Quick write up for those interesting in this topic. Our VA went through a research phase before settling for PhpVMS7 + VMSAcars.
Here are the main reasons behind it.
SmartCars is well known however we found out that it doesn't support phpVMS 7 yet so we must use phpVMS 5.
phpVMS 5.x is a none starter because it is outdate and won't run on supported version of OS/PHP etc. This leave a potential security hole.
That drove us to phpVMS 7. We got a trial version of VMSAcars client to use it with https://demo.phpvms.net/ . We did a lot of testing and
-It worked with FSX/P3D
-It worked with MSFS2020
-It worked with X-Plane
-Everything we needed are being captured in vmsAcars from the simulator.
-It doesn't require users to subscribe to get additional feature.
-My VA is on discord so chat/radio were not needed that comes with Smartcars.
What convince us to proceed is actually the phpVMS discord. We saw how frequently phpVMS and ACARS client are being patched multiple times a week! TDI doesn't offer such frequent patches. Because the main author of phpVMS is also coding the ACARS, they can add new feature and changes as needed much faster. Their Discord is full of people helping each other out far superior.
We got phpVMS7 and purchased vmsAcars and went live with our VA. Everything in our VA is going smooth even though the software is labeled as beta. In fact it is far more stable then many live products in the market.
Feel free to message me. Hopefully this help.
