Version 2.6.2.0 with extended ai traffic

[fenwick.reid 2]

 I am having the same problems with WT3 and Pilot2ATC. Sometimes I can see the planes in Pilot2ATC and then at other times no planes display although they are showing up in WT radar and x-plane map display.

[Crokybird 37]

I am also having the same problem with WT3 and Pilot2ATC. In most cases the AI planes do not show in the P2A Map, but they do in the XPlane Map and in the WT3 Radar Display. 

After a few re-installations of P2A, the AI planes did show on the P2A Map (not after every re-installation), and sometimes they stopped moving after 10 minutes or so.

Pilot2ATC has continous contact with XPlane as the display of the own plane on the P2A Map is correct, frequencies can be correctly set, etc. So properly connected.
The Show Plugin Admin in XPlane shows continous activity (around 1% of processing activity) of the P2A XPLink plugin, so data is being processed by the P2A plugin
Could it be that the final step of showing the AI planes on the map inside Pilot2ATC still has some bugs? 
Is there a way to check where the problem lies?

In the rare occasion that the AI planes (approximately 60) were displayed in P2A, switching the TCAS function off in WT3 removed the planes from the XPlane Map and the P2A Map, and switching TCAS back on made the planes re-appear on the XPlane Map and the P2A Map. Same planes and same location of planes in both maps of course. So in principle it works as it should..

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 875]

Since the problem is only with WT, not any of the other traffic engines, it stands to reason that the issue is not with P2A.

If it were with P2A, then all of the traffic engines would be having the same trouble.

Dave

[furrer411 1]

Hello all,

I have tried with Traffic Global and with Live Traffic. Everything is OK with these plugins. AI traffic is visible in P2A. So I'm pretty sure that the problem is on the world traffic side AND NOT ON THE P2A SIDE. Greg (world traffic developer) says his plugin is working correctly. But in my opinion wt is not working correctly. But keep in mind that the TCAS WT version is still a beta version. So let us wait until the new wt update is finally released or post your comments, bugs etc. in the world traffic forum. Maybe Greg will take a look into his coding.

Best regards

Markus 

[PeterS72 2]

I politely disagree with above conclusions, at least partly.

I also experience the same difficulties with World Traffic. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. "does not" mostly means, absolutely no traffic in Pilot2ATC. Sometimes I see planes, but at some point they stop updating. This seems to meet other users experience.

With Live Traffic I mostly have good experience, at least initially. However, after some time the same problems start to occur as with Live Traffic. Lack of updates, missing planes etc.

Connection to the new P2A_XP plugin is established, I see the opened port, a TCP connection and network traffic bewtween X-Plane and P2A. P2A is also configured to use the new traffic. I dare to say everything looking good on that part.

Vanilla Laminar traffic so far always works, also adding and removing planes. However, we are limited to 19 planes here, so that may not mean much. The trend I observe is that the problems start to occur as more planes are added by the traffic engine. For example. I load up in KBLI (medium airport near Vancouver) and World Traffic would give me 30 planes. I connect P2A and everything works fine. Once I fly south over Seattle and more traffic is added, multiple things can happen. Either all planes gone from P2A, some planes gone, some or all planes not updating. I have not managed to find a reproducable pattern here, unfortunately.

Other example: I start at KLAX where World Traffic gives me immedately 60 planes. In 99% of the cases I see zero planes in P2A on connection and it never will pick any up.

This leads me to believe that the number of planes might be a factor, not only the traffic engine. As Live Traffic hardly ever starts up with 60 planes immediately, Live Traffic appears to work fine at the start of a flight, but will also show the same problems as World Traffic does over time. With WT you just notice it sooner, as WT will immediately fill up the traffic with 60 planes while Live Traffic takes a while to fill up to 63 AI planes, if ever (often it never goes beyond 30, depending on your location and time). One noticable observation is that both World Traffic and Live Traffic will cause "holes" in the array of 64 planes as planes get added and removed. Depending on how the P2A plugin reads these arrays (from 0 to number of planes, or all 64 skipping the holes), this *might* be a factor. Not saying it is, impossible to say without knowing the code or more detailed (rather: any) debug logging.

I am observing the TCAS DataRefs for vanilla and third-party traffic and so far these look reasonable, though without knowing what exactly the P2A plugin is reading, it's hard to say if anything is wrong here, either the provided data or reading the data.

However, as more as I try, as more the "too many planes added/removed over time cause issues" theory, independant from the traffic engine, seems to be valid.

I am not saying P2A *is* the problem, nobody can say that without knowing the code. But trying to bring a few more facts on the table which may offer a possibily different perspective. I apologize for being so persitent with this. But the new P2A plugin is a dream coming alive, so it hurts even more when thing don't work as hoped.

The only thing I have not tried yet is to examing the network traffic with WireShark and check if the provided data matches the tcas datarefs, but I lack the motivation to do so, it does not sound like much fun to me.

[fenwick.reid 2]

I am also experimenting with Traffic density and am experiencing the same results as described by PeterS72. When the traffic density is low at the airport everything works fine (I have only been using P2ATC with WT3). Once I increase the density,  I either lose planes of don't see the planes at all in P2ATC. In all cases I can see the planes in the x-plane map. 

[Crokybird 37]

As a test I installed the Live Traffic plugin next to WT3 in XPlane. It is simple to switch between Live Traffic and WT3 in feeding the TCAS during the same flight. I can confirm that the AI airplanes form Live Traffic always show up in Pilot2ATC, no exception to that. When the AI planes from WT3 (on occasion) show up in P2A, then switching to Live Traffic and back again to WT3 is no problem. The WT3 AI planes are again shown in P2A. But doing a re-sync operation in WT3 removes all AI planes from P2A, and they never come back (also not after stopping and restarting P2A.). If the WT3 AI planes have disappeared and Live Traffic is then selected as traffic feeder during that same flight in Xplane, then the Live Traffic AI planes do show up in P2A.

So the problem of not showing WT3 AI planes in Pilot2ATC must be on the WT3 side, as Dave also mentioned.

CB.

[furrer411 1]

3 hours ago, Crokybird said:

As a test I installed the Live Traffic plugin next to WT3 in XPlane. It is simple to switch between Live Traffic and WT3 in feeding the TCAS during the same flight. I can confirm that the AI airplanes form Live Traffic always show up in Pilot2ATC, no exception to that. When the AI planes from WT3 (on occasion) show up in P2A, then switching to Live Traffic and back again to WT3 is no problem. The WT3 AI planes are again shown in P2A. But doing a re-sync operation in WT3 removes all AI planes from P2A, and they never come back (also not after stopping and restarting P2A.). If the WT3 AI planes have disappeared and Live Traffic is then selected as traffic feeder during that same flight in Xplane, then the Live Traffic AI planes do show up in P2A.

So the problem of not showing WT3 AI planes in Pilot2ATC must be on the WT3 side, as Dave also mentioned.

CB.

Hi Crokybird,

Thank you for testing. I have observed the same. Can you please post it into the world traffic Forum? Greg from world traffic is ignoring my Message. Maybe your message will not be ignored.

Thank you.

[storm348 1]

Hi all,

I have recently moved to the newest version of both P2A and WT3 RC4 to try this extended AI traffic functionality (and to try to move to Vulcan 😀) and I am also facing the same problems you are facing. I have done many tests in order to understand the problem and one of them I think is really representative of the problem:

Test 1:

1. In EDDF (many many planes there) I resynch planes in WT3, with "Set Max Track Camera Distance" = 80 -> planes not shown in XP map neither P2A (naturally...)
2. In WT3, Toogle Plugin Control of Aircraft TCAS Off and On - planes show now in XP map, but not P2A
3. In P2A, Disconnect and Connect - P2A still no planes!

Test 2:

1. In EDDF, I resynch planes in WT3, with "Set Max Track Camera Distance" = 20 -> planes not shown in XP map neither P2A (naturally...)
2. In WT3, Toogle Plugin Control of Aircraft TCAS Off and On - planes show now in XP map, but not P2A
3. In P2A, Disconnect and Connect - Planes are back to P2A!

Test 3:

1. After test 2, I played with "Set Max Track Camera Distance" setting and monitored behaviour in XP Map and P2A
2. Increasing the setting I can see both in XP map and P2A planes spawning around and coherently between both. But, around 50-60 max distance, P2A freezes all planes, stops spawning more and end up removing all planes.
3. Reduced again to 40 - P2A still frozen planes, XP Map perfect
4. In P2A, Disconnect and Connect - Planes are back to P2A!
5. Increased to 42 - some planes spawn, P2A freeze again
6. Reduced immediately to 40 - P2A recovers without Disconnect and Connect

 

 

Conclusions:

• There is something wrong with either P2A or X-plane interface in which P2A is reading TCAS info from
  • I would disregard WT3 because planes are showing correctly in XP Map and I have never seen any suspect behaviour on X-plane when changing the Distance Setting - planes show and hide very smoothly
• The issue is definitely related with either the number of planes (most likely) or the distance they are from us
• Issue always gets solved if we reduce the Camera Distance and Disconnect/Connect P2A - not sure what this triggers in P2A and its plugin behind the scenes but this is enough to solve the issue (until we increase camera distance again!)
• If I react quickly on camera distance setting, P2A manages to recover from freeze. This does not happen if I leave in a distance setting that causes P2A to freeze for too long -> P2A deletes all planes instead and recover from this state seems only to be possible with Disconnect/Connect

For all this, I think this could be something Dave you be kind to look at. Please, if there is anything I can help with (tried to check both X-plane and P2A logs but nothing relevant during the tests) - enabling any verbose logging functionalities of P2A or something like that, please let me know.

I really love both P2A and WT3 and it could be so perfect if you team these products up to come up with a great solution for ATC + AI traffic control... This is my dream! 😆

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 875]

P2A gets the traffic data from the same place regardless of what traffic engine is feeding it.  It is an XPLM function in X-Plane.  

The traffic engine has to explicitly populate that data reference, in addition to all the other rendering it does.  All the engines except WT3 seem to be doing that correctly and the planes show up fine in P2A.

If it were something I could fix in P2A, I would...but since the other traffic engines are not having this issue, there's nothing I can do.

Dave

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 875]

I forgot to mention above that I did find a problem in P2A where it was confusing ground and airborne traffic, so to see all traffic you might want to turn on both ground and airborne traffic.  You may see the airborne traffic mixed in with ground...seeing double.

That is fixed for the next update and shouldn't affect the issue of no traffic showing.

Edited February 1, 2021 by Dave-Pilot2ATC

[storm348 1]

Hey Dave,

Thanks a lot for your swift reply.

Now that you mention it, I have noticed the confusion about ground and airborne traffic. I am glad you fix that for the next version. 🤩

Regarding the freezing/disappearing planes in P2A I fully understand your point. BTW: are you reading planes position using which Dataref set?

sim/cockpit2/tcas/targets/position/double/planeX_lat + sim/cockpit2/tcas/targets/position/double/planeX_lon + sim/cockpit2/tcas/targets/position/double/planeX_ele?

If this is the case, maybe I found the culprit:

I am afraid your P2A plugin and/or Pilot2ATC and/or the communication between them are not handling these fantastic NAN created by WT3 correctly. Do you think it could be possible for you to do a verification of when this happens and show all good planes? I will report to WT3 developer this issue as well...

Please let me know if this don't make sense to you. I am just a humble X-plane beginner with a bit of programming knowledge 😀.

I would be very happy to help.

Huge thanks.

[storm348 1]

Hey Dave,

Not sure if you had the chance to check my last message. I have been trying harder on identifying this issue and it seems that NAN in the positions does not happen so frequently. Much more frequent is the problem in P2A not identifying correctly the planes. Nevertheless, I would say it is a good idea P2A to be protected against NAN in planes position, which can actually happen.

Since I am not happy at all yet, I have made myself a plugin to inject fake planes in X-plane TCAS. Just a very simple one, making use of a maximum of 60 planes. Plugin allows to change the number of planes live by means of a textbox input:

As you can see, I have removed almost all my plugins, only keeping the ones needed for my tests. From them I can tell you:

• Using a number of planes up to around 40 P2A handles the planes very well
• Increasing to 50 P2A freezes planes in the map and after 10-20 seconds, ends up deleting all of them in the map
• Going back to a lower setting (for example 30), after some time, P2A shows again planes in the map.
• This behavior is consistent.

 

From my tests, it just can be an issue in P2A side that seems not to be capable of handling so many planes for some reason... Maybe other traffic injectors are injecting an amount of traffic low enough so that P2A can still handle them.

Is it possible for you to give a try to my plugin? I am leaving it here for everyone that wants to give it a try and see if can replicate my results and reach the same conclusion.

My plugin was very simple, only faking planes position around the user (not actually drawing them in X-plane) and following the guidelines by Laminar on injecting traffic in TCAS system. It is meant only to be used in this test and not to be used with other traffic injectors (not sure about the behavior, so please make sure you disable them if you want to try):

I have used my plugin in XP 11.51: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c1DXIQGAn1VOKIA-sJbhZDkK408SOwwu/view?usp=sharing

Dave, please, if anything else I can help you with on solving this issue please let me know. It may not be a simple thing., but it would just be wonderful if we could have P2A handling all the planes that X-plane new TCAS can provide...

All the best to all,

/Bruno

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 875]

Thanks for your efforts Bruno!  

I will try the plugin and see if I can find a problem in the code.

Dave

[storm348 1]

Thank you very much Dave.

If you need something to be changed in the plugin code let me know.

Looking forward for some news there 😊