How to get Euroscope on Mac?

[Gustav Lodeiro]

Hey!

 

I recently got a Macbook Air, and as I'm using it a lot more frequently than my windows computer I was wondering how I would be able to set up Euroscope on it. I haven't seen anyone yet explaining how to do it, preferably for free.

 

Help is very much appreciated!

 

Kind regards,

 

Gustav Lodeiro

[Morten Jelle]

Hi Gustav

 

I just made a quick search and did found this link: http://forums.vatsim.net/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=56174

I'm not using Mac, so I can't tell you if it works - but I have heard a lot about people succesfully getting Euroscope to work on Mac.

[Mark Richards]

I have it running on my iMac using Parallels.

[1275389]

I remember that I was able to get it running with Wine (free) once.

I haven't experimented much with it since I don't use it in the US

[Merik Nanish 1184142]

I have read several success stories of running EuroScope on a Mac through virtualization. Many have used Parallels; I have personally used VirtualBox (mostly because it is free) with success. But you need a valid copy of Windows for this method to work.

 

I have read rarely reports on people being able to run it without virtualization, using WINE. However, I have also read stories about how headsets may not work or other voice related problems might occur.

 

I am still hoping for a day where we have EuroScope (or some other comparably good client) developed for more than one operating system. However, it is still the case that the majority of people use Windows so it is not surprising that no one is motivated to create a cross-platform software for free, when only 10-15% of people might benefit from it.

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Hi! It's been several days since I've first installed EuroScope following this tutorial and I still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong I've also registered on stackoverflow.com and asked there, too, but nobody seems to know what the problem is.

 

So, I'll post about my issue here, too:

 

"I've been trying for days to run EuroScope on my Yosemite OSX using this tutorial - http://www.vatcaf.org/docomeents/ES_Installation_Mac.pdf , as I am an illiterate with the terminal commands and so on.

 

So, after installing XCode, Macports and XQuartz as they suggested, I successfully installed Wine and EuroScope, but everytime I want to run EuroScope, I get this message:

 

-bash: /Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/bin/wine: No such file or directory

I've tried to manually install Wine and run EuroScope before following the tutorial, and that didn't work - whenever I opened the Wine menu using the GUI and wanted to open EuroScope from there, it did nothing. No action. I used Wine with several other Windows applications and it worked just fine. But not with EuroScope.

 

I looked in the Applications directory and there is no Wine.app, or my mac might not let me see it (?) Still, if I try to reinstall Wine, it says that no file is broke or so. So it should be working.

 

What can I do? There are only 2 mirrors for EuroScope on their site and other users have managed to make it work, some of them on macs. They can't offer me any guidance, as they don't know much, either; they've just followed the "instructions" and it worked for them from the beginning." /* I was under this impression after reading the older topic and before discovering this one*/

 

And I got this answer from a member on stackoverflow:

 

" Try to determine where you installed your wine binary. Maybe it is in \usr\local\bin\ ? When you will know the path to wine try to run \path_to_wine\wine \path_to_euroscope\EuroScope.exe"

 

After following his advice, my problem became:

 

"Hi again, I went to the binary and what I got was: Merisor-cel-Muscat:bin lavinia$ Wine EuroScope.exe wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\EuroScope.exe" So, from what I read it seems that I have to "place" EuroScope on wine's C:\\ partition... how do I do this? I don't manage to get wine open with its GUI and I can't find its "partitions" other way... Thank you."

 

So, has anybody encountered this situation before? What should I do?

 

Thank you.

[1275389]

I've found that ES runs a lot worse on Mac than VRC.

 

 

Install WineBottler. It's a whole lot easier to get wine installed with it rather than doing it manually.

 

Again, make sure you have the latest version of XQuartz.

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Yuppy, thanks a lot for the suggestion! I'll give it one more try, and if I'm not lucky I'll switch to my ooold Dell with Windows on it.

[1275389]

Worst comes to worse, I know a software to convert .ese files to .sct2 files for VRC.

(It's actually not hard to do manually either)

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Why, is it more convenient to convert .ese files to .sct2 files for VRC? If so, why?

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Weeell, it's aliiiveeee! I got VRC! Buuuut! I don't know which my callsign is, I guess I should read some docomeentation, huh? Well. It seems I have a lot of stuff to do

 

Thank you!

[1275389]

I just finc it easier.

A bit less information in the sct2 and pof files than in ese files.

 

Yeah, VRC has a lot of useful docomeentation. I would also see what the Dutch ACC wants you to necesarily do as an observer to begin training

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Well, yeah, I should begin with that, I guess.

 

Buuut, I still can't log in because it says that my CID is not valid Do I have to register on some VRC-related site first or ... ?

[1275389]

Don't copy paste, make sure you login and type in every single character manually from the email you received when you first joined VATSIM.

You are connecting to a VATSIM Server, so no, you do not need to register anywhere else.

 

Make sure your rating is OBS and your position is Observer.

If you need help converting the sector file, let me know...

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Hi again!

 

Hmmm... Still getting the same error message - invalid CID Haven't copy-pasted it, I know my CID by heart.

Anyway, what is a sector file? And does asking this question say that yes, I need help?

 

I am starting to ask myself very seriously if I ever get to be an ATC. It' really annoying

[Lavinia Coltofeanu 1319789]

Ooohh... Well. I guess I need help. I've just figured out that I haven't configured my VRC Just as with any other program, I just opened it and was hoping it would work

 

Only now I got to read the docomeentation and everything makes sense So - where do I find the .sct files? On the Dutch vACC I can only find the EuroScope files. Are they those files that you said needed to be converted? If so, how do I do that? If not, where should I look?

[1275389]

Yes, those are the files that need conversion since Euroscope is widely used in Europe while VRC is used mostly in the US.

 

You need two files to make a sector file (.sct2) and positions file (.pof) for VRC, a .ese file and a .sct file.

 

I'm going to use the EHAL_TWR files for this example (mainly because it's in the only public sector file package I can download)

 

EHAL_TWR_ES.ese

[POSITIONS]
; EHAA FIR ESE for EuroScope
; Version February 2011

Change this to:

; EHAA FIR ESE for EuroScope
; Version February 2011

After that, rename the file to EHAL_TWR_ES.pof and make sure the actual extension changes rather than an extension being added (because Macs sometimes like to just add an extension. You can ensure this by right click the file, Get Info, and manually changing that name. If you do it properly, it should prompt you to make sure you want to change the extension.

You also want to delete below a tag (other than positions) such as [RADAR], [sIDSSTARS], [AIRSPACE], [FREETEXT], etc.

 

Next, rename EHAL_TWR_ES.sct to EHAL_TWR_ES.sct2 keeping in mind the extension change again.

 

Do keep in mind that you may lose certain abilities. I have only dealt with moderately-complex sector file conversion. If you want a shortcut and have some access to a windows computer (because Wine wouldn't run this for me), use SectEd to convert the file...then manually re-make your .pof file from the [POSITIONS] section of the .ese file.

 

If anything gets very messed up, let me know and I can try to make a VRC-compatible version of the file that will show as much information as possible. I haven't tried this with their sector file and do not know what the result will be.

 

Josh