Hi guys, I want to ask a question

Can the ACARS works in the PMDG777 SP1 for downloading the real-time WX report or another messages?

If there are available, can you guys tell me how to do it. Thank you very much.

 

No, the COMM page of the MFD is not functional.

Would be great though to be able to retrieve METAR and TAFs through the interface from for example ASN. As winds aloft data can be pulled from ASN, why not METARs?

 

 

As winds aloft data can be pulled from ASN, why not METARs?

 

Wind data is limited.  As in, the weather file only contains wind-on-route.  You don't need to call or store data for any more than your route.  Your FP tells ASN which wind to gather data for and toss into a WX file.  METAR requests, though, could potentially be any airport in the world.  As you wouldn't want to program yourself into a box (by calling a specific program for the data), you'd want to refer to a file location (as is the case with the WX file).  In order to call any METAR, you'd need every METAR in that file...and...well...good luck with that!

 

If it were truly that simple, they probably would've already done it  :wink:

 

The better option would be to have it refer to some sort of data service, but which one?  And how?

Wind data is limited.  As in, the weather file only contains wind-on-route.  You don't need to call or store data for any more than your route.  Your FP tells ASN which wind to gather data for and toss into a WX file.  METAR requests, though, could potentially be any airport in the world.  As you wouldn't want to program yourself into a box (by calling a specific program for the data), you'd want to refer to a file location (as is the case with the WX file).  In order to call any METAR, you'd need every METAR in that file...and...well...good luck with that!

 

If it were truly that simple, they probably would've already done it  :wink:

 

The better option would be to have it refer to some sort of data service, but which one?  And how?

 

Thanks for your clear response. Didn't think of the fact that the winds are retrieved from a file and that indeed for METARs ASN would need to put all METARs in a file for the 777 to read them. Interesting...

Thanks for your clear response. Didn't think of the fact that the winds are retrieved from a file and that indeed for METARs ASN would need to put all METARs in a file for the 777 to read them. Interesting...

 

You're welcome.  It would definitely be a nice feature to have!

 

Further info:

The tough part is that an independent source would be tough to come by.  With all of the passive anger about requiring ASN for the weather radar, it's clear that people would like to be able to use any weather program (which, they could if the weather program developer had some of the same stuff that ASN has).  Similarly, people would also want to be able to use various programs for the same feature.  With that, it would have to refer to either a central server or a central file.

 

Example:

vPilot (a VATSIM client, for those unfamiliar) is able to pull up just about any METAR in the world.  Pulling a METAR is a pretty simple request.  I believe it uses VATSIM weather for that report (I could be wrong).  This means it's tied to VATSIM, and people couldn't use it for IVAO.  In the case of vPilot, that's not really a bad thing.  It's one program meant to interact with one service, and people expect that.

 

The 777 on the other hand has users using it for all kinds of different things with different programs, and to satisfy the most amount of people, it needs to be a vendor independent as possible.  People expect that the 777 shouldn't rely on any single data service.  Thus the difficulty...

Actually, were ASN to provide a call interface to user programs it would be pretty easy to get METAR and TAF info for any airport by calling the function that provides data on the 'Conditions' page of ASN and simply passing the ICAO of interest.  The return could be the actual METAR and TAF string(s) or the creation of a single text file of the same name as the ICAO.  Have no idea if Damian is interested in doing such a thing but it really shouldn't be particularly difficult.

 

DJ

 

 

Actually, were ASN to provide a call interface to user programs it would be pretty easy to get METAR and TAF info for any airport by calling the function that provides data on the 'Conditions' page of ASN and simply passing the ICAO of interest.  The return could be the actual METAR and TAF string(s) or the creation of a single text file of the same name as the ICAO.  Have no idea if Damian is interested in doing such a thing but it really shouldn't be particularly difficult.

 

Right - but again, you'd program yourself into a box by doing so.  If the goal is to remain vendor neutral to get the most bang for your buck, as soon as you say "tell the code to reach out to this specific program," you've screwed yourself over.

The ASN reliance for the weather radar is a unique case, as it's the only one capable of doing it, currently.  I'd argue they'd want to have the METAR functionality for anyone, honestly.

 

Doing it isn't difficult.  Doing it in a flexible manner is.

A fully functional COMMS page would definitely be neat. 

 

I was thinking though, with regards to altitude requests etc, could it not operate as a dummy and just approve 100% of requests automatically or approve a certain percentage? Just an idea, probably still wouldn't work well though.