VisualPSX Suite 6.3 and 7.3 released

[Garry Richards]

These are build 5654 and they address 2 problems:

1 Ground traffic passing from RealTraffic through PSX to FSX is now above ground and level. RealTraffic may not be sending stable data yet and this will be reflected in the traffic seen appearing and vanishing in FSX/P3D.

2 Choice of runway for offset in automatic mode when landing has been fixed.

There is a further problem discovered recently for which I haven't found a solution. In fact there may not be one. On some occasions when weather is being sent from PSX to FSX/P3D the FSX/P3D weather reverts to clear skies and ignores subsequent weather changes from PSX. VisualPSX is doing all the right things so it is possible that the cause is within FSX/P3D. Maybe further information will come to light.

Cheers,

[cagarini]

Thanks for all your efforts Garry.

That's probably why HiFiTech ended up writing their own simconnect wrapper - ASNConnect....

Presently I reverted to no weather being fed by PSX into FSX:SE, and ASN doing the job. It works nice for real world weather flights, but of course  fails miserably most of the time when starting from a recorded situ, or METARs generated by PSX's own weather model...

It would be great if ASN, or any other weather injector, could read the weather data directly from PSX ( an option for that, instead of using their own METAR / TAF / weather model sources...  I might suggest that at their beta forum.

[Balt]

Garry, are you still using PSX traffic for your visual traffic injection or have you swapped over to the (more reliable) UDP network stream?

Cheers

- Balt

[tango4]

Thanks a lot Garry,
I just gave it a try, and I think you are going to hate me, but another issue appeared.
I ran the exact same test as last time (LFPG 26R approach).
This time it is detected by visual PSX on the correct runway. The problem is that when Visual PSX makes its correction, I see the aircraft going "backwards". I did not understand why at the first time, but then I made an autoland to see precisely where it was going, and it appears it was aiming for threshold, but on runway 26R , you have a displaced threshold.
So the result was that the aiming point was not correct.
Without any offset, the positioning was roughly correct (just a bit on the side, but glide path was correct).
Don't know if this is already a known issue.

Anyway, thanks for your time !

Charles

[Hardy Heinlin]

Actually, the displaced threshold data that comes from PSX for the active runway is required just to calculate the take-off location. The lat/lon of the active runway refers to the landing threshold location; so that doesn't need a displacement. But maybe there is a strange offset from the FSX scenery?


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[Garry Richards]

Hi Balt,

TrafficPSX does not read RealTraffic data directly and so does not need UDP. It has been extended only slightly to accommodate RealTraffic.

TrafficPSX was designed to read PSX airborne TCAS target data and display them as moving 747 aircraft in FSX/P3D. It can also obtain data from FSX/P3D airborne AI aircraft, select up to seven and send their details to PSX for display as TCAS targets.

The modification for RealTraffic is to infer which PSX targets are on the ground and to display them in FSX/P3D as 747 aircraft.

A better approach, especially to deal with large volumes of real-world traffic on the ground and in the air, would be for a separate application to  process RealTraffic data and display every aircraft in FSX/P3D. PSX could then obtain TCAS targets from RealTraffic as it does now or from FSX/P3D through TrafficPSX.

I do not have the time to write such software but I have thought of a possible approach. vPilot performs this task for VATSIM online traffic and can handle large volumes, such as occur in flyins and during Worldflight. vPilot also has a large database of aircraft types with correct company liveries.

Perhaps the vPilot developers would be prepared to write an alternative to their VATSIM input data processing and process RealTraffic data instead. I know nothing about the internals of vPilot so this may not be a simple task. Might be worth your investigating though.

Cheers,

[Garry Richards]

Hi Charles and Hardy,

Thanks for your report, Charles. It's good to receive this sort of information that can be tested and may reveal a bug. When fixed the software can only be better.

And that's what happened. I repeated your test with the same result: The displaced threshold offset is not being applied correctly by VisualPSX when landing. I will investigate.

Cheers,

[kiek]

Hi,
Just to add to it, and clarify:

vPilot also has a large database of aircraft types with correct company liveries.

Vpilot works with matching rules. Based on these rules and the callsign of the aircraft it will select the best livery (type and company) possible in the AI aircrafts locally installed by the user of vPilot (so not from a vPilot database).

There are two approaches possible for getting these matching rules, one is to let VPilot load matchingrules for commonly used AI packages, the other is to use my tool VMRGenerator that generates these rules based on the AI aircraft that are installed by the user.

The developer of vPilot is Ross Carlson. This is the forum.

Nico

[tango4]

Thanks a lot Garry !
Don't hesitate to ask if you want me to run some tests for you, of course.

Charles

Hi Charles and Hardy,

Thanks for your report, Charles. It's good to receive this sort of information that can be tested and may reveal a bug. When fixed the software can only be better.

And that's what happened. I repeated your test with the same result: The displaced threshold offset is not being applied correctly by VisualPSX when landing. I will investigate.

Cheers,

[JP59]

Hello Garry,

In the release notes, you said RunwaysPSX is looking for add-on sceneries entries within the P3D or FSX scenery file, from version 7.0

I have a setup with FSX and P3D on the same computer, but add-on airports compatible with FSX and P3D are installed within FSX, but only declared within P3D scenery library, pointing to FSX\\AddonScenery directory for example. It is working very fine.

My question is : is this setup ok for RunwaysPSX to find the offsets for P3D add-on airports, or do I need to install them also in P3D ?

Many thanks

[Garry Richards]

Hi Jean-Philippe,

Yes that's ok, in fact it is the (possibly unintended) loophole in the design of the addon scenery management in FSX and unchanged in P3D. The location of a particular addon airport's files as specified in the scenery.cfg file could be anywhere that is accessible, even on another computer.

The SDKs make no mention of this which is why RunwaysPSX became more complex recently when I realised why it couldn't find some addons. Your use of addon airport files residing in FSX folders but being read by P3D illustrates nicely that it works.

Cheers,

[Garry Richards]

Thanks for all your efforts Garry.

You're welcome!

Jose Monteiro - o mais porreiro!

Não, isso é me!

[cagarini]

Não, isso é me!

Ehehe - that's  very TRUE :-) !

[Britjet]

Hi Garry,

The update for the REALTRAFFIC ground aircraft is now working very nicely for me.
Thank you very much!

Peter

[Balt]

Garry,

can you define what you mean by "RealTraffic is not sending stable data"? My app is simply passing on the data as it is received from the ADS-B network. There shouldn't be much variation in terms of altitude and position as this is all GPS data with baro altitudes (that means if the baro setting locally where the a/c are is not standard, i.e. 1013hPa, the altitude readout will be wrong). But you can easily correct that, from memory, it's about 30ft per hPa. So if you have access to realtime metars for the location in question, you can apply the offset.

Cheers

- Balt

[Pierre Theillere]

Hi Balt!

The exact conversion rule for altitude vs pressure is 1 hPa <=> 28ft. Hope it helps!

[Garry Richards]

You're welcome Peter.

Hi Balt,

Can you define what you mean by "RealTraffic is not sending stable data"? My app is simply passing on the data as it is received from the ADS-B network.

I was referring to the data output from PSX. TrafficPSX reads only the TCAS data from PSX. It is unaware that RealTraffic is providing the data for PSX. In the version of RealTraffic that I was using for testing with heavy ground traffic the seven TCAS targets selected by RealTraffic were changing frequently, meaning that the equivalent FSX/P3D aircraft were appearing and disappearing at the same rate. You may have improved your selection algorithm since then.

Ground traffic output from PSX always has an altitude of 0 so I have to wait until PSX is close to the ground to read the FSX/P3D airport elevation to use with the generated ground traffic.

In a previous post I suggested that a separate application could be developed (but not by me) to inject RealTraffic data directly into FSX/P3D. I have since seen a difficulty with using real world ground traffic positions and altitudes for AI aircraft in FSX/P3D. Gates, taxiways, runways and elevations may not match between the real world and the scenery, but with that caveat it would be fascinating to see that traffic displayed.

Cheers,

[Joe]

Good morning Garry,

Unfortunately, I still have a problem with the latest version of VisualPSX.
I run PSX with P3Dv2.5. VisualPSX works in version 5464. fails at any later version RunwaysPSX work. I've also P3D reinstalled, but to no avail. RunwaysPSX recognizes P3D 2.5, but after pressing "Start Processing" disappears RunwaysPSX.
What's wrong?

Gruss, Joe

[Balt]

Interesting idea Garry. I can have a look at what options there are for injecting traffic into FSX/P3D. Are you sure that doesn't exist already?

I'm also working on RealTraffic release that will stabilise the PSX slots somewhat.

Cheers

- Balt

[JP59]

Hi Jean-Philippe,

Yes that's ok, in fact it is the (possibly unintended) loophole in the design of the addon scenery management in FSX and unchanged in P3D. The location of a particular addon airport's files as specified in the scenery.cfg file could be anywhere that is accessible, even on another computer.

The SDKs make no mention of this which is why RunwaysPSX became more complex recently when I realised why it couldn't find some addons. Your use of addon airport files residing in FSX folders but being read by P3D illustrates nicely that it works.

Cheers,

Great ! Thanks again for all you efforts to develop and improve VisualPSX suite.