My 747 seen in two places at the same time by different VATSIM users

[macroflight]

Since this has now happened to me twice, I thought I would mention it here in case anyone else has also seen it. I'm not even sure if this has anything to do with PSX.NET.MSFS, but since it has happened to me twice and I've never heard of it happening to anyone else...

First time (last Monday): I was landing in Copenhagen 22L during a busy event. A minute or two after I landed I had taxied at least a mile from touchdown and then other pilots started complaining about a "747 on the runway". I didn't realize they were talking about be since my sim was nowhere near the runway.

During landing, something strange happened. I started hearing a very loud engine sound in MSFS (I have the MSFS sound on but at very low volume for some ambient airport sounds). It followed me as I taxied, and I had to mute MSFS to avoid waking the neighbours up.

A minute later I was stopped short of rw 12/30 waiting for permission to cross. Then an Easyjet taxied straight through me. "Idiot", I thought. Then another plane did the same thing.

Just as I was starting to wonder if something was wrong with my VATSIM connection, ATC asked the Easyjet pilot why he taxied through the Cargolux 747 (me). Easyjet said he saw nothing.

ATC connected the dots and asked for my position, which agreed with what he saw in Euroscope (holding short of 12/30). We agreed that I should disconnect since it was a busy event, and I did.

Second time (today): I was departing from Miami runway 9. I was holding short waiting for another 747 to land (using P3D). He landed, I took off. A few minutes later he asked about why the Cargolux 747 was still holding short of the runway.

Not sure if there was any strange sound from MSFS this time (I had forgotten to unmute it).

At that time, I could see my own flight in both VatSpy and VATSIM Radar showing at the same location as PSX was at.

Any thoughts about what could cause some parts of VATSIM (so far only pilots) to see an aircraft in one location and other parts (Euroscope, VATSIM Radar and VatSpy) to see it in another location?

Two vPilot clients running? I checked, found only one. Not sure if you even can start more than one per computer (and my sim only uses one PC).

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

It is highly unlikely that the VATSIM core system would accept and remember two positions for any airplane. There is one position slot per callsign -- you either overwrite it, or not. If there would have been two parallel connections from you, the position would flipper, not duplicate.

So the most plausible reason for now, is that those other pilots had a hiccup in their updates. It is well possible that there were other anomalies in their virtual neighbourhood but they didn't notice them. And the complexity of pilot clients is a factor higher than of ATC clients.

My opinion ... I know nothing  :-)


Hoppie

[Gary Oliver]

I wonder.......

Are you still running the vpilot shortcut with the -rx 0 etc command line in it? 

The Traffic data that simulators see and the radar client are different data packets.

We know the WASM module didn't used to inject velocity data properly so our planes wobbled all over the place, and we started experimenting with vpilot shortcuts to solve the issue - but then we didn't need to as Ross fixed something.

I have not had that issue yet - unless something changed recently (I'll drop Ross and email)

Cheers
G

[macroflight]

Are you still running the vpilot shortcut with the -rx 0 etc command line in it? 

No. I start vPilot with this BAT script:

Code Select Expand

cd C:\fs\VATSIM\vPilot
del .\Plugins\PSX.NET.vPilot.dll
copy .\Plugins\PSX.NET.vPilot-2023-02-28-DISABLED .\Plugins\PSX.NET.vPilot.dll
start /b .\vPilot.exe
vPilot.exe is set to run as administrator (to allow it to see my chosen PTT (Pause)).

The script is used so I can use another script (that does not copy the PSX.NET.vPilot DLL) for non-PSX flying.

vPilot version is 3.11.1

[macroflight]

This has now happened again. Departed Sydney, and after a while people started talking about a 747 that was still on the runway.

One pilot messaged me and asked me to reconnect. He had used the .aircraft command in vPilot to identify that it was my aircraft that was still on the runway. ATC (and VatSpy/VATSIM Radar) could see me in the correct location, just as last time.

After reconnecting, my plane was no longer stuck on the runway as seen by other pilots, but it was instead stuck in the position/altitude that PSX/MSFS2024 was when I reconnected to VATSIM.

I then tried restarting vPilot, but by then I was outside the 100nm range of ".aircraft", so I do not know if a vPilot restart helped. You can't see your own aircraft using that command.

Gary's comment that vPilot sends two data packets (one for other sims and one for ATC) was helpful. I will try to dump the network traffic when this happens again.

Apart from that: any suggestions on what information I should try to collect when it happens again? Any secret debug options to vPilot?

[Gary Oliver]

I'll send this thread over to Ross Carlson and see if he has any ideas.