AviTab Browser

For X-Plane 11 and X-Plane 12.

Download at x-plane.org

The AviTab browser plugin is a browser that lets you browse the internet using your AviTab and will integrate with about every plane / tablet resolution, as long as there is an AviTab.json present in the airplane directory. There's a special integration for the Zibo 738 as well.

A few features of the plugin:

• Configurable using .ini file
• Custom homepage
• A statusbar integration with up to five handy 'hotkey' websites
• Flightplan downloading from SimBrief directly to Output/FMS Plans
• Local browser cache (for login credentials, cookies and stuff)
• Geolocation support (your location comes from the sim, of course)

This plugin makes use of the already present CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) in the X-Plane 12 binary. This plugin ships with CEF 117.2.5 for X-Plane 11. That's also why the X-Plane 11 download is relatively big in size. There's a lot of talk around using CEF in X-Plane. The problem with CEF is that there's at most only one instance allowed to be active. This is why for X-Plane 12 the plugin aims to use the integrated CEF version. This way X-Plane does not need to "uninitialize" their version, which gives all sorts of problems. For X-Plane 11 the plugin does load a standalone version, so this could be problematic when opening the browser in X-Plane 11. See also https://developer.x-plane.com/2018/04/lets-talk-about-cef/. For X-Plane 12, this plugin simply creates a new "browser tab" in the already initialized CEF framework.

Development Setup

1. XPlane SDK

This project supports SDK 410 for XP12 and SDK 301 for XP11.

Rename the downloaded SDK folder to SDK_301 or SDK_410 and use the following folder structure:

avitab-browser/
│
├── README.md
├── LICENSE.md
├── .gitignore
│
├── SDK_410       #SDK 410
|  ├── CHeaders
|  ├── Delphi
|  ├── Libraries
|  ├── ...
|  ├── README.txt
|
├── SDK_301       #SDK 301
|
.....

2. CEF

a. Download CEF 117.2.5 (This may change as X-Plane 12 updates its CEF version, we try to stay on the same version)

• Windows: https://cef-builds.spotifycdn.com/index.html#windows64:117.2.5
• Linux: https://cef-builds.spotifycdn.com/index.html#linux64:117.2.5
• MacOS(arm): https://cef-builds.spotifycdn.com/index.html#macosarm64:117.2.5

Create a lib folder and put the downloaded file like this:

avitab-browser/
│
├── README.md
├── LICENSE.md
├── .gitignore
│
├── SDK_410
|
├── SDK_301
|
├── lib               #<----- lib
|  ├── mac_x64
|      ├── cef        #<------ unzip and rename downloaded cef
|         ├── cmake
|         ├── include
|         ├── ...
|         ├── README.txt
|  ├── lin_x64
|  ├── win_x64
.....

b. Build cef

lib/mac_x64/cef/CMakeLists.txt has instructions on how to build. you will need (on MacOS):

• Chromium Embedded Framework.framework under cef folder
• libcef_dll_wrapper.a copied from cef/build/libcef_dll_wrapper/libcef_dll_wrapper.a under cef

avitab-browser/
│
├── README.md
├── LICENSE.md
├── .gitignore
│
├── SDK_410
|
├── SDK_301
|
├── lib
|  ├── mac_x64
|      ├── cef
|         ├── cmake
|         ├── include
|         ├── ...
|         ├── README.txt
|         ├── README.txt
|         ├── Chromium Embedded Framework.framework    # <----------
|         ├── libcef_dll_wrapper.a.                    # <----------
|      ├── dist_301
|         ├── ... all embedded XP11 files. See the download for XP11/mac_x64 ...
|  ├── lin_x64
|      ├── To be determined...
|  ├── win_x64
|      ├── cef
|      ├── curl
|      ├── dist_301
|         ├── ... all embedded XP11 files. See the download for XP11/win_x64 ...
|      ├── dist_410
|         ├── ... all embedded XP11 files. See the download for XP12/win_x64 ...
.....

3. Compile X-Plane plugin

Use Xcode or build a release version using: ./build_platforms.sh

NOTE: for development, you only need to setup dependencies of your OS so you can compile and test. If you are on MacOS, you may also want to change toolchain-mac.cmake to only include Intel or Arm build for development and quicker compilation. You could also use the xcodeproj file to build and run the plugin.