Live Flight Map

[Guest Ben Clark]

Hi there. I've recently been working on writing a program to run behind FU3 that will directly watch the memory that FU3 is working in.Essentially, it means I can pull data out of the simulator while it is running.I have created a simple demo of this at:http://fu3map.phpnet.usIt's a live(well, sort of, you have to refresh to get an updated view) map of current flights in the seattle region.You can download the updater and run it on your computer while you run FU3 and hopefully it will give you an icon on the map showing your location and altitude (I havn't managed to get heading yet but I'm working on it - currently everyones icon is in the same orientation)Mouse over the icon to see who's flying and their altitude, and a little note from the pilot.My original plan was to combine it with the challenges and hopefully implement some sort of multiplayer but after investigating the challenges system, it seems like it is not capable of moving objects during the game, you have to set them all up before the challenge starts, making my idea impossible.Anyway, can anyone think of any good uses for this system?Oh, by the way, don't run the map updater if you dont plan to be in seattle, I havn't tested it but I doubt it will work very well.All the best,BenPS - the software is beta - I can't offer any guarantees

[Guest Ben Clark]

Also, the maths is slightly off so your location on the map is not exactely where you are in the FU3 world but that should be fixable with a bit more testing out.Edit:Hmm, i just tested it in IE and it looks like the popup box with details about the pilot doesn't work in IE, it seems to work fine in firefox... I'm not very good with html/css so I don't really know what i'm doing.

[Roger Over 0]

HI Ben,My guess is that this would be a great tool if it was possible to use it to interact with other players via the AI system or something, but I doubt that it would be possible to extract and/or modify the data "on-the-fly". Keep thinking though..CheersBruce H

[Guest ChrisDS]

Ben.This sounds great!This opens a lot of new, exsiting features and could make FU3 a whole new experience.I wonder if it is possible to pull my position, height, and heading out and transfer this to another copy of FU3 on 2 other machines.This could make Wideview come true on FU3. :)Just dreaming, but with Your program it does not seem so far away after all?...What do You think?Happy Holidays and happy FU3 flyingChrisD

[agtim 0]

Hi Ben,Hope you have received my email with the zip that can help you to fix plane orientation. I will try your demo later, fantastic idea. :-wave agtim

[Guest Ben Clark]

This is an interesting idea... That might be possible, however you would have many problems to deal with, such as synchronising everything else in the sim - things like weather and AI.Still, i'll look into the feasability of it :)

[Guest Ben Clark]

Yeah, I have been thinking about this kind of thing, it certainly would be possible to extract and modify the data on the fly, but the problem is, knowing where the correct data is stored in the memory - when you run FU3 the AI is initialised - I don't think that the memory locations storing where any particular AI plane is will be the same every time you run it... which would make finding and modifying the correct data extremely hard.

[Guest Ben Clark]

Hmm, I was just looking at the database, your altitude is always registering as zero... I'm not sure why that is, It's something i'll have to look into.By the way, all the data gets stored, so it should be possible to plot a line of all the previous points that you've been to.

[agtim 0]

Hi BenTest flight done, but my icon is outside of the map.My Seattle Region is 16x16 tiles up to the north and east.The base point - south west corner of aaaa is still the same as for the original LG. Started from Matha Lake and was out of the map all the time. There must be a scale problem. The original LG nav. map is not UTM scaled. How do you convert.May be you can use Googlemaps for this as it is done for FSX ;-)There is a tool for that posted at avsim lib. :-wave agtim

[Guest Ben Clark]

Hmm that's interesting... i just looked at the database and the data that you are sending looks a bit nonsense... I think that your version of FU doesnt have the data in the same location as my version... perhaps because you have the german(?) version? I'm not sure... but that is sure to be a problem with this kind of technique.I need to think it over a bit more i think.Ben

[agtim 0]

Hi Ben,did you receive my email with the zip ? :-wave agtim

[Guest Ben Clark]

I did, thankyou, I modified it so it just showed the plane position on screen all the time... so that i could attempt to find the correct memory location for that... that was how i found the memory location. I'm not sure how to map that directly to longitude/latitude... currently all i did was some quick maths taking the pixel locations of two places on the map and comparing them to the in game coordinates to make a simple equation to convert in-game value to pixel coords.But thats not the main issue... your FU3 is always sending the same data as x and y, and I think that is because the memory location that I am peeking into is not the right one for your version of fu3.. i'm not sure how to fix that.All the best,Ben

[Roger Over 0]

Hi Ben,I think to get lat/long correct you are going to have to apply the factors from the region.cfg file in the region base folder:; These are the mappings from world; to pixel coords for region map and vice versareg_map_col1 0.0092163 0.000290412 0reg_map_col2 0.000290412 -0.0092163 0reg_map_col3 809.584 1745.74 1reg_imap_col1 108.396 3.41563 0reg_imap_col2 3.41563 -108.396 0reg_imap_col3 -93718.3, 186466.0, 1These calculate pixel position from lat/long and vice versa, allowing also for curvature. I have had a bit of a look at how these work, but am not sure if anyone else has something more definitive.If you want, I will send you what I know. It will be a very short email. :-roll The FU calcs work OK over a small area (Sanfran, Seattle) but for larger regions are not so good because of curvature etc. :-erks Also I notice that for you app to work you have to disable or work around the firewall, which is fair enough. But if anyone tries it and gets a blank, check your firewall.CheersBruce H

[Guest Steffen]

Hi Ben,I'm looking at your news from the challenge point of view - if you/we could be able to read other data from the memory (like the current gear or flap status), that would be great news!Maybe something like this pops up - then I can try to come up with a challenge making use of this or try to integrate these improvements in one of the existing (before limitated) challenges.Blue Slies,Steffen

[Guest Ben Clark]

Well, if anyone wants to try their hand at what I've done, then the software i used to find the memory location was artmoney:http://www.artmoney.ru/it's primarily used for cheating in games.essentially you search the entire memory of a running process for the value you are looking for... if you get multiple values then you go back into the game and do something to modify the value... then go back to artmoney and filter the results, telling it what the new value will be and it filters them down. repeat this process until you've found the exact memory location (or locations) that define the parameter you want to watch or modify from outside the software.For something like gear or flap status, this could be a very difficult or long process, and the data might not always be in the same place, it is likely it will be different for every aircraft.Still, it would be good to try and get a sort of "memory map" of fu3, detailing all the useful data, if people are up for the task of working with me on that.All the best,Ben