AI Companion Live Mode now works with VOXATC

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Haven't you always wanted a freeware utility that showed you a traffic board of all the flights within the user's reality bubble? Now you can and it works with VOXATC:

https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=29651.msg339559#msg339559

AI Companion's live mode (used while P3d is running) used to show some information about VOXATC AI aircraft, but this experimental version shows a lot more, like destination and arrival airports and whether the aircraft is either taxiing, parked or enroute. AI Companion has many other offline modes that are helpful for checking schedules, models and liveries. Make sure to tick the VOXATC checkbox in AIC's settings. 

[vadriver 247]

4 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

AI Companion's live mode (used while P3d is running) used to show some information about VOXATC AI aircraft,

indeed it does, & in P3D4 shows the consequences of tweaking your vox settings for active / parked / enroute.

i guess in P3D5, it will suggest what the "new" base line is & hence whether one needs extra to make it "real".

the big plus is (knowing Vox only spawns at coded parking) that one can adjust one's afcad to provide parking for all that Vox spawns (which is different to the sim's spawn)

 

Edited July 19, 2020 by vadriver

[Dirk98 354]

On 7/19/2020 at 4:40 AM, jabloomf1230 said:

Haven't you always wanted a freeware utility that showed you a traffic board of all the flights within the user's reality bubble? Now you can and it works with VOXATC:

https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=29651.msg339559#msg339559

AI Companion's live mode (used while P3d is running) used to show some information about VOXATC AI aircraft, but this experimental version shows a lot more, like destination and arrival airports and whether the aircraft is either taxiing, parked or enroute. AI Companion has many other offline modes that are helpful for checking schedules, models and liveries. Make sure to tick the VOXATC checkbox in AIC's settings. 

And it works very well on a networked PC.

[Tom3123 8]

I have to say this is one of the best programs I have used.  Hat's off to the Dev.

[bmaik 11]

I  like this nice little tool, too. Did you manage to see arrival and departure airport and times also in Live View? So far I only get Status information (taxi, enroute etc.) in Live View and Arrival and Departure Airport only in Airport View, the same which is basically provided by STB (Super Traffic Board) as well and STB has been available for years (at least for FSX) although not for free. What I'm looking for is a correct status message with correct flight number, times and dep/dest on the SAME traffic board

Edited December 1, 2020 by bmaik

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I suspect that the author of AIC has been busy with trying to get his app to work with MSFS and hasn't gone further with any VOXATC refinements. The present version was more of a proof of concept and tries to match flight info from VOXATC AI aircraft with info in AI traffic BGL files. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. 

[bmaik 11]

Thanks for your quick reply, jabloom, I think the problem resides on the side of VoxATC because it generates flights that only approximately replicate the traffic.bgl files (Honestly, I can't imagine why: If Tegwyn can make Vox respect the traffic.bgls, so why isn't there an exact replica at least of flight numbers???? This should be easy to achieve and there is no need for a random assignment, I understand that you need a time buffer for departure and arrival times, and flight delays are realistic, but the flight number should be accurate at least). So it's not surpising that AI companion has two versions of the same flight, one from the traffic.bgl schedule and the one injected into the sim by VoxATC, they share their arrival and departure airports, but they have different flight numbers and therefore AI companion does not recognize them as the same flight. There's no hope that we get help from Tegwyn's side but perhaps we can make the AI companion developer adapt his tool in such a way that it considers two flights as equal if arrival/departure airports and the airline carrier are the same  and the departure/arrival times are sufficiently close to each other, but on the other hand  the flight numbers are simply ignored. This would in fact solve at least part of the problem. Cheers

Edited December 1, 2020 by bmaik

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

VOXATC uses the AI traffic BGL files without alteration to create a database file which is structured to provide better performance than constantly reading and decoding all the individual BGL files. The author of AIC ispent a short amount of time trying to match flight information for each aircraft in the live traffic window to the BGL files (since he did not want to figure out how to read the VOXATC database file directly).

Since the approach worked I'm sure at some point he will fine tune it. You can ask the author about this directly on the AIG forums.

Edited December 1, 2020 by jabloomf1230

[vadriver 247]

My take on the above ........ both Vox (>10yo) and AIC (<2yo) are doing the same thing, reading the data of one's traffic,bgl's.

I often see (AIC's) tomorrow's flights spawned by Vox today ..... thus I suspect the 2 programs use a different "day encoder", a carry over from the days of FS9 in Vox (?).

I can only encourage the potential of Vox using AIC's "analyser" in lieu of / to supplement its own read to more appropriately spawn all aircraft (as included in one's AI inventory) irrespective of their state ........ some freighters for example park on the ramp for a few days, a lot of LCC's overnite.

In this, there would thus be no need for Vox sliders / parking parameter options ..... one's airport would be "correct" (well as best it can be given the capabilities of AIG's team)

Further, I can't see how this would disadvantage Vox's AI engine, given that is limited to active traffic.

Of course, one will need to adequately populate one's afcads with parking to match.

Here's hoping

Edited December 1, 2020 by vadriver