Dynamic sectors within Euroscope

[Paul McDyer]

This is maybe a slightly wild request as I am pretty sure the majority of the world have static sectors which makes the request redundant to them but with free route airspace (FRA), it is becoming more and more common especially in Europe. For some time now, the Shannon FIR (EISN) has employed dynamic sectors due to FRA and the varying traffic loads entering and exiting the ocean. I believe that the example I will explain below applies only to Ireland but some other FIRs have a varying option with regards dynamic sectors.

How the Shannon FIR works:

The chart below shows each individual sector above FL245 with the EISN FIR. Taking the most northern sector name 1AS/1AU. This is actually two sectors. The "S" and "U" represent "Super" and "Upper" respectively. Upper owns FL245-355 and Super owns FL355+. This applies to all the mini sectors or rather "LFUNCs". With the current functionality of Euroscope, these sectors are permanently assigned to a specific ownership hierarchy in our .ese file.

Now I know sector ownership of individual sectors can be changed via the "Sector Ownership Setup" but unfortunately this is fixed to the sector identifier. This means, if we change the ownership for one of the LFUNCs it will change all ownership for all LFUNCs which fall under that sector identifier which is not my goal. For example, ideally we would like to be able to lets say change the ownership of the sector 1DS/1DU (the bottom green sector) from NOTA to West (the purple sector) which would leave NOTA with the top 3 LFUNCs. 

If it came to it that all controllers have to click a few buttons to change the ownership I suppose that would work okay but a "coordinator" ability would be excellent. Basically, one person dedicated to figuring our sector ownerships would push the change and all controllers who are online would notice the change automatically.

My ignorance to how the backend of Euroscope works and how it is coded, does not give me any sort of idea how big a task like this would take to implement, but it would highly enhance the realism for not only our controllers in Ireland but also for those within vACCs that also utilize dynamic sector.

What I do understand is that all of these sectors and ownerships are defined in the .ese file and would maybe be difficult for Euroscope to bypass this "hard-coded" information but seen as coordination through the track label is possible between two different instances of Euroscope maybe information like this is somewhat possible through the current architecture of Euroscope/VATSIM. 

If changes of ownership can bypass the .ese file (or rather edit the .ese live without user interference)  it would also possibly solve the issue of ensuring our neighbor's Euroscope instances are aware of the sector change.

So I suppose, the short version of what I am asking is...is a task of this nature possible through Euroscope and if so what potential problems could creep up and if possible would Euroscope Developers be willing to take on such a project. 

I hope I have explained what I am asking clearly but if not feel free to ask a few questions to clarify.

[Bernardo Reis]

This would indeed be a great feature.

In Portugal we have similar needs, where chaging the controller who owns the sector or the altitude split of the sectors would greatly enhance our capacity.

We have alternate ownership settings but those are not synced between controllers, which is a big handicap.

[Mateusz Zymla]

While extensive sector inner logic seems to be rather untouchable, I guess, that at least secondary ownership, cross-controller ownership sync or at least more convenient sector ownership changes (based on premade configs) could be done.

It all requires @Gergely Csernakopinion, of course.

 

And, I do not get why changing ownership of 1D is not currently possible. Just divide your LFUNCs as per these sectors and 4 of them would be covered by NOTA by default by ese. Don't do one big sector for NOTA.

Basically, one person dedicated to figuring our sector ownerships would push the change and all controllerswho are online would notice the change automatically.

How do you technically imagine this, especially if only 1 sector is online, and/or coordinator is offline, which is most of the case?

Edited March 4, 2022 at 09:47 PM by Mateusz Zymla

[Paul McDyer]

With regards the "coordinator position" in theory it could be anyone who is logged onto EISN_[X]_CTR. I would trust all our C1 controllers to figure it out for themselves. If only one sector is online they would by default own everything and if a second was to log-on, both would be able to change the ownership but internally they would decide who is in charge of changing things.

To confirm we have each LFUNC defined separately. The example below is NOTA Upper:

SECTOR:SNN:05500:35500
OWNER:SNN:SNW:SNE
BORDER:1AS/1AU

SECTOR:SNN:05500:35500
OWNER:SNN:SNW:SNE
BORDER:1BS/1BU

SECTOR:SNN:05500:35500
OWNER:SNN:SNW:SNE
BORDER:1CS/1CU

SECTOR:SNN:05500:35500
OWNER:SNN:SNW:SNE
BORDER:1DS/1DU

*The border is named after both the upper and super sector as both share the same coordinates but the super sector is defined elsewhere.*

Basically what I would like to see happen is that Euroscope can bypass the .ese and remove SNN from the ownership for 1DS. The only issue with that would be if we wanted to assign the ownership of 1DS to a sector that is not defined in the ownership hierarchy. So for example if SNW is not online and SNS (which is the southern sector) has control of all SNW LFUNCs, the ability to assign SNS the ownership of 1DS without actually having to edit the .ese file.

 

[Marvin Palmer]

Break them into different sectors...think of them as stacked boxes, and you tell which one owns it by position name(id)...

In your example above...you need to make the sector name different.

example:
SECTOR:SNN-1AS:05500:35500
OWNER:
BORDER:1AS/1AU

SECTOR:SNN-1AU:35500:99000
OWNER:
BORDER:1AS/1AU

SECTOR:SNN-1BS:05500:35500
OWNER:
BORDER:1BS/1BU

SECTOR:SNN-1BU:35500:99000
OWNER:
BORDER:1BS/1BU

...ETC... doing the same for 1CS/1CU and 1DS/1DU

so, above is 2 sectors each for 1AS/1AU and 1BS/1BU (etc). this is to define lateral space 5500 to 35500 and 35500 to INF
If you are trying to split the "1AS/1AU" into West and East...you will need to define a "sectorline" and add it to the border.

This creates a larger file, but it will be automated once your done.

Now, the OWNER needs to define the rule of priority...first ID is the ultimate owner

SNN is controlling...owns all
SNU logins in, and assumes the Upper sector (350-UNL)...just an example.

SECTOR:SNN-1AS:05500:35500
OWNER:SNN
BORDER:1AS/1AU

SECTOR:SNN-1AU:35500:99000
OWNER:SNU:SNN
BORDER:1AS/1AU

 

Edited March 7, 2022 at 03:45 PM by DIsplay Name
bolded the sector names

[Harry Sugden]

Sorry Marvin, but you've missed the point. That requires hard coding into the .ese and sending it around to controllers before they log on, which isn't what Paul has asked for 😉

We have a similar 'flexible' area in Scottish between two sectors that is switched between the controllers real world depending on where the traffic flow sits on that day. You can't do this on VATSIM without sending round an .ese update or changing the sector ownership manually.

I do understand though that this would be a significant technical challenge to not only sync up home controllers, but to be able to sync up with other FIR's sector files as well... we might have named the sectors completely different things!

[Mateusz Zymla]

19 hours ago, Harry Sugden said:

I do understand though that this would be a significant technical challenge to not only sync up home controllers, but to be able to sync up with other FIR's sector files as well... we might have named the sectors completely different things!

You also need to consider, that there's no real station supervisor there to decide, whether given portion of airspace shall be allocated to one or another. You're equally ranked controllers on the network so it sould not be really possible that one is overriding the other. I hope you get my point.

[Bernardo Reis]

1 hour ago, Mateusz Zymla said:

You also need to consider, that there's no real station supervisor there to decide, whether given portion of airspace shall be allocated to one or another. You're equally ranked controllers on the network so it sould not be really possible that one is overriding the other. I hope you get my point.

I get your point but I don't think it would be an issue 90% of the time.

[Jonas Kuster]

Wouldn't alternative ownerships exactly fulfill the purpose? You can prepare them in advance, then the controllers need to agree what division they want to use and activate the corresponding alternative ownership. This can even be given a name and configurations can be prepared in files, so it's just selecting the same config for both controllers and they are setup.

[Bernardo Reis]

26 minutes ago, Jonas Kuster said:

Wouldn't alternative ownerships exactly fulfill the purpose? You can prepare them in advance, then the controllers need to agree what division they want to use and activate the corresponding alternative ownership. This can even be given a name and configurations can be prepared in files, so it's just selecting the same config for both controllers and they are setup.

The problem is that they are not synced between controllers. And neighbor facilities would have to incorporate alternate ownership settings, because I don't think that this comes in GNG? (Correct me if I'm wrong Jonas)

 

Anyway, the fact that every controller has to change it is not ideal.

Plus, what Paul was specifically talking would lead to thousands of alternate ownership settings, because of the enormous sector configs you can have.

Edited March 21, 2022 at 09:01 PM by Bernardo Reis

[Jonas Kuster]

Ownerships are never synced with ES, it's purely taken from the local ESE file. But if the two controllers need to agree on the split anyway, both of them requiring to select the "right" ownership locally does not really increase their workload. Because if you could "steal" airspace from another controller and directly influencing his ownership, who would be the master for this?

[Federico Handl]

I don't think there needs to be a 'master' at all. The agreement can be reached by the two controllers swapping sectors. Controller A initiates coordination to take over LFUNC BX from Controller B, Controller B can either accept or reject the proposal, and if accepted, the ownership is automatically updated for Controllers A, B and bordering neighbour C. Alternatively Controller B can initiate the coordinate for controller A to take LFUNC BX from them, and the rest is the same.

[Torben Andersen]

Can anyone explain the implications of such a scheme, not between Irish controllers internally, but the UK, Shanwick and Icelandic controllers. 

[Bernardo Reis]

7 hours ago, Torben Andersen said:

Can anyone explain the implications of such a scheme, not between Irish controllers internally, but the UK, Shanwick and Icelandic controllers. 

Ideally, if it would all be synced, none, as ES would change dynamically the next sector frequency.

[Torben Andersen]

One thing is ideal, another is reality. If Irish controllers internally change sectors, how does Euroscope know, to which sector a plane is to be handed over to, as this kind of dynamic is non-existent now and presumeably in an unforseeable future? Sorry for my ignorance on the inner working of Euroscope.

[Bernardo Reis]

3 hours ago, Torben Andersen said:

One thing is ideal, another is reality. If Irish controllers internally change sectors, how does Euroscope know, to which sector a plane is to be handed over to, as this kind of dynamic is non-existent now and presumeably in an unforseeable future? Sorry for my ignorance on the inner working of Euroscope.

Right now it's not possible, and would be limited to intra-country resectorization. However, this post is about the feature request to make it non-impactant to other controllers, so 😅

[Mathias Jacobs-Anseeuw]

Is it a possibility to give the sector that's swapped around gets its own frequency, and neighbouring sectors always hand off to that frequency? Then, whoever controls the airspace at the time, simply enables it in AFV?

Edited March 22, 2022 at 07:58 PM by Mathias Jacobs-Anseeuw 116

[Federico Handl]

2 hours ago, Mathias Jacobs-Anseeuw 116 said:

Is it a possibility to give the sector that's swapped around gets its own frequency, and neighbouring sectors always hand off to that frequency? Then, whoever controls the airspace at the time, simply enables it in AFV?

That'd mean over 60 new frequencies for EISN alone, and controllers covering all the LFUNCs would need to manually cross-couple all of them. I don't think that's the best solution

[Mateusz Zymla]

On 3/21/2022 at 10:25 PM, Jonas Kuster said:

Ownerships are never synced with ES, it's purely taken from the local ESE file. But if the two controllers need to agree on the split anyway, both of them requiring to select the "right" ownership locally does not really increase their workload. Because if you could "steal" airspace from another controller and directly influencing his ownership, who would be the master for this?

Also, with GNG style, it would often required changing multiple ese sectors.