AviTab - The Aviator's Tablet

AviTab is a plugin for the X-Plane flight simulator. It displays a tablet like computer with a few apps in the cockpit. It is mainly used for flying in virtual reality.

Purpose

When flying in a simulator, one often needs to lookup details in PDF charts, plane manuals, checklists or other documents. Using a PDF reader breaks the immersion because the virtual aviator either has to take off of their HMD or use other tools that can move windows into VR.

AviTab tries to solve this problem by offering a PDF reader inside a native plugin for X-Plane. Using a plugin also opens possibilites for more apps inside the tablet, for example to display information about the plane status or aid in navigation.

Features

Let the screenshots speak! Note that these were taken using the standalone version for better resolution, but all of this is available right inside your VR cockpit.

More screenshots here: Screenshots

Installation

• Download the latest release from the release page
• Extract the archive and move the folder into your X-Plane/Resources/Plugins directory
• Start X-Plane
• Find a new menu inside the plugins directory to toggle the tablet
• Optionally, you can assign a key for this command (I prefer the right-hand lower trigger)

Usage

General

When hovering over the edges of the tablet from a short distance, X-Plane will display green bars around the tablet. The upper bar can be used to grab the window and move it around inside the cockpit.

Charts Viewer

The charts viewer displays PDF files inside the charts/ subdirectory of the plugin/ directoy. You can add your charts there, including subdirectories.

Limitations

• PDFs containing CJK fonts or ancient fonts such Linear B are not supported. This is mainly due to font sizes - a version containing all fonts would be 40 Megabytes in size.

Compiling

• If you would like to contribute to AviTab's development, a script called setup.sh has been added to automatically download and setup your environment with the needed dependencies.
  • Windows, Linux, and macOS are supported with their respective dependency managers. If you do not have the proper dependency manager installed, the script will prompt you to install it before proceeding.
• There is another script called teardown.sh that will delete the folders where the dependencies were placed to compile AviTab.

Donate

If you like AviTab and want to support its further development, you can donate.