Flight Code-X v0.2.2-beta: Cleared for a Smarter Mission

FlightCodeX v0.2.2-beta is about turning a scenario from a sequence of events into something that can react, guide, measure, and evolve with students and pilots. This release gives creators more control over the world around the aircraft, better tools for organizing complex training, and new ways to build experiences that feel intentional rather than scripted.

We put that vision on display at Flight Sim Expo 2026 with Sky Rift Rio, a fully automated air-race production created with Fly Shirley. The live experience brought together dynamic briefing, in-flight guidance, objective tracking, debriefing, post-processing, and student follow-up into one continuous mission. It proved the framework behind this release in a high-energy show environment: not just a scenario that runs, but an experience that can guide a pilot before, during, and after the flight.

A More Conversational Kind of Scenario
With Shirley Link and LiveKit integration, scenarios can now participate in a richer guided experience. Instead of treating narration, prompts, and student choices as disconnected pieces, creators can build flows that exchange structured messages with Shirley and respond as the scenario unfolds.

That opens the door to training that feels more like a conversation: a student can be guided through a task, make a choice, provide a value, see relevant information, and receive the next prompt at the right moment. It is an important foundation for more responsive, human-feeling scenario guidance​

Objectives That Can Actually Tell a Story
The new progress system gives scenarios a way to communicate purpose, not just activity. Authors can define objectives, group smaller tasks into a larger mission, track completion, apply scores or penalties, and present supporting information while the student is flying.

A good training scenario should answer more than “what happens next?” It should help the student understand what they are working toward. Progress displays and end-of-scenario reporting make that possible, whether the goal is flying a stable approach, following a route precisely, or completing a multi-stage exercise.​

Let Data Move the World
Monitors have become signals and reworked to make scenario behavior more flexible, and the new Signal Data system can read CSV and flight-data/FDR files during a scenario. Rather than hard-coding every change, authors can now use recorded or prepared data to drive behavior over time.

This is especially useful for dynamic object placement and movement. A moving target, a guided visual reference, or a replay-informed training element can now follow data from a file, making scenarios more repeatable while still feeling alive.

A Busier, More Believable Sky
v0.2.2-beta expands what can happen outside the students’s aircraft. Objects can move through the world or remain locked to the aircraft with configurable position and orientation offsets, making it easier to create aircraft-relative visual cues, formation elements, and moving references.

The release also adds managed traffic and ghost aircraft through X-Plane TCAS integration. Traffic can carry its own identity, aircraft type, gear and flap state, ground state, and wake turbulence behavior. These details help transform the surrounding airspace from background scenery into part of the training problem.

Better Math for Real Flight Problems
Scenario logic is now better equipped for the kinds of calculations aviation training actually needs. New tools can measure distance from a line for track-keeping, create a new geographic point from a heading and distance, and account for magnetic variation.

The calculation system also handles mixed numeric types more reliably. That may sound small, but it removes a source of subtle errors in scoring and logic. A calculation such as `1 / 2` can now produce `0.5` when that is the correct result, instead of quietly losing the fractional value.

Studio Becomes a Better Place to Build
The Studio experience has been improved around the practical rhythm of creating a scenario: try an idea, adjust it, test it, and keep moving. Undo and Redo make exploration safer, while node groups help keep large scenario graphs understandable as they grow.

Opening recent projects, launching and loading scenarios directly from Studio, and saving a project with its assets collected together all make authoring less fragile and easier to share. The canvas, properties editing, object preview, catalog tools, and scenario-generation workflow have also been improved so creators can spend more time designing the mission and less time managing the tool.​

More Room to Explore
The Flight Code-X demo remains a 30-day experience, but v0.2.2-beta gives creators more room to build and test meaningful scenarios before committing to a full license. Demo users can now create and generate scenarios with up to 20 nodes, while the runtime provides up to 30 minutes of active scenario time per X-Plane session.
That is enough space to explore the full authoring workflow: build a graph, add objectives, connect signals, test scenario behavior in X-Plane, and understand how the pieces fit together. When you are ready to move beyond those limits, a full license unlocks unrestricted scenario creation and runtime use.

Cleared for What Comes Next
v0.2.2-beta builds on the tools Flight Code-X creators are becoming familiar with, refining scenario guidance, audio, aircraft-relative objects, and scenario flow while opening the door to more responsive and ambitious training experiences. We are continuing to develop Flight Code-X alongside our partners, including Fly Shirley at  airplane.team, with a focus on making simulator-based training more interactive, practical, and connected.

Download the beta, fly the new demo scenarios, and put the new Studio and runtime tools through their paces. Your feedback helps shape what comes next, from smarter scenario authoring to richer guided missions in the simulated sky.

Download
Fly Shirley

Release Notes

Shirley and LiveKit
- Added Shirley Link integration using LiveKit room connections.
- Scenarios can exchange structured messages with Shirley and coordinate guided dialog flows.
- Added support for interactive prompts, choices, numeric responses, displayed values, and response-state handling.
- Added scenario-controlled audio support for guided and narrated experiences.

Scenario Logic and Progress
- Added a new progress system for tracking objectives, completion states, scores, penalties, notes, and help text.
- Added grouped progress items for multi-step objectives.
- Progress screens can display live data-ref values during a scenario.
- Added progress reporting at the end of a scenario.
- Reworked monitors into signals for more flexible repeated and data-driven scenario behavior.
- Added Signal Data playback: signals can read CSV and flight-data/FDR files, step through rows, and use that data to drive scenario behavior.
- Signal Data can drive dynamic object movement and placement.
- Added node groups to help organize larger scenario graphs.
- Added scenario sequencing, allowing scenarios to select and load the next scenario.

Objects, Aircraft, and Traffic
- Added object movement controls for dynamic scenario objects.
- Added aircraft-relative object placement and movement, allowing objects to remain locked to the aircraft with position and orientation offsets.
- Added ghost aircraft and managed traffic support.
- Added X-Plane TCAS integration for scenario-controlled traffic.
- Added traffic configuration for flight ID, ICAO aircraft type, on-ground state, landing gear, and flap position.
- Added wake turbulence controls, including wake-category presets and custom wake-physics settings.

New Calculation Tools
- Added distance-from-line calculations for track-keeping, navigation, and scoring logic.
- Added geographic point calculations from heading and distance.
- Added magnetic-variation calculations.
- Improved numeric calculations so integers, floats, and doubles can be mixed safely.
- Calculations now preserve fractional results where appropriate, such as `1 / 2 = 0.5`.

Studio Improvements
- Added Undo and Redo support.
- Added the ability to start and load scenarios directly from Studio.
- Added recent-project support.
- Added improved Save As behavior that can collect scenario assets for easier sharing, backup, and portability.
- Improved the scenario canvas, properties workflow, and node editing experience.
- Improved authoring workflows for objects, commands, data refs, weather, sounds, coach marks, stopwatches, and scenario logic.
- Improved command, data-ref, and object catalog tools.
- Improved object preview and OBJ8 asset handling.
- Added improved settings, licensing, and demo-access flows in Studio.
- Added expanded Studio user documentation and authoring guidance.

Installer and Platform Improvements
- Improved installer downloads, progress reporting, responsiveness, error handling, and installation reliability.
- Improved licensing and demo-session handling.

New Demo Content
- Added the `Fly Shirley` demo scenarios.
- Added the C172 KPRC guided demo.
- Added a Shirley quick-test scenario.
- Added an audio-driven Shirley tic-tac-toe demo.
- Added a moving-target demo.
- Updated existing demos including `First_look`, `Camera Control`, `Tic_Tac_Toe`, `Pulitzer`, `Pylon Practice KPDX`, `rand_path`, and `sky rift rio`.

Beta Note
This release includes substantial changes to Studio, scenario loading, the runtime, traffic systems, and the installer. Back up important scenario projects before opening and re-saving them in `v0.2.2-beta`.