Flight Plan and SimBrief

Flight Plan & SimBrief Import

JoinFS can attach a flight plan (callsign, aircraft type, departure/destination, route, remarks, etc.) to your aircraft and broadcast it to the network — this is what feeds joinfs-euroscope-bridge (so EuroScope shows a real callsign and flight strip instead of your tail number) and the aircraft popup in joinfs-map-websocket-webcomponent.

There are two main-screen controls for this, next to the Simulator/Network/Auto Join buttons:

• Flight plan button (center/wide) — shows DEP ➜ DEST once a plan is set, or plain "Flight plan" when none is. Hovering shows the full flight-plan strip (callsign, rules, type, route, remarks) as a tooltip. Clicking it always opens the flight-plan dialog for manual editing.
• SimBrief button (icon, right) — a small green ✓ or red ✕ badge shows whether the last SimBrief fetch succeeded. Clicking it re-fetches your latest SimBrief OFP immediately.

Setting up SimBrief (one-time)

1. Click the Flight plan button to open the dialog.
2. Enter your SimBrief username in the SimBrief username field.
3. Click Import from SimBrief.

That's it — the username is saved (Settings.Default.SimBriefUsername) and reused automatically from then on. You don't need to re-enter it.

Automatic fetch on every startup

Once a username is saved, JoinFS automatically tries to fetch your latest SimBrief OFP every time it starts — no click needed. This happens in the background as soon as JoinFS launches (it doesn't wait for a simulator connection, since it's just a cloud API call), and if it succeeds, the flight plan is committed and broadcast right away.

The SimBrief button's badge always reflects the outcome of the last fetch attempt (startup or manual):

• Green ✓ — a SimBrief flight plan was found and is currently active.
• Red ✕ — no username configured, the request failed, or SimBrief has no OFP filed for that username.

You can force a re-fetch at any time (e.g. after regenerating your OFP in SimBrief) by clicking the SimBrief button again.

Editing a flight plan by hand

Click the Flight plan button to open the dialog. All fields (callsign, type, departure, destination, rules, route, remarks) are editable regardless of where they came from. Nothing is (re-)broadcast until you click OK — this is different from the SimBrief button on the main screen, which commits and broadcasts immediately.

Clearing a SimBrief flight plan

To get rid of a SimBrief-sourced (or any) flight plan:

1. Click the Flight plan button (DEP ➜ DEST) to open the dialog.
2. Click Clear — this empties departure, destination, route, and remarks (callsign/type/rules are left alone, since those are normally sourced live from the simulator, not SimBrief).
3. Click OK to save and broadcast the now-empty plan.

Where this data ends up

WebSocket feed

If JoinFS is started with -websocket (see Coms Webhook & WebSocket Feed for the full flag list), it runs a WebSocket server at ws://<host>:<port>/ws/ (default port 8765). Every time a tracked aircraft's state changes, connected clients receive an aircraft_update message, and each aircraft entry in it carries the full flight-plan/identity field set described on this page:

{
  "type": "aircraft_update",
  "aircraft": [
    {
      "callsign": "EWG740", "registration": "DAJOE",
      "icaoAirline": "EWG", "flightNumber": "740",
      "icaoType": "A20N", "livery": "Eurowings Europa-Park",
      "from": "EDDH", "to": "EDDB",
      "rules": "IFR", "route": "N0281F090 SOKW1G SOKWO DCT", "remarks": "PBN/A1B1C1D1O1S2 ..."
    }
  ]
}

This is the same feed Coms Webhook & WebSocket Feed documents for position/telemetry data — connect once and you get both the flight-plan/identity fields shown here and the flight-dynamics fields (altitude, speed, com1/2, gear, lights, etc.) documented there, in the same aircraft_update payload per aircraft.

• callsign/registration/icaoAirline/flightNumber are populated automatically from the simulator where possible (see below), or from SimBrief when configured.
• joinfs-euroscope-bridge uses these to build the FSD $FP flight-plan message and to answer EuroScope's on-demand $CQ:FP queries.
• joinfs-map-websocket-webcomponent's aircraft popup shows icaoAirline/flightNumber/registration/livery as extra rows once they're present.

Automatic (non-SimBrief) sources

Even without SimBrief configured, JoinFS fills in what it can directly from the simulator:

• Registration from the aircraft's tail number/livery config.
• Callsign from a live in-sim Call Sign override if set, otherwise synthesized from ICAO airline + flight number, falling back to the tail number.
• Departure/destination from the sim's GPS/FMC flight plan, when one is loaded — this is best-effort and aircraft-dependent (many complex add-ons bypass the stock GPS gauge entirely), which is why SimBrief is the more reliable source when available.

SimBrief, when configured and successful, takes priority over all of the above.