MSFS GeoShot is the first and only all-in-one 🖼️ screenshot tool that's specifically crafted for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It allows you to take intelligent screenshots that store helpful information about your flight in their metadata, which then allows you to import them into other tools to achieve all kinds of fun integrations like:
- 🗺️ Viewing a map of your screenshots using Google My Maps or GeoSetter
- 🔎 Searching for screenshots in Explorer by their location or even the🛩️ type of aircraft used!
Additionally, MSFS GeoShot will name your screenshots by date, time, and human-readable location (e.g. country, area, city), making it super simple for you to browse through your screenshots and keep them organized.
Getting Started
- 1.) Download and unzip the attached zip file
- 2.) Run the simple installer .exe contained within
- 3.) Launch MSFS GeoShot by clicking on its desktop shortcut or start menu entry
With the flight simulator running, simply press Ctrl+Shift+S to take a screenshot, or use the corresponding button in MSFS GeoShot.
The hotkey, just like almost everything about the tool, can be customized using a number of easy-to-use options.
Making More of Your Screenshots
To get the most out of MSFS GeoShot, make sure to couple it with other apps and services that support the metadata within!
Windows Explorer
To view your screenshot metadata, simply enable the details pane, or change to a column view and customize the columns shown to include image metadata. The metadata also automatically enriches Explorer's search feature, allowing you to e.g. find screenshots taken in a particular aircraft type.
Google My Maps
One of the most fun ways to utilize the screenshots taken by MSFS GeoShot is to display them on a map. The easiest way to do so is using the My Maps Service by Google Maps. To get you started on that please see this offical tutorial by Google.
If you're so inclined, you can even go one step further, record your flight path with Little Navmap, and then export it to GPX in order to import it as a layer into your custom map.
GeoSetter
As an alternative to Google My Maps, you might also want to check out GeoSetter. This will allow you to view your screenshots on a map without having to upload them to Google first.
Important tip: By default GeoSetter will try to show Google Maps as the map layer, but due to limitations on Google's side, that does not seem to work particularly well at the moment. So my recommendation would be to immediately swap out the layer for OpenStreetMap at the top of the map widget. That way you will also see the same map as in LittleNavmap.
Other Tools
The apps and services listed above are just a few of the many ways to integrate MSFS GeoShot with other tools. If you find other fun integrations, please do let me know in the comments!
Known Limitations
- MSFS currently does not expose any interface to determine the actual in-game camera position, so both the recorded screenshot location and viewpoint are fixed to the aircraft for now. When you are using the drone camera you might end up with a recorded location that does not exactly match the actual camera position. Similarly, the picture angle shown in tools like GeoSetter will always correspond to the aircraft bearing. Hopefully future updates to the SimConnect API will make it possible to access the camera data.
- Because geo-location metadata is still a fairly new addition to the PNG file format, most applications will not support it. For the best experience I would suggest that you either choose JPG or TIFF as the format for your screenshots.
Credits and License
MSFS GeoShot is Copyright (C) 2021 pyviator.
The source code for MSFS GeoShot is available on GitHub. Contributions are welcome!
Regarding MSFS GeoShot's code
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
Regarding non-code-files
MSFS GeoShot also includes a number of media assets which are licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0. For more information on the exact licensing terms and credits of original works, please see the media resources README.
Additionally, compiled builds of MSFS GeoShot include Python-SimConnect which ships with a bundled version of the SimConnect.dll from Microsoft Flight Simulator's SDK. Microsoft Flight Simulator is © Microsoft Corporation. Any assets from Microsoft Flight Simulator used by MSFS GeoShot (SimConnect.dll) are used under Microsoft's "Game Content Usage Rules". This project is not in any way endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.
Special shout-outs
MSFS GeoShot is built on the shoulders of giants, with a special shout-out due for the following members of the MSFS community:
- odwdinc for their work on Python-SimConnect
- Luuk3333 for inspiring this project with msfs-screenshot-gps-data
MSFS GeoShot would also not exist without a number of other third-party software in the greater open-source ecosystem. A full overview of all the dependencies bundled with the program and overview of their copyright statements and licenses may be found in MSFS GeoShot's in-program credits.
4 months ago
firuzza63
8 months ago
TopGun
Great app! It does just what I need it to do. I just wish there was a single button I could press to take a screenshot with it, rather than having to do a combo.
12 months ago
IanBrettCooper
2 years ago
ThorSix
Excelente para saber de donde es cada captura que tomaste.
2 years ago
codegab
The application fails to rename taken screenshots showing an error message if the "geocode" contains characters that are forbidden in filenames like \, / or &. You should probably filter these names and replace all relevant characters.
2 years ago
Ran into this last night too, so I created a Pull Request that should fix this -- https://github.com/pyviator/msfs-geoshot/pull/3
Hopefully we see an update soon :)
2 years ago
MinchinWeb
Faern
Love it, finally screenshots with meaningful names and super simple!
2 years ago
dekla24
Norton Meldet Virus ??
2 years ago
Hi, danke für die Rückmeldung. GeoShot nutzt Python unter der Haube und damit verpackte .exe Dateien werden von manchen AV-Anbietern leider immer mal wieder falsch positiv erkannt. Weiß nicht, ob Norton da besonders anfällig ist, aber VirusTotal meldet z.B. keine Probleme: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/2bef3b5ad282878d1e07d30fcfddd3976cdd5496059eb4e10f801513ed8c7f72
Wenn du auf Nummer sicher gehen willst und dich ein bisschen mit Python-Coding auskennst, kannst du die GeoShot .exe auch selbst zusammenbasteln, da das Tool quelloffen ist: https://github.com/pyviator/msfs-geoshot
Hoffe das hilft!
2 years ago
pyviator
guennizw
Yes, it's 99% the tool what I am looking for. One (stupid?) question I have - can I place the photo function into a joystick button? Cause I am flying alwys in VR only...and searching the 3 keys...I have to remove the googles 😊. And my Thrustmaster HOTAS has so many fine buttons and switches 😊
2 years ago
Using VR, which photo is registred, the view as throught my VR headset or the current screenshoot ?
2 years ago
Musis3rd
Tyrell63
Perfect screenshot tool
2 years ago
Thanks for the kind words! Glad it's working well :)
2 years ago
pyviator
DutchSimPilot
Nice simple tool!
2 years ago
Thanks for the 5-star rating! Glad you like it :)
2 years ago
pyviator
haralda
Great tool!
And how can I using GeoSetter while the default is google?
3 years ago
OK I can check pics with my cellphone.
3 years ago
starwolf
starwolf
Great tool!
3 years ago
Thanks, stamflyer! Glad you like it!
3 years ago
pyviator
stamflyer
Works well here, thx! Maybe you can add a map?
3 years ago
Hi willi, Thanks for the rating!
A map would be cool to have, but I fear it would take quite a lot of effort to add to the tool, and with much better apps and map services out there to show your photos on a map, I'd rather delegate that part of the workflow to them. My personal recommendation would be to give GeoSetter and/or Google My Maps a try (some basic instructions to get you started with these are in the description above).
Still, appreciate the suggestion!
3 years ago
pyviator
willi86willi
Great stuff - your beta.2 patch got me past the error 😊. However - I have a request ... is it possible to load up a previously saved screenshot to go to the geodata info? At the moment, the only option appears to be the current/last pic taken.
3 years ago
Hi Adamski, great to hear that the patch worked, and thanks for the suggestion!
That would be a cool feature to have, for sure. However, unfortunately it would be quite difficult to implement and complicate the code quite a bit. My goal with the tool for now is to keep it as lightweight as possible and focus on the image capturing part (which is already quite complex), offloading displaying images and their metadata to other software in the greater photo management ecosystem (e.g. GeoSetter, GMaps, or DarkTable: https://darktable.gitlab.io/doc/en/map_chapter.html ).
By keeping the scope limited, it should be easier for me (and other contributors as the project is open-source) to keep MSFS GeoShot maintained long-term. I guess the philosophy I'm hoping to follow here is: Do one thing and do it well.
Still, I really do appreciate the feedback!
One last thing: I really don't like asking about this, but would you perhaps consider updating your rating? It's unfortunate how these things work as it makes rating scales very useless, but nowadays people will really veer away from anything rated around three stars. As this is the only rating the tool has, I fear it will detract a lot of users from giving it a try, which would be a shame as it really took me a lot of time and effort to create this.
Just a request, completely understand if you want to keep the rating, and at the end of the day it's not you, but the weirdness of rating scales that's the actual issue.
3 years ago
pyviator
AdamskiNZ