All About Gizmo
You keep hearing about it, so let's learn about it!

If you don't care what Gizmo is or that your product requires it, then all you need to know is that x-aviation.com includes it with any product purchase that requires it and there is a installation instruction PDF file that tells you how to install it. If you want to know a bit more about Gizmo though, read on:

 

What is Gizmo?

Gizmo is the brainchild and product of programming whiz Ben Russell of Australia. Gizmo is a suite of software and software tools based on the lua programming language (www.lua.org) and designed specifically for X-Plane. The reason for Gizmo's development is to simplify and speed up add-on development of products and services for X-Plane. This suite of software tools contains multiple parts, including plug-ins that reside within X-Plane's file structure and also text based scripting files.

X-Plane has a plug-in system that allows developers to customize X-Plane through programming, but this SDK (software development kit) is implemented in the C/C++ programming language. Such a language, while very powerful and flexible, has limitations that makes add-on development cumbersome and time consuming. It was the desire to do less programming work in C/C++ that inspired the creation of Gizmo.

 

Why do we use Gizmo?

In the simplest terms, we use Gizmo because it's much faster to develop features and services for X-Plane and the X-Plane community. Most importantly it creates a more robust experience for you as a customer. By using Gizmo, we can bring better products and services to the X-Plane market faster...and that's why we use it!

 

Why does my product require Gizmo?

X-Plane's plug in system only “speaks” one language. To speak to X-Plane, you must speak it's language and this is what the Gizmo plug-in does, It is an interpreter between X-Plane and the text based Gizmo script files.

For developers (including us at x-aviation.com) who choose to use the Gizmo software tools to enhance their products, their products will utilize the Gizmo plugin to speak to X-Plane. When you acquire and install Gizmo, you are simply putting the required software “interpreter” files into X-Plane's plugin folder. The additional software that comes with the Gizmo installation are used by Gizmo for web-based features such as product activation and updates and in the future, very powerful web based flight sim and networking add-ons. Products that utilize Gizmo will display the “Enhanced by Gizmo” logo, look for it!

 

Can I use Gizmo?

Gizmo is what is called a programming API (Application Programming Interface) and is primarily used by programmers. Use of Gizmo for add-ons and licensing issues are still under development and any questions can be directed to the author, Ben Russell. The Gizmo wiki can be found at: http://www.x-plugins.com/wiki/Gizmo/api