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vATIS: Intermittent Voice Broadcast & Outdated METAR Information


Evan Reiter
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Evan Reiter
Posted
Posted

Over the past several months, we have seen several examples of inconsistent behavior from vATIS. This seems to affect controllers at all levels and at multiple facilities within ZBW. We routinely get reports from pilots and need to restart vATIS on a fairly regular basis over the course of a long session.

The issues are as follows: 

  1.  After an hour or so, it seems vATIS will stop broadcasting the "voice" portion of a non-recorded ATIS. The "TX ATIS" button remains selected and the "TX" light is on, but nobody can hear the audio (myself included). A restart of vATIS is required to re-enable the voice functionality. 
  2.  vATIS will occasionally update to a METAR from several hours ago. For example, ATIS is currently A. vATIS updates to ATIS B but with a METAR from 12 hours ago. A few minutes later, vATIS updates again to ATIS C with the correct time and weather. 

I've seen a few of these reported here and there across these forums and have heard a variety of answers from "it's a server issue" to "it's an AFV issue" to "it's a vATIS issue". I am hoping that @Justin Shannon and/or the VATSIM network team is already aware of these two points and can identify for us whether a fix is in process. Or, if these are new/unreported issues, I'd be happy to help with troubleshooting.

As always, I'm very appreciative of the work that volunteers do to maintain our network and provide great ATC clients for our use. I hope this post helps to consolidate a few issues and perhaps points us on the right track to resolution if in fact these issues affect other controllers.

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Evan Reiter
Boston Virtual ARTCC/ZBW Community Manager

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Evan Reiter
Posted
Posted

Hi everyone, just following up on this thread.

Have other facilities experienced this issue or is it just us in ZBW? 

Is vATIS' developer aware of any of this? 

Is VATSIM aware of any of this?

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Evan Reiter
Boston Virtual ARTCC/ZBW Community Manager

 

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Alex Amorianos
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I have occasionally experienced the No. 2 issue but I strongly believe it's a server issue and has nothing to do with vATIS.

Alex

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Jeremy Peterson
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Some controllers at ZNY noticed this today. 

Jeremy Peterson (HP)
VATUSA Command Center National Operations Manager (NOM)/VATUSA9
[email protected] or [email protected]

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Justin Shannon
Posted
Posted
On 10/12/2020 at 6:26 AM, Evan Reiter said:

After an hour or so, it seems vATIS will stop broadcasting the "voice" portion of a non-recorded ATIS. The "TX ATIS" button remains selected and the "TX" light is on, but nobody can hear the audio (myself included). A restart of vATIS is required to re-enable the voice functionality. 

I’ve personally have not experienced this while using vATIS. However, I will see what I can do about detecting if the voice drops and appropriately restarting it. I have no estimate of when this will happen, however.
 

On 10/12/2020 at 6:26 AM, Evan Reiter said:

vATIS will occasionally update to a METAR from several hours ago. For example, ATIS is currently A. vATIS updates to ATIS B but with a METAR from 12 hours ago. A few minutes later, vATIS updates again to ATIS C with the correct time and weather. 

Out of sync or expired METARs is a network problem, not a vATIS problem. 

Controller (C3), Los Angeles ARTCC
Developer: xPilot, vATIS

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Evan Reiter
Posted
Posted

Thanks Justin! 

@Dhruv Kalra 1182570tells me "ATIS voice dropouts are a known issue with AFV servers - that issue isn’t isolated to vATIS. Euroscope has the same issue. That’s high up their fix list, but afaik the AFV dev team hasn’t been able to nail down the issue as yet."

Perhaps you are already aware but I thought I'd pass on his note.

23 hours ago, Justin Shannon said:

I’ve personally have not experienced this while using vATIS. However, I will see what I can do about detecting if the voice drops and appropriately restarting it. I have no estimate of when this will happen, however.

I think that would help tremendously. For what it's worth, it isn't immediately obvious that the voice drops. You would have to be monitoring it and/or have a pilot report that the voice isn't working. In my case, when I'm on position for 2-3 hours, I'll occasionally monitor the voice ATIS through AFV toward the end of the session and that's normally when I see it's dropped voice broadcast. 

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Evan Reiter
Boston Virtual ARTCC/ZBW Community Manager

 

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  • 1 month later...
Andrew Doubleday
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Posted

This is still happening on a fairly consistent basis where the voice portion drops out. Any word on a solution?

Regards,

Andrew James Doubleday | Twitch Stream: Ground_Point_Niner

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  • 3 weeks later...
Fabian Gilgen
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Controlling in LSAS i can agree to both issues. But as far as i could reconstruct it, it has few to nothing to do with vATIS. 2) is proven to be serverside. As ES itself downloads the wrong METARS every once in a while. I didn't have this issue with either ES nor vATIS in the last few sessions.

1) *could* have partially to do with vATIS, but, again, i highly doubt it. Whenever vATIS stops working i fall back on ES ATIS. I can not say this for a 100% sure, but my observation is, that, whenever the vATIS wont voice-out, neither will ES ATIS.

and it has most probably got to do with VATSIMs TTS daemon for some reason (which i have no clue at all, i'm just a user 🙂 ) not doing what it should.

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Matthew Wurzbach
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Posted

This is still an issue. Controlling the last two days I have been unable to get the voice side of D-ATIS to transmit at all. Any chance we could get some update or reply from the powers that be about this?

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Dhruv Kalra
Posted
Posted

I'm 99% sure this is an AFV server side issue over being a vATIS issue since it affects all clients that can publish voice ATIS.

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Dhruv Kalra

VATUSA ZMP ATM | Instructor | VATSIM Network Supervisor

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  • 1 month later...
Fabian Gilgen
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Posted

Unfortunately i could not yet find a Statement from the "officials" towards this issue. I may have missed it, and would be glad if there was anyone who can throw me a stone in the right direction (i tried googling already 😜 )...

It's not so much about a "yeah it will be fixed tomorrow" but more of a "yep we have noticed the issue and are working on finding / have found / have no clue yet where to find the issue".

Just hoping for some information on what's happening on the staff side, in this context.. 🙂

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  • 4 weeks later...
Nicholas Camperos
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Posted
On 1/24/2021 at 10:35 AM, Fabian Gilgen said:

Unfortunately i could not yet find a Statement from the "officials" towards this issue. I may have missed it, and would be glad if there was anyone who can throw me a stone in the right direction (i tried googling already 😜 )...

It's not so much about a "yeah it will be fixed tomorrow" but more of a "yep we have noticed the issue and are working on finding / have found / have no clue yet where to find the issue".

Just hoping for some information on what's happening on the staff side, in this context.. 🙂

Yeah this would be nice, I am yet to see any actual statement on it. vAtis is a big pain for me, thing decides to work some weeks, decides to not some others.

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  • 5 months later...
Fritz Eisler
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Posted

Any news on this?

Could not find it 😉

From my side, got into the habit of disconnecting/reconnecting ATIS every time ATIS-letter changes (traffic/time permitting) . . that helps a little 😉

 

 

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