A Better Camera (ABC) plugin for X-Plane v1.7.7r1 #960

Introducing a free plugin for X-Plane 11 and X-Plane 12: A-Better-Camera (ABC) for X-Plane.

A-Better-Camera (ABC) is fully supported on Linux, Windows, and macOS (including new Apple Silicon running natively on XP12).

ABC is a fully-functional, seamlessly integrated replacement camera and synthetic traffic viewer/manager for X-Plane, which works out of the box with most synthetic traffic plugins and multiplayer/TCAS providers. ABC extends the X-Plane built-in camera features -- instead of fully replacing them -- so you can think of it like a glove that fits around the X-Plane camera, making it easier to use, more powerful, able to view many more aircraft than just the 20 at a time that X-Plane's camera can view.  With custom "1-click" commands, you can define shortcuts to help you manipulate the camera in real time extremely easily and quickly!  ABC even lets you use those commands with other cameras (!!) -- i.e., easily take over views from X-Plane's or third-party traffic plugins' camera views -- from saved 3-D Cockpit "Quick Looks" to literally any exterior view.  For example, you can very quickly aim the camera directly at the target, switch between camera view modes, and switch targets, all without losing your precisely-aimed camera view. (You can even let ABC automatically re-position the camera to give you the same logical view, even though the aircraft you are tracking may be much bigger or smaller than the last one you set the view up on!)  Read on for more detail on all these and more features.

ABC also has some innovative features that can really be game-changers in using the camera more effectively for making videos, taking screenshots, or even just flying your favorite aircraft around while checking out the scenery or watching for other traffic nearby!

In v1.7.6, ABC added a full suite of new features, to augment and improve X-Plane's Quick Looks (saved cockpit and exterior camera views)!  In particular, ABC v1.7.6 includes:

• Auto-FOV adjustments - See this video for more about this feature, hot off the presses!

• Quick Look "TAKEOVER mode", allowing ABC to take over all your favorite NUMPAD keys, so you can automatically get the same exact views as you got in X-Plane, but with the ability to automatically back-fill any missing views with ABC's awesome "global" QuickViews, which adjust themselves automatically to work in virtually any cockpit!  This is really a game-changer!

• Disable cockpit animations using ABC's standard animation on/off setting that has always worked for exterior views!

• Make X-Plane's memorize feature only "take" if you hit the memorize command twice in a row (with a prompt to inform you of this, so you know you need to do it), with feedback as to exactly which view you're memorizing!  This avoids major mistakes users make by hitting the wrong keyboard shortcut, and doesn't just work for ABC's views, but also protects you from memorizing X-Plane's views accidentally as well!  (As long as Quick Look TAKEOVER mode is enabled.)

• Many more features and improvements to make ABC a "glove" that fits perfectly over top of X-Plane's camera, expanding the camera capabilities to span all traffic and working seamlessly with most plugins as well.

Other innovative features include ABC's "prime-time mode", which allows you to pause the simulator clock (or keep it within a range of time) -- locking the sun exactly where you want it (!!) without affecting most other X-Plane functionality (with caveats for features or plugins that depend on the local simulator time, such as Traffic Global).

ABC's optional "extended mode" even lets you nudge AI and User aircraft around (!!), using modified camera controls for WYSIWYG real-time manual aircraft placement (in air or on the ground, e.g. for manual push-back).  "Nudge" is only supported for the User or X-Plane-managed AI aircraft, however; it is not available for TCAS or other third-party traffic outside X-Plane's "core 20" simulated aircraft (including the User aircraft).  Below is a 7-minute video demonstrating "nudge", and walking through setting it up and using it for the User and AI aircraft in X-Plane:

ABC supports all the standard X-Plane camera modes, from 3-D cockpit views to external views like Circle, Chase, Ride-Along, Tower, Runway, Still Spot, and even Linear Spot views. (In fact, in XP11, there was no equivalent of what XP12 calls "Chase", ABC provides a mode called "ABC Control view" that gives you those exact camera semantics as XP12's "Chase" within XP11!) ABC adds even more view modes to this list, though, including "Moving Spot" (letting you track one target/aircraft from another!) and "Drop Spot" (letting you drop the camera anywhere you want -- on the ground or in the air) to use the "spot" camera to view the target from that position!  In addition, ABC's "spot" views all also provide innovative modes that are on by default: "auto-zoom" and "auto-roll", that keep the camera zoomed into the target, and for the most part, keeping the target level in the viewport by rolling the camera where necessary to achieve that!  Both modes can be toggled on and off at any time, leading to some powerful productivity enhancements whether you're making a video or just enjoying the visual experience! (No need to sit there adjusting the zoom while the aircraft flies towards, then away from the camera. Auto-zoom will take care of that for you (as well as aiming at the target, which of course ABC does just like X-Plane), so you can focus on more important things!  Real-time dynamic camera manipulation is the name of the game, and ABC makes that substantially easier than the default X-Plane camera experience, but is still backwards compatible with it, so you don't have to retool just to use it, like other camera plugins. (And -- in principle -- ABC can readily co-exist and complement even those other camera plugins, just like it does with X-Plane's camera. Though of course, your mileage may vary there!)

Another innovation ABC brings to the table is the concept of "Global QuickViews".  With this feature, you can define up to 20 saved views, which are just like X-Plane's "Quick Looks" saved views, except they views are "re-usable" (meaning, they will morph or adapt themselves to fit different-sized targets, instead of only working for the aircraft for which you memorized them)!  As of v1.7.6, ABC also supports "per-aircraft" saved views -- which ABC calls "ACF QuickViews" -- which work just like X-Plane's Quick Looks saved views, with two major improvements:

1. ACF QuickViews will "fall through" to Global QuickViews if the aircraft doesn't have a view defined for the specific view number you requested (i.e., using the "Numpad" keys, with Takeover mode enabled).  This can be a game-changer, because you can memorize a single "Global" view for each of your favorite Numpad keys, that will adapt themselves and generally work on ANY aircraft!  So, when you first get a new .acf file, even if you haven't yet saved any Quick Looks (e.g., in "_prefs.txt"), your Global QuickViews will fill in these missing views -- giving you a similar, though not perfect, adaptation of those global views for each aircraft (yes, including interior views!).

2. All ABC QuickViews support all view modes and types -- instead of just the handful that X-Plane's Quick Looks support!  In other words, whereas Quick Looks only allow you to memorize and recall interior view types (i.e., 3-D cockpit views, as well as very simple 2-D variants) and a limited set of exterior view modes (Circle, Chase, and Ride-Along views), ABC's QuickViews can actual save/restore all existing camera view modes!  In other words, ABC not only supports interior (3-D and 2-D cockpit views), and the three exterior view modes (Circle, Chase, and Ride-Along) views -- but it also supports memorizing and recalling Free-Camera views (letting you memorize and recall precise GPS-based camera positions, for amazing value-add for scenery developers -- with protections against jumping too far from the current User aircraft's position), as well as all supported Spot views (i.e., Linear Spot, Still Spot, Tower Spot, Runway Spot, and even ABC's custom Moving Spot views (!!) -- where you can track one aircraft from another -- as well as arbitrary "Drop Spot" views)!  Yes, this really works!  So you can customize your favorite spot views, for example, to have the camera at a very specific offset from the Tower or Runway, and then memorize the adjustments you made, so you can recall that exact view (or relative view depending on which type it is) any time you want.  And, remember, with Global QuickViews, you can even apply these saved camera views to ANY aircraft model, since the Global versions of these views will include some extra information to help ABC re-cast / adjust the view to fit the new target! (Of course, this is not always 100% perfect, but it's pretty good! You'll be surprised!)  QuickViews are literally WYSYWIG for saved camera views. 🙂  Which segues to another awesome feature...

ABC v1.7.6 also introduces a new feature:  "copy/paste" for camera views!  ABC exposes all the powerful memorize/recall features described above through a very simple user interface, by letting you simply "copy" a view (to memorize it into a "view paste buffer") using the ABC custom "Copy View" command, and then recall that view later by loading it using the "Paste View" command!  And believe it or not, this view clipboard or paste buffer is actually persistent!  (Meaning, the same view will be saved and available to paste again any time you start up X-Plane in the future, until you change it again!)  Of course, if you think of it this way, it turns out the Global QuickViews feature described above is really just 20 numbered paste buffers of views. 🙂

Another big innovation in ABC is its ability to place the camera much closer to the ground than X-Plane's built-in exterior camera views -- or at least, by default, ABC's exterior camera is much closer to the ground than X-Plane's exterior camera!  However -- as it turns out -- X-Plane 12 seems to have taken a lesson from ABC, by adding a technical way (using a published "dataref") to let users change the camera minimum AGL level from the 5+ feet it was previously, to as low as the user wants (just like ABC).  However, for some reason, XP12's camera still starts out for all users at 5+ feet AGL as its minimum (floor) level, and you'd have to modify that dataref if you know how in order to make it lower -- whereas ABC just does it for you from the outset, and provides a setting and a pair of custom commands to easily modify that floor level in real time.

There's a lot more, some of which is listed in the inventory of features below...

ABC is and will always be free of charge, as a universal 64-bit plugin on macOS, Linux, and Windows.  (Note: Mac users on Catalina or later don't have to worry about painful security prompts, since ABC is signed and notarized, so if you running apps from an Apple "identified developer", it will not even prompt you the first time as long as you enable "identified developers" to run without requiring approval!)

No installers are needed, and no configuration is required. (To install, you just need to copy the folder A-Better-Camera from the download into your plugins directory, which contains a single necessary file, A-Better-Camera.xpl, for each platform. ABC works with the standard X-Plane camera controls, only when you ask for it, using the menus or custom ABC commands that you can bind to keyboard shortcuts or joystick buttons.)

Here's a bird's-eye view of A-Better-Camera (ABC) v1.7.7, as of 11-July-2025:

• "Active" status bar:

  • For the first time since A-Better-Camera first launched in 2018, you can control many aspects of this plugin directly from the ABC status bar, which is now movable so you can position it wherever you like on the screen. You can even tell the ABC status bar whether you prefer it to be centered on the main display (or even spanning displays), left-aligned, or right-aligned!  By default, the status bar has the following features built in:

    • Always displays the current saved-view number when loaded (e.g., "ACF QuickView #n") when Takeover mode is on, as of new as of ABC v1.7.6!

    • Status-bar "lock" button allowing simple locking/unlocking of the status bar on screen

    • Pop-up "view menu" to select from ABC's many view modes (Circle, Chase, Control, Still Spot, Tower Spot, Runway Spot, Linear Spot, Moving Spot, Drop Spot) and even some select X-Plane view modes (3D Cockpit, 2D Cockpit, XP Circle, etc.)

    • User cockpit scroll-wheel zoom lock ("+/-zoomlock") to avoid conflicts with cockpit instruments

    • Toggle ABC camera animation on/off ("+/-anim")

    • Toggle auto-zoom on/off for spot views ("+/-autozoom")

    • Toggle custom ABC "auto-roll" feature for spot views ("+/-autoroll")

    • Track your User aircraft ("|<") in the current ABC exterior tracking view at any time

    • Track the previous target ("<<") in the current ABC exterior tracking view

    • Pop-up "tracking menu" to select from all available aircraft (showing each target's identifiers, altitude, distance, flight phase, etc.)

    • Track the next target (">>") in the current ABC exterior tracking view

    • See the full name of the nearest airport (hover/click truncated airport names to see the whole thing in a tooltip)

• Quick Look "TAKEOVER" mode: new as of ABC v1.7.6!

  • On by default, this allows all users to take full advantage of ABC's improvements to make Quick Looks substantially easier to use, and more powerful!

  • Without making any keyboard shortcut changes, Takeover mode lets ABC handle missing X-Plane Quick Looks for a given .acf file, to fall back to Global QuickViews that can take care of most cases automatically (even better for exterior views, but also quite useful for interior views as well!).

  • In addition, as long as Takeover mode is on, you're protected against accidentally overwriting your favorite saved views, by requiring new "Memorize" commands (e.g., via Ctrl+Numpad-n) to be confirmed!  (Confirmation is easy: ABC prompts you, telling you the view number for the view you are trying to memorize, and then you simply hit the memorize command a second time to confirm it!  This has saved many users already from incorrectly overwriting Quick Looks in X-Plane just because they hit the wrong keyboard shortcut!)

  • This even allows you see all the correct saved views for your AI aircraft (by automatically reading and importing into ABC's QuickViews model, the prefs.txt file in X-Plane for each AI aircraft you have configured)! You can even memorize new views for AI aircraft (!!) though this only works with Takeover mode on!  (Viewing saved Quick Look views for AI aircraft, however, works with or without Takeover mode -- both for 3-D cockpit and exterior views associated with each aircraft, and falling back to the Global views if a particular view is not defined in prefs.txt for that aircraft.)

  • Doesn't require any special configuration or training. It will "just work"!  (Note: ABC stores cached versions of all its customized versions of those views in the same folders as the .acf and prefs.txt files, but with the ending, "abc.txt", whereas Global QuickViews are stored in the ABC preferences file in the Output folder, since they apply to all targets.

• ABC + tracking list menus:

  • On X-Plane startup, A-Better-Camera (ABC) will be added to the Plugins menu, along with a tracking list menu that shows up to 3 submenus, one for each "bank" of aircraft. (Each bank is also shown as a tab in the ABC tracking window, which actually supports up to 6 banks of aircraft instead of just 3 in the menus, and has a scroll-bar, allowing you to choose from all possible aircraft to track with ABC's camera.)

  • The first bank is called "X-Plane", and is always present.  It includes the User aircraft first, followed by all trackable X-Plane targets (such as TCAS or AI aircraft, including X-Plane missiles or bombs while in the air, the frigate, and the aircraft carrier, if active).  The remaining "external" banks hold all trackable synthetic aircraft or objects from installed third-party plugin such as LiveTraffic, Traffic Global, X-Drop, World Traffic, xPilot (VATSIM), etc.  (Please let us know if you have a favorite plugin that is not supported, and we can either add it or you may be able to track its aircraft if the plugin supports "TCAS override" in X-Plane, described just below.)

  • ABC supports AI aircraft and/or TCAS targets from your favorite third-party providers (including the new "XPMP2 Remote Client" TCAS concentrator). With plugins that support X-Plane's TCAS override (from XP11.50 through the current XP12), you can use ABC's "tracking window" to manage all third-party traffic, including explicit controls to switch TCAS providers when available. (In other words, if you have more than one traffic source, you can use ABC to explicitly disable and enable any single source to use the TCAS-override feature in X-Plane. This is really easy when using ABC, for supported plugins.)

• Full emulation of X-Plane's standard camera controls with an explosion of additional views, options and modes:

  • With no setup required (!!), ABC fully emulates the X-Plane camera (including responding to all X-Plane camera controls, even if you've changed from the default keyboard shortcuts or re-bound controls to joystick buttons, etc.), and even more methods below (i.e., X-Plane's standard support for hat switches, right-drag gesture, scroll-wheel zoom, etc.).

  • When any ABC external camera view is active (which you control explicitly), it acts just like X-Plane's external camera (though ABC fixes some bugs and smooths over some inconsistencies in X-Plane's camera!); this includes emulating X-Plane's features such as:

    • right mouse-button drag to move/pivot the camera based on the current view mode (just like X-Plane)

    • scroll-wheel zoom gesture (the same as, but faster/easier than, X-Plane's scroll-wheel zoom)

    • hat-switch controls (just like X-Plane, with custom per-axis inversion and two-way speed adjustments in ABC's settings)

  • That's just the baseline -- there is so much more it can do!

• Seamless camera "take-over" and mode/target selection:

  • ABC can "take over" any camera view from X-Plane, preserving the camera position (absolute or relative, depending on whether you are tracking a moving aircraft, or just viewing scenery using the free camera) and even the camera mode of the source controller.

  • You can start a fresh "tracking view", and seamlessly hop between targets and modes without losing your place, using ABC's reverse-engineered, emulated exterior camera views:

    • Circle view - emulating the classic exterior aircraft tracking camera in X-Plane

    • ABC custom "Control" view (XP11) - essentially X-Plane 12's Chase, but in XP11 (since XP11 Chase is the same as "Ride Along")

    • Chase view (XP11 and XP12) - different in XP11 vs. XP12 (but works the same as the corresponding X-Plane version's Chase camera)

    • Ride-Along view (XP12) - works exactly the same as X-Plane 12's Ride Along camera

    • Wingman view - new as of ABC v1.7.6 - works the same as X-Plane's new XP12.1.4 view called "Wingman" (even works in pre-XP12.1.4 and XP11!)

    • Spot views - six (6) distinct tracking spot views, with manual override of the camera position, with optional auto-zoom and auto-roll modes for all of them:

      1. Tower spot view - tracks targets from the same logical position as the X-Plane tower camera

      2. Runway spot view - tracks targets from a runway near each target (not necessarily the nearest)

      3. Still spot view - lets you watch any target "fly by" the camera from a position along its projected trajectory

      4. Linear spot view - emulates X-Plane's Linear spot camera (moving the camera alongside and slightly slower than the target) - new as of ABC v1.7b5!

      5. ABC custom "Drop spot" view - spots targets from any fixed camera position (just "drop" the camera wherever)

      6. ABC custom "Moving spot" view  - tracks one target from a position attached to another target - new as of ABC v1.6!

    • Free-Camera view

      • "Scout" mode - freeze and hide the User aircraft and attach it to the camera, so the camera's view is always top quality (not for use when flying)

      • "Slew" mode - freeze and keep the User aircraft directly in front of the camera, so it can be easily moved to a new location (e.g., to continue flight from there)

  • Choose ABC camera views and targets from ABC's expansive, configurable plugin menu, and/or by binding custom keyboard shortcuts and/or joystick buttons to these views.

  • Quick toggle between previous and current view, as well as previous and current tracking target!

  • Memorize and restore up to 20 saved Global "QuickViews".

    • Note: QuickViews can be saved in any supported camera view listed above, including "Free Camera" view. For ABC Free Camera views, the actual GPS coordinates of the view position are stored when you memorize and restore a QuickView -- so it works correctly regardless of your scenery or your User aircraft's position. (This also means you can save a specific global location as a QuickView while using a Free-Camera view in ABC Scout or Slew mode, though it may freeze the simulator while loading if it is more than just a tile or two away from the current position -- but it will load the exact saved free-camera Scout view eventually in that case! In fact, you don't need to be in Scout or Slew mode, they are just a powerful ABC tool to allow you to restore a view in another area and actually see the scenery at the restored camera position -- otherwise, it would just be a sea of blue in X-Plane without Scout or Slew to load the arbitrary global position.)

• Extensive customization available (but not required):

  • As you grow in experience using ABC, and discover its many features, you can open doors into more configuration options, modes, features, and much more, with:

    • extended (or minimized) menu options

    • over 100 custom options and settings (more details below)

    • over 70 custom assignable commands (as X-Plane keyboard shortcuts and/or joystick buttons; look for "A_Better_Camera" in the keyboard settings panel for the commands, broken out into categories for ease of discovery)

    • UI elements such as the ABC Status Bar and alerts (notification) area, are now "widgets", meaning you can customize them by dragging them anywhere you like, including changing them to be left-aligned, centered (the default), or right-aligned, using a simple and intuitive WYSIWYG interface.

• Unified aircraft tracking:

  • With ABC's "Tracking List" window (using the highly efficient ImGui library), you can readily see lists of all the aircraft traffic in your X-Plane world at any time -- from all your traffic sources, including TCAS, ADSB (via LiveTraffic), and most synthetic traffic plugins. ABC's tracking list shows details -- such as aircraft type or description, current altitude, and flight phase -- for each individual target (i.e., each individual aircraft or trackable object).

  • The Tracking List window is a scrollable, tabular user interface showing the same targets as the "ABC Aircraft Tracking" menu, with separate tabs (one tab for each source of traffic), showing:

    1. which plugins you have installed that generate traffic,

    2. how many aircraft are currently simulated in your world within each provider, and

    3. all aircraft from each source or plugin (i.e., by simply clicking the tab for that source).

• Powerful custom commands:

  • ABC has a large number of custom commands that can help you save time when manipulating the external camera, including saving views to restore them later for any aircraft, toggling between the last two aircraft and/or the last two views, and even seamlessly taking over the camera from your favorite traffic plugin's camera views (or X-Plane's built-in camera views) to apply ABC's extended feature set -- all without losing your place or skipping a beat!

• Serious multi-tasking as core design principle:

  • ABC provides a suite of "multitasking" features, so you can focus on flying your own aircraft when you need, but also quickly and easily switch back to an external view (of your or another aircraft) to continue in ABC exactly where you left off.

  • The lack of such support in X-Plane is likely why many serious sim-pilots chuckle when asked if they've used X-Plane's external camera views.  (Since X-Plane's external camera only supports the most basic multitasking requirements, and is thus far too difficult to use while also flying the aircraft!  But ABC breaks through that barrier, making it so much easier to context-switch, while keep the exact same views and tracking targets as you switch between any two contexts. And ABC even adds features to enhance the use of the camera within the cockpit, by letting you use some of ABC's one-click view control/positioning commands -- such as quick-pivot and quick-zoom -- into the cockpit as well!)

• Special features:

  • ABC has an innovative special feature called "Screensaver mode", which lets you "lean back" (the opposite of the multitasking experience above!) and just watch the show! (Only interesting if you have at least one provider of traffic, whether it's AI or multiplayer aircraft in X-Plane, or one or more third-party traffic providers.)  Here is an 8-minute video demonstrating the basics of using the Screensaver feature:

  • [Mouse-Look Override]: ABC can now take over the right-drag for any camera in X-Plane, including the main X-Plane camera (both in the cockpit and in views like Circle and Chase), as long as the camera implements X-Plane's standard "sim/general" commands (up, down, left, right, etc.).  This (optional) feature disables the X-Plane "mouse-look" locking feature (i.e., the double-right-click), which many users have complained about not being able to disable for years!!  View this 5-minute demo video with instructions for getting the most out of Mouse-Look Override in ABC:

  • ABC has an innovative feature called, "Prime-time mode", that lets you freeze local time without freezing the simulator (which in turn keeps the sun and/or night sky exactly where it is until you turn prime-time mode off again).  There are quite a few options including the ability to set a "period" to let the clock run within a well-defined time window if you prefer not to stop the clock altogether.  This is all described in this 15-minute demo and instructional video for getting the most out of ABC Prime-Time mode:

  • ABC allows you to opt into special "tracking alerts", to notify you of all take-offs, landings, and go-arounds as soon as they are detected (across all your traffic providers, including AI aircraft, VATSIM or other TCAS or multiplayer aircraft, and "synthetic" traffic).  Note that tracking alerts are disabled in the cockpit by default, but you can enable them there, too, if you like.

  • In fact, you can plug the two features above together, and have Screensaver automatically show you all take-offs, landings, and go-arounds as they happen, if you opt into "auto-accept" of tracking alerts (simple option on menu just below Screensaver). Caveat: you must also opt into take-off/landing alerts, since otherwise the experience would not be triggered.

  • ABC also provides a camera "position display", as a somewhat stand-alone utility feature.  Using a command or the menu item, "Display CAMERA POSITION", you can ask ABC to overlay its on-screen status with the current camera view's exact geo-position (latitude, longitude), altitude (both AGL and MSL), camera heading (in true degrees), and camera pitch (in degrees up/down from the horizon).  The display also lets you see the relative coordinates (x/y/z) of the aircraft you are tracking, or optionally, the relative coordinates of the camera as well.  This can be a very useful utility for scenery developers, pilots, etc. -- pretty much anyone, for a wide variety of uses.  In fact, as of v1.7.6, you can use a command to open the position display as a widget, using the command, "abc:  POSITION DISPLAY (toggle)".

    • Note: ABC's "position info" works with any camera (not just ABC's views!), and is continuously updated as you move any X-Plane camera view around. This means you can monitor X-Plane's camera heading, pitch, roll, and geo-position, regardless of which plugin (or X-Plane itself) is driving the camera, by toggling this feature on.  However, certain tracking information (such as aircraft position) will not be shown unless you're actively using A-Better-Camera to track a given aircraft.  Here's a 6-minute video showing the Position Display feature, including configuring a keyboard shortcut to toggle the display on/off, and examples of showing the camera position for non-ABC and ABC views alike:

      • (Note: this video shows a much older version than is currently available in v1.7.6! The latest version is a fully-functional ABC "widget", so you can readily drag and drop it anywhere on the screen, and have it stay in place, including left-, center-, or right-aligned, based on where you drop it!

• Expansive Settings window (with optional "expert" mode):

  • As you gain experience using ABC, you'll surely want to customize its many features and defaults. This is easily done through ABC's expansive Settings window (now using ImGui as of v1.5!), which has a "filter" to allow you to easily find what you're looking for.  Expert mode is a simple click away, which exposes even more settings and options for experienced users, without potentially distracting or confusing newer users.

  • Settings are persistent, and stored in the standard X-Plane preferences folder. (Note: this makes updates trivial: the plugin is literally just one .xpl file, and can be replaced any time. Also, upgrades/downgrades are supported automatically, since each individual saved setting is tagged with a version number, making it easy, safe, and automatic to migrate between any two releases of the plugin.)

  • A-Better-Camera's settings window is also a user manual! In other words, each setting has a detailed description of each feature that has a setting associated with it, and may include references to other settings, features, etc. Additionally, most features in the Settings and Tracking List window have tooltips to give you usage instruction when you hover over them.  Built-in documentation is a big time saver and helps you learn more about the plugin as you go! Just try different queries in the "Filter: " input box at the top of the Settings window to discover features, options, and more information.

• Lightweight, self-contained, modern plugin for 64-bit desktop platforms (Windows, Linux, and macOS):

  • Mac users: A-Better-Camera.xpl is a single universal binary for both Intel and Apple silicon platforms, and is digitally signed and notarized, i.e. confirmed by Apple as being from an "identified developer"!  (This means you will see no security prompts or hurdles as long as you allow downloads "from identified developers" in your Security & Privacy preferences! Even more importantly, you won't have to play the game of quitting and re-running X-Plane to get it to actually load, because it will "just work".)

• Better coexistence (and some limited cooperation) with X-Camera:

  • Though this is really something that will be more interesting in a future release (of both plugins), there has been a lot of thought put into making A-Better-Camera v1.7.6 work as well as it can with another camera plugin, X-Camera, to avoid user confusion and technical conflicts between the two related plugins. Though ABC has and will always be aimed at solving a different set of problems for users than X-Camera, there are obviously some areas of overlap -- and a lot of work is in the latest release to ensure that X-Camera users have an improved experience over time when using both plugins (for their respective tasks), while also hopefully being able to do more things in the overlap area without breaking or confusing the other plugin. More on this in the future -- but as of today, ABC should exist more peacefully with X-Camera as of v1.7.6 than ever before. (This will be especially true after a bug-fix release of X-Camera, which should be coming relatively soon as of this writing.)

Videos will be updated soon to show the latest version -- until then, here's a 41-minute walk-through for an earlier release (v1.5) that will orient you around the basic ideas behind A-Better-Camera, and how you can get started if you are just trying it out: (though this version is now pretty out of date, it at least shows the fundamentals, which have not really changed at all, and some things will look very similar to the current v1.7.6 release):

Not only is ABC light-weight, but it also stays out of your way until you need it, and works seamlessly and collaboratively with cameras from other plugins.  ABC augments and improves the camera in X-Plane or third-party plugins, and only when you want it to (i.e., to use one of ABC's views/features directly). For example, ABC can be used in parallel with X-Camera -- they don't work together, but they don't conflict, either. You can readily switch between a saved view in ABC and a different one in X-Camera. (The only challenge there is keeping all your keyboard or button bindings straight!)  As another example, you can capture the exact camera position, zoom level, and target from LiveTraffic's camera, from Traffic Global's camera, and even from World Traffic's camera -- all by simply using ABC's basic take-over command ("abc:  TETHER")!

A-Better-Camera is a must-have utility...

• if you are an X-Plane user who enjoys the built-in X-Plane external camera views (in Views > External for the default camera) -- and/or if you use X-Plane's multi-player or traffic features through add-ons such as LiveTraffic, Traffic Global, World Traffic, xPilot/VATSIM, etc. -- ABC will improve your life!

• if you use AI aircraft and/or synthetic traffic plugins such as listed above... ABC makes it very easy to keep track of which traffic plugins are active, lets you see all their aircraft with one click either of the tracking menu or the tracking list window. ABC's traffic plugin management features include:

  • the tracking window's "X-Plane" tab always shows which plugin is currently controlling TCAS

  • custom traffic controls: (each tab in the tracking window includes a context-sensitive menu with traffic management features letting you truly manage your traffic plugins)

    • start/stop traffic (when supported by the plugin)

    • open custom configuration dialogs for each plugin (if supported)

    • enable/disable TCAS mode in supported traffic plugins (so you can pick which of several plugins should control TCAS with one click).

  • These traffic management features allow you to avoid having to define your own custom keyboard shortcuts for each plugin -- you can just use the context menus in ABC's tracking list, if you prefer, for most core features of each plugin.

  • This makes managing traffic plugins a breeze -- even if you just have one, the user interface in ABC is essentially identical for all providers, so you can take on more traffic sources later, if you like, with no extra complexity.

In lieu of a user's manual (which is still currently not ready), the Settings window accessible via the X-Plane Plugins menu is a great place to start. It has tons of information, and can be easily filtered and organized around topics or "tags". There is a also a separate companion A-Better-Camera support forum where the author and some power users will happily answer any questions you may have, as well as discuss ideas for improvement.  There are also yet more walk-through/demonstration videos below, showing off all sorts of things about the plugin and what it can do...

Please feel free to PM me or -- better yet -- post any questions or comments on the separate discussion thread:

Below, I've also posted a series of videos to explain ABC's features as of versions 1.2 and 1.3 (for the Traffic Global integration demo). Obviously, these are pretty old in that ABC has evolved a lot since these. However, all the fundamentals are the same.  A more recent walk-through video (for v1.5) is above -- and yet another new one for v1.7.7 is coming soon.

There is a lot to say about using ABC, so each video below attempts to focus in and give you specifics around just one or two related topics or features.

So, please watch the first video first, and then you can watch the rest as you like, in any order.

The first video ("INTRO/OVERVIEW") gives an overview of the plugin (as of v1.2), and explains why you would need it and what it can do with some examples.  The videos above mostly replace the content in these, but they are left for posterity and because there are some useful details in them if you have time to watch after seeing the specific feature videos above.

Again: the videos content below are from much earlier versions of ABC and new versions are above (mostly spread out as smaller videos describing specific features). Starting after 19-July-2021, all releases of ABC use the ImGui framework for ABC's user interface in X-Plane (whereas, the windows shown in many of these videos from previous releases -- as well as screenshots -- are from the "legacy" user interface built directly on OpenGL). I hope to make a whole new set of videos after v1.7.7 is final, and move all of these to an archive or something... At least, I hope I can find time to do that after v1.7.7 final launches. 🙂

Part 1: INTRO/OVERVIEW (v1.2): 

Part 2: AIRCRAFT TRACKING (v1.2):

Part 3: SEAMLESS HAND-OFF with TRAFFIC GLOBAL (v1.3):

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Note: older videos (showing ABC v1.5) have been added inline above, with each description in the overview section. (When viewing any embedded video, click the expand button or hit the "f" key to expand them full-screen while viewing, and be sure to explicitly choose HD quality (1080p or 4K equivalent) when viewing each video here, to ensure you can see text that is displayed. While YouTube may say "auto (1080p)", it actually will not show you the 1080p quality unless all circumstances align perfectly. So please make sure you ask for the higher quality version explicitly, even if it means buffering. Otherwise, you may miss most of what is being explained due to a lack of visual clarity. 🙂 )