Intrigue Media

Lately I’ve been getting emails from people asking me if they can embed Cayri on their virtual airline’s website. So I think it’s about time to post a small tutorial on how to do this. The simplest way to do it is by using an IFRAME tag with HTML. Just stick the following code in any HTML page, and Cayri will show up on your website:

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<iframe src="http://www.cayri.org/?network=vatsim" frameborder="0" height="500" width="700"></iframe>

If you would like to show IVAO traffic instead of VATSIM traffic, you’ll need to replace ?network=vatsim with ?network=ivao in the src attribute.

The heading information for aircraft on the IVAO network has finally been implemented! Thank you for the staff over at IVAO for modifying their server data to supply this information. The difference is truly night and day.

I’m busily working on the next version of Cayri, and I’m pleased to announce that this new version will live directly on your desktop. A couple weeks ago, I was little unsure if I was going to be able to pull this off, but with some assistance from the guys over at Modest Maps and the new AIR runtime, it’s all possible. Here’s a break down of the new features:

Different Map Views
You can now switch between either Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, or Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. On top of that, you will also be able to toggle between road, aerial, and hybrid views. What’s great about hybrid view, is that the map will display country boundaries and also display aerial photography. I think that people will also enjoy using Google instead of Yahoo because their imagery is more up-to-date.

METAR Weather
Pretty basic - retrieve a weather report for almost any airport in the world by typing in an ICAO code.

Pilot and Controller Details
This was a feature that didn’t make the previous version, but it’s finally implemented now. You can either click on an aircraft or ATC position on the map, or click on a client in the Client Listing window, and a pop-up will appear with the detailed information for that user.

User Settings
Since Cayri now lives on your desktop, you will be able to store user settings. This means Cayri can store the position of the map, or save a collection of your favorite map filters.

I haven’t set a release date yet, but I’m hoping for sometime in mid August. Make sure to check back soon, as I will be posting screen shots of Cayri running on Mac OSX and in Windows.

Spending the last couple weeks refactoring Cayri’s code to be more modular, I was excited to start working on the AIR version of Cayri this morning. So I started up Flex Builder, drug my custom Yahoo Maps control onto the canvas, compiled the project, and got this sweet error:

Error: Error #2067: The ExternalInterface is not available in this container. ExternalInterface requires Internet Explorer ActiveX, Firefox, Mozilla 1.7.5 and greater, or other browsers that support NPRuntime.

This is just a heads up to those who are using an ExternalInterface work around for AS2 to AS3 communication, and are planning on moving your projects to AIR.

Ugh.

Well, it has been a week since Cayri was released, and I think the overall response has been very positive. It even received Editor’s Pick from Yahoo!  I’ve been poking around some of the flight sim forums where people have posted about Cayri, and I’ve noticed a lot of ooohs and aaahs. All of this is an awesome start, and now is when I’d like to hear what you - the user - would like to see implemented in the next release. So if you’d like to see a feature added, you can either email me, or head on over to the discussion group and post a request.

One area that I’d like to focus on is localization. I realize that not every flight simmer out there can read English, so I’m going to start with translations for French, German and Chinese. Hopefully I can get this working for the next release, which should be in the next week or two.

So here it is everyone – the new Cayri! For those unaware, Cayri is an online program that monitors the clients who are connected to either VATSIM or IVAO flight simulator networks.

In this release, I wanted to focus on making Cayri a more usable and more practical application for finding specific users, and I think I’ve written some cool features that really accomplishes this. For example, you can apply some simple map filters to quickly change the map to just show the aircraft arriving or leaving from a specific airport. Or, just show the aircraft from your favorite virtual airline.

Check it out here: www.cayri.org, or continue reading the feature listing with screenshots:

IVAO Support
Cayri now supports the IVAO network! You can switch between either VATSIM or IVAO by clicking on the drop-down menu in the top-right corner.

Client Listing
If you’re interested in finding a pilot or controller who’s connected to a network, simply pull up the Client Listing window, and type in their ID, name or tag into the filter text box. What’s great is the filter will search for segments of their name. So to find all the tower controllers, just type in TWR – simple as that.

Map Filters
This is truly the coolest feature of Cayri. You can setup a map filter to display only the clients you’re interested in. So if you just want to show aircraft that are flying to Chicago O’Hare, bring up the map filter window and apply two filters: one to only show aircraft, and the second to just show aircraft arriving to KORD.

Departing, Landing and ETA Information
To see how much time is left before an aircraft will reach its destination, simply put your mouse over any aircraft and wait for the plane’s flight route to display. A simple tool-tip will popup telling you if that airplane is either waiting to depart, has landed at its destination, or how much time he or she has to go before they land.

Airport Search
You can easily find nearly any airport in the world by bringing up the Airport Search screen. Type either the name or ICAO identifier for a specific airport, and all the results will be displayed in a list. You can then click on any airport in the list to move the map to that location.

Enjoy!