A little survey about CPDLC

[Pierre Ferran]

Hello everyone,

 

There is a lot of talk concerning CPDLC on those forums, but it remains hard to get a clear picture of how popular it is. I am considering coding some more controller plugins to support CPDLC with the Hoppie network in the near future, but I would like to know if this is actually desired by the community as whole, for both pilots and controllers.

 

I've decided to do a small survey, it is anonymous, and the results will be openly shared. It will ask you about your thoughts on CPDLC from a pilot's perspective, and a controller's perspective if you are one. It would be great help if you could take the time to fill in the survey!

 

https://goo.gl/forms/IuSRbZ0Oc4TKDsli2

 

I will run the survey for a few weeks, and then publish the final results here, in the meantime, live results are available here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexYrUqzu3anOBUT9-BwxpzhjiVo80Sx63BEDd60GWMjbcP8Q/viewanalytics

If you have any suggestions or questions, don't hesitate! Thank you for your help!

 

Pierre

Edited May 25, 2017 at 10:29 PM by Guest

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

get in contact with the swift team and see what you can get. supposed to be a feature thatll be included, so obviously better idea is to see how that feature can be linked with the current clients then ending up with 2 separate CPDLC clients which might end up causing confusion

[Pierre Ferran]

get in contact with the swift team and see what you can get. supposed to be a feature thatll be included, so obviously better idea is to see how that feature can be linked with the current clients then ending up with 2 separate CPDLC clients which might end up causing confusion

 

I planned only to keep using the Hoppie network, as I have already done with vSMR. I'm following the Swift project, but from the little communication that was given, I understood CPDLC was still a secondary feature to be added after release, and not confirmed as of yet?

[Andreas Fuchs]

I will forward your survey to the German forums.

 

Earlier this year we held our first CPDLC Theme Night at VATSIM Germany and we had quite a few pilots using it. Especially for PDC it was very well received. Now, in the meantime, its usage has decreased again. A second Theme Night is required

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Hi Pierre,

I was involved with Hoppie in the days of his developing the CPDLC software. I would love to see a new implentation of the pilots' CPDLC components. I am happy to be involved in the design and testing of a new cockpit-based CPDLC feature.

Although the controller-based implentation of CPDLC will heavily depend on the intentions of the swift team and their timescales, I believe that the cockpit-based features should be developed commercially as a guage, and sold either to the aircraft simulator developers or to the end users.

If you wish to proceed along these lines, please contact me to discuss.

Kind regards, Richard

[Andreas Fuchs]

I strongly believe that a basic Pilot CPDLC Gauge should be available to all users for free. The current piece of software that is provided by Hoppie is doing fine and for Airbus skippers there's the freely available "CPDLC AOC-Client" of "Project A330". Currently they are in talks with Aerosoft to include the client into Aerosoft's new A330 addon.

 

The crucial thing will be that VATSIM has to come up with its own CPDLC-server, either standalone (possibly Hoppie will make his server software available to us) or as part of our current VATSIM FSD-protocol. VATSIM needs to have full control of the CPDLC protocol, server and communication.

[Pierre Ferran]

I also strongly believe this is an excellent opportunity to break off the old and outdated fight sim community way of developing software. We should have a free, open source, cross platform, centralised system that uses modern technology. In itself, a CPDLC server is not a hard task to accomplish. We could make a simple system using websockets, and quick front end platform. A single server could exchange thousands of messages a second using very little resources.

 

I also think it would be better to have a system independent from the VATSIM FSD servers, as they are outdated technologies, full of flaws, and already stretched thin. We can't just keep adding features to an old and rusty tractor, it's going to break at some point. It would also be simpler for the third party developers, such as Aerosoft, to be able to rely on already existing technologies that are cross platform, well docomeented and simple to use. I think developers would be more tempted to try the technology if they didn't have to rely on another party, if they could simply open a webpage and see what needs to be done, and implement it at their own pace.

 

I already had a small and simple test server, and I would be willing to participate in the development of this system, but only if it does not conflict with the projects of the Swift team, and if VATSIM would be willing to endorse it. To me, this is a great opportunity to shine within the flight sim community with something new and progressive.

 

Richard, thank you for your offer, however I know very little about programming for the various Sims, and would rather focus on the server/controller aspect.

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Pierre,

No problem. Looking forward to seeing how your work progresses.

[Daniel Hawton]

My biggest complaint about Hoppie's CPDLC client is it is too mouse dependent. I find it comebersome to use and it takes longer to use it than typing out an ATC instruction by text through VRC without an alias. That alone, to me, makes it undesirable and why I never used it more than twice.

[Josh Glottmann]

My biggest complaint about Hoppie's CPDLC client is it is too mouse dependent. I find it comebersome to use and it takes longer to use it than typing out an ATC instruction by text through VRC without an alias. That alone, to me, makes it undesirable and why I never used it more than twice.

This is exactly why I don't use it.

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Surely we should be aiming towards a real world replica. I presume its design is very ergonomic.

[Kirk Christie]

Generally controller support is well covered.

 

What is needed is more pilot support, however the, the likes of aerosoft and pmdg are not interested, I asked the question on the aerosoft forums and they told me not enough people used it, I came back with how can people use it if it's not available, they then shut me down and said, they will implement what ever vatsim makes, in other words they have no intention of using hoppies, the limitation of using what ever vatsim makes is that it's limited to the members of this network only. At this stGe vatsim has never indicated a CPDLC infrastructure for the network.