Aircraft labels VATSpy/SimAware

[Florian Mooijaart]

Hi all,

Question: When I fly, my entire equipment list is visible behind my AC designator, instead of only the AC type.
FE: my AC line is B748/H-SDE2FGHIJ1J2J3J4J5M1P2RWXYZ/SB1D1G1, but others are just B748/H-

Is there a way to change that to just the designator and wake catagory?

Thanks!

Florian

[Evan Reiter]

Recently, VATSIM updated the online flight planning capability allowing for pilots to file ICAO flight plans (now used in most countries for IFR and VFR flight plans) instead of FAA-style flight plans. If you are interested in some background on how/why this happened: 

Unfortunately, many of the clients (including VatSPY) haven't received a corresponding update. As a result, equipment information you showed above is transmitted and appears as you've seen it. Personally, I don't think it reflects well on the network. And it's a major issue for controllers who use VRC, vSTARS, or vERAM. 

The only workarounds I am familiar with are to use your pilot client (like vPilot) to transmit a flight plan using the old FAA-style form, or use VATSIM's previous prefile tool. As far as I know, using prefile form from myVATSIM will mean your full equipment information is transmitted like this. 

(We're all hoping VATSIM comes up with a fix or more information for us but thus far it doesn't seem that further actions is pending.)

[Kirk Christie]

On 12/11/2020 at 6:19 AM, Evan Reiter said:

(We're all hoping VATSIM comes up with a fix or more information for us but thus far it doesn't seem that further actions is pending.)

The fix would be from the developers of the clients, to update their software to allign with the new network protocols. Clients aren't developed by VATSIM, therefore VATSIM is not responsible for "a fix". In the post you shared, they had made a work around to force legacy FAA equipment codes to aircraft that filed a flight plan to an airport with an ICAO code for areas that still operate under FAA codes. 

[Ross Carlson]

1 hour ago, Kirk Christie said:

The fix would be from the developers of the clients, to update their software to allign with the new network protocols.

This was not a protocol change. Rather, it was a change in how one particular data source (namely, the flight plan pre-file form) formatted one of the fields in the existing protocol. (Namely, the equipment code field in the flight plan packet.) This broke some existing clients and some existing consumers of the data feed.

1 hour ago, Kirk Christie said:

Clients aren't developed by VATSIM, therefore VATSIM is not responsible for "a fix".

VATSIM is responsible for this formatting change, therefore they are responsible for the fix.

There has been some discussion among client developers and the VATSIM tech team about the appropriate long-term solution, and that will likely involve sending the equipment code in FAA format to all clients and data feed consumers unless they explicitly request it in ICAO format. This will provide backward compatibility for all existing software and an upgrade path for any developers that wish to use the ICAO format.