Il-2 Mission Planner | online flight planning tool | il2missionplanner.com

[SC_Manu653]

It's super great for planning very nice addition !!! Great shot !

[curiousGamblerr]

Thanks everyone! Can't wait to hear about how it works during an actual mission.

 

Jim- Very strange. Thanks for trying again.

 

It doesn't use any cookies, besides maybe the Google analytics bit that's been there since the beginning so that's not it. Do you happen to know how to open the JavaScript console? Are any errors being logged when you reload the page?

[JimTM]

...

 

...

 

... Do you happen to know how to open the JavaScript console? Are any errors being logged when you reload the page?

 

Here are some screenshots from the console:

 

 

 

  <-- Scrolled the screenshot above to the right.

 

I hope that helps. Let me know if you need more information.

 

Jim

[curiousGamblerr]

Hmm I'm at loss. That's exactly what I wanted Jim, thanks, but I don't see the smoking gun I was hoping for. Pretty baffled because there's nothing new about the button itself haha if the others show up then so should it!

 

I will keep thinking about this Jim, thanks for the info. Might bug you for more info if something occurs to me.

 

Anybody else seeing the problem of the new button not showing up?

[JimTM]

Glad to help.

[[CPT]Pike*HarryM]

Wow, that's very cool to say the least.

[curiousGamblerr]

Thanks Harry! I appreciate the kind words from everyone... but I would really appreciate it if you guys could use it and let me know how it works! I need testers! (Besides poor Jim, because the darn button won't appear for him, still wondering about that...) Thanks! 

Edited September 16, 2016 by 19.GIAP//curiousGamblerr

[[DBS]El_Marta]

Great tool.

Edited September 16, 2016 by [DBS]El_Marta

[JimTM]

Thanks Harry! I appreciate the kind words from everyone... but I would really appreciate it if you guys could use it and let me know how it works! I need testers! (Besides poor Jim, because the darn button won't appear for him, still wondering about that...) Thanks! 

 

Oh well, I can still use it in IE for now, just not Chrome.

Edited September 16, 2016 by JimTM

[coconut]

CuriousGambler, thank you for that tool, and thank you for letting others use the map tiles. I'm using them for after-mission reports (still early WIP) http://coconutside.eu:8083/missions

 

[curiousGamblerr]

Happy to help coconut, thanks for the kind words!

 

I've been pining for something like what you're working on, definitely looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

And I see you're using Leaflet- let me know if you run into any issues with it. I've become pretty familiar with it after hacking away and monkey patching it to make it suit my needs for the mission planner. Really a fantastic library, the mission planner wouldn't exist without it.

[=/WoVi/=kirumovka]

Oh cheers! It runs less efficient than the il2bos android app on my tablet but it does have more necessary functions.

Some things that could be added:

 

-Snapping on points (Snap onto a pre-defined airfield, currently it won't let us click on something that is marked when giving waypoints)

-- It will also make a two-way leg prettier to look at because on a touchscreen it is hard to click with precision

 

-Wind input for legs, or even better, global winds at specific levels 500m, 1000m, 2000m and 5000m since il2 bos winds are pretty simple (though will need changing if they do somehow give a proper weather system into the game)

--Compensating winds calculation may be a bit complicated since some pre-made programming engines don't feature trigonometry functions, but if you do have those functions programming this should be somewhat basic.

---This site provides reliable calculations, outputting integers - Wind compensation is the third one.

 

-Drawing line, which allows us to draw the front lines as well as probably doodling, drawing arrows etc.

 

-Capability of Deleting Flight Routes - Cannot delete flight routes at the moment which can be messy

Edited October 8, 2016 by Y-29.ZdrytchX

[curiousGamblerr]

Hey ZdrytchX, thanks for the suggestions! Let me address each of them in turn:

 

"Snapping on points" - This would be nice, but given the technical challenge vs benefit I will most likely never get around to it. A solution is not obvious to me within the framework of the underlying library I've used to create this app, but if something pops into my head maybe I'll give it a shot. There are also some related plugins for the underlying library that could help or provide technical inspiration.

 

"Wind input... calculation" - Meteorology and wind correction is definitely on the short list of features to implement. It's next in line after I finish the streaming piece and release it to production beyond beta. I planned on having a control that lets you define the wind as exactly as you described, at each level modeled in the game, and then to draw wind corrections to boot. I envision a second, toggle-able line on each leg of the flight that gives the corrected heading and time in order to accomplish the drawn flight leg. And luckily wind correction in it's most basic form is a matter of simple vector addition, so no trig functions are required. Thanks for the link btw.

 

"Drawing line" - This would be nice, and I know a few people have asked for it. Similar to the first one, there are related plugins but nothing quite perfect. One tricky part is exporting such a line, given the continuous nature of a free drawn line, but it could be approximated into discrete segments after drawing. I think it's likely I eventually add this, but not anytime too soon.

 

"Deleting Flight Routes" - This is already possible with the eraser button located below the edit button. Since you're on mobile, it may just be that the thin lines are somewhat tricky to click in order to get them deleted. I might experiment with thickening the lines on mobile in order to make deleting and manipulating them easier in general.

 

A general note on touch support- Mobile and Tablet users represent a unique challenge in the form of touch screen support. This is part of the reason I used existing mapping and drawing libraries to build this app- supporting touch screens requires a good bit of work and a ton of device testing to get done properly, and I just don't have the time or inclination to do all that myself (I do it professionally and it's a PITA so until someone starts paying me for the mission planner I let myself be lazy lol). Even using those libraries, which are maintained by and contributed to by hundreds of developers, there are still bugs, such as the fact that editing doesn't work properly on touch devices and thus I've just disabled it when a touch screen is detected. (although this reminds me I just upgraded some dependency versions so maybe that's fixed itself...)

 

For what it's worth, mobile and tablet users only represent ~20% of my users on a weekly basis, and only 10-15% of sessions. As much as I do my best to support touch devices, I can't concentrate too much time on catering those devices, which leads to certain bugs, feature limitations and inefficiencies like you mentioned. So please bear with me if you're a mobile user.

 

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! I always appreciate it.

[=/WoVi/=kirumovka]

Your welcome. Here's some concept wise tips:

"Snapping on points" - This would be nice, but given the technical challenge vs benefit I will most likely never get around to it. A solution is not obvious to me within the framework of the underlying library I've used to create this app, but if something pops into my head maybe I'll give it a shot. There are also some related plugins for the underlying library that could help or provide technical inspiration.

Your icons are at least deletable by clicking on them, so if you use the same way of detecting the click, you can let it snap into the same co-ordinates as the icon.

"Deleting Flight Routes" - This is already possible with the eraser button located below the edit button. Since you're on mobile, it may just be that the thin lines are somewhat tricky to click in order to get them deleted. I might experiment with thickening the lines on mobile in order to make deleting and manipulating them easier in general.
 
A general note on touch support- Mobile and Tablet users represent a unique challenge in the form of touch screen support. This is part of the reason I used existing mapping and drawing libraries to build this app- supporting touch screens requires a good bit of work and a ton of device testing to get done properly, and I just don't have the time or inclination to do all that myself (I do it professionally and it's a PITA so until someone starts paying me for the mission planner I let myself be lazy lol). Even using those libraries, which are maintained by and contributed to by hundreds of developers, there are still bugs, such as the fact that editing doesn't work properly on touch devices and thus I've just disabled it when a touch screen is detected. (although this reminds me I just upgraded some dependency versions so maybe that's fixed itself...)
 
For what it's worth, mobile and tablet users only represent ~20% of my users on a weekly basis, and only 10-15% of sessions. As much as I do my best to support touch devices, I can't concentrate too much time on catering those devices, which leads to certain bugs, feature limitations and inefficiencies like you mentioned. So please bear with me if you're a mobile user.

I noticed the flight route clickable area is only 2 pixels thick haha. Struggle even on a computer (I usually do the planning on a computer, then upload to dropbox then downloda onto my tablet for playing)
 
But yes, you probably will need to get some experience specifically with touch screen devices to improve the usability for suck devices. Nevertheless, I still find it easier to use than the google playstore android app 'il2bos' or whatever it is called.

Speaking of which, it is impossible (at least for me) to save a mission on my tablet, so this might be the reason why the traffic for such devices is low. The reason being is that running the json script or whatever for saving only outputs a text document and chrome for mobile devices does not have an option to save a webpage. I usually save a mission on my computer by right clicking and save as .txt file.

And luckily wind correction in it's most basic form is a matter of simple vector addition, so no trig functions are required. 

I still see it as trig though, though I do find vector addition easier than sin/cos/tan, even if it takes more time to calculate by hand.
 

I'm one of those people who are also better at visualising than actually calculating too, which is what allowed me to replicate many fast paced shooter game physics, without even knowing how to operate a while or for loop:

 

 

But I overcame my own inability to do some things and kind of improvised

 

[curiousGamblerr]

Thanks for the tips. If you're interested, the project is all open sourced on Github... I haven't publicized it much because a large portion of the code is a bit of a mess, but if you want to contribute you're welcome to fork it and open a PR. But really, the code holding it all together is crazy, because like I said, it's hard to hold myself to the same standards I stick to at work given that I do this all in my free time. Anyway, code is here: https://github.com/gavincabbage/il2missionplanner.com

 

In other news, I've pushed the streaming feature out of beta into prod, so it's now available in main app at http://il2missionplanner.com. Looking forward to some of you guys getting some use out of it! I didn't get many beta testers, so I'm looking forward to hearing about what bugs and such you all find 

 

And ZdrytchX, you could use the stream to create your mission on a PC and stream instantly to your tablet, rather than having to export and import.

 

Always looking for feedback guys, keep it coming!

 

Edit: The more I look at this I realize how long it's been since I've updated the README and stuff, so I'll probably polish some things over the next few days/weeks. I would love to have the community helping out with this tool, since I've gotten so many great feature ideas/requests.

Edited October 12, 2016 by 19.GIAP//curiousGamblerr

[SCG_Limboski]

Is a Moscow map in the works?  Love this tool and I use it all of the time.

[[DBS]El_Marta]

yep, just hit the gear in the right bottom corner.

[curiousGamblerr]

Yup as El Marta said you can change the map in the settings menu, accessed by the gear in the bottom right. Moscow and V. Luki are both available in addition to Stalingrad. S!

[SCG_Limboski]

Thanks guys....I never saw the settings icon.

[AstrixAU]

Great tool loads nice and quick! Thank you so much,

 

My only issue is the info for each navigation point is very small and hard to read, I've tried all settings. Maybe if it was bigger or blue might stand out better like when you hover your mouse over it. Maybe add a option to make it larger along with the speed.

 

Thanks for all your great work! 

Edited October 24, 2016 by astrix_au

[curiousGamblerr]

Small bit of news...

 

Pretty busy at work lately, but in the next few weeks I'm hoping to add additional display options, since many people have mentioned that. This includes an option to make the text bigger, change the format (remove the bars and brackets) and increase the line thickness of flight plans. I also want to include some new icons created by 19.GIAP//SAG.

 

Meteorology and wind corrections will probably need to wait until early next year. 

 

And I would love to hear more feedback on the real-time streaming feature I added recently, if anyone is using that.

 

Happy Mission Planning!

[SvAF/F16_Petter]

This is a fantastic tool! 
Thank´s for putting so much effort in to it.

As a thank you, I would like to contribute with ideas:

 

My suggestions

 

1. "Stream Share" URL generation

The stream function is great, however.. would it be possible to have a URL generation button that would contain the link to the actual map that intended for streaming? This would make it very easy to share, so the user only needs the url to connect to that stream.? It could even contain or not contain the password. This would have the user less to click about and to jump into the correct stream directly. You would of course as a leader distribute it for example in the Teamspeak/Discord chat box so you are among known people. Basically... at the Start Streaming Dialouge, there could be a button that says: Generate URL or something nifty.

That way the planner only needs to start the stream and paste ctrl+v the link to the intended recipient / form of communication

Any user clicking that URL goes directly into the stream without any fuzz!

 

It´s kind of like back in the days when you sent ftp links with hostname user and password embedded. And since the planner is responsible to who he/she shares to, it´s easy and not really a security concern.

 

 

 

2. Fonts, colors and transparency
Could it be possible to change the font type, sizes and perhaps their colour or even transparency? As of now, I personally think they are a bit too large and I would prefer letters that are more of a cleaner type, don´t really know how I can explain this better, but have a look at the image below:

 

 

I know that this looks like a nightmare of clutter, but remind you what do you think it would have looked if all had same colour?

 

It would be great to be able to enter information in different colors not only the icon color, I think the different flight lines could have selectable colors? this way several flights could be on same map etc.

I really like what you did with the background removal & dark / white option! Now this would be a step even further in increasing readability and information processing for the stressed out pilot.

 

In short:
Colors can separate and sort information quickly!
Fonts should cover the map as little as possible what if transparent text could increase details in background?!

 

 

3. Timestamp on legs

It would be really interesting option if the waypoint line would include a series of 1-minute breaks/points/or very small markers that would indicate to the pilot where on the leg he is or should rather should be according the route.
This could be done by interrupting the line with a small x or a point.. or something that is subtle yet informative.

Normal flight plans just include the hdg/alt/etc, but since you already included the speed option, this could be a neat function?

 

In this the pilot would cross reference if he is on time or behind or forward etc.  This would look something like this along the path

------------ . ------------- . -------------  or ----------- | --------- | --------------  or maybe even the time stamp with micro font of time or minute number? 

------------ 1 ------------- 2 -------------  or ----------- hh:mm --------- mm:ss -------------- 

What do you think?

It would be great to be able to enter information in different colors not only the icon color,

I really like what you did with the background removal & dark / white option! have a look at the info that can be quickly separated below just by color of text!!!

Edited January 4, 2017 by SvAF/F16_Petter

[curiousGamblerr]

Great suggestions Petter, thank you

 

Unfortunately my day job has sapped all my coding energy lately, and sort of derailed my plans for this, but hopefully I'll have the time to get back into it before too long. Colors and wind correction were on my mind, but I also like your link idea! Hopefully sometime in the next few months. Thanks again!

[-TBC-AeroAce]

Hi loving the app, very grateful!!!!!!

 

 

A couple of things:

 

The edit icon does not appear on my version of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Internet explorer but it does appear on Firefox.

 

Also on this versions where the above does not work there are additional way points added in on the points where the legs change showing 0 km, 0 time at heading (xxx of the last leg). The regular way points are populated in the middle of the legs .This is on a windows 10 Tablet.

 

Also is there any way of moving the text boxes around the target markers? As for example if you have a take of and landing at the same field the texts boxes will over lap. I know that is a very very very small thing that is probably not worth the time to implement it but would be nice for general aesthetics. Could it be made that when you use the edit function you could move the text box to the up, down, left and right position... instead of just right.  

[curiousGamblerr]

Hey Aero, thanks! Good suggestions for when I start working on this again, hopefully sometime in the next few months. Lots of things I want to add and improve.

 

On the edit button, it's intentionally disabled on touch devices because there was a bug in one of the underlying libraries I was using. I've since upgraded that library and bet it's fixed. I'll test it when I start working on it again and reenable editing on touch devices if it works.

 

If you have a chance, can you post a screenshot of the 0km 0 time bug you're seeing?

[Freccia11]

Hi all!

First of all, let me say how fantastic I find this app, especially the possibility to transfer everything from a pc to a mobile device using the stream.

 

However, I think that there could be a graphical addition to make the whole thing overall better and more effective during the flight. During my flight training, I was taught to draw dotted lines from both ends of a navigational leg spaced 10° from the centerline as can be seen in the photo:

 

 

To give a bit of an example for better understanding, let's assume the fact that we were flying this leg from right to left and 6 minutes after we past the checkpoint we pinpoint the position of the aircraft at the yellow dot, which is about 4° left of the track as you can estimate using the red dotted line.

You can therefore apply an initial correction of 4° right - since you drifted off-route of exactly that amount - to get back parallel to the original track countering thus the effect of the wind, plus 4° more degrees to regain the correct track in the same time (6' in our case) it took you to fly from the last known position on the centerline (which I assumed in this case the start of the leg) to the moment you pinpointed the position.

So basically: you turn right 8°, fly for 6' and then re-correct left 4° because now you just want to keep the 4° required to counter the wind and not the ones to regain the track (since you should be on it, if you flew accurately).

 

I hope this makes sense... Sorry if I either overcomplicated it or spent too much time explaining it!

 

So, to summarize, my question is: do you think it is possible to automatically - or manually - add this lines along the plan?

 

 

 

Let me know what you think about it! 

Edited January 23, 2017 by Freccia11

[GOA_Walter_Nowotny]

Great work. Thank you for your contribution to the comunity. Will use this for my next mission on TAW server.

Salut!!

[IRRE_Golgoth21]

Hello, i can't save my map ! Or i don't know where it is saved.  Does-it work ?

[CCG_bexhausted]

Clic on button "Export File", a page opens in your browser then "Save as "where you want.

Sorry for my strange english 

[curiousGamblerr]

Clic on button "Export File", a page opens in your browser then "Save as "where you want.

Sorry for my strange english 

 

Yeah, the export functionality isn't great. When you click the button you will get a new tab with some text - just save that text somewhere, and import the saved file when you want to restore the map state.

 

I plan to improve this at some point, but right now I'm concentrating on integration with Random Expert server (teaser!)

[IRRE_Golgoth21]

Okay, thanks, works only in CHROME, but it works. At leas, i found out !!!!!

[curiousGamblerr]

Okay, thanks, works only in CHROME, but it works. At leas, i found out !!!!!

 

Really? I'm on OSX and just tested it on Firefox and Safari. You're doing this on a Windows machine? What does it do? Just no new tab?

[IRRE_Golgoth21]

Exact, windows 7, IE10 and FireFox  don't work. On IE10, a blank new tab, on FireFox, nothing happened (maybe an Adblock issue on Firefox).

 

Anyway, it works on Chrome. And it's a super cool tool, thank you for it.

 

Are you working on the tool ? because the EDIT Icon disapeared.

Edited March 30, 2017 by -IRRE-golgoth21

[BOO]

This is a great asset to have.

 

Thank you Gamblerr

[Chief_Mouser]

Hi Gamblerr. This is an excellent tool, thanks very much.

I don't appear to be able to Export a file; just get a blank page. Windows 7 and IE 11.

Cheers.

[curiousGamblerr]

 

 

EDIT Icon disapeared.

 

Edit is disabled on touch devices because of a bug in the mapping framework I used to build the tool. I've since upgraded versions for that framework so it might be fixed.

 

In general, I hear there are many problems with the export functionality, so I'll look into that in the coming days. I hadn't touched the tool in ~5 months, but recently got back into it so hopefully I can iron out many of the bugs folks have mentioned. Thanks for reporting them- cross platform testing is one of the biggest challenges of web tools, and for a side project like this I don't have the time to run the tool through it's paces on every OS+browser combination.

 

In the meantime, if you're having issues with export, try the streaming functionality located below the import/export buttons. Your map stream will stay around for 12 hours since it was last changed, so if you're just moving your map from one device to another or sharing with a teammate, the stream will probably be easier than exporting and importing.

 

Thanks for the help and kind words all. 

[IRRE_Golgoth21]

Hello

 

Export works.  use Chrome. it opens a new tab with all the coordinates of the icons you've set up.  Select the whole text and save it to a txt file.

 

To recall a map, you just have to click onto "open" and select the txt file previously saved.

 

===UPDATE=== Streaming doesn't work with big maps. I can provide you my file, in order you can check what's wrong. ===UPDATE ===

Edited March 31, 2017 by -IRRE-golgoth21

[IRRE_Genius]

Hi,

 

I found some bug on streaming map.

 

When i try to connect to an existing map, the map not responding (clic to "connect" has no effect ans start streaming page still appear).

 

I use chrome last version.

 

Bye

[curiousGamblerr]

Hi,

 

I found some bug on streaming map.

 

When i try to connect to an existing map, the map not responding (clic to "connect" has no effect ans start streaming page still appear).

 

I use chrome last version.

 

Bye

 

I tried it on a recent version of Chrome and it seemed to work as expected. Could you make a video or describe your problem in more detail?

 

Thanks and sorry it's not working for you!

[IRRE_Genius]

I tried it on a recent version of Chrome and it seemed to work as expected. Could you make a video or describe your problem in more detail?

 

Thanks and sorry it's not working for you!

 

Re, Thanks for your help.

 

I make:

1) choose moscow map

2) add icons / airbase

3) start streaming (test_Genius / password: Genius)

 

When you finish to edit the map, stop streaming is needed/availuable ? Other players can still connect to this map if "stop streaming" are applied (the map still appear on the connect list) ?

 

How much long is this map allowed ?

 

Thanks

 

Genius

 

 

P.S.: you can test "test_Genius" map. I don't click to "stop streaming"