New Prefile Page/Website

[Dhruv Kalra]

47 minutes ago, Christoph Reule said:

I'm sure there are technical solutions for this. E. g. only displaying the wake turbulence category, RVSM approval (code: W), GNSS availability (code: G), PBN availability (code: R) and surveillance equipment, and "hiding" the rest in a context menu "FPL lookup" ? In above screenshot, this would shorten "B738/M-SDE2E3FGHIRWXY/LB1" to "B738/M-RW/L"...

Just thoughts, of course.

The technical solution is to convert either server or client side back to an FAA single character suffix letter, which is what the real system does.

VATGOV and Ross have been provided the information regarding this.

[Matt Bozwood-Davies]

Hi everyone

I've spoken to a couple of people in the loop already but want to clarify for everyone else's benefit as transparency is critical at this point. 

There was some disconnect in information in how clients would support this and I apologise to those, especially in the US, as to how this has impacted you.

Modernising the network is a big thing for everyone, we all want flashy new things and to get there takes baby steps. This was meant to be one of them but hasn't gone quite as well as we might have hoped 😞

Obviously we need to find a solution, even just a temporary one and I will be working with the web team to get this done ASAP until a longer term solution can be found. It's likely that this will be released tomorrow and will for any K***/PH**/PA** airport in the flightplan, will convert from the ICAO to ERAM format utilised by the US and I will post here once that's been complete.

 

Matt

 

[Dhruv Kalra]

34 minutes ago, Matt Bozwood-Davies said:

Hi everyone

I've spoken to a couple of people in the loop already but want to clarify for everyone else's benefit as transparency is critical at this point. 

There was some disconnect in information in how clients would support this and I apologise to those, especially in the US, as to how this has impacted you.

Modernising the network is a big thing for everyone, we all want flashy new things and to get there takes baby steps. This was meant to be one of them but hasn't gone quite as well as we might have hoped 😞

Obviously we need to find a solution, even just a temporary one and I will be working with the web team to get this done ASAP until a longer term solution can be found. It's likely that this will be released tomorrow and will for any K***/PH**/PA** airport in the flightplan, will convert from the ICAO to ERAM format utilised by the US and I will post here once that's been complete.

 

Matt

 

Don’t forget the multitude of 3- and 4-digit alphanumeric US airports that don’t necessarily start with “K”!

[Kyle Weber]

41 minutes ago, Matt Bozwood-Davies said:

 ...will for any K***/PH**/PA** airport in the flightplan...

 

PG** as well please, or as Dhruv pointed out, the variety of alphanumeric airports in the US.

[Kirk Christie]

On 8/22/2020 at 4:32 AM, Dhruv Kalra said:

but frankly from an ATC training perspective in the USA, we shouldn’t have to go through this.

This is a bit of a poor me post. The entire global vatsim community has been using the same FAA codes for the last 20 years. Non USA training departments have had to train their ATC to a non local standard for that time, with little to no complaints.

 

Euroscope has no option for ICAO codes, given that it was designed and released in the last 20 years with very little indication of VATSIM moving to ICAO, it was likely never on the cards. No such software as vTAATS, I assume you mean vatsys? which has been in build for close to 3 years, again has been designed around the FAA system that is currently in place, while it has received an update to deal with ICAO, no doubt it will have to be bilingual to deal with people still filing legacy flight plan codes.

 

 

What will be the outcome for flights that depart from K*** PH** and PA** airfields but arrive at an ICAO airfiled? 

[Kirk Christie]

According to one response here since AUG 2019, FAA codes have been abolishied in the USA anyway. Time to move forward, rather than staying in position and hold.

[Dhruv Kalra]

1 hour ago, Kirk Christie said:

According to one response here since AUG 2019, FAA codes have been abolishied in the USA anyway. Time to move forward, rather than staying in position and hold.

I assure you that they haven’t been abolished on the ATC side. All controller-facing flight plan information at FAA facilities still has single character suffixes.

Yes, filing ICAO flight plans is now mandatory in the US, but the automation still runs them through a translation process. Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% in favor of moving to ICAO FPLs on VATSIM, and I wasn’t trying to be a stick in the mud about it. That being said, controllers in the US don’t actively get fed ICAO data. I have to dive 3 menus deep in the automation to get at ICAO equipment, and even then it’s not presented as the combined string.

[Daniel Roesen]

The problem is not moving to ICAO format (quite the opposite - FINALLY), but doing so grossly uncoordinated without any public announcement with a reasonable pre-warning time. That gave a lot (most, almost all?) of developers zero chance to prepare their software for that change. And we now have to live with the fallout:

etc.

That was unnecessary. It's not that it was all too urgent now to rush this out in hush-hush mode... or am I missing something?

On 8/23/2020 at 12:53 AM, Dhruv Kalra said:

The technical solution is to convert either server or client side back to an FAA single character suffix letter, which is what the real system does.

"The real system"? Which one? The world is more than "the USA", even if VATSIM continues to ignore that little detail again and again (see the new pilot training guides "based on FAA" instead of ICAO rules).

On 8/23/2020 at 12:53 AM, Dhruv Kalra said:

VATGOV and Ross have been provided the information regarding this.

I'd love to see a statistical breakdown (that VATSIM certainly has) about ATC client usage on the network... It's not just "Ross" software for sure. Has "Gergely" (author of the "most popular ATC client on the network, EuroScope" - cite from https://www.vatsim.net/air-traffic-control/software) been warned in advance?

Regards,
Daniel

 

[Robert Grant]

On 8/23/2020 at 6:53 AM, Ryan Parry said:

There is a button in the upper right that says "Process ICAO FPL". You can paste your ICAO flight plan from PFPX or Simbrief and it puts everything where it needs to go. Pretty intuitive in my opinion.

Ive just tried to do this and for me it does not work.

I created an FPL in PFPX and exported it to the usual places. I then pressed the blue button that says IMPORT ICAO FPL (not process). When I pressed that import button I was presented with a fpl I have never seen before SHT8 something. None of my PFPX FPLs were available to me to import. On that plan presented there is a button PROCESS which I pressed to see what would happen . Nothing did.
I assume this is why I am getting the 308 Permanent redirect when I try to pre file an FPL through PFPX.

If this feature is now implemented then the implementation process leaves much to be desired.

Also I do not know why the tag line Visit PCflyer .net is on my post. Please disregard it.

Edited August 25, 2020 at 06:33 AM by Robert Grant

[Koen Meier]

32 minutes ago, Robert Grant said:

Ive just tried to do this and for me it does not work.

I created an FPL in PFPX and exported it to the usual places. I then pressed the blue button that says IMPORT ICAO FPL (not process). When I pressed that import button I was presented with a fpl I have never seen before SHT8 something. None of my PFPX FPLs were available to me to import. On that plan presented there is a button PROCESS which I pressed to see what would happen . Nothing did.
I assume this is why I am getting the 308 Permanent redirect when I try to pre file an FPL through PFPX.

If this feature is now implemented then the implementation process leaves much to be desired.

Also I do not know why the tag line Visit PCflyer .net is on my post. Please disregard it.

It is just a ghost text to show you what you should look for. The prefile through pfpx sends you to the old page so that must not redirect properly. 

[Robert Grant]

correct it doesnt.

so can you tell me what URL I need to have pfpx redirect me to the new pre file site?

[Koen Meier]

6 minutes ago, Robert Grant said:

correct it doesnt.

so can you tell me what URL I need to have pfpx redirect me to the new pre file site?

this is something for the pfpx devs to fix with regards to implementing the new link.

[Oliver Branaschky]

One other thing, which, granted, is a minor issue but an issue nonetheless: According to ICAO, in the Altitude field (item 15) we should be able to enter i) Axxx for altitudes in ft MSL, ii) Fxxx for flight levels, iii) Mxxx for metric altitudes, iv) Sxxxx for metric flight levels, and last but not least "VFR" for VFR flights. Even the FAA has acknowledged this ICAO rule 😉

Quote

ENTER the planned cruising level for the first or the whole portion of the route to be flown, in terms of:

Flight level, expressed as F followed by 3 figures (for example, F085; F330), or

*Standard Metric Level in tens of meters, expressed as S followed by 4 figures (for example, S1130), or

Altitude in hundreds of feet, expressed as A followed by 3 figures (for example, A045; A100), or

Altitude in tens of meters, expressed as M followed by 4 figures (for example, M0840), or

for uncontrolled VFR flights, the letters VFR.

(Source: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/fs_html/appendix_a.html#:~:text=ITEM 15%3A ROUTE&text=True Mach number%2C when so,(for example%2C M082).&text=for uncontrolled VFR flights%2C the,by the appropriate ATS authorities.)

Right now, we can only enter figures, which simply isn't correct for any of the above cases. I would appreciate if this could be fixed.

All the best,

Oliver

Edited August 25, 2020 at 03:06 PM by Oliver Branaschky

[Matt Bozwood-Davies]

I'm hoping to have the fix out tonight. It's just going through some more testing before we release it publicly.

To cover a few of the other points that have been raised since:

On 8/23/2020 at 2:01 AM, Kirk Christie said:

What will be the outcome for flights that depart from K*** PH** and PA** airfields but arrive at an ICAO airfiled? 

Here's the challenge. Trying to appease to one part of the world while then damaging the other parts. No body can win and it will take both client and server updates for us to be able to move to a global ICAO based solution. 

 

15 hours ago, Daniel Roesen said:

I'd love to see a statistical breakdown (that VATSIM certainly has) about ATC client usage on the network

Another thing we are trying to pull data on for other purposes and there's no reason not to share this information once we have it ourselves.

 

11 hours ago, Koen Meier said:

I created an FPL in PFPX and exported it to the usual places. I then pressed the blue button that says IMPORT ICAO FPL (not process). When I pressed that import button I was presented with a fpl I have never seen before SHT8 something. None of my PFPX FPLs were available to me to import. On that plan presented there is a button PROCESS which I pressed to see what would happen . Nothing did.
I assume this is why I am getting the 308 Permanent redirect when I try to pre file an FPL through PFPX.

This as noted in the post below is a placeholder text. With the update for the flight plans tonight I have lightened it up slightly so that it's in line with the rest of the inputs. You can just copy the same section of text from your generated OFP and paste it in. We have reached out to PFPX to see if they can update the links but have heard nothing back. We will in the future automatically redirect anything going to the old prefiler to the new one, prepopulate the correct inputs on the new prefiler so you can then just hit go.

 

3 hours ago, Oliver Branaschky said:

Right now, we can only enter figures, which simply isn't correct for any of the above cases. I would appreciate if this could be fixed.

This is a limitation of the current server software and one that we certainly want to overcome. We have plans to rewrite the server to fix and improve a lot of things, this is also one of them so watch this space.

[Robert Grant]

7 hours ago, Matt Bozwood-Davies said:

 

This as noted in the post below is a placeholder text. With the update for the flight plans tonight I have lightened it up slightly so that it's in line with the rest of the inputs. You can just copy the same section of text from your generated OFP and paste it in. We have reached out to PFPX to see if they can update the links but have heard nothing back. We will in the future automatically redirect anything going to the old prefiler to the new one, prepopulate the correct inputs on the new prefiler so you can then just hit go.

 

 

Retrospect is a wondrous think but really this should have been done for kickoff on day one and I think a lot of angst would have been avoided, knowing devs do take time to catch up.

SO. Can this redirct be done as a matter of urgency NOW and not later please? I think that fix would make life a lot easier for all until a proper staged implementation can be done.

[Andrew Martz]

Something appears to have been "fixed" on this. Now, on VATTASTIC, my equipment suffix isn't showing up as the long string of ICAO letters. It converted to simply /B... which is still wrong. I don't know how the logic needs to work, I'm not a programmer by any means, but there should be some logic where you put in all of your ICAO codes, and it spits out your equipment suffix, just like the FAA system. 

[Koen Meier]

17 minutes ago, Andrew Martz said:

Something appears to have been "fixed" on this. Now, on VATTASTIC, my equipment suffix isn't showing up as the long string of ICAO letters. It converted to simply /B... which is still wrong. I don't know how the logic needs to work, I'm not a programmer by any means, but there should be some logic where you put in all of your ICAO codes, and it spits out your equipment suffix, just like the FAA system. 

with the new prefile system we are essentially moving away from the old faa based pre file system. now the problem is every software is now built around that old system and needs to be updated. something might have been fixed on the side of vattastic if it didnt show up on other maps.

[Eric Fisher]

On 8/25/2020 at 8:37 AM, Koen Meier said:

this is something for the pfpx devs to fix with regards to implementing the new link.

That will never happen then. I am pretty sure PFPX is now abandoned-ware. 

[Robert Grant]

8 hours ago, Eric Fisher said:

That will never happen then. I am pretty sure PFPX is now abandoned-ware. 

Im not so certain Eric. I have had email contact with the dev recently regarding a couple of issues. Last they had been hacked and were working to fix that issu.

[Kirk Christie]

14 hours ago, Andrew Martz said:

Something appears to have been "fixed" on this. Now, on VATTASTIC, my equipment suffix isn't showing up as the long string of ICAO letters. It converted to simply /B... which is still wrong. I don't know how the logic needs to work, I'm not a programmer by any means, but there should be some logic where you put in all of your ICAO codes, and it spits out your equipment suffix, just like the FAA system. 

Whos online pages like vattastic are devolved by 3rd party groups, they just pull data from the vatsim data server and display it, they need to make the changes. It is also highly likely that some one changed your equipment code. 

[Lance Williams]

I just file my FP via vPilot or xPilot - - never even noticed an updated prefile page... Seem like a lot more hassle than just filing via the client.

[Koen Meier]

52 minutes ago, Lance Williams said:

I just file my FP via vPilot or xPilot - - never even noticed an updated prefile page... Seem like a lot more hassle than just filing via the client.

if you use simbrief for example then all the fields are pre filled with the data which makes it very easy. 

[Lance Williams]

1 hour ago, Koen Meier said:

if you use simbrief for example then all the fields are pre filled with the data which makes it very easy. 

I do use Simbrief - - have never prefiled (or should say, very rarely prefile) on VATSIM. I just don't see a need for it when I can simply copy the flight plan into vPilot and hit "file FP" in a matter of seconds.

[Koen Meier]

31 minutes ago, Lance Williams said:

I do use Simbrief - - have never prefiled (or should say, very rarely prefile) on VATSIM. I just don't see a need for it when I can simply copy the flight plan into vPilot and hit "file FP" in a matter of seconds.

when you prefile now you dont need to file in vpilot again.

[Lance Williams]

33 minutes ago, Koen Meier said:

when you prefile now you dont need to file in vpilot again.

Yes, but that's just another step, outside the sim. I have to open vPilot as it is, when flying, so why file on a web site when I can do it in game, while already opening vPilot as it is? I guess we all have our own, specific way of doing things and using vPilot to file is simply faster and less things to do outside of the sim, in web browsers, which I try to keep to a minimum. 

That said, glad to see VATSIM's updates as long as they don't cause issues such as the ridiculously long equipment code on radar clients, LOL!