msfs Review #2 of Beyond ATC

[Bobsk8 12,901]

On 5/9/2024 at 4:24 AM, Fiorentoni said:

You don't understant how it works: User data *is* BATC's data. It reads from your scenery, so it can use whatever outdated / fictional scenery people use. There's no other way to get taxi way data by the way, since it's not available via the Navigraph API.

How does it get this data, Makerunways?

[roland_lfor 249]

Just now, Bobsk8 said:

How does it get this data, Makerunways?

Simconnect API

[kiek 1,238]

1 hour ago, roland_lfor said:

Simconnect API

Well I have been programming with SimConnect from the beginning, and have never seen this. Did I overlook it, or?
Could you point to the place in the documentation where you think it is? SimConnect API Reference (flightsimulator.com)

I guess they get the data from the airport.bgl, hence not in SimConnect.

 

Edited May 10 by kiek

[eslader 1,819]

1 hour ago, roland_lfor said:

Actually you can tune frequencies from the aircraft. Set the frequency, then switch it to active and BATC will recognize it.

I've found this to be true after you first tune clearance in the BATC window. Otherwise, if I tune it in the aircraft, BATC will miss that it got tuned and not present the phrase options. Until it does that, it won't recognize anything I say.   Could be that BATC and PMDG don't get along yet, I haven't tested in anything else.

 

 

 

 

[Fiorentoni 4,441]

23 minutes ago, eslader said:

I've found this to be true after you first tune clearance in the BATC window. Otherwise, if I tune it in the aircraft, BATC will miss that it got tuned and not present the phrase options. Until it does that, it won't recognize anything I say.   Could be that BATC and PMDG don't get along yet, I haven't tested in anything else.

 

 

 

 

PMDG tunes fine for me with BATC. Check assustance settings in MsFs

[roland_lfor 249]

1 hour ago, kiek said:

Well I have been programming with SimConnect from the beginning, and have never seen this. Did I overlook it, or?
Could you point to the place in the documentation where you think it is? SimConnect API Reference (flightsimulator.com)

I guess they get the data from the airport.bgl, hence not in SimConnect.

 

I'm not part of BATC team, I just report what they have written on Discord.

[martinboehme 542]

2 hours ago, kiek said:

Well I have been programming with SimConnect from the beginning, and have never seen this. Did I overlook it, or?
Could you point to the place in the documentation where you think it is? SimConnect API Reference (flightsimulator.com)

 

Here it is:

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Programming_Tools/SimConnect/API_Reference/Facilities/SimConnect_AddToFacilityDefinition.htm#taxi_path

[Tuskin38 6,681]

3 hours ago, kiek said:

Well I have been programming with SimConnect from the beginning, and have never seen this. Did I overlook it, or?
Could you point to the place in the documentation where you think it is? SimConnect API Reference (flightsimulator.com)

I guess they get the data from the airport.bgl, hence not in SimConnect.

 

GSX also uses the simconnect API to get taxiway and runway info. That's how they're able to get data on encrypted marketplace airports.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/644707-say-intentions-integrates-navigraph-taxi-data-and-more/?do=findComment&comment=5101299

Edited May 10 by Tuskin38

[eslader 1,819]

4 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

PMDG tunes fine for me with BATC. Check assustance settings in MsFs

They're all off.

Tested with the default 787 just now, same story. Had to get that initial tune done through the app, but I discovered it's not that it doesn't see the radio. I can pull up ATIS in the plane and I get BATC's ATIS. But when I then tune to clearance, there are no "what to say" options in that lower left window, so when I say anything, BATC doesn't recognize it. I have to tune clearance in the BATC window first, then I get the options and can talk to it.

[kiek 1,238]

10 hours ago, martinboehme said:

Here it is:

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Programming_Tools/SimConnect/API_Reference/Facilities/SimConnect_AddToFacilityDefinition.htm#taxi_path

Aha, thx! Maybe I can make use of it in PSXT too, although at first sight it looks not, I do not see any latitude/longitude info in it... 

Edited May 11 by kiek

[Fiorentoni 4,441]

7 hours ago, eslader said:

They're all off.

Tested with the default 787 just now, same story. Had to get that initial tune done through the app, but I discovered it's not that it doesn't see the radio. I can pull up ATIS in the plane and I get BATC's ATIS. But when I then tune to clearance, there are no "what to say" options in that lower left window, so when I say anything, BATC doesn't recognize it. I have to tune clearance in the BATC window first, then I get the options and can talk to it.

Since it works on my side (for the PMDG, haven't checked the 787), there must be something conflicting between the radio dial in the virtual cockpit and the BATC software on your side. Do you have hardware to manipulate the frequencies? Some other software that interacts with the frequencies (FS2Crew, or one of these copilot-addons)?

[martinboehme 542]

1 hour ago, kiek said:

Aha, thx! Maybe I can make use of it in PSXT too, although at first sight it looks not, I do not see any latitude/longitude info in it... 

The TAXI_PATH has indices of the starting and ending TAXI_POINT, and that has an offset in meters from the airport reference point; you can compute the lat/lon from that.

(The information has to be there in some form, or the WT avionics wouldn't be able to draw the airport layout. Edit: Duh, that's not true obviously because the WT avionics use JavaScript. But the SimConnect API has matured quite a bit too now - though it's still pretty clunky, in the finest tradition of Win32 APIs. 😉) 

Edited May 11 by martinboehme

[virtuali 4,446]

2 hours ago, kiek said:

Aha, thx! Maybe I can make use of it in PSXT too, although at first sight it looks not, I do not see any latitude/longitude info in it... 

That's because, if you are looking at the TAXI_PATH definition, it doesn't really make much sense to have coordinates for a "path". A path is just a segment with a start and and end (the START and END parameters) which are just integer indexes to a list of TAXI_POINT elements (they are just before the path in the SDK docs). The TAXI_POINT have coordinates, which are expressed as offsets in *meters* (BIAS_X and BIAS_Z) from the Airport reference point, which is finally in Lat Lon.

So, assuming you wanted to "draw" a map of taxiways, you need to:

- First get the basic Airport record (from ICAO), which will tell you basic things, like Lat/Lon of its ref point, but also how many taxi points and paths there are, which you'll surely need

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Programming_Tools/SimConnect/API_Reference/Facilities/SimConnect_AddToFacilityDefinition.htm#airport

- Get all the TAXI_POINTs and store them away in some table.

- Get all TAXI_PATHs and use the Start and End as Indexes into the table of TAXI_POINTs, so you can draw the individual segments.

If you only work in Lat/Lon, since the taxi_point data is expressed as an offset in meters from the airport center (as many things in the Navdata API are), you'll need some formula to add a linear distance to Lat/Lon, like the popular GeographicLib (Open Source and available on many platforms and languages), to get the actual Lat/Lon coordinates of the various points.

You can also get a list of TAXI_NAMES, which the TAXI_PATH references to, as indexes.

Edited May 11 by virtuali

[Cpt_Piett 4,842]

On 5/10/2024 at 2:07 AM, F737MAX said:

Before 28R became operational, taxi instructions in an earlier sim for the correct layout were: [Callsign], taxi to gate 109 via taxiway Echo 6, Bravo 6, Bravo 5, Bravo 4, Mike 2, Mike 1, Foxtrot Oscar Uniform Tango Echo Romeo, Link 5, Foxtrot India November November Echo Romeo. 😅

Wow, that’s crazy. Who would be able to read back that correctly? That’s one I would let the FO handle 😅

Btw I think I got an IFR clearance while airborne. From EDDS to EDNY the sim/PC crashed repeatedly (hardware issues). So I kept restarting on the runway. Which worked. 

[Fiorentoni 4,441]

12 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Wow, that’s crazy. Who would be able to read back that correctly? That’s one I would let the FO handle 😅

Btw I think I got an IFR clearance while airborne. From EDDS to EDNY the sim/PC crashed repeatedly (hardware issues). So I kept restarting on the runway. Which worked. 

To be fair "Foxtrot Oscar Uniform Tango Echo Romeo" and "Foxtrot India November November Echo Romeo" is an error by that earlier sim: The name of the taxiway is "Foxtrot OUTER" and "Foxtrot INNER". Without turning OUTER and INNER into NATO alphabet letters, the instructions would be okay.