SMARTLINK

SMARTLINK is a free companion app for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024. On your own it looks after your sim: scenery that switches itself for each flight, Sim health to find what's stuttering or crashing, voice commands, routines, overlays and a logbook that fills itself in. When you fly with friends or a club, it adds group flights, clubs, races and challenges you won't find anywhere else.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

Most sim tools do one job: an add-on linker, a flight tracker, a voice app, an overlay tool, a crash log reader. SMARTLINK does those jobs in one app and the parts work together:

• The flight you plan decides which scenery loads, gives your group its route, counts down on your overlays and is what your logbook compares your flight with.
• Every landing is scored once and turns up everywhere: the card over the sim, your group's results, your club's leaderboards and your logbook.
• Crash finder works on the same add-on library you switch every day, so it can switch things off for you and put every one back.
• A routine can start from a phrase you say or a key you press, then switch your overlay set, change your voice profile or mark your logbook.
• Fly alone or together. Everything works on your own, and the day friends join you, group flights, clubs and races are already there.
• Free with no account, no ads and no premium tier. It's light on your PC too: about 0.03% of the CPU in the tray.
• It's built with the pilots who use it. Ideas and bug reports from the Discord shape what comes next.

Use all of it or only the part you came for. Each part works on its own.

FLY TOGETHER

• Group flight: share a three-letter code and you're in. Everyone gets the leader's route straight into their plan and can match the leader's time of day.
• The Flight bar over the sim shows where everyone is along the route. A card pops up with each pilot's landing rate and score as they land, and the flight ends with a results card for the whole group.
• Departure and arrival spacing: SMARTLINK tells each pilot when it's their turn to go and keeps a gap on the way in. Spoken, on screen or both.
• The leader can start a race, rally, relay race, treasure hunt or landing target on the spot, or ping a place on the map for everyone.
• Markers in the sim (MSFS 2024 only): race gates, start and finish arches and your group's own markers along the route.

CLUBS AND CHALLENGES

• Clubs: the group you fly with every week gets its own page. Plan a flight and people wait in its waiting room until it goes live. Run a series over several weeks with standings, leaderboards, medals and a passport of everywhere you've been together.
• Members can choose to show themselves on the club's map while they fly, outside group flights too.
• Races: build one on the map and share it by its number. Everyone who flies it goes on one leaderboard, even if you fly it on your own. Times are balanced by each aircraft's speed, so a Cessna can beat a jet.
• Landing challenges with rules you set, a different challenge on each leg of a trip and points that count towards a series.

Want a club for your group? Ask for its code on the SMARTLINK Discord.

SIM HEALTH

• When the sim stutters, freezes or crashes, Sim health says what happened in plain words: how long the picture stopped, what was happening around then and what was running at the time.
• Crash finder tracks down the add-on behind a crash. It switches your add-ons off half at a time, launch by launch, then puts every one back. Answer each launch yourself, or let it start the sim and read the crash reports for you.
• Compare a crash with other pilots who've had the same one and see which add-ons they had in common. On a day when lots of pilots are crashing, Home tells you it's most likely the sim.

SCENERY THAT FOLLOWS YOUR FLIGHT

• Plan a flight and SMARTLINK asks what scenery you want: only the airports on your route, or everything within a radius of it. Your add-ons are switched to match before you launch. Load less and the sim starts faster and uses less memory.
• The map shows every airport you have scenery for, on or off, and you can switch it from the airport's card.
• Filters for handcrafted airports, World Update points of interest (ticked off as you visit them), scenery you could get, the weather now and the countries you've landed in.
• Plan with SimBrief or without it, load a .pln, add waypoints with a right-click or press Random for somewhere new, real airline routes included.

ADD-ONS

• Switch scenery and aircraft on and off in one place. Your add-ons live in a library folder and SMARTLINK leaves a link in Community for each one that's on. Switching one off removes the link, never the files.
• Sort by size to find what's taking up the most room.
• Sets for the way you fly, with several on at once. Rules so a scenery and the library it needs always come on together.
• Liveries listed under the aircraft they're for. Got 2020 and 2024? Both can share one copy of everything.

VOICE COMMANDS

• Hold your push-to-talk key or a button on your stick, say "landing lights on" and the lights come on. Speech is recognised on your PC with no internet needed. It only listens while you hold the key.
• Through SimConnect, commands go straight to the sim with no key bindings to set up, and nothing can land in the wrong window. Say a heading, altitude, speed or squawk digit by digit and it's set. Say "fuel remaining" or "destination weather" and hear the answer.
• Or have a phrase press any keyboard shortcut you've bound in the sim, a single key or a sequence. Every phrase has a Test button and you can add your own.
• In MSFS 2024, Update from this aircraft matches your phrases to the aircraft's own controls.

ROUTINES

Start your apps with the sim, then let SMARTLINK do the routine stuff at the right moment. A routine is a moment, then the steps to take. A few you could set up:

• Climbing through 10,000 ft: altimeter to standard and landing lights off. Descending through it: back again.
• Sitting down in the cockpit: start your other apps, load your SimBrief fuel and payload and put up your overlay set.
• Wheels up: wait until you're climbing, then gear up.
• Taxiing too fast: a pop-up telling you to slow down.
• Top of descent: pause the sim, so a long flight never runs past it while you're away.
• Your turn to depart in a group: a line spoken in your headset.

In MSFS 2024 a step can learn any switch straight from the cockpit, or record a whole flow and play it back on one key. Routines can be shared with friends as a file.

OVERLAYS

• Dozens of instruments to put over the sim, from airspeed and wind to fuel at destination and the next waypoint. Each comes small, medium or large and sits where you drop it.
• For group flights: the Flight bar, a formation radar on whoever you're following, the group's best landings and the next gate in a race.
• Landing cards with your rate and score, approach warnings and spoken callouts.
• Save sets for the ground, the climb or a race and switch them with one key.

SOUND AND PICTURE

• Play the sim's own sound through an equaliser, with a starting sound for each kind of aircraft, tuned to whether you listen on headphones, a TV or speakers. It rides out a stutter instead of cutting out.
• Switch ReShade presets with a key, or let them change at sunrise and sunset. No ReShade? Warm your screens up for an evening flight.

LOGBOOK AND FLEET

• Every flight is written down for you, with a score for the landing, a replay and a passport stamp for each country.
• Fleet shows every aircraft you fly with its hours, its softest landing and when you last flew it, with your own picture on each.

LIGHT ON YOUR PC

Staying light is SMARTLINK's first rule and I measure it before every release. In the tray it uses about 0.03% of the CPU. Overlays only ask the sim for numbers while they're on.

INSTALLING

1. Unzip and run SmartLink-Setup-0.5.6.exe.
2. Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because SMARTLINK isn't signed with a paid certificate yet. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
3. It installs for you only and never asks for administrator. It needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime. Windows offers it if SMARTLINK doesn't start.
4. Open it. SMARTLINK finds your sim itself: Steam or Microsoft Store, 2020 or 2024.

Updates: a pill on the side bar tells you when there's a new version. Your settings, flights and layouts are all kept.

Uninstalling: if you've moved add-ons into SMARTLINK's library, open Add-ons first and press Move all to Community so they're back in Community as ordinary folders. Then uninstall from Windows Settings, Apps.

GOOD TO KNOW

• SMARTLINK is in beta. A group of testers tries each version before it comes to everyone, but you may still find rough edges.
• Everyone in a group flight needs SMARTLINK. It doesn't matter whether they're on 2020 or 2024.
• Free with no account. There's a Donate button in the app to help pay for the server that runs group flights. Nothing changes whether you use it or not.
• Your voice and your logbook stay on your PC. Group flights go through my server. The privacy notice is at simsmartlink.app: privacy

HELP, IDEAS AND PEOPLE TO FLY WITH

Join the SMARTLINK Discord: discord.gg: ezaRCJKx6 Pilots post flight codes there if you're looking for company. You can also send feedback from the Feedback page in the app.

Made by Kanzooie.