Feature request: move the aircraft on the ground in fine increments?

[Will]

Hi Hardy,

Has this been proposed or discussed before? I'm wondering about a way to move the aircraft in fine increments on the ground, like using the arrow keys (or buttons on the Instructor Page) to move the aircraft a meter or two at a time. The purpose would be to get the aircraft located perfectly on a runway intersection, or on a taxiway, or at a gate, or on a parking stand. Maybe this feature would only activate at maximum map zoom on the Instructor page.

Not a big deal. You get there by using the "drag aircraft" checkbox, but this would add a further refinement.

Thanks for thinking about it.

Will

[Ton van Bochove]

That would be a nice improvement!

[B747-400]

+1

[Hardy Heinlin]

Hi,

in the current version, when dragging the aircraft on the map with the mouse, the aircraft onscreen motion goes 1:1 with the mouse onscreen motion.

Now how about this?

When dragging the mouse while holding CTRL, that ratio is not 1:1 but 0.01:1 or whatever. What ratio would be useful?

In the current version you can also hold the ALT key which freezes the heading while dragging. This function would remain intact for that new finer function: Just hold CTRL+ALT.

What ratio would be useful? It will refer to the map pixels. When you zoom the map, the map related motion control gets finer. So you can vary that finer ratio by changing the map zoom factor. There are 14 map zoom settings. So you can get 14 settings of that finer ratio when holding CTRL. E.g. when the whole world is in view, 1 mouse pixel may move the aircraft by 10 feet or so. Guess this is for scenery users, so you probably look at the scenery, not at the Instructor map, when moving the aircraft. At max zoom, it wouldn't be 10 ft but 10 ft/4096 which is about 0.7 millimeters.


Regards,

|-|ardy

[Will]

Guess this is for scenery users, so you probably look at the scenery, not at the Instructor map, when moving the aircraft.

Exactly. This was never a consideration for me until PSX.NET.MSFS.WASM, which makes such a simple and easy "world generator" for PSX that it's hard to fly without it anymore.

The new problem is that I like to start right at the correct spot, whether it's on a yellow line in the GA area, or at a gate on the terminal. Dragging with the mouse might still be a useful solution, if you could change the ratio as you suggest. It's hard to say what ratio would be most useful, but I'm happy to experiment and let you know. Maybe something like 0.1:1 to start with?

[Gary Oliver]

Will,

Have you tried Gatefinder?

Cheers
G

[Will]

I tried gatefinder. It works great, but it only places the aircraft at pre-determined parking spots. This isn't an issue for gates, where the aircraft seems to line up properly every time.

But when parking at stands away from the gates, I still think the ability to manually fine-tune the parking would be good. Sometimes the airport (and thus gatefinder) doesn't have a parking spot where the aircraft would fit the best.

[B747-400]

Hi Hardy,

fine tuning depending on zoom setting sounds great.

Of course, 0.7 mm sounds a bit too fine. Perhaps a logarithmic increased added inch value, until max zoom is reached, could make sense?

l think a smallest amount of approx. 2 to 6 inch should work very well, to repos the bird exactly on the yellow line.

BR
Hans

[Hardy Heinlin]

How about this range?

Map zoom -- Smallest motion step with finer ratio
128 -- 200 feet
64 -- 100
32 -- 50
16 -- 25
8 -- 12.5
4 -- 6,25
2 -- 3,125
1 -- 1,5625
.5 -- 0,78125
.25 -- 0,390625
.125 -- 0,1953125
.0625 -- 0,09765625
.03125 -- 0,048828125 feet = 14.9 mm = 0,59 inch


Regards,

|-|ardy


P.S.: Has anyone ever used the "heading freeze" option when dragging anyway?

[B747-400]

For me it looks perfect!

I use HDG freeze often for positioning during testing and setup.

Thx 4 all and BR
Hans

[Hardy Heinlin]

By the way, did you guys also know that you can enter relative heading changes in the "Hdg" edit field?

Valid entries, for example:

+3
+90
+180
-45
-1

When Enter is pressed, the focus goes to the "Alt" edit field. Shift+Tab returns to the "Hdg" edit field and highlights the entered value so that you can promptly start to overwrite the entry.


|-|ardy

[Will]

By the way, did you guys also know that you can enter relative heading changes in the "Hdg" edit field?

Thanks, I had no idea about that.

I'm looking forward to trying out the new sensitivities with mouse dragging, but it would be handy to be able to add a relative value to the Aircraft Position text box....

+1 moves the aircraft 1 m forward
-1 moves the aircraft 1 m backward
r1 moves the aircraft 1 m right
l1 moves the aircraft 1 m left

Of course, maybe +n is better, where n is 1-99 meters, or something like that.

Anyway, this is not needed if dragging the aircraft gets more precise. Thanks!

[Hardy Heinlin]

The finer mouse dragging ratio is already implemented and it's very precise. At zoom factor 128 the ratio is 1:1000.

Note that it only works on the world map, not on the arctic and antarctic maps. But the world map covers the entire world, so it works at all latitudes. Just select the world map. You will be looking at your scenery anyway.

Also please note: When an edit field has the focus, the keyboard is assigned to that edit field and all keypresses will go to that edit field, i.e. the CTRL key won't be detected for the finer ratio feature. Just put the focus on any button or checkbox and the CTRL key will work.


Regards,

|-|ardy

[B747-400]

Hi

great feature with the +/- value in the HDG field!

I knew about TAB / SHIFT+TAB, but the field content will not be selected (highlighted) .. I have to do manually. If not, the entered value will be written beside the existing one.

PSX running on Win 10

BR
Hans

[Hardy Heinlin]

In Mac Java the entry is highlighted after every focus transfer.

A triple mouse click in the edit field also highlights the entire entry.

Here in my browser, when I double-click a text line in this comment, the word under the mouse cursor will be highlighted.
A triple click will highlight the entire text line. -- Is that different in your Windows OS?

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Windows is the same, he only means that the focus transfer by (Shift-)Tab isn't auto-highlighting the content. Although it does exactly that in my Firefox web browser, for example (on Windows). Java VM differences, I bet.

[B747-400]

Hi Gents,

Hoppie is right, I meant no auto-highlighting.

Yes Hardy, I know and use the double and tripple clicks frequently - they work flawless!

On Win another great shortcut is CTRL + A = select all content in an edit field!

BR
Hans

[Hardy Heinlin]

The new motion ratio option is now available in PSX version 10.172:

https://aerowinx.com/board/index.php/topic,4191.0.html


Regards,

|-|ardy

[Will]

Thanks Hardy, this does the trick!

[Iadbound]

Hardy -- Moving the aircraft in small increments is so very easy now!  Thanks.