Newsky

Newsky (opens in a new tab) is a client for virtual airlines to book, track, and manage flights.

⚠️

This software is only supported on Windows. Whilst Newsky says official Linux and Mac support is "planned at some point", currently it is "not yet" supported, and though it has been able to be run on Linux, there is no guarantee that this will work later down the line. Do not expect, or ask for, support from Newsky.

Installation

ℹ️

Difficulty: easy-medium

Newsky can have issues launching alongside MSFS when running using protontricks. To get around this, Newsky can be launched using Wine, and then use a networked SimConnect session to connect to MSFS.

Download and run the Newsky installer

You can download the Newsky installer from the link on their website (opens in a new tab).

Open Winetricks (not Protontricks), select the default prefix which should show up in the window titlebar under ~/.wine. Then select "run an arbitrary executable", find the Newsky installer you downloaded, and run the installer. Once Newsky has finished installing, it should have added a shortcut in your application launcher, and opens automatically.

Sign into Newsky, then click on your user profile in the top right, and open settings. Scroll down until you reach the "Networked setup" setup.

Enable the Networked setup, and select MSFS as the simulator, 127.0.0.1 as the IP address, and a free port. I chose 8381, other ports may or may not work for you, but this worked for me.

Enable Networked SimConnect for MSFS

Navigate to PATH/TO/COMPDATA/1250410/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft\ Flight\ Simulator

Open SimConnect.xml in a text editor of your choice, then add a new <SimConnect.comm> element, where "PORT" is the port that was set in Newsky:

    <SimConnect.Comm>
        <Descr>Static IP4 port</Descr>
        <Protocol>IPv4</Protocol>
        <Address>127.0.0.1</Address>
        <Scope>global</Scope>
        <Port>PORT</Port>
        <MaxClients>64</MaxClients>
        <MaxRecvSize>41088</MaxRecvSize>
    </SimConnect.Comm>

Now launch MSFS, and Newsky should be able to connect to the simulator. The text in the top left saying "waiting for sim connection" should change to "connected to simulator", and will show during towards the end of the loading screen, or on the main menu. If it does not change, check that the ports match, or try another port.

(Optional) Desktop entry

There should be no need to create a desktop file yourself, as Winetricks should have created it for you. If you want to modify the .desktop file, it is located in ~/.local/share/applications/wine/programs.

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