by Michal Rok » Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:47 am
Hi,
congrats on the new features.
!PREFILE and VATBOOK are not coupled, as they serve two different purposes. !PREFILE is a feature of VATSIM servers to upload your flight plan before actually connecting to the network (just like you post your flight plan in real life before jumping into the plane). This is very time-limited (all entries expire within 2 hours) and not very useful for other people than the pilot himself; and for this reason (and some others) vroute.info does not display this information at all.
VATBOOK in comparison is for mid-term planning, i.e. "I will fly this evening" or "I will be online on tower on Saturday from 8PM", and is not connected to VATSIM's FSD servers.
When you look up vroute's FIR or country screens, VATBOOK is used for forecasting when a particular flight will be overflying the specific area; in the same way all present flights are forecasted based on their present location, speed and destination.
Michal
ps. can I please have an ignorant's-level description how to set up Qutescoop on my Mac mini?