Pegasus ACARS

Pegasus is the vAMSYS ACARS client — a desktop application you install on your own computer. It connects to your flight simulator, streams position reports to vAMSYS while you fly, and files your PIREP when you shut down. Every Virtual Airline hands it out from its own Pegasus ACARS page in Phoenix, so that page is where you start.

Before You Start

• A vAMSYS account with a verified email address, not banned, holding at least one pilot profile at a Virtual Airline.

• A booking at that Virtual Airline, made in Phoenix before you open Pegasus.

• No PIREP currently flagged as needing a reply. While one is outstanding Pegasus is given no booking at all, so it shows you nothing to fly. Answer the staff comment on that PIREP in Phoenix first.

• A supported simulator: MSFS 2020, MSFS 2024, X-Plane 10, X-Plane 11, X-Plane 12, Prepar3D, FSX (including FSX: Steam Edition), or FS2004.

• FSUIPC, installed and kept up to date, for MSFS 2020, MSFS 2024, FSX, Prepar3D and FS2004. X-Plane does not use it.

Getting Pegasus

In Phoenix, open Resources → Pegasus ACARS in the sidebar — it sits between Hangar and Airports. The page belongs to your Virtual Airline, and staff can rename it and edit its contents, so the exact title and the wording of the download links vary from VA to VA. Its address is /phoenix/pages/acars; /phoenix/resources/acars reaches the same page, which is the link the in-app upgrade prompt uses.

Pegasus is built for Windows, macOS and Linux. From version 2.0.8 the macOS and Linux builds include the .NET runtime, so it no longer has to be installed separately; earlier builds needed it in place first.

If the Pegasus ACARS page is missing from your sidebar entirely, it is a VA setup problem rather than something you can fix — ask your staff to restore it (see below).

Staying Up to Date

• Pegasus updates itself. Since 2.0.8 you can choose between the Beta and Stable update channels in Settings → Updates, and switch back at any time.

• Running an out-of-date client is a hard stop rather than a warning. The server rejects it with OUTDATED_VERSION and you cannot get past sign-in. On the older v1 API, anything below version 1.9 is refused outright.

• On Windows, an update that will not install is usually being blocked by Windows Application Control, AppLocker, Smart App Control or antivirus software.

• Since 2.0.8, if a required component is missing because an install is broken or incomplete, Pegasus tells you to reinstall instead of failing silently.

Connecting to Your Simulator

MSFS 2020, MSFS 2024, FSX, Prepar3D and FS2004

These simulators are read through FSUIPC, so it has to be installed and current — particularly if you have just moved from Pegasus v1 to v2. On MSFS, the deep capture used for detailed switch and system data goes through the FSUIPC WASM module.

X-Plane

Since 2.0.12 Pegasus ships its own X-Plane plugin and uses it by default. It is lighter on X-Plane than the old dataref stream, captures hard-landing G spikes at full frame precision, and needs no network configuration inside X-Plane when Pegasus is running on the same machine.

• A guided install auto-detects your X-Plane installations. You can run it again at any time from Settings → Simulator. Once installed, the plugin is kept up to date for you.

• Raw UDP is still selectable in Settings, with a manual IP address and port, for setups where X-Plane runs elsewhere on the network. Pilots who were on the UDP connection were moved to the plugin automatically.

• XPUIPC was removed in 2.0.12. Anyone still set to it was switched to the plugin connection automatically — it is no longer an option.

• Since 2.0.13 the X-Plane connection method cannot be changed while a simulator is connected. The plugin and UDP choice, the manual IP and port, and Save are all disabled for the duration, and Settings explains why. Disconnect the simulator first.

Signing In

Pegasus signs in with your vAMSYS email address and password — the same credentials you use for Phoenix. There is no separate ACARS account or key to copy.

When sign-in fails, the reason is specific:

Reason	What it means
INVALID_CREDENTIALS	The email address or password is wrong.
UNVERIFIED_USER	The email address on the account has never been verified. Verify it, then sign in again.
NO_ACCOUNTS	The account is banned, or it holds no pilot profile at any Virtual Airline.
NO_BETA_ACCESS	A beta build was used by an account that is not on the Pegasus whitelist. Whitelisting is added by another user; there is no self-serve route.
OUTDATED_VERSION	The client version is missing or no longer supported. Update Pegasus.

Picking a Virtual Airline and a Flight

Pegasus lists only the Virtual Airlines where you already hold a booking, and it does not let you choose which booking to fly. It always fetches a single flight: your oldest outstanding booking at that VA. If you are holding two bookings, Pegasus tracks the earlier one, and Phoenix tells you so on the booking page — Please start tracking the first Booking in Pegasus, followed by the time it is valid until.

The booking Pegasus receives carries everything it needs for the flight: callsign, flight number, route string, cruise altitude, cost index, network (Offline, VATSIM, IVAO, POSCON or APOC), departure and arrival times, passengers, freight and luggage weight, remarks, a link to the SimBrief OFP PDF, the valid-to time, the departure, arrival and alternate airports, the aircraft, and your Virtual Airline's announcement soundpack.

While You Fly

• Position reports were rewritten in 2.0.8 to survive a bad connection: they are batched, sampled adaptively, and queued while the connection is down then resent when it comes back, so a dropout no longer leaves a hole in your flight track.

• Those reports feed the live flight map and trigger the takeoff and landing notifications. The takeoff report is also what stamps your actual departure time.

• Pegasus reports your position to work out which stand you are parked on, which airport you are at, whether you have diverted, and how far you still are from your arrival airport.

• Your Virtual Airline's announcements arrive with the booking — boarding, pushback, climb, cruise, descent, approach, landing, safety and unloading — including any fleet-specific overrides and the per-fleet switch that turns announcements off entirely.

• You can point Pegasus at your own folder of announcement sound packs. Since 2.0.9, a missing or wrong folder is simply treated as having no custom packs rather than filling the logs with errors, and choosing a folder with no packs for your airline shows a warning along with the folder layout Pegasus expects.

What Ends Up in the Flight Log

Recent releases have added a lot of detail: refuelling detection in 2.0.8; stall detection with altitude, airspeed, pitch and vertical speed, unlimited-fuel toggles, and navigation, beacon, landing, taxi and strobe lights, pitot heat, parking brake and spoiler entries in 2.0.9; and spoilers armed and disarmed in 2.0.10.

The Aircraft Data Wizard

The wizard is a guided in-app capture that teaches Pegasus how your add-on aircraft reports its switches and flaps. It arrived in 2.0.9 for flaps only and was rebuilt in 2.0.10 to cover systems as well. It works like this:

1. You tap the switch labels printed on your aircraft's panel.

2. You do an all-on and all-off pass.

3. You walk the remaining switches one at a time.

4. Flap positions are declared by lever label and then walked through.

Run it whenever you like from Settings → Simulator, or accept the offer at the end of a flight. Every submission is reviewed by hand before it reaches other pilots. Since 2.0.13 the prompting is rate-limited: Not now is remembered for 30 days and a completed submission for 120 days, where a completed submission used to silence the prompt permanently.

Add-on aircraft recognition already spans MSFS 2020, MSFS 2024, FSX, Prepar3D and X-Plane 11 and 12, covering PMDG, QualityWings, Aerosoft, FSLabs, FeelThere, Captain Sim and others.

Filing the PIREP

At the end of the flight Pegasus sends the booking, the full flight log and an optional comment to vAMSYS. When it succeeds, the booking is closed, your current airport moves to the arrival airport, and you get a link straight to the new PIREP in Phoenix. There is no undo from the client afterwards.

If you try to file twice for the same booking, the second attempt is refused with A PIREP has already been filed for this booking, so this PIREP has not been filed. Nothing is lost and nothing is duplicated — the PIREP already exists, so go and look at it in Phoenix under My Profile → PIREPs.

Pegasus v1 and Pegasus v2

Pegasus v2 launched on 13 October 2025 as a complete rebuild that shares very little with v1. The headline changes were a new layout, flap-name detection, improved FSUIPC stability, MSFS 2024 livery detection, landing G-force sampled at 40 Hz, better runway turnoff and taxi start detection, and expanded landing summaries.

The upgrade notice Phoenix shows once gives four steps: remove the old Pegasus version, download and install Pegasus v2, update FSUIPC to the latest version if required, then start vAMSYS Pegasus and fly.

What "Pegasus v2 Only" Means on a Scoring Rule

It is about data, not licensing. Pegasus v2 writes things into the flight log that v1 never produced, so any rule that reads them has nothing to work with on a v1 PIREP:

• Landing G-force — v2 records a G value with each touchdown. v1 records rate, gear, pitch, roll and speed, but no G at all, so landing G is always empty on a v1 PIREP.

• The liftoff event — pitch, maximum pitch, roll and roll direction, and liftoff speed. This exists only in v2, which is what every Liftoff Pitch and Liftoff Roll rule reads.

• Takeoff fuel and weight — the v1 takeoff entry is just a timestamp; v2 adds fuel and weight with their units. Every takeoff fuel and MTOW rule depends on them. The Takeoff Fuel scorer and its autoreject go further and refuse to run on anything older than v2 outright.

• Approach data — v2 landing reports include altitude and frame rate alongside airspeed, vertical speed, pitch, roll and gear. This is what feeds the Stabilized Approach altitude gates.

• These rules do not fail on a v1 PIREP. They simply never fire, so they score nothing either way.

Telling Which Version Filed a PIREP

Open the PIREP in Phoenix under My Profile → PIREPs. In the Flight Details panel, the Landing Rate row shows a rate in feet per minute followed by a G figure when the PIREP came from Pegasus v2; anything filed by an older client shows the rate alone. The Flight Data panel is more direct — the first line of the log records the client and version that filed it.

Telemetry and Other Settings

• Flight telemetry is optional. Opt out from Settings → Logs. Be aware that turning it off also stops the detailed data being read from X-Plane.

• The in-app changelog page was removed in 2.0.9. Settings → About → Changelog now opens the changelog on the web instead.

• Your Virtual Airline can target alerts at Pegasus as well as Phoenix, so notices from your staff may appear inside the client.

• Pegasus uses your Virtual Airline's bright logo on the bright theme and its dark logo on the dark theme.

For Virtual Airline Staff

Restoring the Pegasus ACARS Page

The Pegasus ACARS page is a special custom page cloned from a master template when your Virtual Airline is set up. If it is missing, or has been edited into something unusable, recreate it:

1. In Orwell, go to HQ → Pages → Custom Pages.

2. Open the three-dot menu next to the New Custom Page button and choose Restore ACARS Page.

3. Confirm. The old ACARS page is deleted and a fresh copy of the template is created in its place, so any edits you made to the old one are gone.

Special pages are deliberately locked down: the category cannot be changed and cannot be chosen for a new page, the URL field and the enabled, hidden-in-nav and external-URL toggles are disabled, and the page cannot be deleted. The content is still yours to edit, which is how VAs customise the download instructions their pilots see. The action needs the same access as Custom Pages.

Scoring Pegasus v2 Landings Consistently

In Orwell, Settings → Reward Settings → Point Settings has a Pegasus v2: G-Force scorer only toggle. With it on, Pegasus v2 PIREPs are scored with the G-Force landing scorer only and the FPM (Graduated) scorer is skipped, while Pegasus v1 PIREPs keep the FPM scorer. It exists for Virtual Airlines that operated on v1 and want consistent landing scoring after migrating, so it is hidden for Virtual Airlines created on or after 10 May 2026 — those never operated on v1.

To put a notice in front of pilots inside the client, go to Comms → Alerts and set Show Alert In to Pegasus.

Related

• How to Book a Flight — Pegasus needs a booking before it will show your Virtual Airline

• PIREPs & Claims — reading the PIREP Pegasus files, and filing a manual claim when tracking was not possible

• ACARS Sounds — the announcement soundpacks Pegasus plays during the flight

• Scoring Rules — the full rule reference, including the rules that only score Pegasus v2 PIREPs

• Custom Pages — the page builder behind the Pegasus ACARS page