SquawkBox is not in active development. This web site remains here in order to provide downloads and documentation for existing users of the software. I've left the contents of this blog intact for historical interest. If you're looking to get flying, I recommend visiting VATSIM or PilotEdge and following the instructions there.

Building, releasing and maintaining SquawkBox was a real adventure. I hope you enjoy this free software as much as I enjoyed making it. I was helped along the way by numerous individuals with coding, art, audio, testing, advice and moral support. Thanks to everyone that chipped in!

If you enjoy SquawkBox and appreciate that it's available for no charge, consider paying it forward with a charitable donation to Médécins sans Frontiers / Doctors Without Borders. And then drop me a line to let me know!

I was very saddened to hear the news that Microsoft shut down the ACES studio and as a result has ceased development on Flight Simulator. This obviously impacts the development of SquawkBox significantly. Unless Microsoft resumes development, I very much doubt there will be a version beyond the recent 4.0 release.

It has been a lot of fun working on SquawkBox over the years. I have made friends all over the world, learned a ton and had a great time in the process. I hope those of you that use SquawkBox will continue to derive enjoyment from it. See you in the skies!

Better late than never, they always say.... The public beta of SquawkBox 4 is out and ready for your enjoyment. For those of you still on Flight Simulator 2002 or 2004, it will work just like SquawkBox 3. But for those of you that have moved on to Flight Simulator X, you can now fly online on the VATSIM network. Go get it!.

I want to give a big thanks to Brian Gefrich who stepped in to finish off the final bits of version 4, since my life has been more or less completely taken over by my new job. Brian is a talented programmer who took on the hard bugs and got SquawkBox in a state that will allow many people to fly online for a long time to come.

If you experience any problems with SquawkBox 4, post on the forum. There are lots of experienced users on there that will be able to help you out. And if you are able to find bugs in this beta release, you can play a part in making the software better for everyone.

I hope you enjoy it, and I'll see you in the skies!

The candidate build we believe is ready for a public beta release has been sent to VATSIM. I don't have visibility on when they will approve it for release, but I believe it will be sometime next week.

Thank you all who have waited so patiently for this release. And thanks again to Brian for playing a key role in getting the code finished.

See you in the skies....

Brian has fixed quite a few nasty bugs over the last few weeks. It turns out that the combination of Vista and FSX caused a crash that was pretty hard to track down. I think he finally licked it though (in addition to a bunch of other bug fixes) so we're sending out a new build for a sanity test today. I'll keep you posted on how it goes! If it's successful we should be ready for an open beta very shortly.

Brian has done a great job finishing the To Do list to get SquawkBox 4 in shape for the release of our public beta on VATSIM. We have a candidate build on which we are running some tests with a few pilots. After that we will submit it to VATSIM for approval and it will be released publicly.

Thank you all for your patience. I'm excited for this release.

Last week I gave a talk at the Flight Simulator Developers Conference in Seattle. I gave an overview of how SquawkBox 4 uses the SimConnect interface in the Flight Simulator SDK. It was a great conference and a good chance to catch up with a bunch of people in the Flight Sim developer community.

In the talk I revealed that the person helping me with SquawkBox is Brian Gefrich. Brian is a Flight Simulator MVP and an excellent programmer. He has already begun working on the SquawkBox 4 code.