X-Plane 12 API

Laminar Research actually built something that follows basic engineering principles instead of chasing whatever garbage framework is trending on GitHub this week. Simple C API with no bloated C++ monstrosity featuring 47 inheritance layers. Just plain function calls that do what they say they’ll do. Minimal dependencies too; no frameworks, no “ecosystems,” no BS. You link against their headers and you’re done.

The documentation was written by actual humans who understand the code, not auto-generated garbage that tells you getData() “gets the data.”

Compile your plugin, drop that thing into the plugins folder, restart the sim. Done. No registry bullshit, no installer wizards, no configuration files scattered across seventeen different directories.

Compare this to some other game APIs that require you to import half of Boost just to display a triangle.

I wish more companies built APIs like this.

Plugins

This motivated me to build two military-focused plugins for the sim. There aren’t that many plugins around for X-Plane 12 regarding military simulation, given that the sim focuses mostly on civilian flight operations. Due to its amazing API and developer friendliness, I came up with building two plugins that enhance the realism of flying a Maritime Patrol Aircraft, namely:

• A realistic FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) plugin
• Automatic missile guidance (JTAC-like) - this makes it possible to select an arbitrary point (center view of camera), calculate its real-world coordinates and guide the missile to the calculated target; this is done by terrain probing and a binary search algorithm

Both are open source and on my GitHub page:

• FLIR Camera
• Missile Guidance