72. Little Xpconnect

Little Navmap connects to X-Plane using the Little Xpconnect X-Plane plugin which has to be installed in X-Plane.

The Little Xpconnect plugin is included in the Little Navmap archive. You can always find the latest, correct and matching version on your Little Navmap installation directory.

The plugin is 64-bit only and is available for Windows, macOS (ARM and Intel) and Linux and can be used in X-Plane 11 and X-Plane 12.

See Installation below for installation instructions.

72.1. Menu

The plugin adds a sub-menu Little Xpconnect to the X-Plane menu Plugins which contains the following menu items:

Fetch AI: Enable or disable the fetching of AI aircraft and ships (carrier and frigate). Disable AI fetching if you see stutters or performance degradation within X-Plane when using the plugin.
Load AI Aircraft Information: Xpconnect tries to load additional information from related .acf files. This is done in background and does not cause stutters or hesitations. You can disable this function if you see problems. Only limited information is available for AI and multiplayer if disabled.
Fetch Rate 50 ms to Fetch Rate 500 ms: Xpconnect will get all aircraft parameters at this rate. Lower values result in smoother aircraft movement (see more below) but may induce stutters or decrease performance in X-Plane.

The changes are applied immediately and are saved on exit.

Note that the settings are shared between all plugin installations on the same computer.

Note that the fetch rate affects only the rate of which Little Xpconnect gets the data from X-Plane. This can affect X-Plane performance, expecially when using large amounts of AI aircraft.

The option Update Time Interval in Connect Dialog in the Little Navmap connect dialog window defines the rate Little Navmap fetches the data from the plugin. This affects Little Navmap performance and fluidity of the aircraft updates together with the setting Simulator aircraft updates in Options page Simulator Aircraft.

It is recommended to keep both update rates equal and not lower than 100 ms.

72.2. Compatibility Error

If a pop up window says that versions are not compatible and and upgrade of Little Xpconnect is needed:

Remove the Little Xpconnect plugin from X-Plane and reinstall the new one.

If the latest Little Xpconnect plugin is installed:

There is probably an old version of Little Xpconnect installed wrongly somewhere in your X-Plane plugins path. Maybe it was installed accidentally in the plugins base path without the Little Xpconnect folder structure.

Check if there is another folder with the Little Xpconnect executable (win.xpl, mac.xpl or lin.xpl depending on operating system) around or if the file is stored in the plugins folder on the top level.

You can see the path of the (wrongly) loaded plugin in the X-Plane plugin manager or in the X-Plane Log.txt file.

72.3. Installation

Delete any old Little Xpconnect installations in the plugins directory before copying the new version. Do not merge new and old installations.

Copy the whole plugin directory Little Xpconnect into the directory Resources/plugins in the X-Plane installation. The complete path should look like:

.../X-Plane/Resources/plugins/Little Xpconnect

The installation was successful if you can see the menu Little Xpconnect in the X-Plane plugins menu.

When connecting with Little Navmap select the tab X-Plane in the connection dialog. See also Flight Simulator Connection.

72.4. macOS Architectures

The X-Plane plugin comes in two separate folders for different architectures.

Little Xpconnect arm64: This is for Apple computers having an Apple Silicon or an Intel CPU. It supports only newer macOS releases from Mojave 10.14 and later.
Little Xpconnect x86: This is only for Apple computers having an Intel CPU. This supports older macOS releases from Sierra 10.12.

Install Little Xpconnect arm64 if in doubt.

72.5. Clearing the Quarantine Flag on macOS

You have to remove the quarantine flag from the plugin after downloading and extracting it. Otherwise X-Plane will silently not load the plugin.

The procedure may be slightly different depending on whether you’re using Big Sur or Catalina.

Copy the whole plugin folder Little Xpconnect into the folder plugins in Resources in the X-Plane installation. The complete path should look like .../X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/Little Xpconnect.
Right or Ctrl-Click in the Finder on the included script Prepare Little Xpconnect.command in the folder .../plugins/Little Xpconnect and select Open With and Terminal.
You will see a dialog Prepare Little Xpconnect.command cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. Click Ok.
Go to System Preferences -> Security and Privacy. You will see a message mentioning the script Prepare Little Xpconnect.command. Click Open Anyway.
Next a dialog Are you sure you want to open it? pops up. Click Open.

The script shows a few explantions and asks for your password which allows it to run a command as an administrator. You can look at the script which is a text file to see what commands are executed.

The installation was successful if you can see the menu Little Xpconnect in the X-Plane plugins menu.

You have to repeat this procedure each time you update Little Xpconnect.

Tip

Use the tool Mac OS - CleanUp Quarantine Flags to clean the flags for all X-Plane plugins. Place the downloaded and extracted application in your X-Plane base folder and double click it. A dialog window showing the number of cleaned flags pops up after running.

72.6. Files

The Plugin creates a log file which can be found in

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\abarthel-little_xpconnect.log for Windows,
/tmp/abarthel-little_xpconnect.log for Linux and
/var/folders/RANDOMIZED_DIRECTORY_NAME/abarthel-little_xpconnect.log for macOS.

Additionally a settings file is created which can be found in

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\ABarthel\little_xpconnect.ini for Windows,
$HOME/.config/ABarthel/little_xpconnect.ini for Linux and macOS.

The settings can also be changed using the configuration file little_xpconnect.ini.

Little Xpconnect configuration file

[Options]
FetchAiAircraft=true     # Same as "Fetch AI" in plugin menu.
FetchAiAircraftInfo=true # Same as "Load AI Aircraft Information" in plugin menu.
FetchRateMs=200          # Data will be fetched from X-Plane every 200
                           milliseconds. Same as "Fetch Rate" in plugin menu.
FetchRate=200            # Old obsolete value. Will be deleted on start.