Swift - Pilot client progress

[Mauro Gerber 1175094]

- 50.0% of pilots DO NOT RESPOND to ATC's attempt to contact the pilot over both the ATC channel in use AND unicom.

because they are on unicom and of do not read on 122.8 in mid air.

I know you should, but there are times when a lot of "hi everyone" "decent FL 180 on the airway XY" and so on is posted.

 

What brings me to an idea: can we make the messages on 122.8 with standard phraseology?

like a button PUSH, TAXI, DEPART.

When you click on TAXI you can enter the RWY and post it as: traffic XXXX, Taxi to holding point RWY 28 via [freetext]. (something like the function already bild in FSInn)

 

On an other freq or privat messages you can post every chit-chat if they like

 

as fot the ATC allert:

what would be easy to implement would be like:

you ar logged in on LSZH AND have a flightplan with departing LSZH in your flightplan. ATC with a callsign like LSZH_DEL/_S_GND/_TWR/_APP or whatever start with LSZH loggin, you get a message: "LSZH_S_GND has come online"

 

I know that don't work for all airport as EDNY and LSZR are handled by LSZH_APP, bud it would prevent making a pushback when a controller just whent online with a collsign as the same airport.

 

the same can go for at least below XYZ_APP and when closer 100nm (or an other fix distance) to your destination airport. it would/should not be a contact me, just an information for the pilot who is maybe busy with the approach.

 

bud i know that would not work with CTR's.

 

And i remember an other one, can you "force" pilots to make a decision betwen /V /T and /R (voice, text and recive).

Edited November 19, 2013 at 10:07 AM by Guest

[Gary Tekulsky 1134195]

And i remember an other one, can you "force" pilots to make a decision betwen /V /T and /R (voice, text and recive).

We can definitely look into adding that as some form of required radio button or drop-down when we get around to the FP filing interface. I know how you feel about that one

[mohamed abdellatef 1271346]

do we have a release date please end our suffering with fsinn

[Gary Tekulsky 1134195]

Making a pilot client is an ambitious undertaking, especially if it isn't going to just be the bare minimum required to work. A release date can not be given at this time but it will definitely take many more months of work to complete. In the interim another developer, Ross Carlson, is working on a more simple pilot client which should be available some time before ours. A release date for that is not available either. More information on that can be found here.

[Mauro Gerber 1175094]

THX for the reply and I'm looking forward to the new client

[Mathew Sutcliffe]

If possible, I wanted to ask developpers to make the client accessible to those who are using a ScreenReader, by providing shortcuts for various actions of the client.

 

Can't promise anything, but as the client is developed with the Qt framework, this should reasonably easy to accomplish by enabling the Qt accessibility modules.

[Mathew Sutcliffe]

While not perfect, there are many situational awareness tools out there (e.g. Servinfo, VATSpy, vattastic, etc.) that let pilots know when ATC is online ahead.

 

Invariably these tools are wrong in the airspace they display.

 

Just as wrong as a pilot client would be if it tried to offer this facility.

[Michael Pike]

I don't see why. We have the data in the Euroscope sector files. What if these were made public and the pilot clients could read them? The data is not available everywhere of course, but it is frustrating to know that where the data is available, the pilots are kept in the dark.

[Chad Black]

I don't see why. We have the data in the Euroscope sector files. What if these were made public and the pilot clients could read them? The data is not available everywhere of course, but it is frustrating to know that where the data is available, the pilots are kept in the dark.

 

[Steven Caffey]

I don't see why. We have the data in the Euroscope sector files. What if these were made public and the pilot clients could read them? The data is not available everywhere of course, but it is frustrating to know that where the data is available, the pilots are kept in the dark.

 

I see 2 potential issues with this.

 

1. Would the pilot have to download the 4774837 (approx.) sector files for all the different airspaces in the world?

 

2. Many places don't have Euroscope format sector files, would VRC sector files be usable?

[Roland Rossgotterer 104726]

Its not a matter of correct sector files. I personally use them in my ATC client too and they are excellent.

However, ATC is still heavily coordinating between each other especially in the center positions. As I said, for a single ATC station logged in it is rather simple and the sector files are fine. But what happens, if two stations share the airspace due to traffic. The only way to map between a sector and a station is either by callsign or frequency. The callsign is not guaranteed to be always the same (handover, training, etc), so you would have to map to frequency. But they are not unique too.

 

So a pilot client could give a good guess in some situations, but it can never know the coordination done between different centers. You always need an intelligent person in between, which coordinated with the neighbor sectors and forwards you to the correct controller. If this is missing, because the pilot is on unicom I find it easier for the center controller to send the pilot a contact me, instead of forwarding all the time pilots to another station, who tuned the wrong frequency -otherwise its more work for everyone.

[Jonas Kuster]

I don't see why. We have the data in the Euroscope sector files. What if these were made public and the pilot clients could read them? The data is not available everywhere of course, but it is frustrating to know that where the data is available, the pilots are kept in the dark.

 

Data in Euroscope files are also limited in distribution because of their source. For example the Swiss file is only available for Swiss controllers because the data provider allows usage only under these conditions.

 

And as I experienced in my work as controller, sending a Contact Me is way easier than finding the correct frequency for a pilot who shouldn't be with me. Additionally, these situations always happen when the airspace is congested anyway and no capacity is available.

[Aleksandr Irshinski 123569]

how is going with new client? when it will be released?

[Gary Tekulsky 1134195]

We are progressing well. As has been said before we can not pinpoint a release date as this is a m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive undertaking that is done in our spare time, but we are working to get it released as soon as possible.

[Adrian Liu 1246548]

Yeah we all especially from prepar3d are definitely waiting for the new client!!

[Roland Rossgotterer 104726]

As Gary already said, we are actively developing and progressing well. Release date is, when its finished We cannot estimate when this will be the case. I'll give an update, when we reach a major milestone. Currently we are working on finishing the IPC mechanism between the different processes. The connection to our test server works well and we can receive all needed information (currently testing with a traffic simulator) and display it in the GUI. After this is tested and reviewed we will make a feature freeze and fix all bugs, warnings and clean up the code. This will lead to version 0.3

After that we are going to work on the simulator drivers.

 

A lot technical stuff and not much details,but we are going to provide some more, after milestone 0.3 is reached.

[Jeff Turner]

As Gary already said, we are actively developing and progressing well. Release date is, when its finished We cannot estimate when this will be the case. I'll give an update, when we reach a major milestone. Currently we are working on finishing the IPC mechanism between the different processes. The connection to our test server works well and we can receive all needed information (currently testing with a traffic simulator) and display it in the GUI. After this is tested and reviewed we will make a feature freeze and fix all bugs, warnings and clean up the code. This will lead to version 0.3

After that we are going to work on the simulator drivers.

 

A lot technical stuff and not much details,but we are going to provide some more, after milestone 0.3 is reached.

 

Thanks Roland...

[Hadi Remonion 1198912]

If possible, I wanted to ask developpers to make the client accessible to those who are using a ScreenReader, by providing shortcuts for various actions of the client.

 

Can't promise anything, but as the client is developed with the Qt framework, this should reasonably easy to accomplish by enabling the Qt accessibility modules.

 

That's true. usually QT apps are not friendly at all to ScreenReaders, but most of the elements become accessible when accessibility modules are included by the developpers. let's hope the guys behind the development do this

[Roland Rossgotterer 104726]

Hadi,

 

Qt has a built in feature: https://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5/accessible.html I've never used it before, but if I got the docomeentation right, this is enabled by default for all Qt widgets. We only have to take it into account for our custom widgets.

Since I'm creating the set of custom widgets these days, I put this on my list of things I will look into. I cannot promise anything, because I dont know much about the background and how impacting this will be. But I'll consider it.

[Iain Colledge 1248050]

Loving the progress being made, good work guys and looking forward to using it.

[Mauro Gerber 1175094]

Just a small request.

Would it be possible to implement a tone on specific output (speakrer) to "ring" when an ATCO send me ma "contact me"?

I often remove my headset in cruise bud then i don't hear the privat message sound of the ATC.

[Gary Tekulsky 1134195]

We will look into implementing this

[Andreas Fuchs]

Dear Team,

 

just had another look through the docomeent describing the requirements and could not find (overlooked?) a feature that could be very useful for a lot of our pilots: a quick switch button to swap the voice-output between the primary and the secondary output device. We often need to leave our cockpits for a minute or two to collect something, answer a phone call, open the door etc. and it would be really handy if pilots could switch from "headset" to "speakers" in order to not miss any calls. Furthermore during long flights headsets won't be used and this feature would make it much easier when receiving a call, get your headset back on your head, switch back to this device and then answer the call.

 

Keep going, we are lookong forward to this fantastic piece of software! VATSIM lives off people like you!

[Callum McLoughlin]

Could we have an alarm system so if people miss a call from a SUP rated member (i.e. don't view the message) after a couple of minutes it tones, then repeats and so on? That way people may miss the initial "ding dong" will hear the later continuous tone... think of it like the crew alertness system in the 777.

[Gary Tekulsky 1134195]

Both good ideas we shall look into implementing