Installation

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Installation

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 (x64) with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
• For building from source: .NET 10 SDK (winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10) and the MSFS 2024 SDK (for SimConnect)
• Optional: a microphone for the Voice Loop, a SimBrief account for plan-based features

Option A – Installer

Releases are currently created as drafts and are not public yet. Until the first public release, use option B.

The installer (Inno Setup):

• installs to C:\Program Files\Duopilo – or, without admin rights, for your own user only,
• creates a Start menu entry and a desktop shortcut (preselected, can be turned off), optionally autostart (the same as Start with Windows in the tray menu),
• picks its language from the Windows language (English as fallback).

On updates appsettings.Local.json stays untouched. Bundled profiles, atc-templates.json and appsettings.json are renewed; your own changes to them are backed up to backup\<date>\ first.

Uninstalling removes program, Start menu entry, desktop shortcut and autostart and asks whether settings and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Duopilo should be removed as well.

There is also a ZIP with the same self-contained build.

SimConnect isn't included in setup or ZIP – it belongs to Microsoft's MSFS 2024 SDK. Duopilo loads it from the installed SDK (C:\MSFS 2024 SDK, the variable MSFS2024_SDK or the folder under Settings → SimConnect). Without an SDK the dashboard offers Install MSFS SDK: Duopilo downloads Microsoft's installer directly from Microsoft, checks it against the known checksum and starts it; you accept Microsoft's license there. Then Restart Duopilo.

Option B – Build from source

1. Get the SimConnect SDK

Duopilo needs two files from the MSFS 2024 SDK:

File	Location in the SDK
Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect.dll	SimConnect SDK\lib\managed\
SimConnect.dll (native, used directly by the traffic query)	SimConnect SDK\lib\

You get the SDK through MSFS 2024 Developer Mode: enable it in the options, then start the SDK installer from the Help menu of the developer toolbar.

The build looks for the DLLs in this order:

1. lib\ in the repo (just copy the two DLLs in – they are git-ignored)
2. environment variable MSFS2024_SDK
3. C:\MSFS 2024 SDK\

If it finds nothing, it builds against a stub – meant only for GitHub Actions. That build can't connect to MSFS; the build log shows a warning. A proper build logs Duopilo: SimConnect aus ….

2. Build

git clone https://github.com/duopilo/duopiloapp
cd duopiloapp
dotnet publish src/Duopilo -c Release -o C:\Tools\Duopilo

Afterwards C:\Tools\Duopilo must contain Duopilo.exe, Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect.dll, SimConnect.dll and the profiles folder.

3. Update later

Double-click update.cmd in the repo folder. It

1. pulls the latest version,
2. builds into a temporary folder,
3. stops all running Duopilo instances (including the one Claude Desktop started, and old Kopilot instances),
4. copies to C:\Tools\Duopilo and restarts Duopilo.

Other target folder: update.cmd D:\Duopilo. update.cmd never overwrites appsettings.Local.json or anything in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Duopilo.

Where things live

Path	Content
Program folder (C:\Program Files\Duopilo or C:\Tools\Duopilo)	Duopilo.exe, appsettings.json (defaults), appsettings.Local.json (your settings), profiles\, atc-templates.json, data\, voice-settings.json (template only)
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Duopilo	Data folder: logs, downloaded models, speech.json, voice-settings.json, ATC session, sign-ins, reports, your own template/data overrides

Full list: Configuration Reference.

Coming from Kopilot?

Most things carry over automatically, but the Claude connector has to be re-added. See Migrating from Kopilot.

Next: Quick Start