PSX Shared Cockpit Flying

[macroflight]

(discussion moved from the thread that keeps on sprouting unrelated goodies - WorldFlight 2024)

Shared cockpit for PSX turned out to be both possible, and a lot of fun! Me and voipmeister have flown a number of flights, both offline testing and on VATSIM, including some busy events. We have also got Kurt started even lack of time made it a very short test flight.

In order to encourage others to try, we made a PSX Shared Cockpit Tutorial.

We now have a working PSX router for shared cockpit flying. Apart from making things a little more robust, it has basic authentication so that you can control who can connect to your sim when it is configured for shared cockpit.

[Kurt]

Thanks for the effort on this - looking forward to have some VATSIM shared flights soon - currently a bit hanged up IRL.

Cheers

[voipmeister]

Shared cockpit for PSX turned out to be both possible, and a lot of fun! Me and voipmeister have flown a number of flights, both offline testing and on VATSIM, including some busy events.

It was a lot of fun indeed! Had a great time trying it all out with you and test the new frankenrouter in the process 

About the router (which is not a requirement to connect two remote sims): it's running nicely and to see it progress like it did was great! We managed to find a few kinks here and there, but no show stoppers. I'd say it's very stable; I was running it on a separate Linux box but that shouldn't stop Windows users from trying frankenrouter - it has no dependencies, so it should be fairly easy to get going.

Longest remote test as of yet was this morning, flying from NZAA to YBBN together. Went great apart from a vPilot audio issue (for me as observer this time) that seems to be related to RCP power states not being synced, but we'll look into that. We used frankenrouter for this flight.

My highlight of last week's shared cockpit was flying into Copenhagen together. It was extremely busy and with not many VATSIM hours on record I can say that I would never have flown there alone, with an event going on. It was awesome!! Got the hold and being vectored around experience: 2 hours for a 1 hour flight 
We used the socat solution for this flight.



The best feature of shared cockpit might be: being able to step away from the flightdeck for a bathroom break after 'your controls, your radios' 

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I was running it on a separate Linux box but that shouldn't stop Windows users from trying frankenrouter - it has no dependencies, so it should be fairly easy to get going.

Look at "pyinstaller" and then "Inno Setup". These two tools combined bake a native OS installer next-next-finish that would help most people getting things running in a few mouse clicks. Sane default settings then do the rest.


Hoppie

[macroflight]

Look at "pyinstaller" and then "Inno Setup". These two tools combined bake a native OS installer next-next-finish that would help most people getting things running in a few mouse clicks. Sane default settings then do the rest.

I have used pyinstaller before to make binaries of some of my scripts when people wanted to test e.g frankenusb without installing Python and the required modules. Thanks for the tip, I will have a look at Inno Setup as soon as the router gets a little more polished.

Just to avoid confusion in this thread: YOU DO NOT NEED PYTHON TO DO SHARED COCKPIT, just the winsocat binary. Actually, not even winsocat is needed, but without some kind of router or relay in the slave sim you will need to reconfigure all slave sim addons to talk to the master sim, which adds a lot of extra work for no real benefit).

[macroflight]

The tutorial (see the first post in this thread) has been updated with some notes on how to use the new PSX router for shared cockpit. Me and voipmeister would love to have some more testers! If you are interested in trying this out - let us know (contact info is in the tutorial).

[macroflight]

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I think me and voipmeister have managed to get Kurt hooked on this too. Who is next? If you're even a little curious, I recommend reaching out to me or voipmeister for a trial run. I think almost everyone on the forum would have fun with this.

Hardcore 744 simmer? You can practice your SOPs as they were meant to be used - with a real fallible human in the other seat.

Beginner 744 pilot? You can now have a semi-skilled instructor in the right seat.

VATSIM skills rusty? Join us as observer, or be pilot flying while someone else talks to ATC.

We found that a shared cockpit setup and a few shared problems (whether sim issues or just flying the 744 properly) is a great way to get to know other PSXers


Actual news
We have simplified the setup for trying out shared cockpit even more. There's only a few steps involved now:
- Switch your PSX main server into client mode
- Download and run the frankenrouter executable
- Enter your simulator name and the IP, port and password for the shared cockpit master sim
- The router starts up and connects to the master sim
- Restart any addons that do not automatically connect to the router

When you are done, just shut down your sim and everything is back to normal the next time you start it.

Details, download links etc on https://github.com/macroflight/psxhacks/blob/testing/router/README.md

The tutorial (which is almost not needed if you are just going to run the "slave sim") has been updated and can be found on the first post in this thread.

[PSX747atlas]

I will like to try this maybe in a few weeks time.

[SwissMark]

(got to steal from Dwight again)...

Question: am I correct in assuming that this works on a 2 plus configuration? I.e. a 3 or 4 crew set-up for those ultra long hauls .... or 2 crew with 1 Observer and a very detail-obsessive Check-ride CPT?

I would love to give this a try ... once I got my head more around the technical side of it.
Discord would prove to be a great tool perhaps to link audio and establish a sort of little community for PSX Shared Cockpit? I would volunteer to create that server .... just an idea .... feedback welcome. Cheers everyone for this fantastic and amazing community. Love it.

[macroflight]

Question: am I correct in assuming that this works on a 2 plus configuration? I.e. a 3 or 4 crew set-up for those ultra long hauls .... or 2 crew with 1 Observer and a very detail-obsessive Check-ride CPT?

Yes. PSX and the router doesn't really care how many sims we merge into one sim. We did 2 pilots + observer for Vectors to Copenhagen a few days ago.

I would love to give this a try ... once I got my head more around the technical side of it.
Discord would prove to be a great tool perhaps to link audio and establish a sort of little community for PSX Shared Cockpit? I would volunteer to create that server .... just an idea .... feedback welcome. Cheers everyone for this fantastic and amazing community. Love it.

There's already a server for PSX shared cockpit (and some WorldFlight planning), and we already use a Discord voice chat for in-cockpit audio. Anyone is welcome, but to avoid bots and moderation headaches the server is not public.

Any PSX:er is welcome, just DM me (mk3830) on Discord and let me know your PSX forum username and I'll invite you to the server.

[Kurt]

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I think me and voipmeister have managed to get Kurt hooked on this too.

Hehe yes I am all-in. It was a great experience earlier this week with the shared flight into Copenhagen. Only minor issue we had - besides the captain sipping a bit of wine in the cockpit while on duty :O  - was that one of my PSX instances did not have the gear synced correctly - restarting that instance solved it completely.

Interesting times ahead for sure - looking very much forward to more shared flights in the community.

And again - BIG thanks to Macroflight for this and all the other tools.

Cheers

[voipmeister]

Yes, it was great flying with 3 pilots on the flightdeck! The extremely late landing clearance at EKCH was a new one for me, but hey, now I experienced that too
Hooking up 2+ sims together really adds to the experience.

I agree with Macroflight, it's a great way to learn to fly on VATSIM, get back into it, practise crew resource management (gets confusing sometimes ) or build out your 744 knowledge - every flight I'm learning something and it motivates me to practise stuff by myself as well, so I know I improved some skill I need in future flights

I'd like to thank Macroflight as well, for creating all the Frankenstuff (tm), his time, effort, patience and willingness to share knowledge. I'm having great fun doing the shared cockpit sessions and every time I learn new stuff!

[PSX747atlas]

Just had shared cockpit with Macroflight, what a difference it makes if you havent tried it yet I sudjest you do you wont be dissapointed, Thank you again @macroflight for this.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Interesting kit:

https://github.com/GermanCoding/hoppie-acars-multiplayer-proxy

To use two actual ACARS clients in the cockpits, but appear as just one to the ACARS server.
Not required for full native PSX ACARS cockpits as they only share the MCDU heads.

[Kurt]

Interesting kit:

https://github.com/GermanCoding/hoppie-acars-multiplayer-proxy

To use two actual ACARS clients in the cockpits, but appear as just one to the ACARS server.
Not required for full native PSX ACARS cockpits as they only share the MCDU heads.

Hey Hoppie.

Thanks for this - browsing the main.py at germancoding mentions something about CPDLC  - i am not clever enough to understand the code - Do you have any idea if this could be related to any native CPDLC implementation towards PSX using Hardy´s build in implementation?

Thanks

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

No, not at all. This is to equip two cockpits with their own ACARS (i.e. running two fully independent ACARS programs, not share anything) and then aim both of them at the combiner proxy so that to the actual ACARS network server only one appears. In some situations this is useful. What I am cooking up and what exists for PSX native (such as BACARS) installs just one radio and shares the MCDU -- that is something entirely different and much better. But I am stalled, due to lack of time, at this moment. I need a few days off.

Hmmm.

<looks at list of days of remaining>

[macroflight]

After making a number of shared cockpit flights we have realized that we need a bit more structure. Two people who can fly a 747 single-pilot does not a crew make. Especially when they can't turn their head and see what the other guy is doing...

So here it is - the first version of our PSX Shared Cockpit SOP. It is deliberately short, focusing on "who does what when" and leaving out many steps that we would mostly ignore anyway on a short Monday evening VATSIM flight (checking CBs, test switches, etc.)

There are also some things added you won't find in a real SOP that has to do with the shared cockpit setup and how we will use it during Worldflight.

Latest version of the PSX Shared Cockpit SOP - comments are enabled.

[Kurt]

After making a number of shared cockpit flights we have realized that we need a bit more structure. Two people who can fly a 747 single-pilot does not a crew make. Especially when they can't turn their head and see what the other guy is doing...

So here it is - the first version of our PSX Shared Cockpit SOP. It is deliberately short, focusing on "who does what when" and leaving out many steps that we would mostly ignore anyway on a short Monday evening VATSIM flight (checking CBs, test switches, etc.)

There are also some things added you won't find in a real SOP that has to do with the shared cockpit setup and how we will use it during Worldflight.

Latest version of the PSX Shared Cockpit SOP - comments are enabled.

Thanks for all your work here Macro - highly appreciated !! - Looking forward to get the SoP under the skin so we are ready for WF.

Cheers

[voipmeister]

It was good fun to test the first setup of the SOP! It really helps to have a clear separation of flows and actions, especially since you're not sitting next to each other in the cockpit

Love the added value, good improvement upon the 'we manage'

[macroflight]

Shared Cockpit stream at https://www.twitch.tv/psx747atlas [until 1538z or so]