EZBoards - Generate kneeboards (flights, comms, stpts, weather) from briefings
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Hi @MnMailman ,
did you figure it out? What does it say on the console? What theater are you using? -
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@Logic Do you think this may become open source. I would love to add the airport information the the html as im using it on an ipad. That would give me everything on my knee.
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Hi @gbracer08 ,
what do you have in mind with the airport information?
Do you mean static data? Or something drawn from the briefing?
EZBoards is already quite “open source” in the sense that it is basically a batch script that runs some external tools. The batch script is freely editable and for everyone to see.
The only closed part still is xbrief, the tool I wrote that extracts the briefing information to HTML. And yes, I will put that to open source as well at some point. -
@Logic I would love to have the airport information like frequency, tacan, ils etc as well as for the tankers so I dont have to go to the pdf of everything i have on my tablet… WDP does this, but I wouldn’t need to use it if ez had that info. Thanks. Great program as i love the auto monitoring and server for my tablet
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Just wanted to verify that it does not fill in the data card on the right kneeboard?
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@MailMan Hi, not sure what your question is? It does overwrite the left and right of the first pages of the kneeboards by default. But it can be modified by changing the script.
It’s the line saying
SET TARGETFILE=7982.dds
If you increase the number there, you’ll shifting it to higher pages, but it’ll always be the left and right of the same page number. -
Like a lot of VR users, I prefer to use openkneeboards. I’ve been doing all sort of horrible things to achieve what I wanted, including making myself go through the trauma of writing Windows code (I’m a unix c developer, or was).
I never thought to incorporate a filthy hack into ezboards … but, if you add just one extra line to the ezboards script to convert the briefing to pdf as well as html, and point openkneeboards at that, it works an absolute treat.
Ezboards already has wkhtmltoimage in its bin directory. I added wkhtmltopdf (from the same author at wkhtmltopdf.org), and copied the wkhtmltoimage line to output to a pdf file of my choosing. Simples.
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@rubbra
This. But it’s actually even easier than this.
Openkneeboard can read pngs as well.
And with a little modification, EZboards can render the left and right pages to two different images.
So both can be imported to Openkneeboards and paged through separately.The corresponding lines to replace in EZboards v12, around line 60 would be
ECHO [33mRendering HTML to left and right briefing images.[0m bin\wkhtmltoimage.exe --width 1024 --height 1554 --disable-smart-width --enable-local-file-access briefing.html briefing-left.png IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO ERROR bin\wkhtmltoimage.exe --width 2048 --height 1554 --crop-w 1024 --crop-x 1024 --disable-smart-width --enable-local-file-access briefing.html briefing-right.png IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO ERROR GOTO SUCCESS
I’ve already assembled such an alternate version of the EZBoards Bat file for use with OKB that’ll render those into a seperate folder, and I’ll ship it in the next version I upload.
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@Logic “easier” not a lot of difference, to be fair.
In the next release, any chance of you extracting the departure time for the holding steerpoint which is in the briefing? E.g the one before push should have a departure time… I use this all the time to hit my push point at exactly the right time without a having to draw sky circles at the holding point.
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@rubbra said in EZBoards - Generate kneeboards (flights, comms, stpts, weather) from briefings:
@Logic “easier” not a lot of difference, to be fair.
In the next release, any chance of you extracting the departure time for the holding steerpoint which is in the briefing? E.g the one before push should have a departure time… I use this all the time to hit my push point at exactly the right time without a having to draw sky circles at the holding point.
@rubbra said in EZBoards - Generate kneeboards (flights, comms, stpts, weather) from briefings:
@Logic “easier” not a lot of difference, to be fair.
In the next release, any chance of you extracting the departure time for the holding steerpoint which is in the briefing? E.g the one before push should have a departure time… I use this all the time to hit my push point at exactly the right time without a having to draw sky circles at the holding point.
i modified mine this way (target2 is the folder where openkneeboard reads the briefings):
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@Virus any chance of posting it so it’s readable? It’s v low res in my device and not a chance of reading it.
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@rubbra sure
this is around line 60
REM /// Step 2: Render the HTML file to briefing.png image. ECHO [33mRendering HTML to briefing.png image.[0m bin\wkhtmltoimage.exe --width 2048 --height 1554 --disable-smart-width --enable-local-file-access briefing.html briefing.png bin\wkhtmltoimage.exe --width 1024 --height 1554 --disable-smart-width --enable-local-file-access briefing.html briefing_0.png bin\wkhtmltoimage.exe --width 2048 --height 1554 --crop-w 1024 --crop-x 1024 --disable-smart-width --enable-local-file-access briefing.html briefing_1.png IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO ERROR ECHO [32mOk.[0m
this should be around line 82 (use the folder where you want openkneeboard to read your kneeboards)
SET TARGET="%THEATERPATH%\%TARGETFILE%" SET TARGET2=E:\Data\OneDrive\Desktop\Sims\BMS\Briefing
and finally this around line 100
REM /// Do the actual copy. ECHO [33mCopying the result to %TARGET%.[0m COPY /y briefing.DDS %TARGET% COPY /Y briefing_0.png %TARGET2% COPY /Y briefing_1.png %TARGET2% IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO ERROR ECHO [32mOk.[0m
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V13 Released.
- Added EZ2PAGES.BAT for generating briefings on two separate pages, for use with OpenKneeboards.
Images will be generated in the folder given bySET DESTFOLDER=
,
by default in .\pages - Minor increase in font size for better readability.
- Added EZ2PAGES.BAT for generating briefings on two separate pages, for use with OpenKneeboards.
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@Logic said in EZBoards - Generate kneeboards (flights, comms, stpts, weather) from briefings:
Added EZ2PAGES.BAT for generating briefings on two separate pages, for use with OpenKneeboards.
Does this mean EZBoards (when executed with this new EZ2PAGES.BAT) will not replace the first page of either side of the remaining pages lying underneath anymore?
Anyway…
Big THANK YOU to you Logic for providing us with this powerful application and still updating it as well. I’m using it since the first version, its so quick and handy. -
@Zero900
Yes, for simplicity, it’s either EZ2PAGES.BAT for 2 separate pages as PNG files or EZBOARDS.BAT for the usual single double page as texture file.
But nobody’s preventing you from modifying the one or other to have both generated at the same time! -
@Logic said in EZBoards - Generate kneeboards (flights, comms, stpts, weather) from briefings:
@Zero900
Yes, for simplicity, it’s either EZ2PAGES.BAT for 2 separate pages as PNG files or EZBOARDS.BAT for the usual single double page as texture file.
But nobody’s preventing you from modifying the one or other to have both generated at the same time!Nice, have to check it out!
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And if you want to run both from
EZWATCH.BAT
add the call toEZ2PAGES.BAT
at line 114 inEZBOARDS.BAT
It might not be the correct or most swelligant solution, but it works for me!
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Does EZ Boards work with different parallel BMS Installations ? Cheers, Stephan
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@Phonon Yes, but you will need to create a new ezboards instance for each bms instance, and know how to edit a .bat file with notepad…