Board index FlightGear Support Tools ATC-pie

Ideas

ATC-pie is a radar air traffic control simulation program for the FlightGear multi-player network.

Ideas

Postby morlanius » Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am

Hi,
I have a few ideas for ATCPie
In the radio stack it would be nice if we could assign a separate button as well as being able to switch them on and off
Add a mumble client into it so we can connect though that.
An options dialog where we can change the settings to the FG instance that loads for tower view
When double clicking on a VOR/fix in the search thing all the active windows centre on it, could this be made so it only effects the main one?
The route map thing is fantastic but it would be nice if the lines changes resolution as you zoom in kind of hard to see sometimes.
It would be nice if the radio panel had an indicator as to which frequency is making a noise too.


It would be very neat if the weather thing had a graphic, I was recently at a control tower and saw some of their equipment. I can draw a rough picture of what it looked like, but something like it would look really neat where that pane is. I'll describe it.
It was an upright metallic box, the display was made up a large 7-seg display top centre with the wind speed. Under this was a ring of bars which were LED lit and split into 8 sections, these lit up according to wind direction. In the centre of this was another 7-seg display with the wind direction in numbers. the rest of the information was stacked left, right and vertically underneath the ring all using 7-segment displays. Red in colour the device was plain folded aluminium it looked bespoke and probably an heirloom or something, but it was very neat. the housing wouldn't need to be drawn, just the display layout.

Jay
User avatar
morlanius
 
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2016 2:29 am

Re: Ideas

Postby mickybadia » Mon Jun 06, 2016 5:08 pm

Hi,

Thank you for testing, and for the feedback.

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:In the radio stack it would be nice if we could assign a separate button as well as being able to switch them on and off

I would not like to implement individual key choice for potentially many radios, but I can propose two kbd keys instead of one, e.g. L_ctrl+R_ctrl or L_ctrl+L_alt. Then you could assign any set of radios to either, like you already can assign any set of radios to the unique L_ctrl PTT key.

Several reasons to back this proposal:
- more useful and more realistic than having multiple buttons for single radios: in real life it is common to merge frequencies (emit/receive on several simultaneously), but not to work on many frequencies separately
- I am afraid of implementing Kbd shortcut key grabbing/customising :-p
- you can already emit on specific freqs using mouse press on the PTT button

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:Add a mumble client into it so we can connect though that.

??

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:An options dialog where we can change the settings to the FG instance that loads for tower view

Could you elaborate on the options you would you like to add? ATC-pie normally takes care of all the vital options, and you can easily customise the command it uses to start FG so you should not be limited even as things are.

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:When double clicking on a VOR/fix in the search thing all the active windows centre on it, could this be made so it only effects the main one?

Every radar screen already has its own "centre on point indications" toggle option. See bottom right-hand menu.

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:The route map thing is fantastic but it would be nice if the lines changes resolution as you zoom in kind of hard to see sometimes.

Yes, the resolution of this map is horrible. I will try and adjust it but the point there was really only to spot errors in route analysis like points missing or chosen at the other end of the world. As far as I can see, there is no proper use of exact zoomed-in point location.

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:It would be nice if the radio panel had an indicator as to which frequency is making a noise too.

One of my strong wishes too, but unfortunately impossible technically. FGCom instances are independent child processes giving no signal on reception.

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:It would be very neat if the weather thing had a graphic

Look and feel in general could do with a lot more graphics indeed. I will one day try and make all this prettier, and I thank you for your description. It is similar to that I have seen for radio direction finding (LED circle for quick hdg reading, with numbers in the middle).
mickybadia
 
Posts: 475
Joined: Tue Sep 24, 2013 10:12 am

Re: Ideas

Postby CaptB » Mon Jun 06, 2016 6:13 pm

@mickybadia: I could probably do most of the graphics you require, just let me know.
Ongoing projects(3D modelling): A320, MD-11, A350, B767
FG767: https://fg767.wordpress.com/
CaptB
 
Posts: 685
Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:36 pm
Callsign: EKCH_AP
IRC name: CaptB
Version: next
OS: Xubuntu

Re: Ideas

Postby morlanius » Wed Jun 08, 2016 11:45 pm


morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 1:23 am:
Add a mumble client into it so we can connect though that.


??


By this I mean what would essentially be a mumble client embedded into ATCPie. I believe there are libraries already that provide a mumble client (object) that you can reference and supply your own GUI for.

This should have no channel selector, that whole part of the interface should look exactly as it does with the FGCom radio box, the client would autocratically connect and join a channel perhaps called "RADIO".
Choosing a frequency follows the logic;
<pseudo>
if( server.channel.exists(frequency)) {
client.joinChannel(frequency);
} else {
server.createChannel(frequency);
client.joinChannel(frequency);
}
</pseudo>

I would also like to recommend this for flightGear too, it would make the game more portable (No one likes setting up asterisk and my FGCom server took a while to get running properly). This would also allow people to use local-mute in game.


Could you elaborate on the options you would you like to add? ATC-pie normally takes care of all the vital options, and you can easily customise the command it uses to start FG so you should not be limited even as things are.

I didn't know this.

Every radar screen already has its own "centre on point indications" toggle option. See bottom right-hand menu.


Regardless of state of that it seems, when I double click something in the navigate panel they all jump to the rough location. Although the secondary radar I use for ground will end up somewhere near Clacton every time for some reason.

As for the weather panel, I can provide sketches if you like. Also I am working on making one of these that should be either USB or networked (wifi would be nifty) that will look like the device I saw and display METAR (although I think mine will have a LCD for the wind direction display so that it can double as the menu for setup, wifi SSID+key and airport/station setup)
Once I have got my personal version of this working ill publish how I made it, any eagle files and firmware so other people can make them and perhaps make a couple extra and anyone who wants to buy one at parts value can message me, sorry about the offtopic there good idea or no?

Jay
User avatar
morlanius
 
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2016 2:29 am

Re: Ideas

Postby Omega » Thu Jun 09, 2016 4:37 am

It would be very neat if the weather thing had a graphic, I was recently at a control tower and saw some of their equipment. I can draw a rough picture of what it looked like, but something like it would look really neat where that pane is. I'll describe it.
It was an upright metallic box, the display was made up a large 7-seg display top centre with the wind speed. Under this was a ring of bars which were LED lit and split into 8 sections, these lit up according to wind direction. In the centre of this was another 7-seg display with the wind direction in numbers. the rest of the information was stacked left, right and vertically underneath the ring all using 7-segment displays. Red in colour the device was plain folded aluminium it looked bespoke and probably an heirloom or something, but it was very neat. the housing wouldn't need to be drawn, just the display layout.


What you are describing is an AWOS display. Someone has already written a program that simulates it (windows only): http://bafio.altervista.org/awos.htm

But you have to understand, that such display in real life is used to quickly observe changes in weather that happen over a short period of time. It displays LIVE information received from multiple sensors located in different areas of the aerodrome.
Among other things, the display will indicate wind velocity at the threshold of each runway; as well as RVR values at touchdown, midpoint and roll-out for each runway, all updated every few seconds.
However, in a simulated environment, all we have access to is the METAR which is updated every 30 or 60 minutes, and can only indicate a single, average wind velocity and RVR. Therefore, a simulated AWOS display would be rather useless in my opinion.
The engine is the heart of an aeroplane, but the pilot is its soul.
User avatar
Omega
 
Posts: 587
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2010 2:46 pm
Callsign: Star,EHAA_CT,MIA0176
IRC name: Omega
Version: GIT
OS: Vista,7,Ubuntu 10.04

Re: Ideas

Postby morlanius » Thu Jun 09, 2016 12:11 pm

I'm not saying it would provide more information, I'm saying it would be cool. For instance, why buy flight equipment? use the keyboard, you dont need a yoke, peddles, nice screens or detailed displays. You don't really need any of these http://www.saitek.com/.

Hell I used to fly a Comet on the Apple IIe with a display rendered in points and lines and the joystick was like something from an interactive level CNC machine.
Image
But now we have nice things.

But it wouldn't it be nice if ATCs had nice things too?
User avatar
morlanius
 
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2016 2:29 am

Re: Ideas

Postby jaxsin » Thu Jun 09, 2016 12:21 pm

I would also like to recommend this for flightGear too, it would make the game more portable (No one likes setting up asterisk and my FGCom server took a while to get running properly). This would also allow people to use local-mute in game.


Has anyone considered Discord?
jaxsin
 
Posts: 395
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 4:54 pm

Re: Ideas

Postby morlanius » Thu Jun 09, 2016 12:40 pm

The idea of using mumble is that it is pretty damn small and libraries that can be used to create a client are available easily, and we already have and use mumble so it would be easier to add a mumble instance into software than it would be something that provides an entire conference service.
Last edited by bugman on Thu Jun 09, 2016 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Please do not quote the entire previous post (forum rule 8).
User avatar
morlanius
 
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2016 2:29 am

Re: Ideas

Postby mickybadia » Mon Jul 18, 2016 11:04 am

morlanius wrote in Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:23 am:The route map thing is fantastic but it would be nice if the lines changes resolution as you zoom in kind of hard to see sometimes.

Done in r10d. The map is still low-res but things do not get cluttered on zoom.

Caution by the way: the custom nav data dir was renamed so if you had a route preset file, make sure it is placed and named as "resources/nav/route-presets" for the presets to be restored in newer versions.
mickybadia
 
Posts: 475
Joined: Tue Sep 24, 2013 10:12 am


Return to ATC-pie

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest