Changelog.
What changed in each version of Roundout, newest first.
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FLARE is now Roundout
A new name, and everything of yours comes along
FLARE is now Roundout, and the website is roundout.io. Your licence key keeps working, FLARE- at the start and all. Your landings, statistics, achievements and settings move across by themselves the first time 1.3.0 starts.
A new look, on every page
Every page has been redrawn: a light design, a menu along the top, the landing report with its approach shown one bar a second, and Settings in tabs. Make the window larger and each page uses the room.
You choose what opens after a landing
In Settings, General, under "Score card after each landing", pick the detailed card (still the default), the short card, the strip, the tag, or Off. The shorter ones show less and close sooner. Off opens nothing at all, and your landings are still scored, saved and synced. "See an example" shows each one over your screen with a sample landing.
View score card on a landing's report opens the card you chose, or the detailed card with Off, and it no longer plays the landing sound.
Moving around a landing's report
Next landing now sits beside Previous, so you can step both ways. The report also has its own Share, which opens your landings on your Roundout account.
Uploads keep moving
A very long recording can no longer hold up the landings flown after it. If an upload fails, the next one sends less at a time and builds back up.
Also in this release
- The coach gives the target for the aircraft you flew
- Any text that's cut short shows whole when you hover over it
- New licence keys start with ROUND-, and a key pasted with stray spaces or line breaks still works
- Your PC's name on your account no longer defaults to the computer's name
- Landings left by a previous account on this PC stay out of yours, and Clear clears them
- Times in Landing history and in export names are right whatever your PC's time zone
- Exports now go to Documents\Roundout
- A landing with no grade shows no letter, on the score card and on its report
- Comparing two landings now reads from the landing you're on
- Statistics stays readable after a very firm landing
- Landings you brought to this PC with Download my landings get their approach back: open one in the Landing report and its chart, Raw data and comparison fill in from your account
- Landings you downloaded to this PC now show their right date and time
- The first switch under "After each landing" now says what it does: "Open the landing report in the Roundout window". It works as it always did
- When MSFS starts Roundout, Steam's FPS counter no longer appears on Roundout's window, and its taskbar button shows the Roundout logo
Your existing landings aren't rescored.
Versions before 1.3.0 were released under the name FLARE.
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Signed, and landings that keep saving
Every file FLARE installs is now signed
The installer and every file it installs carry a digital signature: FLARE's own files from Roundout Company, the company behind FLARE, and the runtime files from Microsoft. Windows shows Roundout Company as the verified publisher, and Smart App Control no longer blocks parts of FLARE.
Landings keep saving, however long FLARE stays open
FLARE now checks its licence in the background every few hours. Before, a copy left running for more than two weeks could stop saving landings without saying so.
A chart can't take a page down
If Windows ever blocks the part FLARE uses to draw charts, that chart is replaced by a short note and the rest of the page keeps working.
Landing History's filters work
Search by any part of an aircraft's name or an airport's code or name, pick a grade, and the "To" date now includes the whole day.
Statistics match the website
Best and average G-force count only landings where G was measured, the strongest crosswind counts wind from either side, wind records cover all your landings, and ungraded landings stay out of the grade charts.
Also in this release
- The Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg is recognised
- "Install now" during a flight tells you to land first
- Clearer wording in Settings and on the default-scoring note
- The uninstaller explains how to move FLARE to another PC
- The support and help links in Windows' list of installed apps go to the FLARE website
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The right speed, the right runway and the right weather
Reference speeds that fit your aircraft
Your reference speed (Vref) is now worked out from the weight your aircraft's own documents quote it at, instead of one rule for every aircraft, and every aircraft's reference speed has been rechecked against flight manuals and manufacturer data.
"Fast" means fast over the threshold
The fast-approach card now looks at your speed over the threshold, against your own aircraft's tolerance, instead of firing while you're still slowing down on final.
The right runway, more often
FLARE now asks the simulator about the runway you're lined up with and uses the simulator's own runway data first. MSFS ATC's runway is only used when you actually flew along it, and a helicopter pad, a floatplane on the water or a touchdown past the end of the runway isn't scored against the runway anymore.
Real-world weather that shows up
Low-visibility weather like haze, rain, fog and snow now comes through, the report is always the one from when you landed, and weather that arrives late now reaches your FLARE account.
Also in this release
- A "Check for FLARE updates" button at the bottom of Settings
- "Remind me later" on the update banner now brings the update back the next time you open FLARE, instead of hiding it for good
- The same coaching on the score card, the landing page and the website
- Numbers and dates read the same whatever language Windows is set to
- New profiles for the PBY-5A Canso, Aviat Husky, Dassault Falcon 50, Pilatus PC-12/47, Piper M500, Bell 429 and Robinson R44, and better recognition for PMDG, Black Square and Just Flight aircraft
Your existing landings aren't rescored. The new reference speeds and runway changes apply to landings you fly from now on.
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Your landings on the web finally show everything
Your coaching is on the web now
The coaching cards only ever existed in the app. Open the same landing on flaresim.io and you got the numbers with none of the advice. Every landing you fly from now on carries its cards with it, so the website shows you exactly what the app showed you.
Real-world weather reaches your account
FLARE looks up the real-world METAR for the airport after each landing, but it was finishing that lookup a moment after the landing had already been sent, so the weather stayed on your PC and never made it to your account. Only 800 of 3,807 landings had it.
Weather that turns up late is now sent on afterwards, and FLARE also goes back through the landings already on your PC and sends the weather they're missing. It works through them quietly in the background and stops when it's done.
Twice as much on your landing page
The website was showing about half of what FLARE records. Your landing page now also has:
- Who flew the approach, and the reference speed your threshold speed is measured against
- Which stability check failed at 500 and 300 feet, instead of just a score
- Bank angle, heading, ground speed, pitch at round-out, flaps and throttle
- The decoded real-world weather, not just the raw METAR line
- Your best and average score beside the landing, and the grade in words
Your aircraft is also named properly now instead of showing an internal ID.
Download the data for any landing
There's a "Download raw data" button on a landing in the app, and the same download on the website. You get two files: the landing as JSON, and its second-by-second approach as a spreadsheet-ready CSV, about 800 rows for a typical approach. Both surfaces give you the same files, so you can compare or combine them.
The app saves them to your Documents folder and shows you a link straight to it. Only you can download your own landings; a share link doesn't include them.
Export CSV and Export JSON in Settings were only exporting your 50 most recent landings. They now export all of them, in the same columns your FLARE account uses.
A Dashboard that's actually a dashboard
"Dashboard" used to be the landing you were looking at, so opening a landing from Landing History jumped you to a page called Dashboard. Now:
- Dashboard is a home page: whether MSFS is connected, your last landing with its top coaching card, your landing count, average and best score, your last seven landings, and links to your license, billing, support and the rest of your account
- Landing is its own page, and that's where a landing opens from anywhere
When you touch down, FLARE takes you straight to the landing you just flew.
Coaching that fits the landing
"Round-out started high" was appearing on 68% of flares, and on 79% of the ones graded A or A+, which made it noise rather than advice. It's measured against your aircraft's own flare now, and appears on 8.5% of landings.
FLARE watches the standard MSFS autopilot controls, and study-level add-ons like PMDG, Fenix and iFly fly their own, so a fully coupled autoland looked identical to a hand-flown approach. It no longer congratulates you for flying by hand when it simply couldn't see the autopilot, and the chip now says "AP not detected" instead of "Manual". You can still set it yourself, and that correction now shows on the website too.
Five scoring corrections
These change grades, and they apply to landings from now on. Your existing grades stay as they are.
- A helicopter or eVTOL settling onto a pad is no longer judged for flying sideways
- A landing that comes almost straight down is no longer thrown out for barely moving
- A touchdown the simulator reported as impossibly soft, while the aircraft clearly wasn't, is now caught even when the recording ends in the air
- A touchdown recorded well past the end of the runway is no longer scored as if it were on it
- A descent rate no aircraft could survive is now flagged when the impact reading disagrees with it
Your runway, recognized far more often
FLARE asks MSFS about the airport you're approaching so it can use the simulator's own runway geometry. It was getting the wrong airport a third of the time, usually a heliport or a balloonport nearby. It now gets the right one for 90.6% of approaches, up from 67.2%.
Eighteen more aircraft recognized
Eighteen aircraft that were being scored against generic values now have their own profiles or match an existing one, including the Hawker 800XP, the Dornier 228, the DC-4 Skymaster, the Grumman Cougar, the Sopwith Camel and the Taylorcraft BC-12D. Every reference speed was checked against published figures.
Installing over an existing FLARE
Running the installer again used to offer to install a second copy in a new folder. It now updates the FLARE you already have, keeps your settings, and says "Update" rather than "Install".
A few things that just look right
FLARE draws its own title bar now, on every window, instead of the light Windows one sitting on top of a dark app. The approach chart has been rebuilt: it uses FLARE's colors, marks the moment you touched down, and measures time from touchdown rather than from wherever the recording started. Settings uses the full window instead of one narrow column, and the Save button stays with you as you scroll.
Your existing landings aren't rescored. The scoring corrections and the coaching changes apply from now on, so your past grades stay as they are. The weather backfill only adds weather that was missing; it never changes a grade.
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The headline now matches your grade
The headline says what your grade says
The words above your grade used to come from your descent rate alone, so a landing could read "Silk Touch Landing" right next to a D. The headline is now your grade in words: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor or Failed Landing.
Everything specific about the landing is now in the coaching cards, which say how much, not just what. A hard arrival reads Firm arrival, Hard landing or Very hard landing, judged against your aircraft's own limits. Being off the centerline and landing long are described the same way, and a hard hit on the gear gets a card of its own.
The cards also notice more of what went right: crosswinds from 10 knots up, landings in rain, snow, cloud or low visibility, and a greaser at night. They never praise a landing graded C, D or F, and "New personal best" no longer appears on a D or F.
Hard touchdowns the simulator reported as soft
On some touchdowns MSFS doesn't report the moment of contact properly, and FLARE gets a descent rate that's far too soft, sometimes close to zero. One arrival at about 2,700 feet per minute came through as 0.07 feet per minute, took full marks for descent rate and was graded D instead of F.
FLARE now checks that reading against its own recording of the last moments before contact, and uses its own figure when the two clearly disagree. It never makes a touchdown softer than the simulator said. About one landing in fifty is affected, and none where the simulator's figure was already plausible.
Landings you never flew
Loading a flight, moving the aircraft, or scenery appearing underneath it could leave a landing in your logbook that nobody flew, usually with no grade. One pilot found 31 of them.
FLARE now recognizes these and marks them as not a real landing, so they don't count toward your statistics, streaks or achievements.
A clearer message when recording started too late
If FLARE starts recording only a moment before touchdown, for example because you launched it on short final, there's no approach to measure and the landing can't be graded. The message used to say FLARE couldn't work out your runway or follow your approach. It now tells you what actually happened, and that FLARE can start automatically with MSFS.
Two more aircraft recognized
The Flysimware Lancair Legacy now has its own profile, and the Saab 340B cargo version in MSFS 2024 is scored as a Saab 340B.
Your existing landings aren't rescored. The descent-rate check and the handling of landings you never flew apply from now on, so your past grades stay as they are.
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Open any landing's score card again
The score card is no longer a one-time thing
The card that appears after a touchdown used to be all you got. Tab away, or read it too slowly, and it was gone.
There's now a View score card button on the dashboard, under the score. It opens the card for whichever landing you're looking at, whether you flew it this morning or last year, and it doesn't need the simulator running. Press it again, or use the card's own close button, to put it away. A card you asked for stays until you close it, unlike the one that appears mid-flight.
Auto-start now respects your tray setting
If you had "Minimize to system tray" switched on and let MSFS launch FLARE for you, FLARE still opened in front of you with a taskbar button. It now starts in the tray, which is what the setting always implied.
That setting was answering two questions at once, so it's now two: one for what the minimize and close buttons do, and one for how FLARE starts when the simulator launches it. If you want the close button to keep FLARE running in the background but you'd still like to see the window when the sim starts it, you can now have both. Your current preference carries over, so nothing changes until you choose.
Sync now
Settings has a new Sync now button. FLARE already uploads your landings by itself a few minutes after each flight, so you won't often need it, but it's there when you want them up immediately or you'd just like to see that something happened. It tells you the result every time, including when there was nothing to do.
Coaching now mentions a touchdown that was too soft
FLARE treated a softer touchdown as always better, right down to zero. That isn't what anyone flies for. Below roughly 50 feet per minute the gear doesn't compress enough to do its job, and crews aim for a positive touchdown rather than the softest one possible: roughly 100 to 200 feet per minute in an airliner, 50 to 100 in a light aircraft.
When your touchdown is softer than the aircraft is normally flown, FLARE now says so and gives the real-world target. It's advice, not a penalty, and your score is unchanged. It applies to about one landing in forty.
Two scoring corrections
Approaches flown on a localizer with no glideslope were judged against the standard 3 degree path. Nothing publishes a glidepath for those, so the pilot picks the descent, and FLARE was calling them unstable for choosing sensibly. They're now judged on whether the path was steady, the same way visual approaches already were. Around one in five of these approaches changes verdict.
Separately, some flights report no G reading at all, usually an add-on that never drives the sensor. FLARE was treating that missing reading as a perfect one and awarding full marks for it, which is a fifth of the score. It's now left out entirely and the landing is graded on what could actually be measured. This affected 66 landings, and in every one of them the sensor was dead for the whole approach rather than just the touchdown.
Landings that couldn't upload
A long approach, or a backlog built up offline, could produce an upload our server refused, and FLARE would retry the same batch indefinitely without ever getting through. One landing was rejected 204 times in a single day.
Both halves are fixed. The server now accepts far larger uploads and shortens an unusually long recording instead of turning it away, and FLARE sizes each upload by how big it actually is rather than by a fixed number of landings. Nothing was ever lost, and anything still waiting on your PC will go up on its own.
One more aircraft recognized
The Pietenpol Air Camper is now scored against light tailwheel values instead of generic ones.
Clearer message when a key has been replaced
If you regenerate your license key and then activate with the old one, FLARE now tells you the key was replaced and where to find the current one, instead of reporting it as revoked. Your account pages no longer offer to copy a key that won't work, and point you at the one that will.
Your existing landings aren't rescored. Both scoring changes above apply from now on, so your history stays as it is.
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Fairer scoring for visual approaches
Steep visual approaches are no longer called unstable
FLARE judged every approach against the standard 3 degree glidepath. That is the right question on an ILS, where you are following a published path. On a visual approach there is no beam, and 3 degrees is a convention rather than your target.
Measured across your landings, light aircraft flying visually average 4.5 degrees, while the same class of aircraft on an ILS average 3.2, essentially the same as an airliner. So a bush aircraft flying a deliberately steep approach into a short strip was told it was unstable 83 percent of the time for flying it correctly.
FLARE now asks whether a visual approach was flown on a steady path rather than a particular one. Approaches with a beam are judged exactly as before. A uniformly steep dive is still caught.
Captures the simulator invented no longer count
A slew, a reposition, a crash, or the scenery reloading under the aircraft can produce a landing that never happened. FLARE already spotted some of these, but they still received a grade and still counted toward your statistics.
One was a 737 shown as a grade A at 91 points while sitting still on the ground. Another read 125 knots of airspeed at zero groundspeed. A third was recorded inverted.
These now get no grade, no coaching, and no place in your statistics or achievements. They stay in your logbook with a plain explanation of what looked wrong, because the data is yours.
FLARE also checks far more of the touchdown than before. It used to look only at impact force and descent rate. It now checks bank, pitch, airspeed against groundspeed, sideslip, and whether the aircraft was moving at all.
You may notice a grade disappear from an old landing. We applied these checks to existing landings so your statistics are correct going forward. Only 24 landings across all customers were affected, and 19 of those were already graded F.
A bad runway match no longer costs you centerline points
When FLARE matches your touchdown to the wrong runway, the centerline figure can come out hundreds of meters wide. That was scored as though you had flown it, and it dragged the grade down.
Where the simulator supplies its own runway data, no landing is ever more than 55 meters from the centerline. Anything far beyond that is a matching error, not flying, so it is now treated as not measured instead of scored.
Two more aircraft recognized
The Boeing 707 was in the catalog all along but was not being matched from the title the simulator reports. The Dassault Falcon 50 is now scored against business jet values rather than falling back to generic ones.
Clearer explanations in the portal
When FLARE does not believe a capture, the portal now shows the same explanation the app does, naming the reading that looked wrong. Previously it could only describe impact force and descent rate, which was misleading when something else was the problem.
Your existing landings are not rescored. Every scoring change here applies from now on, so your history stays as it is.
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A sidebar that gets out of the way, and fairer approach scoring
The sidebar now collapses
The navigation panel can be collapsed to a narrow icon rail and reopened with one click, which gives the Live Data and Landing History pages noticeably more room on smaller screens. FLARE remembers your choice between sessions. It starts extended, so nothing changes unless you want it to.
Slowing down onto your approach speed is no longer marked unstable
FLARE judges whether your speed was steady on final. It was comparing the gate against an average taken over the whole approach with no limit on how far back it reached, so a level segment flown earlier at cruise speed decided the result.
One TBM 930 held 850 feet for 79 seconds before starting down, and that level segment was two thirds of the entire approach. It failed a descent whose speed varied by about 3 knots at one gate and 1 knot at the other.
The effect was backwards: on the same customer's following flights, carrying ten extra knots all the way down scored full marks for stability because it was uniform, while correctly decelerating onto Vref scored near the bottom. FLARE now judges steadiness over the last part of the descent, so what you did half a mile back can no longer decide the gate.
Landings at unidentified runways no longer receive inflated grades
When FLARE cannot identify the runway, it cannot measure your centreline or touchdown zone, and if it also missed your approach it is left judging how hard you touched down and whether you were crabbed. That says nothing about where you landed or how you got there.
Three landings were graded A+ on that basis, and one scored a flat 100. A landing ten metres off the centreline could reach A+ purely because the runway was unknown.
These landings now show a dash instead of a letter grade, with every criterion FLARE did measure still shown, and they no longer count toward score-based achievements or grade streaks. The landing is saved as normal.
Aircraft recognised by asking the sim
FLARE identifies your aircraft from the title the add-on gives it, and some titles contain no aircraft type at all. An A320neo listed as "FBW Turkish Airlines TC-JPV", or an A380 as "China Southern B-6138", could never be recognised from the title alone.
When the title tells FLARE nothing, it now asks the sim what you are flying. This only ever runs after every existing check has come up empty, so aircraft that are recognised today are recognised exactly as before.
Touchdowns too gentle to be real are flagged
FLARE already flags impacts no aircraft could survive. It now also flags the opposite: a Citation the sim placed 420 feet underground at 345 knots recorded almost no impact at all, and scored full marks for both descent rate and impact because both readings were near zero. A landing that light is not a landing.
Landing History column headings
On a narrower window the table squeezed its columns until headings became unreadable, and its horizontal scrollbar appeared inconsistently. Columns are now sized to their contents, so headings always read in full and the scrollbar appears whenever you need it.
Your existing landings are not re-scored. Every scoring change here applies from now on, so your history stays exactly as it is.
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FLARE stays connected, and stops calling normal approaches fast
FLARE now reconnects to the sim every time
FLARE only ever recovered its connection to MSFS once per session. The first time it dropped it came back on its own, but every drop after that needed you to press Connect by hand. If you let MSFS start FLARE for you it was worse, because that one recovery was usually spent just getting connected during the loading screen. It now reconnects for as long as you are flying.
"Fast on final" was firing on normal approaches
Approach speed was measured from 1000 feet, which is around three miles out. An airliner is settled by then, but a light aircraft is still slowing down and configuring, so FLARE was judging your approach speed at a point where you had not reached it yet. One TBM 930 landing was reported 91 knots too fast. FLARE now measures from 500 feet, where every aircraft should be stable on final.
The warning itself was also too eager. Carrying a few knots over Vref for wind is normal technique, not a mistake, so the tip now waits until you are genuinely fast. Together these changes cut the number of "fast on final" warnings in half.
More accurate touchdown position and centreline
FLARE works out where you touched down using the sim's own runway data, and falls back to its built-in airport database when the sim gives it nothing. It was giving up on the sim far too early, so most landings used the fallback, and that is where runway position errors come from. Roughly one landing in ten was measured against a runway position that did not match where the runway actually is, which affects your centreline and touchdown zone scores.
FLARE now keeps asking the sim as you descend, so it gets the accurate data far more often.
Landings FLARE could not measure are no longer scored as bad ones
If FLARE never saw your approach, it scored approach stability as though you had flown it badly. That cost up to seven points and pushed some landings down a grade. It now leaves that criterion out of the score rather than guessing at it.
Impossible readings are flagged instead of graded
Occasionally the sim reports a touchdown no aircraft could survive, usually after a slew, a reposition, or a crash. FLARE used to score these as real landings. It now tells you plainly when the numbers cannot be right, and the landing is still saved so nothing is lost.
Aircraft recognition
Some aircraft were never recognised because FLARE was looking for their full official names, which add-ons rarely use. Now recognised: the Curtiss C-46, the B-17, the Airbus A300, and the Pipistrel Virus SW.
Two aircraft are newly supported: the Commander 114B and the Fokker 100. The Fokker 70's approach speed has been corrected.
When FLARE recognises an aircraft by family rather than by exact type, it scores you against a typical approach speed for that family. Several of those were wrong, the Beechcraft Baron worst of all. They are now accurate.
Your existing landings are not re-scored. Every scoring change here applies from now on, so your history stays exactly as it is.
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v1.2.33: Short landings are no longer missed
If your airplane slowed down quickly after touchdown, FLARE sometimes did not record the landing at all. Light airplanes on short strips were affected most. Those landings are now captured.
Flying a normal traffic pattern? Your approach speed was measured across the whole pattern, including the downwind leg, so FLARE often told you that you were fast and marked the approach unstable. It now measures only the final approach.
Better recognition: the SR22T, the Bonanza, and several other airplanes are now identified correctly instead of being scored against a similar model. The SR22 approach speed now matches the pilot handbook.
Landings already in your history keep their original scores, as always.
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v1.2.32: Airbus neo recognition, properly this time
v1.2.31 was meant to fix the A321neo being scored as a ceo. It only covered one of the two engine options, so neos with Pratt and Whitney engines were still labeled ceo. Sorry about that.
FLARE now recognizes every neo variant across the A319neo, A320neo, and A321neo, with a safeguard so an unlisted variant can never be labeled the wrong airplane again.
Also fixed: weight aware approach speeds are now saved to your account, not just calculated on your PC.
Landings already in your history keep their original labels, as always.
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v1.2.31: FLARE is getting smarter
FLARE now understands your airplane better, and it has learned when to keep its opinions to itself.
The coach grew up
Advice used to fire one rule at a time, with nothing checking whether it made sense together. FLARE could call your approach go around territory and congratulate you on a greaser in the same breath.
Now every tip is weighed against the rest, and only the most relevant survives.
- Thresholds adapt to your airplane. A Cessna and a 777 are held to their own standards.
- FLARE tells you which part of the landing was weakest, so you know what to work on.
- New things it watches: spoilers, reverse on short runways, runway used, reduced flap landings, and unsettled wings on final.
- It can finally say something encouraging when you recover a shaky approach by 300 feet.
Approach speed knows what you weigh
Vref changes with landing weight. FLARE used one fixed number per airplane, so a lightly loaded widebody kept getting told it was slow when its own FMC agreed with the pilot.
FLARE now reads your actual weight at touchdown. If your airplane does not report one, it falls back to the old behavior rather than guessing.
Approach stability was being unfair
One stability check compared your descent rate to the average of your whole approach. Settling onto a steady rate could count against you.
That check is gone. FLARE now records which part of the approach slipped, so it can tell you something useful.
Your landing history follows you
Set FLARE up on a new PC and your flights come with you. Go to Settings and choose "Download my landings from my account."
History, statistics, and achievements all return. Nothing is duplicated.
Delete now means delete
Remove a landing in FLARE or in your web portal, and it disappears from both. Every PC on your account catches up on its next sync.
FLARE asks first, and tells you exactly what will happen.
Fixes
- The FSLabs A321neo was scored as a ceo. Now matched correctly.
- Real ILS approaches in Fenix, PMDG, and iFly airplanes were logged as non precision. FLARE now works it out from how you flew.
- Landings could silently go missing after deleting FLARE's local database or reinstalling. Fixed for good.
- Live Data now shows your real altimeter reading, magnetic headings and wind, and actual engine thrust.
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FLARE v1.2.30
This update makes sure your landings are saved even at airports FLARE cannot fully identify, and includes a few smaller improvements.
Landings at unrecognized airports are now saved
If you flew an approach to an airport or runway that FLARE could not fully identify, the landing could fail to save. It would not appear in your history and would not sync to the web. Those landings are now saved and graded normally.
When FLARE cannot pin down the exact runway, the centerline and touchdown zone parts of the breakdown now show as "not scored" instead of a red zero bar, so the result reads honestly.
Reduced-flap approaches are no longer flagged as "too fast"
FLARE compares your approach speed to the full-flap reference speed. On a deliberately flown reduced-flap approach, such as an Airbus CONF 3 or a Boeing flaps 30 landing, that could make a perfectly good approach read as "too fast." The coaching note now recognizes reduced-flap landings and stays quiet. Your grade was never affected by this.
Two more aircraft recognized
The Fokker 70 and the Cessna Citation Sovereign are now matched to their own profiles instead of a generic fallback.
Under the hood
We updated a bundled database component to its latest secure release.
The changes above only affect how landings with an unidentified runway are saved and displayed. Landings with a fully identified runway are graded exactly as before, and your existing landings keep their grades.
FLARE is updated regularly as we keep improving the app.
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FLARE v1.2.29
This update makes the option to launch FLARE automatically with MSFS 2024 work reliably across every version of the simulator.
More reliable automatic startup with MSFS 2024
The "Launch FLARE automatically when MSFS 2024 starts" option now works correctly in more situations, including the Microsoft Store and Xbox app versions of MSFS 2024 and PCs with unusual configurations. FLARE now updates the startup settings that your copy of MSFS actually uses, reads settings files saved in older formats that some other add-ons create, and cleanly removes itself when you turn the option off.
If you previously saw a "Couldn't update exe.xml" message, or the setting did not stick after you set it, this update resolves it.
This release changes app behavior only. It does not change how landings are scored, and your existing landings keep their grades.
FLARE is updated regularly as we keep improving the app.
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FLARE v1.2.28 internal verification build for a customer (exe.xml duplicate-entry cleanup). Not for public release.
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FLARE v1.2.27 internal verification build for a customer (legacy exe.xml encoding fix). Not for public release.
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FLARE v1.2.26 internal verification build for a customer (Microsoft Store auto-launch fix). Not for public release yet.
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FLARE v1.2.25
This update fixes automatic startup with MSFS 2024 for the Microsoft Store and Xbox app versions, makes several Settings options work as expected (including showing vertical speed in meters per second), and makes the Settings page clearer about saving your changes.
Automatic startup now works on the Microsoft Store and Xbox app versions
If you use the Microsoft Store or Xbox app version of MSFS 2024, the "Launch FLARE automatically when MSFS 2024 starts" option could fail to turn on and show a confusing "Is MSFS 2024 installed?" message. FLARE now asks for permission when it needs it, makes the change, and tells you clearly what happened. FLARE also locates your MSFS 2024 installation no matter where it is installed, whether it came from Steam, the Microsoft Store, or the Xbox app.
Several Settings options now take effect
A few options on the Settings page were not being applied. They now work as described:
- Auto-connect on startup: when turned off, FLARE starts without connecting to MSFS, and you connect when you are ready.
- Reconnect interval: FLARE uses the interval you set when it reconnects to MSFS.
- Auto-show dashboard on landing: when turned on, FLARE brings the Dashboard to the front after each landing.
- Use metric units: vertical speed can now be shown in meters per second instead of feet per minute, across the dashboard, the landing popup, Live Data, your landing history, and the approach chart.
A clearer Settings page
The Settings page now shows when you have unsaved changes, confirms when your settings have been saved, and asks before you leave the page with unsaved changes, so you do not lose a change by accident.
This release changes app features and settings only. It does not change how landings are scored, and your existing landings keep their grades.
FLARE is updated almost daily as we keep improving the app.
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FLARE v1.2.24
This update makes approach stability scoring fairer for airliners, lets you correct how a landing was flown, shows the correct airport name, recognizes more helicopters, and makes the update notice easier to spot.
Fairer approach stability scoring
Approach stability for airliners could be scored too harshly, even on a perfectly stable approach or a full autoland. The stability check was using a tolerance tighter than the value it measures, so a textbook approach could lose points it did not deserve. Stable approaches now score the way they should.
This applies to new landings going forward. Your existing landings keep their original grades.
Mark a landing as hand-flown or autopilot
Study-level add-ons such as Fenix, PMDG, and iFly fly their own autopilot systems that FLARE cannot always detect, so an autopilot-coupled approach or autoland could be labelled "Manual". You can now click the Manual / AP chip on any landing and set it yourself, whether the landing was hand-flown or flown on the autopilot.
Correct airport names
Landings now show the airport's full, correct name (for example, "Dubai International Airport") from FLARE's built-in navigation database, looked up by the airport code, instead of an abbreviated or incorrect label. New landings show the correct name, and existing landings on your online dashboard were updated too.
More helicopters recognized
More helicopters are now recognized by the names add-ons commonly use, including the AS350 (Ecureuil / Squirrel), the EC145, and the EC225 (Super Puma). These now land against the correct helicopter profile. This is a recognition change only and does not change any scoring numbers.
Clearer update notice
When a new version of FLARE is available, the notice at the top of the app is now larger and easier to spot, with a clear "Update now" button, so you will not miss an update.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with these fixes.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.23
This update improves automatic aircraft recognition, and also includes the multi-monitor, display, and scoring improvements from the previous update.
More aircraft recognized automatically
Some add-ons name their aircraft using the short ICAO type code rather than the full name. For example, the ToLiss A340-600 titles itself "A346", the A330-900neo as "A339", and various Boeing models as codes like "B738" or "B77W". Previously a few of these were not matched to a profile and fell back to default scoring.
FLARE now recognizes these ICAO type codes across the Airbus and Boeing families, regional jets, business jets, and turboprop airliners, so each lands against the correct aircraft profile. The Airbus A340 family in particular is now identified correctly.
This change affects recognition only. No aircraft's scoring numbers were changed. Your existing landings keep their grades, and new landings in these aircraft are now scored against the right profile.
Also included from v1.2.22
Landing popup now appears on your simulator's screen
If you use more than one monitor, the after-landing summary popup now appears on the same screen as Microsoft Flight Simulator, in the top-left corner, and fully on screen. Before this, on some multi-monitor or high-resolution setups it could open on the wrong monitor, in the wrong corner, or with its right edge cut off.
By default the popup follows the simulator's screen automatically. If you prefer it on a specific monitor, you can still set that in Settings.
Sharper on high-resolution and mixed-scaling displays
FLARE now stays crisp on every monitor, including when your screens use different Windows scaling levels, such as a 4K external display next to a laptop screen.
Aircraft scoring tidy-up
We removed some leftover manual aircraft-profile settings that a few users may have saved in much older versions of FLARE. Those could quietly cause a landing to be scored against the wrong aircraft profile. Every landing is now scored using FLARE's current automatic aircraft detection.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with these fixes.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.22
This update fixes where the after-landing popup appears when you fly across more than one monitor, sharpens FLARE on high-resolution displays, and tidies up aircraft scoring.
Fixed: landing popup now appears on your simulator's screen
If you use more than one monitor, the after-landing summary popup now appears on the same screen as Microsoft Flight Simulator, in the top-left corner, and fully on screen. Before this, on some multi-monitor or high-resolution setups it could open on the wrong monitor, in the wrong corner, or with its right edge cut off.
By default the popup follows the simulator's screen automatically. If you prefer it on a specific monitor, you can still set that in Settings.
Sharper on high-resolution and mixed-scaling displays
FLARE now stays crisp on every monitor, including when your screens use different Windows scaling levels, such as a 4K external display next to a laptop screen.
Aircraft scoring tidy-up
We removed some leftover manual aircraft-profile settings that a few users may have saved in much older versions of FLARE. Those could quietly cause a landing to be scored against the wrong aircraft profile. Every landing is now scored using FLARE's current automatic aircraft detection.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with these fixes.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.21
This is a major accuracy update. FLARE's entire aircraft library has been rebuilt and verified from scratch, runway detection is now more precise at airports where map data disagrees with the simulator, and FLARE can now tell what kind of approach you flew.
New: a fully verified aircraft library, 474 profiles
Every aircraft profile in FLARE has been rebuilt from a single verified source, checked against manufacturer data, FAA references, and real-world operating practice. The library now covers 474 aircraft, including dedicated recognition for popular add-ons such as the Fenix A319, A320 and A321, ProSim, PMDG, iFly, and many more.
Recognition is also much smarter. If FLARE does not know your exact aircraft, it now matches it to the closest family (for example "Airbus A320 family") and scores it with that family's real numbers instead of falling back to generic defaults. Your landing page shows exactly what your aircraft was scored against.
Because the scoring data behind every aircraft was re-verified, some grades will differ slightly from previous versions. Existing landings keep their original grades; only new landings use the updated data.
Improved: runway detection where the sim and the map disagree
At some airports, the public map data FLARE used for runway positions does not match where the simulator actually draws the runway. A perfectly centered landing could read as far off the centerline. FLARE now asks the simulator itself for the runway's true position whenever MSFS does not report the runway directly, so centerline and touchdown distances reflect the runway you actually landed on.
New: approach type detection
FLARE now identifies whether you flew an ILS, RNAV, VOR or visual approach, including on study-level add-ons that do not share their radio state with the simulator. When FLARE cannot see the signals directly, it can recognize a stable approach flown on a runway with a published ILS. You can still set the approach type yourself on the dashboard chip, and your manual choice always wins.
Fixed: Touchdown Position diagram
The touchdown zone shown on the dashboard runway diagram was drawn at a fixed position regardless of runway length, so on long runways a deep landing could look like it was inside the zone. The zone band is now drawn to scale for the actual runway, and the SHORT / ON TARGET / LONG / DEEP verdict always matches your Touchdown zone score.
Polish
- The landing summary popup now stays on screen for about half a minute instead of a full minute when coaching notes are shown. Hovering over it still pauses the countdown.
- The Landing History columns now size themselves so every column title is fully visible.
Existing landings keep their original grades and notes. New landings are recorded with the updated library.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.20
This update fixes a coaching note that could wrongly say you touched down with power on, on some detailed add-on airliners.
Fixed: "Power-on touchdown" note on some airliners
On some study-level add-on airliners, such as the Fenix A320, the "Power-on touchdown" note could appear even when you had correctly closed the thrust levers in the flare. These aircraft briefly report their thrust levers back near the climb position in the last few feet before touchdown, and FLARE was reading that single moment at touchdown.
FLARE now looks at your throttle across the whole flare instead of one instant, so the note only appears when you genuinely carried power onto the runway. As with all coaching notes, this was feedback only. It never affected your landing grade, which is calculated separately.
Existing landings keep their original grades and notes. New landings are recorded with this fix.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.19
This update gives you richer coaching after every landing, fixes a pitch reading in the in-app feedback, lets you set the approach type yourself, recognizes more aircraft, and tidies up the landing dashboard layout.
More coaching after every landing
FLARE now has many more coaching notes and shows them more usefully. Alongside the existing tips, you will now see feedback on things like a tailwind landing, carrying power into the flare, flaring too high, an abrupt flare, a fast or slow approach, a steep or shallow approach, and a hard bounce. There are also new positive notes, so a great landing gets recognized too: a buttered touchdown, a well-handled crosswind, and a clean hand-flown landing.
The landing details page now shows a few more notes at once, and it will always include one positive note when you have earned it, even when there are a couple of things to work on.
Fixed: pitch reading in the coaching note
On some aircraft, a normal nose-up landing was being labelled as a nose-down touchdown, with the pitch shown as a negative number. This is now corrected, so the note only appears on a genuine nose-down touchdown and the pitch reads the right way round. This was only the wording of that note. It never affected your landing grade, which is calculated separately.
New: set the approach type yourself
If FLARE could not detect your approach type, you can now set it yourself. On the landing details there is an approach chip you can click to choose ILS, RNAV or GPS, VOR, or Visual, or leave it on Auto to use what FLARE detected. This helps with complex add-ons whose avionics FLARE cannot always read directly.
More aircraft recognized
FLARE now recognizes the ProSim AR A320 home cockpit, so those landings are scored against the proper A320 profile instead of generic defaults.
Tidier dashboard layout
We lined up the new approach chip with the other tags on the landing dashboard, and the coaching note icons now sit neatly beside their headings, so the whole panel reads cleanly.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with these improvements.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.18
This update gives you richer coaching after every landing, fixes a pitch reading in the in-app feedback, lets you set the approach type yourself, and recognizes more aircraft.
More coaching after every landing
FLARE now has many more coaching notes and shows them more usefully. Alongside the existing tips, you will now see feedback on things like a tailwind landing, carrying power into the flare, flaring too high, an abrupt flare, a fast or slow approach, a steep or shallow approach, and a hard bounce. There are also new positive notes, so a great landing gets recognized too: a buttered touchdown, a well-handled crosswind, and a clean hand-flown landing.
The landing details page now shows a few more notes at once, and it will always include one positive note when you have earned it, even when there are a couple of things to work on.
Fixed: pitch reading in the coaching note
On some aircraft, a normal nose-up landing was being labelled as a nose-down touchdown, with the pitch shown as a negative number. This is now corrected, so the note only appears on a genuine nose-down touchdown and the pitch reads the right way round. This was only the wording of that note. It never affected your landing grade, which is calculated separately.
New: set the approach type yourself
If FLARE could not detect your approach type, you can now set it yourself. On the landing details there is an approach chip you can click to choose ILS, RNAV or GPS, VOR, or Visual, or leave it on Auto to use what FLARE detected. This helps with complex add-ons whose avionics FLARE cannot always read directly.
More aircraft recognized
FLARE now recognizes the ProSim AR A320 home cockpit, so those landings are scored against the proper A320 profile instead of generic defaults.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with these improvements.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.17
This update makes centerline scoring accurate on every runway, so a landing that touched down on the centerline is rated as centered.
Centerline now measured against the real runway
FLARE rates how well you tracked the runway centerline. On a number of runways the centerline was measured against a slightly rotated reference, so a touchdown that was actually dead on the centerline could read as if it were several meters off to one side. Because centerline is part of your grade, that could pull an otherwise excellent landing down a letter.
FLARE now measures the centerline from the runway's actual physical layout, drawn directly from the two ends of the runway, across the whole worldwide runway database. A centered landing is rated as centered, and an off-center one still shows exactly how far off you were. Runways that were already accurate are unchanged, and the runway heading shown on each landing is the same as before.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with this improvement.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.16
This update rebuilds the in-app live data page, makes the weather on your landings reflect what you actually flew, and tidies the touchdown popup.
Weather at touchdown now matches your flight — live or preset
FLARE now records the simulator's own conditions at the moment you touch down — temperature, visibility, pressure, wind, precipitation, and whether you were in cloud. So the weather on each landing matches the flight you actually flew, whether you use live real-world weather or a custom/preset.
Previously the only weather shown came from a real-world report for the airport, which was wrong for anyone flying a preset. That real-world report (METAR) is still shown, now clearly labelled as a reference. The weather appears on both the desktop app and the website, and shows instantly after you land.
A brand-new Live Data page
The in-app "Live Approach" page is now "Live Data" — a real-time picture of your whole flight, not just the last few feet.
It shows far more at a glance: airspeed, ground speed, altitude, vertical speed, pitch, bank, heading, sideslip and G-force; real ILS localizer and glideslope guidance; live wind and weather; your configuration (flaps, spoilers, throttle, brakes, and which wheels are on the ground); and which automation is engaged — autopilot, autothrottle, approach, glideslope and GPS.
There's now a proper phase indicator that follows your whole flight — taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, approach, flare, touchdown and rollout — instead of sitting on "Unknown". The glideslope and localizer readouts use the simulator's real ILS signal, and the stability indicator now works correctly for every aircraft, from light singles and gliders to heavy jets.
Touchdown popup tidy-up
The wind chip no longer overlaps the letter grade in the landing popup.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are recorded with these improvements.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.15
This update adds dedicated scoring for two popular aircraft and corrects the airport and runway shown on some landings.
The Fenix A320 and A321 get their own scoring profile
FLARE now recognizes the Fenix A320 and A321 by name and grades them against their own aircraft profile instead of a generic narrow-body. Your landings in these aircraft are now scored against the right approach speed and touchdown limits, and the touchdown summary names the specific aircraft.
The Cessna 208 Caravan is now recognized
The Cessna 208 Caravan — including the cargo and "Medic" variants — is now recognized and scored as a Caravan instead of being marked as an unrecognized aircraft. Its slower short-field approach speed and tendency to float on the flare are now taken into account, so its landings are graded fairly.
The right airport and runway on your touchdown summary
When the simulator reports which runway you landed on, FLARE now double-checks the airport and runway against its built-in airport database using your actual touchdown position. This fixes cases where a landing was attributed to the wrong nearby airport, or to a runway number that doesn't exist there.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are scored and labelled with these improvements.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.14
This update makes landing scoring and the touchdown details more accurate, fixing a few cases where the grade or the numbers did not match what really happened.
Clean landings are no longer penalized for phantom bounces
Some add-on aircraft briefly register a wheel lifting during a normal rollout, and FLARE was counting that as a bounce and deducting points. A smooth touchdown could lose a full letter grade to a bounce that never happened. FLARE now counts a bounce only when the aircraft genuinely leaves the runway and comes back down with a real impact, so your grade reflects only real bounces.
Touchdown pitch reads the right way
Touchdown pitch now shows in the normal aviation convention, with nose-up as a positive angle. A typical nose-up landing previously appeared with a confusing minus sign; it now reads the way pilots expect, both in the desktop app and on the website.
Tail-strike warning now fires correctly
The tail-strike warning now triggers on an over-rotated, nose-high touchdown as intended.
Flare details show on more landings
Flare start height, flare duration, and float distance are now detected correctly on normal landings, so these values show real numbers instead of being blank.
Stopping distance stays sensible
On unusual landings where the aircraft takes off again or never fully slows down (for example a go-around or a touch-and-go), stopping distance is no longer shown as an impossible value. It now reads "not available" instead.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are scored with these improvements.
FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each aircraft profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.13
This update makes the website show the exact aircraft profile each landing was scored against, and carries over a few scoring details that were not reaching the web.
"Scored against" now shows the exact profile
On the website, each landing's "scored against" now shows the specific aircraft profile used to grade it (for example, "NARROW-BODY then Boeing 737-800") instead of only the broad category. The desktop app already showed the profile; now the website matches it. This applies to new landings going forward.
Tail-strike, wind difficulty, and recognition carry to the web
A few scoring details that the desktop app tracked were not being sent to the website: the tail-strike warning, the wind-difficulty adjustment, and whether your aircraft was recognized. These now appear consistently in both places.
Everything from recent updates
This build also includes all the recent improvements: GPS-confirmed runway and centerline scoring (including the wrong-parallel-runway case), fairer approach-stability scoring, accurate flare and float, correct airport names with accents, and the airport code shown alongside the name in the desktop app.
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Existing landings keep their original grades and their original "scored against" label. New landings are scored and labelled with these improvements.
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FLARE is updated almost daily. We review each profile, sub-category, and category individually so that every number and rating reflects real-world aviation operations as closely as possible.
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FLARE v1.2.12
This update fixes airport display in the desktop app and includes all the scoring and accuracy improvements from the recent updates.
Airport name and code shown in the desktop app
Your landings in the desktop app now show the airport code and full name together (for example, "King Khalid International (OERK)") on the dashboard, in the landing popup, and in your history and landing-picker tables. Previously the desktop only showed a single airport field; now the code and name appear side by side, matching the website.
More accurate runway and centerline scoring
FLARE pinpoints which runway you actually touched down on from your GPS track, even at airports with several parallel or crossing runways, including the case where the sim names the wrong parallel while everything else looks normal. Centerline and touchdown-zone scores are measured against the runway you really landed on, and the runway shown matches it.
Fairer approach-stability scoring
Approach stability is judged across a short window around each checkpoint rather than a single instant, so a smoothly hand-flown approach is no longer marked unstable because of a momentary blip. A quick takeoff-and-land with no real approach has nothing to measure and still scores low, as expected.
Accurate flare and float on every landing
The flare timer and float distance are measured only during the actual landing flare, so they no longer start during the takeoff roll and inflate on some landings.
Airport names display correctly
Airports with accented or non-English names (for example, Zurich) display correctly everywhere instead of showing garbled characters.
See what each landing was scored against
Your landing pages show the aircraft category and profile FLARE used to grade each landing, so it is clear how every score was calculated.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are scored with these improvements.
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FLARE v1.2.11
This update sharpens landing scoring accuracy and fixes several display issues, based on real customer landings. It includes everything from the previous update plus extra runway-detection accuracy.
More accurate runway and centerline scoring
FLARE now pinpoints which runway you actually touched down on from your GPS track, even at airports with several parallel or crossing runways. Previously it could line your landing up against the wrong one, making a perfectly centered touchdown look far off the centerline and dragging the score down. This release also catches the case where the sim names the wrong parallel runway while everything else looks normal. Centerline and touchdown-zone scores are now measured against the runway you really landed on, and the runway shown on the landing page matches it.
Airport code now shown
Every landing now records the airport's code as well as its name, so your landing pages show both.
Fairer approach-stability scoring
Approach stability is now judged across a short window around each checkpoint rather than a single instant. Smoothly hand-flown approaches were sometimes marked unstable because of a momentary blip at the exact checkpoint altitude. Stable approaches now score the way they should. (This applies to a normal approach flown down from altitude. A quick takeoff-and-land with no real approach has nothing to measure and will still score low, as expected.)
Accurate flare and float on every landing
The flare timer and float distance are now measured only during the actual landing flare. A timing issue could let them start during the takeoff roll and run for the whole flight, showing wildly inflated float distances and flare durations on some landings. Those numbers are now correct.
Airport names display correctly
Airports with accented or non-English names (for example, Zurich) now display correctly everywhere instead of showing garbled characters.
See what each landing was scored against
Your landing pages now show the aircraft category and profile FLARE used to grade each landing, so it is clear how every score was calculated.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are scored with these improvements.
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FLARE v1.2.10
This update sharpens landing scoring accuracy and fixes several display issues, based on real customer landings.
More accurate runway and centerline scoring
FLARE now pinpoints which runway you actually touched down on from your GPS track. At airports with several parallel or crossing runways, it previously could line your landing up against the wrong one, making a perfectly centered touchdown look far off the centerline and dragging the score down. Centerline and touchdown-zone scores are now measured against the runway you really landed on, and the runway shown on the landing page matches it.
Fairer approach-stability scoring
Approach stability is now judged across a short window around each checkpoint rather than a single instant. Smoothly hand-flown approaches were sometimes marked unstable because of a momentary blip at the exact checkpoint altitude. Stable approaches now score the way they should.
Accurate flare and float on every landing
The flare timer and float distance are now measured only during the actual landing flare. A timing issue could let them start during the takeoff roll and run for the whole flight, showing wildly inflated float distances and flare durations on some landings. Those numbers are now correct.
Airport names display correctly
Airports with accented or non-English names (for example, Zurich) now display correctly everywhere instead of showing garbled characters.
See what each landing was scored against
Your landing pages now show the aircraft category and profile FLARE used to grade each landing, so it is clear how every score was calculated. The airport now shows both its name and its code.
Existing landings keep their original grades. New landings are scored with these improvements.
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v1.2.9: Better detection of add-ons that run the name together
Some add-ons write the aircraft name with no space between the maker and the model, for example "FenixA321" instead of "Fenix A321". FLARE was not recognising these titles, so those landings were scored with generic defaults, and on the Aircraft Mastery page each engine variant was tracked as if it were a completely different aircraft.
FLARE now reads these run-together names correctly. Affected aircraft are scored against the right category, and every variant of the same type (for example the IAE and CFM engine versions of the A321) counts toward a single Aircraft Mastery thread, the way a real type rating does.
Your existing landings are re-counted automatically, so any Aircraft Mastery progress you had already made is preserved.
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v1.2.8 — Sharper landing scoring + smarter aircraft detection
Sharper landing scoring across the catalogue
This release brings per-aircraft tuning to many popular airframes that previously inherited a one-size-fits-all category default. The Bombardier Q400 and CRJ-200 now use their published tail-strike margins (Q400 is 6° per the AFM, CRJ-200 around 9°) — the old thresholds were too generous and could grade real tail strikes as safe.
Warbirds and vintage piston aircraft — P-51 Mustang, Spitfire, Stearman, B-17, B-29, Lancaster, Mosquito, DC-3, C-47, Pitts Special — now grade hard touchdowns appropriately. Newer airliner variants (737 MAX 9/10, 787-10, 777-300ER, MD-11, several CRJ and E-Jet stretches), the Cirrus SR22, the Mooney M20R, and STOL utilities (Twin Otter, Caribou, Caravan, PC-6) each pick up their own thresholds too.
Naval fighters (F-14, F/A-18C/E, A-6 Intruder) now use a carrier-trap descent-rate curve, so a normal arrested landing around 1,300 fpm scores correctly instead of always coming up as a hard landing.
Hot-air balloons (Cameron Z-90, Lindstrand 90A, FlyDoo, and others) are now scored too, with a dedicated impact-rate curve for basket touchdowns. Glideslope deviation for airliners has been tightened to 0.7° to match industry stabilised-approach standards.
Smarter aircraft auto-detection
Addons that use non-standard separators in their titles — like "737-MAX8" with no space, or anything using underscores, slashes, or dots between words — now match their specific profile properly. Your landings should show the precise aircraft name in the dashboard chip instead of falling back to the generic category.
Better hard-landing bounce detection
Bounces where only one main gear lifts off the runway are now caught and counted. The previous detector relied on the overall on-ground state, which stays true whenever any gear touches the runway — so one-wheel-up bounces during heavy or unbalanced touchdowns went uncounted.
Multi-account safeguard
If you re-activate FLARE on this PC using a licence that belongs to a different flaresim.io account, FLARE now asks whether to clear the local landing history (which belongs to the previous owner) or keep it visible. Data sync to your new account is unaffected either way.
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v1.2.7 — Smoother NavData auto-updates + simMarket support
More reliable NavData auto-updates
If FLARE's daily NavData check fails for any reason — a network blip, a server hiccup, anything — the next time you launch FLARE it will retry instead of waiting until tomorrow. Previously a single failed check would skip auto-updates for the rest of the day, even after the underlying issue cleared. Manual "Check for updates" is unchanged.
simMarket licence support
FLARE is now available on simMarket. If you bought your licence there, paste it into the activation screen as usual. The first time a simMarket licence is activated, FLARE will show a friendly "Open browser to claim" button that takes you to flaresim.io to set up your free FLARE account in one step. Once you've claimed, click "I've claimed it — try again" back in the app and you're in.
Licences bought directly from flaresim.io are unaffected and continue to activate without any extra step.
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v1.2.6 — NavData updates now work
Fixed a bug where Settings → NavData → Check for updates was failing with "Check failed — see logs". After upgrading to v1.2.6, clicking that button will successfully download and apply the latest NavData.
If your NavData has been stuck on an older date for the past few days, you'll likely see it jump forward to the most recent release on your first check after this update.
Nothing else changes — this is a focused hotfix for the update flow.
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v1.2.5 — NavData refresh fixes + smoother update UX
NavData updates now actually work.
If you opened FLARE Settings → NavData on v1.2.4 and saw "Check failed — see logs", that's gone. The update flow had a Windows-specific bug where the open data file blocked the new one from being swapped in. v1.2.5 closes it first, swaps the file, then reopens — and your next "Check now" should land cleanly on the latest navdata.
Smoother updater experience.
When you accept an update, the installer now shows a real progress bar instead of a silent gap between the UAC prompt and FLARE relaunching. No more "is it stuck?" anxiety while files are being replaced.
Redesigned NavData panel in Settings.
The Airport data section is now called NavData, with cleaner labels and an explicit magnetic model row (
WMM2025 · NOAA · valid 2025–2029) so you know which geomagnetic model produced the runway headings you see on the website's airport pages. Now also shows the count of commercial airports in the loaded database.Smarter daily-build pipeline on the server side.
The version stamp on the navdata file (e.g.
2026-05-27) now reflects when the source data actually changed, not just when our daily build ran. On days when OurAirports doesn't refresh, no new version is published and your FLARE doesn't pointlessly re-download identical content. Older versions are also automatically swept from our distribution storage now. -
v1.2.4 — Bugfix: landings no longer lost on post-touchdown disconnect
Fixed: landings that scored a popup but never reached Landing History or the Dashboard.
If MSFS 2024 disconnected, hung, or crashed after the landing popup appeared but before the rollout phase finished — including the very common case of you closing MSFS while the popup was still on screen — the landing was silently dropped from the database. The grade was correct on the popup; the record just never persisted.
The fix snapshots the popup-scored record before resetting state and saves it on a background task, so the landing now appears in Landing History and the Dashboard refreshes as expected.
This affected three scenarios: - Closing MSFS while the popup was still visible - Hard touchdowns severe enough to trigger MSFS's internal crash event - Any SimConnect disconnect mid-rollout
Also: cleaned up the touchdown log line in
flare-YYYYMMDD.logso the polled vertical-speed diagnostic is no longer mistaken for the canonical touchdown VS that the scorer uses. (Scores and popup values were always correct — only the log message was misleading.) -
What's new in v1.2.3
Airport data (navdata) status in Settings
A new section in Settings → Airport data shows:
- Your current OurAirports navdata version (e.g.
2026-05-25) - When FLARE last checked for an update
- A Check now button for an on-demand refresh
Useful when troubleshooting unfamiliar airport data on the landing popup — you can verify at a glance which OurAirports snapshot you're on.
Smarter auto-update throttling
- App launch: FLARE now checks for fresh navdata at most once per local calendar day (was every 24 hours rolling). Resets at your local midnight, so opening the app multiple times during the day no longer fires the same check repeatedly.
- Manual refresh: The new Check now button is rate-limited to 10 clicks per day (also resets at local midnight) to stay polite to our servers.
Auto-updates remain silent and non-blocking — the only visible change is the new Settings section showing what version you're on.
- Your current OurAirports navdata version (e.g.
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Parallel runways now show L/R/C
When you land on parallel runways like 15L vs 15R, FLARE now uses its built-in airport database to pick the correct side from your touchdown coordinates — even when MSFS doesn't share the designator letter (a common quirk in third-party scenery and hand-flown approaches).
The popup and portal will now show "RWY 15R" instead of just "RWY 15" — useful for centerline and touchdown-zone scoring, which now know exactly which runway end you used.
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Better runway recognition for parallel runways
When MSFS provides runway data, FLARE now reads the full runway identifier including L/R/C — so a landing on 15R is reported as 15R, not just 15. Crucial when the runway diagram and centerline scoring need to know which side of a parallel pair you actually touched down on.
Transparency on detection source
The landing popup now adds "(via GPS)" next to the runway label when FLARE identified the runway using its built-in airport database instead of MSFS's ATC data — handy when hand-flying without ATC or using third-party scenery where MSFS often doesn't share runway info.
Everything from v1.2.0 carries over — the bundled 70 000-airport database, fairer grading when runway data is missing, heliport/water/grass-strip detection, and the 24-hour automatic data refresh.
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Smarter runway detection
FLARE now recognizes the runway you landed on even when MSFS doesn't tell it — handy for hand-flown approaches, third-party scenery, or any time you fly without ATC.
What's new
- Built-in airport database covering 70,000+ airports worldwide — no internet needed in flight
- Heliport, seaplane base, and grass strip detection with a clear note when you've landed somewhere that isn't a standard runway
- Fairer grading: when there's truly no runway to compare against (off-airport landings, fictional sim airports), FLARE only grades what it can actually measure instead of giving a free 100 on centerline and touchdown zone
- Airport data refreshes automatically every 24 hours
Nothing changes for normal landings at real-world airports — those grades stay the same. You'll just see better feedback when MSFS leaves FLARE guessing.
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Smarter landing popup
The popup that appears in your sim after every landing has been substantially redesigned to put the most useful information in front of you faster.
- Where + when. The popup now shows the airport name, runway number, and the airport-local clock time at touchdown — no more guessing which leg of which flight you're looking at.
- Aircraft title. The actual aircraft you flew (e.g. "737-800 PAX SSW TC") appears at the top, separately from the scoring-profile attribution at the bottom.
- Score-component bars. Six color-coded mini-bars show how each sub-score (descent rate, G-force, centerline, touchdown zone, approach stability, sideslip) contributed to your composite. See at a glance which one dragged the score down.
- Personal-best context. After your first landing in a given aircraft, every subsequent popup tells you whether you beat, matched, or fell short of your previous best in that aircraft.
- Smarter dismiss timer. The popup stays open for 30 seconds normally, or 60 seconds when there's a warning callout to read. Hovering the mouse over the popup pauses the countdown, and a thin bar along the bottom shows the time remaining.
- View details + Share buttons. "View details" brings the main FLARE window forward and jumps you to the landing's full report. "Share" opens the FLARE customer portal in your browser.
Polish - Wind summary reformatted: "11 kt · 10 kt headwind · 4 kt from left" reads cleaner than the previous parenthetical form. - The "0 bounces" row is hidden on clean landings (no point showing a non-event). - Long coach-tip messages now wrap properly inside the popup instead of getting truncated mid-word.
This release is backward-compatible with everything from v1.1.4. If you've been running v1.1.4, you can install v1.1.5 over the top without uninstalling first.
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System tray icon
FLARE now lives in your notification area while it's running, keeping the main window out of your way during long flights. Click the icon any time to bring the window back. Settings has a new "Minimize to system tray" option — turn it on to send FLARE straight to the tray whenever you minimize or close the window. Landing capture keeps running silently in the background.
Landing-popup sound
Get an audio cue the moment a landing is captured. Enable "Sound effects" in Settings to hear a soft chime alongside each landing popup. Respects your system volume and stays quiet if you've muted notifications.
A+ Landings trend chart
A new chart on the Statistics → Overall tab shows your A+ percentage month-by-month over the last 12 months. See your consistency at a glance and track how often you nail the perfect touchdown.
Top Airports
A new "By Airport" tab in Statistics ranks your 10 most-flown destinations by landing count, with the average score and best grade you've achieved at each.
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v1.1.3 — Settings + Achievements polish, navigation lifecycle fixes
Fixed
- Settings → About page no longer shows a stale hardcoded version. It now reads the program's real version, so the displayed version can never drift again (v1.1.2 shipped still showing "v1.1.1").
- Dashboard's "Load Latest Landing" result now persists across navigation — clicking Statistics → Dashboard no longer wipes the loaded data.
- Re-clicking the active page in the sidebar (e.g. Statistics while already on Statistics) no longer flashes the page to empty for a moment.
- Dashboard always reverts to the latest landing on every explicit nav-button click, even after drilling into a historical landing via Landing History.
Changed
- Achievements → Aircraft Mastery now lays out 3 cards per row instead of 2 so the right-hand whitespace gets used.
- Screen-level ViewModels (Dashboard / History / Statistics / Achievements / Settings) are now singleton-scoped — page state survives sidebar navigation.
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FLARE 1.1.2
A maintenance release focused on stability, security, and a few visible bug fixes. There are no new features — your existing landings carry over unchanged. You will be prompted to re-activate on first launch, since this build pairs with our production licensing key.
What's new
- Stability. Background services and SimConnect reconnects are more robust.
- Single-instance protection. Launching FLARE while it's already open brings the existing window forward.
- Sharper text on high-DPI / 4K displays.
- Multi-monitor popups. Landing popups appear on the screen you selected in Settings.
- Updated weather lookup. METAR fetching is faster and more reliable.
- Stronger license + update protection. Activation tokens cryptographically verified; auto-updater confirms file integrity before installing.
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No release notes were published for this version.
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No release notes were published for this version.
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No release notes were published for this version.
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