDITS Show a list of the nodes which have recently been modified.

ALL ERRORS Show a dialog containing every error and warning in this mission

DIALOG SCRIPT Show a dialog containing the text from every DialogAction

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 FSX Mission Editor

ALL COMMENTS Show a dialog containing all comments in this mission

Show a dialog containing all debug events sent from a FSX while
DEBUG EVENTS
FSXME is monitoring

XML FOR SELECTION Show the XML for any selected nodes

Show a dialog containing all lists which can be used in CustomAction

LIST OF LISTS
templates

COMMAND GROUPS Show a list of all top-level groups.

MODEL VIEWER Show an interactive model previewer.

H ELP

OPEN MANUAL (PDF) Open the PDF manual

CHECK FOR UPDATE Check online for new versions of the editor.

SUPPORT Open the support website.

ENTER LICENSE… Enter or change your license key

SHOW STARTUP OPTIONS Show the Welcome window on startup

CHECK OPT SETUP Check and modify the OPT setup in dll.xml

ABOUT… Show the version number and some statistics for this mission

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 FSX Mission Editor

C ONTEXT M ENU

REFERENCED BY → List all nodes that refer to this one

REFERENCES → List all nodes that this one references

Choose which of this node’s parent(s) is used for the main display,
PREFERRED PARENT → rather than the ‘shadow’ display which doesn’t show this node’s
children

When unticked, this node will never be shown with a parent node and
ALLOW PARENT
will therefore always start a new group

HIDE CHILDREN Hide all child nodes of this node

HIDE THIS Hide this node

CUSTOM COLOUR Change a node’s background colour

LIST ERRORS Show errors for this node only

EDIT COMMENT Edit this node’s comment text

DETACH Separate this node from it’s visible parent

EDIT ATTRIBUTES Show the attribute editor for this node

If attributes have been changed but not yet saved or viewed, reset
REVERT CHANGES
them

RENAME Change this node’s display name

Remove this node. If it is linked to more than once, only this one copy
DELETE
is removed.

Add a CustomAction to this trigger which will report back when

SET TRACE
monitoring for debug data

Add a CustomAction to this trigger which will pause FSX and then
SET PAUSE
report back when monitoring for debug data

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 FSX Mission Editor

K EYBOARD S HORTCUTS

These shortcuts are in addition to the normal, Windows ones.

- Zoom out

+ Zoom in

HOME Move main display to far left

END Move main display to far right

CTRL+HOME Move main display to top left

CTRL+END Move main display to bottom left

CTRL+LEFT Select the parent node

CTRL+RIGHT Select the first child node

CTRL+UP Select the previous sibling node

CTRL+DOWN Select the next sibling node

PAGE UP Main display moves one page up

PAGE DOWN Main display moves one page down

DEL Delete selected node(s)

SHIFT+D Detach selected node(s)

ENTER Edit attributes of selected node(s)

; Edit comments of selected node(s)

CTRL+F Find text in all nodes

H Show/Hide Children

F2 Rename selected node(s)

F5 Refresh main display

F6 Show all errors in this mission

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 FSX Mission Editor

SHIFT+F6 Show errors for a selected node

F7 Show all dialog text in this mission

F8 Show all comments in this mission

F9 Set a breakpoint on this node

F10 Show all debug events in this mission

F11 Show XML for selected node(s)

F12 Show the List of Lists

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