PSX Volanta Bridge

[Jamie]

Volanta is a popular flight tracker within the online flight simulation community. You do not need to fly online to use it, but online flying makes it much more useful because you can see other traffic and active ATC sectors. I personally fly offline most of the time and still use Volanta as a flight tracker and logger.

Volanta officially supports simulators such as DCS, MSFS, MSFS 2024, Prepar3D, and more, but unfortunately not PSX. That annoyed me enough to write a small bridge program myself.


Downloads

* Windows: PSX Volanta Bridge v1.0
! macOS: https://www.jamiejets.com/psx/psx_volanta_macos.zip


Questions?

Ask in this topic.
You can contact me on Discord: flipfluitketel
or via email: jamie (at) itsjamie.com


What does it do?

The bridge connects PSX to Volanta and sends aircraft data to the Volanta application every 2 seconds. This is more than sufficient, as Volanta itself forwards updates to its network at a lower rate anyway (unless you use Volanta Premium. I still need to investigate that).

For now, Volanta and the bridge program must run on the same computer as your main PSX instance.
Optionally, you can edit the psx_volanta.ini file to change the PSX and/or Volanta IP/port.


Setup

1. Extract the ZIP file

2. Start PSX

  * Open Network
  * Start the main server
  * Click [ START ]

3. Start Volanta

4. Start the bridge program

psx_volanta.exe
Default is both on localhost and tries to connect to psx port 10747

Optionally:
Edit the psx_volanta.ini if you run PSX and/or Volanta on an other PC.

Stopping the program:

* Press CTRL+C in the terminal window running the .EXE
* End the flight manually inside Volanta
* Engine shutdown (all 4) on ground should trigger Volanta after about 60s to end the flight. If not end it manually.


Current data being sent to Volanta

* Connection to PSX
* Connection to Volanta
* Aircraft position
* Heading
* Pitch/ Bank
* Altitude
* Altitude above ground level
* Ground speed
* Vertical speed (calculated)
* Squawk / transponder
* Landing rate (Main wheel touchdown) + Wind data
* Engine running yes/no
* Aircraft registration, e.g. PH-CKB for Auto Aircraft selection

Not implemented yet

* G-force calculation on landing
* Slew detection and Pause detection. Both not very important, but would prevent abuse


When it all works, it should look like this (v1.0 screenshot):


If not, please contact me!

[Kurt]

Thanks Jamie - Will try it over the weekend.

Cheers

[Ton van Bochove]

Thanks Jamie for the bridge! Volanta is a new dimension in flying for me now

[Jamie]

You're welcome!

In a (to be released) new version, I changed the update-rate a bit. Whereas minimized it doesn't bother me too much. Maybe I'll minimize the output more as well. Most of it was for debugging purposes.

What troubles me a bit:
- if started the bridge too early, say before positioning yourself to the starting spot/airport, the position in Volanta jumps from point A to point B and will be detected as movement or flight. That is if you're selecting or changing position in PSX of course. You can end this 'flight' in Volanta and remove it from your 'Flights' list to start fresh.

- taxiing is a bit wierd of course. Volanta doesn't care. It just detects first movement (GS >0kts =Off block) and Airborne time. Then landing/touch-down (ends flight-time) + engines off (On-Block).

What I do is position myself in PSX near the holding point (e.g. EHAM > 24 > Holding L) and make a right turn on the runway. So block off till airborne is probably 3-4mins. Doesn't bother me much.

- landing rate G-force calculation: Hardy mentioned this somewhere in the forum. This is all highly inaccurate and therefore I left it at 1.00G's all the time.


All suggestions are welcome!

[Jamie]

I uploaded v1.0:

Changed
Removed command-line parameters:
-psx
-psxport
-volanta
Version updated from 0.9d to 1.0
PSX and Volanta hosts are now read from psx_volanta.ini
Volanta TCP port remains fixed at 6746
Existing features retained from v0.9d
Automatic Volanta startup via Windows registry lookup
Automatic reconnect to PSX after disconnect/crash
Automatic reconnect to Volanta
Connection status screen with:
[PSX] Connected
[Volanta] Connected
No continuous screen refresh
No position-update spam in console

[Ton van Bochove]

Thanks Jamie!

[roccod]

Hi Jamie, is there a mac version?

[Jamie]

Hi Jamie, is there a mac version?

yes could you try this one for me please?
https://www.jamiejets.com/psx/psx_volanta_macos.zip

Start PSX local as server.
Start Volanta for MacOS.
Unzip and double click the psx_volanta file. If it works locally, the .INI file allows for networked PSX/Volanta if you need it.

[roccod]

Works beautifully.  Thanks!