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ATC-FS beta

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ATC-FS beta

Postby alfo » Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:16 pm

Image

Help/wiki

After several weeks of programming, here is an aplha version of ATC-FS.
So to get it really usable and remove all remaining bugs, I release the alpha version here. Every feedback is welcome :).

Download
gzip: http://gitorious.org/atc-fs/atc-fs/arch ... all/master
(For gzip you have to rename the folder after extraction to atc-fs to get it working)
git: git://gitorious.org/atc-fs/atc-fs.git


Main Features
  • Ability to store flight related information like STAR, SID, runway and so on.
  • Flightstrips on the right of your screen supporting you always with imporant information about the flights in your airspace.
  • Many different automaticaly generated chat messages, based on the flight information.
  • Multi language support (currently only 2 language files available)
  • Advanced runway management.
  • More realistic ATIS information (including visibility, cloud layer, temperature and so on).

!!BETA version!!

Thanks to
All programmers involved in creating ATC-ML, ATC-MP and ATC.
And to everyone who tests ATC-FS.
Last edited by alfo on Thu Aug 02, 2012 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby polly » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:34 pm

That looks really smooth. Is there a way of locally making AI traffic visible to this for ATC self training ? Thanks
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Sky Flyer » Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:22 pm

i want to test it now!!! i know how to ATC in SFO !!! problem is all i get when i download it its only a crazy XMLfile named master!!! see real crazy
Let me know if there are new Airliners coming up from pistons to jets!!!
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Johan G » Sat Apr 28, 2012 5:01 pm

Looks nice! Quite ok documentation as well. :D
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby alfo » Sat Apr 28, 2012 7:28 pm

Thank you all :)

Sky Flyer wrote in Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:22 pm:i want to test it now!!! i know how to ATC in SFO !!! problem is all i get when i download it its only a crazy XMLfile named master!!! see real crazy


gitorious will normally give you a .tar.gzip if you click on the gzip link. Or is the problem after extracting?
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Hooray » Sat Apr 28, 2012 8:59 pm

That looks impressive. And I especially like the fact that you are building this on top of FG and all its existing infrastructure (GUI, scripting etc). If you haven't already, you should seriously consider getting in touch with the developers of the other two "ATC aircraft" (such as jomo), to see how these different efforts could reuse existing stuff and maybe even merge some work.

Also, please consider adding your project to the wiki, or even the upcoming FG newsletter (see my signature).
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby alfo » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:06 pm

Hooray wrote in Sat Apr 28, 2012 8:59 pm:That looks impressive. And I especially like the fact that you are building this on top of FG and all its existing infrastructure (GUI, scripting etc). If you haven't already, you should seriously consider getting in touch with the developers of the other two "ATC aircraft" (such as jomo), to see how these different efforts could reuse existing stuff and maybe even merge some work.

Also, please consider adding your project to the wiki, or even the upcoming FG newsletter (see my signature).


Thanks, I will create a wiki page next week.

Yes I mainly used the existing ATC-ML code to have an example how everything works (I didn't know nasal before, so that was very helpful).
Probably some exchange makes sense about useful nasal functions and so on. But I doubt that the effort of a shared codebase for ATCs is very efficient because the concepts are very different.
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Hooray » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:23 pm

I don't know if you are using the latest code from git (HEAD), but there's been quite some work on improving access to navigation data from Nasal recently, done by Zakalawe and Scotth1.

While this is currently specific to faciliating the development of modern glass cockpit avionics (CDUs, FMS etc) for airliners and business jets, you'll probably also find the APIs useful for ATC-specific purposes, because you'll get access to airports, runways, frequencies and even terminal procedures.

Just take a look at: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Nasal_Flightplan
If you have any specific needs or ideas, you might want to provide some feedback there.
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby alfo » Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:11 pm

Yes I am using the git code from next. In the current atc-fs version I am reading the runway information from /instrumentation/gps/scratch. But the airport structure seems much easier and covers everything important. I will probably change to those function for 2.7.0 so everyone can use atc-fs in the mean time.
Thanks for the hint.
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Hooray » Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:33 pm

You could introduce a simple wrapper (using just functions or hashes) so that you can support both versions: 2.6.0 using your existing method, and git/2.7.0 using the new Nasal APIs. Then, you could use a simple variable to switch between the two implementations, and even add a runtime check using getprop() or call() to see if the running FG instance has support for the new APIs or not.

That's the approach taken by Thorsten's local weather system, because it supports backward compatibility.
You can see how this works by referring to $FG_ROOT/Nasal/local_weather/compat_layer.nas - which contains generic purpose functions, that are mapped to version-specific features or their corresponding workarounds.

polly wrote in Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:34 pm:That looks really smooth. Is there a way of locally making AI traffic visible to this for ATC self training ? Thanks


This would certainly be possible: AI traffic can be instantiated using Nasal (just see $FG_ROOT/Nasal/tanker/tanker.nas), this is the approach taken by flug's bombable addon, but also by xiii's f14b fox2 missiles (see fox2.nas).

So it would be possible to use this without multiplayer (i.e. offline), just by creating AI traffic in a scripted fashion, just see the links posted in this discussion:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15884&p=154643&hilit=atc+nasal#p154643
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14882&p=146787&hilit=atc+nasal#p146787

You would need to create a new module which creates AI traffic and flight plans for this traffic.
Controlling such traffic would be fairly simple, because each traffic could expose a "command property" and register a listener to parse commands such as "CLIMB TO AND MAINTAIN 5000" or "TURN LEFT HEADING 180 DEGREES" etc.
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby alfo » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:28 pm

Yes the wrapper should be implemented very fast. The code for the older versions already exist ;).

The AI traffic controll stuff sounds interesting. But that's much work. There is not only controlling it, but also letting the traffic know where it can use ILS and that stuff. And where to taxi of course. I don't know the current traffic system so perhaps some parts already exist. However, there are other things on my todo list that have higher priority ;).
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Hooray » Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:49 pm

alfo wrote in Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:28 pm:The AI traffic controll stuff sounds interesting. But that's much work. I don't know the current traffic system so perhaps some parts already exist. .


There's currently no dedicated Nasal module to do this, but there's plenty of code to look at, where snippets could be borrowed - I already mentioned tanker.nas and the fox2.nas script, and then there's also flug's bombable addon - the latest version is apparently: http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/bombable4-4ze-beta.zip (60 MB zip file download).

You can take a look at an older version of the Nasal module here: http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/bombable.nas

As can be seen, flug tends to write fairly short and modular functions with pretty detailed comments, and it would seem possible to extract certain components, i.e. to create and control AI traffic.

His last announcement was posted here: http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewto ... 15#p141335

There is not only controlling it, but also letting the traffic know where it can use ILS and that stuff. And where to taxi of course.

Yes, none of this is currently done by existing code: Bombable doesn't use any radio navigation and tanker.nas doesn't either.
Also, I don't think that ground networks (taxiways) are currently in any way exposed to Nasal or the property tree.
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby scighera » Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:46 am

Ciao Alfo
thanks for having forwarded the ATC: I tested it and after few minutes I tought it wasn't running :) Then discovered the trick (the zip file was making the directory name as atc-fs-atc-fs ) everything was working great ! I used few time the atc-ML , and switching to your was very easy; in addition it works flawlessy !! Thanks a lot and ...keep on !
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby alfo » Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:31 am

Hooray wrote in Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:49 pm:Yes, none of this is currently done by existing code: Bombable doesn't use any radio navigation and tanker.nas doesn't either.
Also, I don't think that ground networks (taxiways) are currently in any way exposed to Nasal or the property tree.

Okay so that seems to be the bigger problem. Or just let the aircrafts disappear after landing, but that's not really nice. At least at the moment you can seperate ground/tower.
However, first I have to get the basic stuff stable ;).

scighera wrote in Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:46 am:Ciao Alfo
thanks for having forwarded the ATC: I tested it and after few minutes I tought it wasn't running :) Then discovered the trick (the zip file was making the directory name as atc-fs-atc-fs ) everything was working great ! I used few time the atc-ML , and switching to your was very easy; in addition it works flawlessy !! Thanks a lot and ...keep on !
Ciao Paolo

Thank you scighera :).

I created a wiki page at http://wiki.flightgear.org/ATC-FS . How can I edit my first post to add the link?
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Re: ATC-FS alpha

Postby Hooray » Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:29 am

alfo wrote in Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:31 am:Okay so that seems to be the bigger problem. Or just let the aircrafts disappear after landing, but that's not really nice.


Actually, my statement wasn't entirely correct: Those ground networks are provided in the form of XML files, where the ICAO code of the airport is used as the "lookup key" and file name: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Interactive_ ... d_networks

For example, see the ground network for KSFO, which is found in $FG_SCENERY/Airports/K/S/F/KSFO.groundnet.xml.

In other words, it is possible to get access to this information using just Nasal. I don't know if there are currently any wrappers provided to read the groundnet XML files, but there are wrappers for XML handling in $FG_ROOT/Nasal/io.nas
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