PSX + X-Plane for scenery

[mikeindevon]

Hi Balt,

I will send you an email shortly and we can see what we can work out for the benefit of the community.

All of the Microsoft specific stuff is in two libraries, one dealing with threads and the other with the comms.  Perhaps you could convert those to OSX and create a .dll (or whatever terminology Apple uses).  It's a couple of hundred lines of code in C++.

I will buy a Mac and port the rest.  Any suggestions on what Mac I might buy?  The requirements would be that it runs PSX well and will compile the software reasonably quickly.  I don't want to buy the high end ash tray thingy because my performance machine is a PC and will remain so as I have a huge investment in various sorts of proprietary software.

Mike

[Pierre Theillere]

Hi Mike!

Wow, that's really good news! Regarding which Mac to purchase, I'd say the cheapest MacBookAir is really enough for having a smooth PSx, and will handle X-Plane rather fine, with simple graphics settings. You may visit Apple's UK website, and make a search for "refurb" (in their built-in search engine, on top-right corner), it will lead you to their refurbished items: nearly all my Apple stuff came it that way, you'll save some £££ and items are fully new.
Oooh, last, but not least: could you add the possibility to disable (via a checkbox, and a line in the config file) the weather injection from PSx to X-Plane? It could be very useful, mostly when flying in real-weather, to avoid the brutal cloud transitions, and also benefit from X-Plane "not unlimited" visibility.

[mikeindevon]

Hi Pierre,

The weather injection (and time) facility you request is in the final stages of testing.  I have written to Ben this morning about the brutal weather transitions.

I was thinking about going for the mini as I don't need a screen and keyboard.

Mike

[Pierre Theillere]

Hi Mike!

Aaaaah, you're right: a MacMini may be even cheaper, and also better suit your needs... and, apart for developing XView for Mac, it can be perfect for a media center, or even a stealth and silent PSx computer.
Amazing news for the weather stuff: the foggy autumn / winter conditions are soon there, and will be perfect for testing (and trying to break) it!

[Balt]

Hi Mike,

no problem, sounds like it'll be a breeze then. Both threading and comms should be straightforward to migrate to OS X.

The target OS however is OS X, not iOS. But I'm sure Apple is close to unifying the two (unfortunately).

Any recent generation Mac Mini should do the job for you, if it's just for building and testing X-Plane and PSX. PSX will run fine out of the box, X-Plane however won't perform ravishingly, as its OpenGL based graphics won't have hardware acceleration in the minis. Perhaps a Macbook Pro might be a better solution. If you're not into super huge resolution (2880x1800) and correspondingly vanishingly small pixel size, stay away from Retina displays (although I quite like PSX on mine I have to say!)

I see you're a retired physicist? What "branch" were you in? I'm in Astrophysics.

Cheers

- Balt

[Berndo]

Mike,

a few days ago I had a conversation with a controller on IVAO. He couldn't see my speed or my altitude. Just now I got the same again from another controller.
The altitude only appears on the web-based tracker, not on their radar screens.

Is there any chance you could look into this please? (I know you're already talking with Ben about the GS problem)

Also, would it be possible to make the com radio frequencies writeable from X-Plane? This way we could tune with X-Ivap.

Thanks,
Bernd

[mikeindevon]

The altitude only appears on the web-based tracker, not on their radar screens.

Bernd,

What altitude is reported on these screens?  Is it the true altitude or as reported by the plane based on air pressure?  There is a dataref ".../misc/h_ind".  I could try writing to that.  It really depends on how XSquawkbox works.  Does it work ok if you run a stand-alone x-plane flight without XView/PSX?

This is a slightly different situation from the GS problem.  Obviously I tell X-Plane what the true altitude is for it to draw the scenery.  The problem with GS is that x-plane won't let you inject a value.

Also, would it be possible to make the com radio frequencies writeable from X-Plane?

I am not sure what you mean here.  I set the frequencies in X-Plane form PSX.  Do you want an option to turn that off, or do you want me to inject the comm values in x-plane into PSX?

Mike

[Berndo]

The altitude only appears on the web-based tracker, not on their radar screens.

Bernd,

What altitude is reported on these screens?  Is it the true altitude or as reported by the plane based on air pressure?  There is a dataref ".../misc/h_ind".  I could try writing to that.  It really depends on how XSquawkbox works.  Does it work ok if you run a stand-alone x-plane flight without XView/PSX?

The altitude the controllers see is 0, e.g. I'm moving on their screen while being on the ground according to their read-out.
Also I'm using X-Ivap, not XSquawkbox.

Without XView/PSX I show up on their screens fine (according to them, can't verify it myself).

Also, would it be possible to make the com radio frequencies writeable from X-Plane?

I am not sure what you mean here.  I set the frequencies in X-Plane form PSX.  Do you want an option to turn that off, or do you want me to inject the comm values in x-plane into PSX?

I'd like the last thing, ideally I'd want full communication in both ways.
-) I change the com radio freq in PSX, it is reflected in X-Plane.
-) I change the com radio freq in X-Plane, it is reflected in PSX.

That feature would really help me while flying online.


Thanks for your continued interest in my problems,
Bernd

[mikeindevon]

I have looked at the X-Ivap website and the links to both the forum and staff are not working.  Can you get me an email address of somebody I can talk to about their software?

You didn't quite give me the answer I needed to my question.  Is the altitude the controllers should see the geometric height above the surface or the barometric altitude reported by the plane?  This may help me find the right data ref.

If you are able to do the following, we might get a solution quicker.  If you load the plugin DRE (Data Ref Editor) you can modify some of the X-Plane internals directly.  If you did this during a controller session you might be able to locate which dtaref is supplying them with the necessary info.  Even if we know this, there is no guarantee that LR lets us write to it.

Mike

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Transponder mode C reports are always in barometric altitude, and technically in the real world always the altitude referenced to 1013/2992. The transponder does not follow the flight deck altimeter setting. I presume that IVAO uses the same principle.

[Berndo]

Mike,

the e-mail for the Software Development Group is softdev@ivao.aero or you can contact them on the IVAO forums, though you need an IVAO account for that.

According to the question one controller asked me ("what is your QNH set to") I think it is the barometric altitude, but I wouldn't take that for granted. As you wrote, it will be much better to ask the SW Dev Group.

I installed the plugin, will look into it the next time when I'm flying under ATC control (though that will probably be next week).

As always, thanks for your quick responses,
Bernd

[mikeindevon]

Hi Bernd,

I wrote to the guys at ivao and their reply is shown below.  Can you check that you have done all this your end.

Mike

Quote ->

The first thing you need to check is if the ICAO flight plan information item 10b contains a valid entry for a - preferably Mode S - transponder with pressure altitude capabilities.

If this is not the case then we assume that the transponder is not capable of replying to Mode C interrogations (or UF5 Mode S interrogations) and as such we don't display altitude information.

This also means that a flight plan shall always be filed inside X-IVAP.  (This is mandatory, also to be able to know what the intentions of the pilot are online)

Regarding the source of Mode C, we use the X-Plane SDK data points so if you see an altitude in the data monitoring it should be ok.

[Berndo]

Good afternoon Mike,

I checked my X-IVAP flightplans, they were filed with transponder LB1, I'll change that to SB1.
If it was my fault, I'll hang my head in shame.   :oops:
I'm going to post an update as soon as I've flown under ATC control again.

Bernd

[mikeindevon]

I have uploaded Version 1.1 of XView at the same web address but in a separate directory.

The new features include:
- weather updating in XView better reflects settings in PSX
- options to turn off updating of weather, time and comms
- all options available from settings window and XView.cfg
- all options saved to XView.cfg

If you run XView/X-Plane once and close it, XView will update your XView.cfg file to include the new parameters.

Let me know of any problems.

Thank you for flying with XView.

[OmniAtlas]

Thanks, will give it a go tonight.

Preferable to copy it to X-Plane 10\\Aircraft\\Heavy Metal\\PSX Plane\\plugins\\XView\\64
and rename the plugin to win.xpl?

Regards.

[cagarini]

Thank you very much Mike!

It's working even better than the previous version. Apparently ( might be placebo, but I don't think so ) it's even smoother ( ? )

Just performed that Kathmandu approach for testing, and WHOW!!! Well, I miss the snow in X-Plane's scenery, but we can't have it all :-)

[Pierre Theillere]

Hi jcomm!

I had the very same impression, flying several approaches! I had deactivated the weather injection from PSx to X-Plane (using real-weather injection), and in that case we get the true limited visibility... maybe that's why it's smoother, having less things to compute.
I have to try VNKT with outside visuals...

[Greg Hateley]

I am having a problem with XView crashing XPlane. I have done some testing to discover that XPlane is stable until I connect the boost server. I have tried the boost server locally to PSX on the same machine on 127.0.0.1 and across the network with the same result. As soon as I try to connect the boost server the Xplane will grey out "not responding"
This is not at all airports but most are unstable.
Any thoughts about what could be causing this will be greatly appreciated.

Greg

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Are you sure the boost server actually connected?  If the connection is still pending due to network issues, it is possible that the whole thing hangs, waiting for the connection to complete.


Hoppie

[Greg Hateley]

Hi Hoppie, thanks for the reply. Yes it is crashing as Xplane often goes to the crash screen where you send the log file to Xplane. Other times it will just hang for ever. Once I waited 15min to see if it would come back but it never did. To get Xplane to start I will turn off PSX and then Xplane boots ok. Xplane on its own will jump to airports and not crash. My visuals pc is a i74790 and gsx780 card, 8gig ram and should be ok.
Greg.