COMPATIBILITY
Which simulators and aircraft SkyHub supports
The simulators the flight recorder connects to, the add-on aircraft it has actually been flown behind, and how that list grows.
SkyHub records your flying through a small desktop client that reads what your simulator is already publishing. This is which simulators it connects to, which aircraft it has been flown behind, and what to do if yours is not on the list yet.
The short version: if you fly Microsoft Flight Simulator, you are supported, and the add-on you fly almost certainly does not matter.
What the recorder actually reads
The client does not modify your simulator, your aircraft or your flight. It opens the simulator’s own data connection, subscribes to a list of standard variables — position, altitude, speeds, attitude, g-load, gear, flaps, engines, brakes — and reads them several times a second. It writes nothing back.
That one design decision is why compatibility is so rarely a problem. Those variables are part of the simulator, not the aeroplane: a study-level add-on and the aircraft that came in the box publish the same altitude and the same vertical speed through the same interface. The recorder never has to know which aircraft you loaded, and nothing has to be installed into the aircraft for it to work.
What varies between add-ons is the exotic end of the list — how a particular aeroplane reports its bleed air, or which detent it calls flap 3 — and that is exactly what testing sorts out.
Simulators
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 — supported, and the one everything here has been flown on.
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 — supported. It is the same interface: the client asks the simulator to identify itself at connection and 2024 answers on its own name and its own pipe, but the variables behind it are the ones 2020 publishes. Nothing about the grading changes between them.
- Prepar3D v6 — under test. The client recognises Prepar3D and connects to it by the same route; what is not finished is the flying needed to say the numbers come back right on it.
- X-Plane 11 and 12 — in development. X-Plane has no SimConnect, so this is a different bridge rather than a setting, and it is written but not yet finished. It is not usable today, and we would rather say so than have you buy on the strength of it.
Aircraft
Flown and verified — sectors recorded end to end, graded, and checked against what the aeroplane did:
- Fenix A320 (MSFS 2020)
- FlyByWire A32NX (MSFS 2020)
- PMDG 737 (MSFS 2020)
Expected to work, on the reasoning above, but not yet flown by us: PMDG’s other aircraft, FlightSimLabs, Aerosoft, and the aircraft that ship with the simulator. If you fly one of these, you are in the best position to move it up this list.
The list names types rather than developers on purpose. Two aeroplanes from the same studio are two pieces of software, and the same aeroplane from two studios can report itself differently — we have one check that reads correctly on one A320 and has to fall back to a second method on another. So a verified 737 is a verified 737, and says nothing we would stand behind about a 777 until somebody flies one.
The fleet you are rostered on is a separate question from what your simulator can load. SkyHub rosters the types the airline operates, and your licence has to cover the type before you can file the sector — that is the airline’s rule, not a limit of the recorder.
If something does not read right
The client carries a diagnostic capture. If a sector comes back with a value that looks wrong — flaps that never move, an engine that reads zero, a landing graded on a number you do not recognise — that capture is what tells us which variable the add-on reports differently, and it is usually a small fix rather than a new feature.
This list is short because it is honest, not because the recorder is fussy. It grows every time somebody flies something new and tells us how it went.