Hi all,I'm looking for people to help in testing the upcoming version 2 of autower.If you're already using autower (v1.0x), I'd be grateful if you could spare a few minutes to test-drive the new version.Version 2 is an almost complete overhaul of autower, focusing on some deficiencies of the previous version.Most notably, I'm trying to incorporate:(1) dramatically faster creation of the database(2) automatic reconstruction if scenery has changed(3) not aborting when FS9 takes a long time to load(4) handling obscure errors related to switching off the "Server" serviceThe bullets are in order of relevance and priority... Anyway, especially for topic 1, I'm not yet 100% sure that mysolution is correct (only 98% ;-) ), so I'd appreciate some help and feedback. If you'd like to help out, please downloadv2 alpha from http://christoph.rosenkeller.org/fs/autower/autower2a.zip and install it.The most important issue I'm wondering about is whether the optimized code still finds all airports, so please do the following:- BEFORE installing v2, delete autower.dat from v1 and restart. It should build its database. Please note the number of airports it finds,and (approximately) the time it took to finish.- overwrite autower.dll with v2 alpha and start again- Note the number of airports it finds. If it's not the same, please, by all means, let me know!- it should be considerably faster. To make sure it's not related to caching, please restart your computer and start FS up again(should be slower, but hopefully still much faster than v1)- from the actual functionality point of view, it should behave identically to v1.Please post your results (especially if something goes wrong or it doesn't find all airports!) in this thread.If there is anything else going wrong (error messages, crashes or so), also, by all means, please let me know.If you have been affected by problems (3) or (4) above, I'd also like to know whether they're fixed with the new version. Any other comments are of course welcome.Oh, and this might be a good time to ask for other features or improvements, if you have any suggestions ;-)Finally, please note that this is not intended to be a production version (yet). It does not use the database at all, and keeps the window open for a rather long time (20 seconds).Both of these are intentional, to ease testing, and will be modified in the release version.Thanks in advance for your help!Chris

Hi all,I'm looking for people to help in testing the upcoming version 2 of autower.If you're already using autower (v1.0x), I'd be grateful if you could spare a few minutes to test-drive the new version.{snip}Oh, and this might be a good time to ask for other features or improvements, if you have any suggestions ;-)Finally, please note that this is not intended to be a production version (yet). It does not use the database at all, and keeps the window open for a rather long time (20 seconds).Both of these are intentional, to ease testing, and will be modified in the release version.Thanks in advance for your help!Chris

I've been using autotower v1 for years and will certainly give this new version a try and get back to you with a report...As a possible feature addition, could we have an option somehow to make the tower setting by autotower persistant. ie. if autotower is running and another program tried to change the tower position, then autotower will just change it back straight away - even on the ground? The reason is that sometimes other software I use (and surely I'm not the only one with this problem) has a feature to automatically set the tower viewpoint to some aircraft-relative position on landing and has no option to disable this behaviour (even in the config files). Sorry to make a request because somebody else's code is poorly written, the software in question (FSHotSFX) is not supported at all, but I thought this could probably be included by autotower if it was to also change tower positions on the ground (which it seems not to currently)?Cheers,Geoff

Hi Geoff,thanks for the suggestion. Code-wise, this is perfectly feasible, it probably takes one line to be added.It would still take a few seconds (the polling interval, but you could lower that too) to reset the position, but it's nobig deal at all.I'm just wondering whether this is always wanted behavior: a side effect would be that manual repositioningof the tower view is impossible - It may sometimes be desired...How about this: an option alwaysSetTowerLocation (or so) that is disabled per default (to leave the possibilityto fiddle around with the viewpoint), but can be enabled for "special circumstances" like yours?-- Chris

As a possible feature addition, could we have an option somehow to make the tower setting by autotower persistant. ie. if autotower is running and another program tried to change the tower position, then autotower will just change it back straight away - even on the ground? The reason is that sometimes other software I use (and surely I'm not the only one with this problem) has a feature to automatically set the tower viewpoint to some aircraft-relative position on landing and has no option to disable this behaviour (even in the config files). Sorry to make a request because somebody else's code is poorly written, the software in question (FSHotSFX) is not supported at all, but I thought this could probably be included by autotower if it was to also change tower positions on the ground (which it seems not to currently)?

I agree with Geoff's comments. I too use FSHotSFX and it changes the position of the tower view as each plane is handled by FSHotSFX. Even at the arriving airports, the tower view is not quite right. Chris, if uower can change the view back to the correct tower position every couple seconds or so like you suggested, that would be jim dandy.I could help with testing, but I'm away from my simulator PC for this week due to renovations going on at home. I paln to be back by the upcoming weekend.

Hi Geoff,thanks for the suggestion. Code-wise, this is perfectly feasible, it probably takes one line to be added.It would still take a few seconds (the polling interval, but you could lower that too) to reset the position, but it's nobig deal at all.I'm just wondering whether this is always wanted behavior: a side effect would be that manual repositioningof the tower view is impossible - It may sometimes be desired...How about this: an option alwaysSetTowerLocation (or so) that is disabled per default (to leave the possibilityto fiddle around with the viewpoint), but can be enabled for "special circumstances" like yours?-- Chris

Hi Chris,Excellent that it is relatively easy to code, and is therefore feasible. It would indeed have to be an option which is off by default but then can be enabled where needed. Personally, since I have generally used autotower.exe with WideFS over the network, I would not see a problem because I could just shut down the program in the rare circumstance that I would want to move the tower position manually... Can we assume an v2 executable version will also exist once we're out of beta?Cheers,Geoff

Can we assume an v2 executable version will also exist once we're out of beta?

Sure! Actually, I've just included the .exe now into the downloadable file -- didn't think it'd be useful before -- so if you could test it... :( --Chris

Im quit curious as to what this program does? I've never heard of it before.

Im quit curious as to what this program does? I've never heard of it before.

It moves the tower view to the airport you are presently visiting - without you having to manually set it.I'll certainly have a look at v2 - I can usually break anything!

REALLY!!!!! I cant beleive I have never heard of it, Im going to go take a look for version 1.Thanks

The test results are as follows, using the exe version on my system (FS9 / fsuipc / XPx64 on machine 1 and autotower / widefs / XPx86 pro on machine 2):v1 takes approx 7 minutes to make the database and finds 24424 airportsv2 takes approx 20 seconds to make a the search and finds 24418 airportsHope this helps.Cheers,Geoff

I got 23,807 with autotower 2 and 23,804 with v1. The problem I had was it said it couldn't open scenery.dat in my uk2000 gatwick scenery. I didn't have that problem with v1. And it also didn't create a dat file. So everytime I started fs9 it ran autotower to get the data. I have windows xp sp3 and 3gigs ram fs9.1.

Will give version 1 another go, never could get it to work... Then I'll try v2 and report back.Edit: by the way, does it read the tower position and height from the Afcad?

Hi John, thanks for the report!

I got 23,807 with autotower 2 and 23,804 with v1.

Now that's interesting in that it finds more airports... But I'm not worried about it :-)

The problem I had was it said it couldn't open scenery.dat in my uk2000 gatwick scenery. I didn't have that problem with v1.

You couldn't, because v1 does not use the scenery.dat. That's where the speed improvement comes from in v2...However, could you elaborate on what exactly the error is? (Permission denied, file not found, ...)

And it also didn't create a dat file. So everytime I started fs9 it ran autotower to get the data. I have windows xp sp3 and 3gigs ram fs9.1.

Yes, as I said, this is intended and will be fixed once I release a production version.Thanks again,Chris

Will give version 1 another go, never could get it to work... Then I'll try v2 and report back.Edit: by the way, does it read the tower position and height from the Afcad?

Yes.In case v1 doesn't work, can you still try v2 anyway? And if it also doesn't work, please report back on what kind of problems you're having.Thanks,ChrisEdit: sorry guys, no idea why the forum joined my two replies into one. Hope it makes sense anyway ;-)

Yes.In case v1 doesn't work, can you still try v2 anyway? And if it also doesn't work, please report back on what kind of problems you're having.

Version 1.03 now working fine. Last time I tried I was still on XP, perhaps there was something on that system autower didn't like or vice versa. I did get the following error:I'll delete the dat file, reboot, then allow it to rebuild, I'll time it this time. Then I'll switch to v2.

Both versions find 24230 airports (in 149 scenery layers). 1.03 does it in about 4:15. 2 does it in 25990 milliseconds or 0:26.