Frequently asked questions

Basic is free. Studio is free to fly with, for personal use. Free includes:

• Arrange and launch panels
• Run instruments you’re building on simulator data (X-Plane or MSFS when connected)
• Demo Flight, to drive instruments and running panels with made-up flight data
• The full instrument editor, for learning and trying ideas
• Temporary instrument drafts, which disappear when Studio quits

Not included in Free:

• Saving panels or instruments — needs Builder or Publisher. You can apply a license in the middle of creating something, then save.
• Packaging, protecting, and selling — needs Publisher.
• Premium store instruments you haven’t bought show a watermarked preview.

Builder — $4 a month or $39 a year. Create your own instruments and new panel layouts, for personal use.

Publisher — $29 a month or $199 a year. Everything in Builder, plus package and protect your instruments to sell or share. Packs you’ve already protected keep working for your buyers even if your Publisher license ends.

Activate Builder or Publisher in Studio under Licenses → Studio license, with your purchase email and store code. Instrument purchases are separate. Builder starts with a 7-day free trial. Publisher has no free trial. Each license works on one computer per operating system: one Windows, one Mac and one Linux computer. Cancel any time. Your license keeps working to the end of the month or year you paid for. Get a license from the Store.

Professional use (flight schools, training centers, commercial simulators, events) needs a separate professional license, even just to display instruments. Price and support are not set yet; contact us.

Premium instruments and US data updates are sold separately in the store.

Yes. A Premium instrument you haven’t bought runs on your launched panel as a watermarked preview. Buy it in the Store to remove the watermark.

Yes, you can. But anyone who buys a zip file can open it, see your code and change it.

The zip must not carry a license that stops buyers from freely using everything in it: images, code and anything else in its resources.

If you want to keep any of that private, get a Publisher license and package and protect your instrument into a .sisx pack.

Yes. Anyone can get a Publisher license ($29 a month or $199 a year). It lets you package and protect your instrument yourself, in Studio, into a .sisx pack that keeps your code private. You sell it through your own channel, such as Gumroad, at your own price. Simulation Instruments licenses your buyers’ computers for a fee of about $1.50 per real, unrefunded sale, and buyers get point updates free. Become a publisher.

Our charts and navigation data come from the FAA, which publishes them for the United States. We don’t currently have an agreement with Jeppesen or another provider for worldwide data.

VS Code opens folders it has not been told to trust in Restricted Mode. In Restricted Mode, extensions such as Simulation Instruments and Lua are turned off, and instruments cannot be run from the editor.

To fix it, trust the instruments library folder once:

1. Click Manage on the blue Restricted Mode bar at the top of the window.
2. Choose Trust Parent Folder (or Trust Folder) and pick the instruments library folder. Default locations:
   • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\Simulation Instruments\Instruments
   • macOS: ~/Documents/Simulation Instruments/Instruments, or ~/Simulation Instruments/Instruments when the Documents folder is synced to iCloud Drive
3. Every instrument inside that folder then opens normally, with the extensions enabled.
4. Open the Simulation Instruments Studio view by clicking its icon in the left Activity Bar (tooltip “Simulation Instruments Studio”). Its Instrument panel shows the Run button. Run is also on the editor title bar while logic.lua is open, and in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P, or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) as SIS: Run instrument. Extension version 0.3.1 and later opens this view automatically for instrument folders.

Studio checks that the Lua extension (sumneko.lua) and the Simulation Instruments extension are installed, and offers to install any that are missing.

Only trust folders whose contents are known; Restricted Mode exists to keep code from untrusted sources from running automatically.

No. Simulation Instruments focuses on its own app, Studio, where you design, test, and run your instruments. For the Lua code behind an instrument, you use VS Code, a free, lightweight code editor from Microsoft. VS Code isn’t part of Visual Studio, Microsoft’s large paid development suite, and you don’t need Visual Studio at all.

To save the instruments and panels you build, you need a Builder license ($4/month or $39/year). Basic lets you try the full editor for free, but nothing is saved when you quit.

Why VS Code? Why reinvent the wheel? Professional programmers have spent years refining VS Code into one of the best code editors there is. You get fast editing, search across files, errors highlighted as you type, and built-in version control. It is free and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Extensions make it fit the job. The Simulation Instruments extension adds what instrument building needs. It connects VS Code to Studio, so you can run the instrument you are editing with one click, and the Lua extension helps you write the code correctly. Studio checks that both are installed and offers to install any that are missing.

On Windows, Studio ships the Simulation Instruments extension as a .vsix beside the app (vscode\sis-lua-….vsix). Installing Studio does not put the extension into VS Code by itself. When you choose Load in VS Code or Debug in VS Code, Studio finds code and can prompt to install or update the extension from that file. If VS Code isn’t installed (or isn’t on PATH), Studio shows VS Code not found and points you to code.visualstudio.com — install it with Add to PATH, then try again. Studio does not open the browser automatically.

No. Simulation Instruments is an independent product of Zimfusion LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Sim Innovations or Air Manager. Air Manager and Sim Innovations are trademarks of their owners and are mentioned here only to describe compatibility.

• Air Manager instruments in Simulation Instruments: many existing Air Manager instruments run in Simulation Instruments Studio.
• The other direction: instruments created with Simulation Instruments Studio do not run in Air Manager. Lua code written and tested in Simulation Instruments Studio can be copied into an existing Air Manager instrument.
• Why the API looks familiar: the Simulation Instruments Lua API (the set of functions instruments call) uses many of the same function names and parameters, so existing instrument code keeps working. Simulation Instruments was written independently and contains no Air Manager code. In Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. (2021), the U.S. Supreme Court held that reusing an API’s declarations so programmers could carry their existing skills and code to a new platform was fair use.
• Knobs while you develop: a NICE knob works in Simulation Instruments Studio while an instrument is still being written, so you can turn a real dual knob against your code as you change it. In Air Manager, hardware knobs work with instruments running on a panel, not while you are developing them.
• Air Manager is still a good choice: many builders use both. An Air Manager license gives access to its large store of instruments, and many of them also run in Simulation Instruments Studio. Simulation Instruments focuses on its own premium instruments, hardware and data.