Another radar gauge for VC & Window usage

[hjsmuc 393]

Sure, v3 is the only version still installed on my computer. However I declared an second external "Gauges" directory outside of P3D root as recommended by LM. But I used the radar gauge from both locations without problem.

 

If you did not declared the gauge in a panel.cfg and don't load the related aircraft, I'm quite sure the dll cannot make the sim to crash ever.

 

About ASN, I think I have the SP3 + the preliminary patch for v3, I don't think I have a SP4. Did you patch SP4 at the same time you installed my gauge?

 

Can you try to disable both ASN components from DLL.xml and EXE.xml and restest?

 

I have to check which ASN version I have currently (tonight). I have read somewhere that the last ASN patch is not working.

Thanks Roland. I tried a bit more and it turns out that I get the CTD with the gauge as faulting module if it is declared in the aircraft that is loaded upon start-up. The gauge works fine if I use another aircraft without the gauge first and then change to the one with the gauge.

[roland_lfor 245]

Good catch Hans, never tested this special case :blush2:

 

You understand now why the gauge will stay in Beta status for the eternity

Impossible to test all use cases!

[verbli 2]

Hi,

I have tried to include this (1.0) in the Alabeo C404 Titan. I manage to get it placed perfectly in the Alabeo WX radar spot, but the click spots are not there.

If I place it offcenter to the left I get 2 narrow click spots. The more I move it offcenter the bigger the click spots gets.

 

It looks to be working normal with autostart and nogps, but I would like to have the click spots.

Is that possible?

[roland_lfor 245]

I'm afraid I can't do anything on this one.

It depends on how the VC is build on your aircraft, and is not related to the gauge.

 

On some aircrafts, click spots are moved outside the radar glass area. Did you searched around the gauge?

 

Also if you have different VC resolutions available, try others as the VC resolution may have an impact as well.

[verbli 2]

I'm afraid I can't do anything on this one.

It depends on how the VC is build on your aircraft, and is not related to the gauge.

 

Ok, not to worry. :-)

Is there some other way to change settings? Like assigning keys to change L:vars or similar?

[roland_lfor 245]

There is some regular Gps buttons linked to the radar functions, see the documentation.

[roland_lfor 245]

Thanks Roland. I tried a bit more and it turns out that I get the CTD with the gauge as faulting module if it is declared in the aircraft that is loaded upon start-up. The gauge works fine if I use another aircraft without the gauge first and then change to the one with the gauge.

Hans, can you tell me which sim and OS you are running?

To try to understand why I don't have this issue myself.

Thanks

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Roland,

 

I just noticed something about your gauge which has prompted me to ask a question. I rarely fly anywhere with an aircraft that has your gauge installed, where my average FPS goes below 30 FPS. And that is with a bunch of addons  and the P3d V3 settings almost maxed out. However, I just installed Drzewiecki Design NYC X V2 and that knocked down my frame rate to the low teens while on the ground and about 17-18 in the air in the NYC area.

 

However, I noticed something interesting. If I turn the radar gauge off while in flight (using the mouse pointer), I gain almost 7-8 FPS pretty consistently in the NYC area. ASN is running on it's own physical core via an affinity mask and that core is not used by P3d with an AM. I have 12 physical cores so I don't think that's the issue. I also don't think it has to do with ASN, since the app seems to only be active during weather injections. My question is this: How often do you interrogate the ASN weather? Is it once per radar sweep? Or do you just adjust the aircraft location once per sweep? I looked through the C++ code that you sent me at one point and it looks like ASN is interrogated every 3 seconds. I'm a bit rusty on my C programming skills, so I could be totally wrong about that and that's why I'm asking you.

 

Jay

[roland_lfor 245]

Actually, I don't request the cells array directly: I send the aircraft true angle with wished tilt and range settings @ 1 Hz, then ASN send the cells array through a callback function when it want to (around each 3 seconds that's correct). It's not linked with the sweep animation.

 

Each time I receive a new array, I translate each cell density to a color pixel to build a new bitmap: this is the most CPU consuming step (the loop), but it happens only with a 1/3 Hz frequency. It means that it should not decrease your fps globally, but you should only see something like a stutter @ 0.33 Hz.

 

The loop load increases at something like the square of the range, but always with a 0.33 Hz frequency.

 

The loop do not happen if you switch the radar off. It's active as soon as you turn it to Idle (to be ready for display)

 

I was unable to detect a frame rate loss myself as far as I keep the range to a max of 80 NM. And it's a waste to go further because there is no clouds cells depicted beyond.

 

So it's strange that you see a global Fps drop, you might see a 0.33 Hz stutter.

 

I have a very low spec computer (i5-750 NotOC / 1333Mhz RAM / GTX770 4GB) and I'm running 20 - 30 Fps at New York v2 (locked @ 30, no AI traffic, single scenery). My best 'bizarre' setting is that I start P3Dv3 on 3 cores from prepar3d.cfg affinity mask, and once it is started, I force the affinity mask to the 4 cores from the windows task manager. The goal is to balance the load on 4 cores and use always all CPU power available (which is not the case if you set 4 cores from prepar3d.cfg)

 

I don't set any specific core affinity to the ASN process, it's running default.

 

I'm using also a permanent 0.01 setting for the fiber frame fraction.

 

I thing that ASN is working all the time at least to manage the dynamic wind.

[charlie130 196]

Apparently weather radar can be injected seemlessly into the GTN 750:

 

http://www.simforums.com/forums/weather_topic50811_post317964.html?KW=asn#317964

Are you using the Caranedo dll?

 

"Carenado use the following DLL called "CMeteoXml.dll" to get the weather data into the GTN."

 

I don't have ASN, but use FSGRW. Currently the Aerosoft airbus (and others) display the weather from FSGRW. 

 

If the correct dlls and links are supplied surely we can get this working, both in Rolands gauge and in the GTN? Why it has not been done is a mystery?

 

 

As a GTN 750 user (avid) I would love to see the weather function activated. 

 

I don't buy GA aircraft unless they support the GTN! :wink:

 

 

 

 

Regards

David

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

So it's strange that you see a global Fps drop, you might see a 0.33 Hz stutter.

 Thanks for the response. I don't see a global drop in frame rate. It only seems to happen around International airports in big metropolitan areas. This indicates to me that it might be a generic CPU-bound issue with P3d V3, since both AI Traffic and building autogen are two of the components in P3d V3 that have not been offloaded to the GPU. Why that turning off the radar gauge improves matters is I guess something related to my setup.

Are you using the Caranedo dll?

 

No, not presently. That dll is very buggy and you can find posts about that by searching AVSim and other flight sim forums.

 

The GTN's authors have already stated that they might consider incorporating the ASN radar into the gauge, but they have been saying that since ASN was first introduced, in when was it? 2013?

 

Since you have the GTN 750, If you have an aircraft that supports dual GTN gauges, you can used the second GTN bezel as the location for Roland's radar gauge. I use the GTN 650 bezel in the RealAir Turbine Duke and it works great.

[charlie130 196]

Thanks. Unfortunately I use FSGRW, not ASN.I chose that because it works in X Plane also. Cheers.

[hjsmuc 393]

Hans, can you tell me which sim and OS you are running?

To try to understand why I don't have this issue myself.

Thanks

Sorry for the late response Roland. I have your gauge running perfectly fine with Flysimware's Lear so I am sure the issues I had are not caused by the Radar itself. I am running it on P3D V3 on Win 8.1. I have not tried it manually with other aircraft in the meantime but if I do I will report back. 

[verbli 2]

Ok, not to worry. :-)

Is there some other way to change settings? Like assigning keys to change L:vars or similar?

 

 

There is some regular Gps buttons linked to the radar functions, see the documentation.

 

Hi again,

Would it be possible to include a way to send the initial range/tilt as a startup parameter? Like nogps|icing|20nm

Something like this would be great when clickspots are unavailable.

[roland_lfor 245]

I'll see that point eventually in the next version (if any)