Working on a useful little program for controllers. I got FSX mainly so I could work on my ATC skills by talking to real people and dealing with real aircraft types. I'm currently on the waiting list to be hired as a controller by the FAA. Overall, FSX does a good job, but I really felt it was missing something very important: Flight Strips. For those that don't know, they're strips of paper with flight characteristics on them - Registration number (N12345), aicraft type, destination, proposed departure/arrival time, altitude, etc. They help the controller form the "flick", the picture of what's going on in the airspace around his airport.Well, I put on my Flash hat and started working on something to take care of the lack of flight strips in the simulator. Between last night and this morning, I put together a fully functioning strip bay that allows you to:* Add, remove, and modify strips* Add, remove, and modify "dividers" (basically, labels so you can separate different blocks of strips from each other - Departures, Arrivals, Taxiing, etc.)* Drag and drop placement for all strips and dividers.* Contains preset layouts for different operations (Standard VFR airport, Parallel runways, Local Control only, Ground Control only)* Fully functioning strips with all fields available.* Zooming and panning view features so you can focus on individual strips and move around the board.* Stretches to fit any monitor size.* Strip and Divider additions operated by either keyboard shortcuts or cllicking on buttonsThings to add:* A notepad so you can take down quick notes that wouldn't apply for a strip.It's designed to be used in a separate window or on a separate computer than the simulator. A lot of FS people use multiple monitors for expanded views as well being able to keep numerous panels open. You could also just run it on a laptop next to your main machine.If you guys see anything wrong with the divider labelling or anything else, please tell me. The overall goal is to make this both easy to use and authentic, but still make concessions to the game. For instance, considering that most virtual towers will just be run by one person, the first two presets are designed to have Ground and Local combined. Here's some quick screenshots of the main menu and strip bay. All fields in all the strips function, but I didn't have time to make up a lot of dummy flight info. Once I get closer to completion, I'll dress up the interface a bit more as well to add a little bit of "form" to the function.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/159899.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/159900.jpg

Extremely cool! What a great idea. Can't wait to see your results.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

That looks terrific! Maybe you should be on the waiting list for hire by ACES! :) Thank you for your contribution!Bob..

Very good idea; could you make white strips for departing acft and yellow ones for arrivals; pink for locals.

>Very good idea; could you make white strips for departing>acft and yellow ones for arrivals; pink for locals.I'm not a traffic controller so I wouldn't know, but I'm pretty sure controllers from different countries have different standards (or simply personal preferences) - it might be better to allow the user to set the color themselves instead of forcing a default on everyone.Just a thought :) The program looks very promising!

wow that looks great, however i like a real 3d tactile feel to it, i was thinking of making a small but physical strip board next to my monitor and really make stripsciao!Brian S

Thanks for the kind responses! As requested, I just added a feature so you can pick a color for the strips. Default will be white, but you can choose from different colors and it will remember the last color you selected.I've also added a "snapping" feature so that it will horizontally align the strips.>>Very good idea; could you make white strips for departing>>acft and yellow ones for arrivals; pink for locals.>>I'm not a traffic controller so I wouldn't know, but I'm>pretty sure controllers from different countries have>different standards (or simply personal preferences) - it>might be better to allow the user to set the color themselves>instead of forcing a default on everyone.>>Just a thought :) The program looks very promising!

Brian; If you know where to get the strip holders at let me know. I could use a few of them.

actually i dont, i was more or less thinking of some sort of homade concotionciao!Brian S

Amazing idea and realization! :-hah Can't wait for that one to get released, and it looks way koooool. :-eek>You could also just run it on a laptop>next to your main machine.Exactly what I do. ;)Thanks a ton for your efforts, they are greatly appreciated. *:-*Cheers! :-beerchugEtienne :-wave

>> >>If you know where to get the strip holders at let me know. I could use >>a few of them.>>They're not something that is easy to come by. The only possible lead I have on that is the London Control simulator web site (http://www.londoncontrol.com/ ). They had mentioned they might start selling strip bay holders, but they were A) expensive and :( the community wasn't really interested (largely because of the price).Otherwise, make some friends with real-life controllers and see if they can donate some. :)

Okeedoke - latest update:http://img422.imageshack.us/img422/6087/alpha01wi2.jpg* Color selection is now in. In the screenshot, you can see both the colored strips as well as the pop-out color selector.* New textured looked for the strip bays.* New textures for strip holders.* New buttons along the bottom. Not color-coded yet, but that's what they'll look like.

This is simply amazing. I can't wait to do a session with some of my pilot rw dtw controllers and your add in. Fantastic work and ideas!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Virtual Radar Client ( http://www.metacraft.com/VRC/ ) (click on screenshots and scroll down) has this strip bay ability already. Why not control online at Vatsim and have many many pilots to control?

I've seen the VRC app before. I actually still have the client here on my machine.The thing is, myself and many of my ATC student friends have been referred out to terminal positions for the FAA. A lot of us will be working in tower cabs. VRC applies to radar positions (like in a TRACON or ARTCC environment) but it's not so effective when you just want to work some VFR traffic in the area around your airport.I just wanted to make a simple application that does one thing and does it as well as it can, a tool to learn with and build experience.