Hi,
Yes a new FGCom is on the way.
I've worked on FGCom integration then Asterisk side and FGCom-sa (
stand
alone) with Geoff McLane.
"FGCom" means FGCom integrated, FGCom-sa means FGCom standalone
Of course the biggest change is FGCom integration into FlightGear. This way, user no longer need to run FGCom out of FG via protocol. This solution was often a problem for "basic" users who don't know what is a port, an IP address, or any technical things required to run FGCom beside of FlightGear.
Now FGCom is a simple checkbox to enable in a GUI dialog in Multiplayer > FGCom Settings. It's already available in FG GIT (2.99.0)
You can find some documentation on the wiki:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Integrating_FGComFGCom use directly the data from $FG_DATA/Airports/apt.dat.gz, it means as soon as we are able to update our apt.dat.gz to the last one generated by X-Plane, FGCom will be automatically updated. Also if you are using a custom apt.dat.gz you should keep in mind he is used by FGCom for searching frequency/ICAO.
FGCom (and FGCom-sa) is also able to simulate different frequency range depending on frequency type. as example, GND frequency are only available within 10Nm, TWR frequency within 50Nm, for other the limit is the same as MP protocol: 100Nm. Therefore these value are only a max limit. FGCom is able to calculate dynamically the range depending on the altitude of your aircraft and altitude of airport. That way, is you are at 40Nm from a TWR frequency but only at 350ft: you are too low to communicate with the frequency so it won't work. This is a basic simulation but closer from reality than before. Of course we should take account of scenery obstruction... maybe a future feature
Another big change is on server side. I setup a new Asterisk server at domain "fgcom.flightgear.org", I hope this domain will be enough easy to remind but since FGCom and FGCom-sa are connected to fgcom.flightgear.org as default you don't really need to remind this domain name.
fgcom.flightgear.org provide a lot a new features like:
- Support for 25KHz frequency spacing
- Support for 8.33KHz frequency spacing
- Support wrong frquency (i.e 124.2
20, 124.7
70...)
- ATIS record
- ATIS playback
- Connection monitoring
Connection monitoring is able to inform who is connected. I've implemented a feed stream who will be used by OpenRadar and FG to inform if the user is connected on FGCom which is his frequency tuned. I'm also looking for a way to know if user is pressed PTT... but I don't want to be too intrusive ! also this feature is not realistic and should be considered as an helper like mpmap tools.
ATIS playback is able to playback an ATIS message recorded by ATIS record. Like in real life the message is automatically repeated until you are connected to the frequency. This feature make radio communication closer to the reality. If you want to test this feature, I recorded an ATIS message at LFMV (120.825 MHz), tune on this frequency around LFMV and you will hear my record (sorry it's only in french)
ATIS record is able to record an ATIS message for a specified ATIS frequency, of course it only works for ATIS frequency, so you can't record a message on APP or TWR or whatever frequency type. In order to record an ATIS message you need of the last FGCom-sa available in gitorious/fg/fgcom repositories. Then use it like
- Code: Select all
./fgcom -f125.350 -aLFML
The record will start after 3 seconds (a countdown is displayed) then exiting FGCom will automatically stop the record.
For now the message still leave on the server without time limit but I plan to add a Cron who remove file automatically 12h hours after the record. (Usually, in real life, the message is updated every hours)
After FGCom and Asterisk it still FGCom-sa.
FGCom-sa has received some new feature/bug fixes like:
- 123.450 MHz is now working
- Debug output is honored with argumentt --debug
- Record ATIS message
- New argument --callsign for connection monitoring (if not used he will automatically use the one provided in UDP protocol)
- Output volume can be changed at runtime from UDP protocol (OpenRadar should implement it soon)
- Plib dependency has been removed
- SimGear library is used and included in the binary for a better portability
But for FGCom-sa the most important problem (in my opinion) is the distribution. As of today, where can I get the last FGCom-sa for Windows ? for Linux I'm forced to built it from source. Clearly FGCom-sa is not easy to get. In order to solve this we plan to include FGCom-sa into FG source code (gitorious/fg/flightgear/utils/fgcom). That way he will be automatically released with FG release and will follow the same release plan.
Also I would like to see a download section on flightgear.org where you can download the last FGCom-sa (certainly beside of FG installer). Of course the last version will be available on Jenkins like FG/SG...
FGCom-sa will be (at least is destinated to be) less and less used since FGCom is now directly integrated into FG, but for those who want to use OpenRadar or want to record an ATIS message or want to run FGCom-sa on separate computer, it will make easier to have FGCom-sa.
For information, FGCom-sa developement is done on my clone:
https://gitorious.org/fg/f-jjths-flight ... 70cdf29b99Last things about fgcom.flightgear.org:
I've activated ODBC in Asterisk server which is able to write in MySQL database, then I've created a (really) basic web interface who is able to show in live who is connected.
Just go on
http://fgcom.flightgear.org you don't need to refresh the page to see if user has came/left, it's automatically refreshed by Ajax.
Also you can look at history connection at
http://fgcom.flightgear.org/history.php the best would to have a similar feature like FGTracker who would be able to show statistic per user/ICAO/frequency, total time by user/ICAO/frequency. In this way we could know which airports is mostly used by FGCom, which user is mostly using FGCom...
There is also a feed which will be used by FG to tell who is using FGCom, the feed is available on JSON and XML format
XML:
http://fgcom.flightgear.org/feed.php (<PropertyList/> means the is no user currently connected)
JSON:
http://fgcom.flightgear.org/feed.php?json (null means there is no user currently connected)
This feed can be used by OpenRadar to know who is using FGCom.
I hope I've answered to the "rumour".
Regards,
Clément