Multiple Requested Features

[Krikor Hajian]

Based off a tour of the A90 Boston Consolidated TRACON today, I have a couple requested features and some justifications below. I think that adding these will lead to a greatly more immersed experience and allow controllers to more closely align their controlling to that of their real world counterparts.

 

Scratchpads

 

There are two possible scratchpads on the real STARS, both of which we have, but not to the full extent of real world. The plus scratchpad "+" is currently used for only entering temporary altitudes (+030 will enter 030 in the third line of the data block). In the real STARS, you could enter something else, such as GPS or an approach type, or a destination such as RKD, using the method above. If you try +GPS in vERAM, it will enter GPS into the Y scratchpad.

 

The Y scratchpad is in the left of the second line of the data block and alternates with the altitude. This is often used for automatic entries for departures (S220 would be an aircraft fired over SSOXS at FL220).

 

The other thing I'd like to see with the + scratchpad is entering a delta (the little triangle). The real controllers will use this to denote being pulled off the arrival vertically (hard altitude), or two delta's to denote being vectored off. With one or two Delta's in the + scratchpad, the + shows up where it normally does, and the Delta's appear to the right separated by a space.

 

Weather Radar

 

I recognize that this is a contested issue and will result in significantly more development time. While this won't be perfect or 100% correct, it's the general representation that counts. Right now, if I want to give a weather advisory to a pilot, I have to find their position, go to Skyvector (or similar), find where they are, reference wx, and give it to them. The issue of using different weather engines still applies, and now their position is still off. Even in the real world the radars are far from perfect; today during the tour, an aircraft requested to deviate right of a cell and was pulled off the departure. Eventually he requested the turn back to HYLND; but the weather he went through then was the same color on the screen as what he wanted to avoid. Adding this would let controllers add a huge amount of realism to their controlling, and would be a super cool addition.

 

Fusion

 

I realize that actual fusion is not possible due to network limitations. I think it would be cool if a setting was added in the facility config menu to make a facility look like fusion. Really all that I want to see happen here is the symbol changes and the blue circle instead of the rectangle and green beacon return.

 

Mileage in Trail

 

I don't know what this was called, but the final controller had something enabled (that the guy said came up automatically) that was in the bottom left of the third line that displayed the distance the aircraft was behind the preceding aircraft. Not sure what it was called, but would be super useful.

[Nick Warren]

As far as weather overlays go, it was discussed in a pretty lengthy thread just shy of two years ago. It even looked like it may grow some legs, but the conversation stalled out.

 

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=72052&hilit=weather+radar

[Krikor Hajian]

To provide a little more clarity, I found some photos of what I was talking about. Notice the destination in the "plus scratchpad" for N3122U (also the scratchpad entry of P070, which we have on vSTARS already!), as well as the MIT indicators on the aircraft on the 4R approach on the other screenshot. (Side note, check out the wx radar and fusion.... ).

 

Hope this is useful Ross!

 

 

[Krikor Hajian]

Ross, I remembered some additional information in the car today regarding those MIT indicators. It would factor in ground speed, and if the planes were forecast/predicted to have between 3.5 and 3 MIT (may be getting those values wrong), it would turn orange/amber. If it was forecast to drop below 2.5nm (the real world minimum, so we'd want to go with 3 for VATSIM), it would turn red. Hope this helps!

[Ross Carlson]

Any idea how far ahead it predicts the separation for that logic?

[Krikor Hajian]

Unfortunately I'm not sure. I'd guess it does it for any targets that the MIT indicator is showing up for, but I can't say with certainty.

[Ross Carlson]

Yeah, but there must be a time into the future that it looks to see if the spacing is dropping below the threshold before it changes the color. It's probably like 5 or 10 seconds.

[Krikor Hajian]

Maybe, I honestly have no idea what the specific limits of the system are.

[Dhruv Kalra]

ATPA look-ahead is 24 seconds for an orange (alert) and 45 seconds for a yellow (warning) cone display, based on longitudinal separation within an approach monitoring area (very similar to CRDA qualification processing areas, I believe).

[Shane VanHoven]

On 8/18/2018 at 4:48 PM, Ross Carlson said:

Yeah, but there must be a time into the future that it looks to see if the spacing is dropping below the threshold before it changes the color. It's probably like 5 or 10 seconds.

I couldn't help but perceive some sort of interest on this feature, even if it was a couple years ago lol.

I can look into more specifics about ATPA if you would like to incorporate it into a future version of vSTARS. It would be a nice tool for vatsim, however it could be a totally dumbed down version. I could very easily forgive a lack of amber and red color coding, and mileage bats depicting the required separation.

Just a number below the data block would be a helpful tool for use on VATSIM. 

The attached image is an example of the areas where ATPA would be active for each specific runway.