Preview Installers and Tarballs

The installers and tarballs are now compiled by and hosted on Github's servers. The intention is to automate, as far as possible, the building of releases and to reduce the possibility that a virus on a development machine could infect installers offered up for release.

The version numbers on preview installers will usually be the same as the currently released version. The version number is not updated until just before release.

If you are not sure whether you need the 64-bit or 32-bit version then choose the 32-bit version.

Version 3

Version 3 is the version currently under development. It runs under .NET 4.6+ and Mono 4+.

If you are using VRS to plot aircraft in Flight Simulator then note that the 32-bit version can display aircraft from Flight Simulator X but not Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, whereas the 64-bit version can display aircraft from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 but not Flight Simulator X.

Preview 11

  1. Reports can now show the Database Editor Plugin's link again.

Preview 10

  1. VATSIM plugin now shows the correct flight level and pressure altitude.

Preview 9

  1. Support for plugins that want to add custom feeds.
  2. VATSIM plugin (see https://github.com/vradarserver/vrs/tree/master/Plugin.Vatsim#readme ).

Preview 8

  1. Various issues with comparing strings in non-English locales (thanks to Github user SnakePin).
  2. Improved trimming of short altitude and speed trails.

Preview 7

  1. Links to the SDM site's aircraft lookup editor now shown in aircraft details panel.
  2. New configuration file WebAddresses.json, let users specify custom back-end addresses.

Preview 6

  1. Add setSvgFillColourCallback to support dynamic marker fill colours. See Change V3 SVG Marker Default Fill Colours custom script for an example of use.

Preview 5

  1. Replaced direct references to System.Drawing with a wrapper to help work around an issue with Mono not drawing images, and also because it is a pre-requisite for a DotNet Core build of version 3.

Preview 4

  1. Links to and thumbnails from airport-data.com have been removed after AVG and Malwarebytes have started blocking links to the site.

Preview 2

  1. Fixed issue (subject to confirmation) with libpng warnings under some Linux distros.

Preview 1

  1. Pressing CTRL+C (or sending SIGINT under Linux) in headless mode now performs a clean shutdown.
  2. Charter and ferry flights are now identified as such.
  3. Virtual Radar Server can now be run as a Windows service.
  4. Added Airnav XRange receiver support.
  5. Added SVG aircraft marker support.
  6. Added balloon marker.
  7. Added render items for time since last position update and ident active.
  8. Added support for pre-selecting an aircraft via the query string.
  9. Show counts by message type in statistics screen.
  10. The original version 0 website has been removed.

Version 2

Version 2 is the currently released version. It runs under .NET 3.5 and most versions of Mono.

Preview 7

  1. Improved trimming of short altitude and speed trails.

Preview 6

  1. Links to the SDM site's aircraft editor in the aircraft detail panel.

Preview 5

  1. Replaced direct references to System.Drawing with a wrapper to help work around an issue with Mono not drawing images.

Preview 4

  1. Links to and thumbnails from airport-data.com have been removed after AVG and Malwarebytes have started blocking links to the site.

Preview 2

  1. Fixed issue (subject to confirmation) with libpng warnings under some Linux distros.

Preview 1

  1. Fixed issue that caused some Beast binary format messages to be ignored.
  2. Google Font links are now HTTPS instead of HTTP.
  3. Added support for XPlane on the flight simulator map.
  4. Leaflet version updated to 1.6.0.
  5. Google Maps version updated to 3.42.

Code Signing

The Windows installers are no longer signed. For some time now Windows 10's SmartScreen had been putting up "are you sure you want to run this?" prompts even when the program has been signed with a valid certificate. Microsoft waits for the certificate to build up trust before suppressing the SmartScreen prompt for a new certificate which, for Virtual Radar Server, takes a few months. I have to buy a new code signing certificate every year so for a large part of each certificate's lifetime it does not stop the SmartScreen prompt from appearing.

Microsoft will let you skip the wait to build up trust by signing the code with an EV code certificate instead of a normal code certificate. The proof I would need to submit to the certificate registrar is the same for both types of certificate, the only practical difference is that a code signing certificate costs me €25 a year whereas an EV code signing certificate would cost me €325 a year.

I'm not going to spend €325 a year just to suppress the SmartScreen prompt. For a large part of the lifetime of a non-EV certificate the outcome of signing and not signing is the same, you get the SmartScreen prompt either way, so I have given up with signing installers altogether.