Any plans for XSB to be run via LAN / Remote

[Steve Willis 1027702]

G'gay.

 

Im tending to find the scenery pauses and weather updates on Vatsim are upsetting the balance and performance when flying online. Especially ATC during a scenery pause? ... Just my system maybe?

 

Like with FSINN providing a LAN option. More resources the better for the machine running the sim. It helped bigtime when i was using MSFSX ...was (-:

 

Apologies if this has been mooted already, but X-plane needs all the power it can get, if we could have another PC take up some of the load, it sure would help.

 

Granted these things take time and resources to buid the software, please consider. Asking is easy, building the software is not.(-:

As it stands, XSquawkbox is great for how neatly if works in the sim. Anything to give resources back to the sim would be a boost.

 

Thanks.

[Wade Williams 877539]

I'm confused - what does the LAN option of FSInn do?

[Steve Willis 1027702]

I'm confused - what does the LAN option of FSInn do?

 

G'day

 

LAN ( PC's networked via cross over cable /ethernet adaptors etc.) I have old bunky PC connected to main sim PC.

 

With FSINN, you would install it on the PC running the sim, and install it on another computer on a LAN.

 

The computer not running the flight sim, does all the cpu work etc and just uses FSINN on the sim pc to connect to the sim. The weather processing, ATC and traffic ( CPU resources ) are taken away from the PC running the sim, and moved over the Remote LAN PC. Gave a real big FPS increase back in the FSX days.

 

Same principe would be great with Squawkbox. Have my old bunky take care of running that program, so my PC running the sim can be left to do it's main job, and not have to worry about processing the ATC speech, weather and traffic etc.

 

With FSINN, i would run Vatvoice, Radar, Radio's and Txt on the remote PC and it's sound card. Was a big help and noticable help with performance.

 

With the scenery loading in X-plane, plus the quirky online weather updating and ATC speech ( at the same time ) .. sometimes it's gets a bit messy.

 

The ability to move the load on to another PC would be marvellous. I like how XS just sit's in the background ... no rader screens etc ...the EFIS in the planes shows the traffic, which is realistic and cool and the radios are in the plane you fly. No need to have another set done up like FScopilot does?

 

But resources are resources, having a LAN option would be big help.

[Keith Smith]

Steve, what version of Xplane are you running?

 

If you're talking about v8, the lengthy pause you're experiencing is due to scenery loads. Moving XSB to another machine would have no impact on these pauses.

 

V9 has a more granular scenery architecture, as well as better use of multi-threading, resulting in scenery loads of less than 1 second in most cases.

 

There are no plans that I know of to allow XSB to be run on another machine.

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Steve, what version of Xplane are you running?

 

If you're talking about v8, the lengthy pause you're experiencing is due to scenery loads. Moving XSB to another machine would have no impact on these pauses.

 

V9 has a more granular scenery architecture, as well as better use of multi-threading, resulting in scenery loads of less than 1 second in most cases.

 

There are no plans that I know of to allow XSB to be run on another machine.

 

G'day. V9 i have.

 

Pause is not the right word come to think of it,(-: more like stutters over about 2-3 secs.

 

But im in the SR-71 minimum 400 knots usually, so i guess the scenery updates occur more frequently. Stiill, that's no the point. This does have an impact when atc and weather updates occur at the same time. No often, but it is happend a few times now.

 

XS slows my system when online as did FSINN with FSX.

 

A LAN option, as provided with FSINN was a blessing.

 

It's not just the software CPU load that was removed from the sim PC to the LAN PC, but also the resources to run the modem and extra sounds on the sound card. It all adds up.

 

XSquawkbox desingers??? It would be wise to at least consider the LAN option. In fact, a LAN option would be first on my list, but that's just me(((-: Shame i can't program (-:

 

(-:

 

"There are no plans that I know of to allow XSB to be run on another machine."

 

Next big fly in on Vatsim. 20 odd planes being processed on screen by the same PC running them sim spells trouble. (((-:

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Hello again.

 

Why does XSquawkbox disable X-planes weather features.?? Why can MSFS simmers use FSINN and the covak option, and have the ability to to over ride the Vatsim weather?

 

WE can't.?

 

Vatsim is the best, but the weather irritates. Fly clear skies, then BANG, clouds everywhere and vast change in a flash. Plane reacts to a sudden pressure change and winds etc. Not realistic at all etc ... It taxes the FPS bigtime. We have weather radar on X-plane wich is fantastic, but fat lot of good that is, when the weather just appears out of nowhere. The radaer becomes a gimmick and novelty.

 

Avoid turbulent weather like in reali life.?? Radar is meant to see ahead, but online, it only reads the immediate stations weather loaded on the server .Practically it's rendered usesless if i can't see the storms at the next weather station.

I just got 19FPS at LICT Italy with the weather. ??? 30FPS is the norm in the same skies while offline.? I just don't get it (-:

 

Log off, no point in flying with frames like that. Yes it did that with FSX FSINN, but the covak option was in place so i would utilize it to help with FPS

 

Not with XS?

 

Just curious as to wo why?

 

Unless things have changed, many MSFS flyers i know would set the weather up themselves or use the FS inbuilt weather feature for smoothing.

 

The option of clicking over to Vatsim weather for approach and landing at destination was cool. One sudden weather change is not so bad to put up with as opposed to 15- 20 over Europe.

 

Fine and sunny one second, then cloudy the next is not realistic at all. ( yes i am aware of the weather limitations. Not easy to have smoothing weather online. )

[Wade Williams 877539]

Why does XSquawkbox disable X-planes weather features.??

 

What good would it do for a controller to say "Wind 360 at 25, cleared for the ILS approach, Runway 36" when you're flying in zero wind with perfect visibility? Worse, what if the controller says "Wind Calm, cleared for visual approach, Runway 36" and you have your weather set to 180 at 25 knots with 1/2 mile visibility?

 

 

Radar is meant to see ahead, but online, it only reads the immediate stations weather loaded on the server

 

I don't know the offline X-plane implementation, but it reads the same station-by-station metar information that XSB does.

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Why does XSquawkbox disable X-planes weather features.??

 

What good would it do for a controller to say "Wind 360 at 25, cleared for the ILS approach, Runway 36" when you're flying in zero wind with perfect visibility? Worse, what if the controller says "Wind Calm, cleared for visual approach, Runway 36" and you have your weather set to 180 at 25 knots with 1/2 mile visibility?

 

 

 

 

Radar is meant to see ahead, but online, it only reads the immediate stations weather loaded on the server

 

I don't know the offline X-plane implementation, but it reads the same station-by-station metar information that XSB does.

 

Simple, as i have stated you would click over to the Vatsim weather for (landing and approach ) to make it realistic. Flying online enroute ... the weather is NOT realistic at all on Vatsim .... the limitations of the weather online are noted in most quarters. Vatsim are aware of this, hence the ability to overide the Vatsim weather with the FSINN covak option?? and the ability to utilize the real world weather features contaned in theMSFS sim.

 

It happens with FSINN, WHY not XS and X-plane?????

 

WE should be able to use the X-plane RX file?

 

Again, flying online in clear skies, the BANG, cloudy skies in the span of two seconds is ridiculous. It's not real at all, and always spoils the flight, BUT limitations exists. So be it. I am aware of this ... many are. I go on Vatsim for the ATC, not the weather.(-:

 

But why two sets of rules?

 

 

The station by station method is flawed,, but remains the most practical for online flying ??? From reading, it's sounds like a major project to provide smoothing weather from one station to the next. Very difficult. I do not expect miracles to happen.

 

With X-plane, i still don't know the full set-up with the weather to be honest and how it reads it. BUT it would like to have the option to use it. i Know one thing, the default X-plane weather program is great.

 

MSFS folk can use the inbuilt system, we should too.

 

Sometimes the real world weather is stormy and cloudy and a huge TAX on the CPU ..... it can causes substantial FPS drops to 19 FPS or worse.

 

Landing a plane in a stuttering frame by frame slide show caused sometimes by " CPU hungary" weather changes is equally unrealistic.

 

Give us the option to turn it off. One rule for some and not others is it?

 

I hope not.

[Keith Smith]

Steve,

 

The presence of broken or scattered clouds can be very taxing on xplane's rendering, taking a system that was humming at 40fps down to 19fps and fog in the blink of an eye. Have you tweaked your cloud settings in the rendering options? I run with .5 and .5 for the two cloud ratios and that helps reduce the hit quite a bit.

 

As for rendering 20 other planes, I've attended fly-ins with that many planes and haven't noticed any frame rate hit, using a customized CSL package. The stock CSL used to give me problems with ONE plane sometimes. Something about the textures was making the machine Not Happy.

 

Running xsb on another machine wouldn't help you with the 20-plane issue. If the cost is rendering those planes, then you gain nothing by running XSB on another box, the rendering is still done locally. If the predictive logic for aircraft positioning was taxing the cpu, then maybe you'd gain something from a distributed architecture, but I doubt that's the bottleneck.

 

Do you have a multi core machine? If NOT, then the frequent stutters or pauses could be the scenery loads (which are more frequent in xp9 due to the smaller scenery tiles) which are running in a separate thread on your single core, causing the pauses. I used to get this ALL the time in v8 on my single core box with 'insane' roads. It would pause for 5 secs loading scenery, then stutter for _20_ secs while it built the roads in a background thread. On the dual core box, this is silky smooth.

 

XSB uses the weather for your destination airport once you're within 40 miles of the airport ([Mod - Happy Thoughts]uming you've filed a flight plan to that airport). The weather should be relatively stable once you're approaching your airport. Enroute, it uses the nearest METAR. It does not transition gracefully from one weather state to another, as you've observed, it simply sets the weather to the settings it p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]s from the metar. To see what it's doing, regarding weather, type .debug weather=1 into XSB command window. On the next weather update (every 5 mins, unless you've changed the default), you'll see what it's up to.

 

Lastly, AFAIK, the developer of XSB no longer actively maintains the code. He now works for Laminar Research (company that makes x-plane) and handles the rendering engine and scenery formats. If there is an urgent fix required, I'm sure he'll make it, but the feature you're suggesting would require a significant investment in time.

[Norman Blackburn]

Give us the option to turn it off. One rule for some and not others is it?

 

I hope not.

 

A little melodramatic there Steve.

 

It isn't a rule thing, merely something that is either not possible within X-Plane or that the developer chose not to impliment.

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Steve,

 

The presence of broken or scattered clouds can be very taxing on xplane's rendering, taking a system that was humming at 40fps down to 19fps and fog in the blink of an eye. Have you tweaked your cloud settings in the rendering options? I run with .5 and .5 for the two cloud ratios and that helps reduce the hit quite a bit.

 

As for rendering 20 other planes, I've attended fly-ins with that many planes and haven't noticed any frame rate hit, using a customized CSL package. The stock CSL used to give me problems with ONE plane sometimes. Something about the textures was making the machine Not Happy.

 

Running xsb on another machine wouldn't help you with the 20-plane issue. If the cost is rendering those planes, then you gain nothing by running XSB on another box, the rendering is still done locally. If the predictive logic for aircraft positioning was taxing the cpu, then maybe you'd gain something from a distributed architecture, but I doubt that's the bottleneck.

 

Do you have a multi core machine? If NOT, then the frequent stutters or pauses could be the scenery loads (which are more frequent in xp9 due to the smaller scenery tiles) which are running in a separate thread on your single core, causing the pauses. I used to get this ALL the time in v8 on my single core box with 'insane' roads. It would pause for 5 secs loading scenery, then stutter for _20_ secs while it built the roads in a background thread. On the dual core box, this is silky smooth.

 

XSB uses the weather for your destination airport once you're within 40 miles of the airport ([Mod - Happy Thoughts]uming you've filed a flight plan to that airport). The weather should be relatively stable once you're approaching your airport. Enroute, it uses the nearest METAR. It does not transition gracefully from one weather state to another, as you've observed, it simply sets the weather to the settings it p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]s from the metar. To see what it's doing, regarding weather, type .debug weather=1 into XSB command window. On the next weather update (every 5 mins, unless you've changed the default), you'll see what it's up to.

 

Lastly, AFAIK, the developer of XSB no longer actively maintains the code. He now works for Laminar Research (company that makes x-plane) and handles the rendering engine and scenery formats. If there is an urgent fix required, I'm sure he'll make it, but the feature you're suggesting would require a significant investment in time.

 

G'day.

 

Investment and time. Bingo! Lest we forget it's all free software ladies and gents.

 

That i am aware off. I'm am greatful for what we alreay have.(-:

 

Consider it a future request with the covak option. Is an off switch for Vastim weather that hard to do?

 

I am still learning to tweak X-plane for online flyiing at this stage. BUT , the covak option immediately jumpes to mind as an alternative option when i get the FPS hit's.

 

End of the day Keith, if a fly in a Cessna and not the Sr-71 , perfromance issues would be different i guess.

 

Regardless, give back the option to use the X-plane weather engine. That's all i want.

 

 

Cheers all.

 

 

PS

 

"I run with .5 and .5 for the two cloud ratios and that helps reduce the hit quite a bit."

 

Champion, never thought of that, will give it a go.

[Wade Williams 877539]

It isn't a rule thing, merely something that is either not possible within X-Plane or that the developer chose not to impliment.

 

It's definitely possible - just different developers with different philosophies. Ross can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think VATSIM has any rules on how clients must implement weather.

 

The station by station method is flawed,, but remains the most practical for online flying ???

 

Steve, as far as I know, this is what X-Plane does with the offline weather as well. It gets a metar file, finds the closest station, and loads that data into the weather settings. If for some reason two stations have a m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive delta between their weather (front coming in, broken station, etc) then you'll get a m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive change in weather when it updates.

 

I'm not sure your description of VATSIM constantly changing weather every 2 minutes from sunny to stormy is correct. Sure, we've all had it happen once in a while, but it's not that frequent. I'm not saying VATSIM weather is perfect by any stretch of the imagination - but in my experience, it's rarely a major problem.

 

I am however interested in hearing the thoughts of others on the option to completely disable weather. I have mixed feelings about that. Would it be in the best interest of VATSIM? You can't say "I'd just use the X-plane weather," because once the ability was given to ignore VATSIM weather, you could just turn off X-plane weather and fly around with it bright and sunny as a hurricane came through. Part of me says, "that's fine - choice is good,' but another part of me says, "why should we enable people to disable most of the network features if they're going to fly on the network?" I don't know...

[Brian Ratledge 962606]

Wade, the option to turn off VATSIM weather is already there (kinda). Once you are ready to taxi, you can go in to the xplane weather and set it to CAVOK, then open xsb preferences and change the "update weather every XXX minutes" to 99. We use this in our VFR flying club so that bad real world weather wont ruin a scheduled flight for 8-10 people.

[Steve Willis 1027702]

It isn't a rule thing, merely something that is either not possible within X-Plane or that the developer chose not to impliment.

 

It's definitely possible - just different developers with different philosophies. Ross can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think VATSIM has any rules on how clients must implement weather.

 

The station by station method is flawed,, but remains the most practical for online flying ???

 

Steve, as far as I know, this is what X-Plane does with the offline weather as well. It gets a metar file, finds the closest station, and loads that data into the weather settings. If for some reason two stations have a m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive delta between their weather (front coming in, broken station, etc) then you'll get a m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive change in weather when it updates.

 

I'm not sure your description of VATSIM constantly changing weather every 2 minutes from sunny to stormy is correct. Sure, we've all had it happen once in a while, but it's not that frequent. I'm not saying VATSIM weather is perfect by any stretch of the imagination - but in my experience, it's rarely a major problem.

 

I am however interested in hearing the thoughts of others on the option to completely disable weather. I have mixed feelings about that. Would it be in the best interest of VATSIM? You can't say "I'd just use the X-plane weather," because once the ability was given to ignore VATSIM weather, you could just turn off X-plane weather and fly around with it bright and sunny as a hurricane came through. Part of me says, "that's fine - choice is good,' but another part of me says, "why should we enable people to disable most of the network features if they're going to fly on the network?" I don't know...

 

 

G'day gentleman.

 

Keiths tip on the clouds had a huge impact. Excellent, i didn't drop below 40fps. Hit 72 FPS a lot (((-:

 

As for the waether updates. Just landed at LICT - 40 miles out, clear and sunny...then cloudy raining and overcast at 30 miles.

 

It's very common from my experience, but at the end of the day, limitations exists for both sims and weather online. I would still like to turn of the vatsim weather off if we had a choice. Not for the entire flight, just in parts. Again going from thunder clouds to no clouds in 30 miles feels a bit strange.

 

Don't get me wrong gents, im happy with what we have and appreciate the ability ti take X-plane online to Vatsim. The Covak option was the first thing i noticed compared to FSINN. Even Larry says it was to help give FPS back to the user. I figured that would be the same case with XS. With PC's getting quicker all the time, i guess in the near future it will not be such as issue.

 

I have no qualms if the situation doesn't change with XS and the weather. Frankly the XS package as a whole works really well with the Sim. Nice neat and tidy, and zero issues with the XS software. It hasn't missed a beat since the first time i set it up and clicked connect.

 

I have to say at this point, X-plane continues to blow my mind. This sim just continues to impress everytime i boot it up.

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Wade, the option to turn off VATSIM weather is already there (kinda). Once you are ready to taxi, you can go in to the xplane weather and set it to CAVOK, then open xsb preferences and change the "update weather every XXX minutes" to 99. We use this in our VFR flying club so that bad real world weather wont ruin a scheduled flight for 8-10 people.

 

Noted (-:

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Worth noting.

 

I am Parked at LAX cargo ramp for a radio check with the tower.

 

I have logged of squawkbox for over 2 miss yet i am still listening to the tower controller over the radio.

 

Seems after clicking disconnect, it's stays connected.???

 

Now 5 mins and still listening. Status on XS ..says im disconnected.

 

I click who is' online and nothing shows??

 

People in the know might want to have a look at that. I doubt it's my set-up.

 

EDIT. Had to change airport in order for it to stop(-:

 

Cheers.

 

EDIT: Correction, went from KLAX to OYSQ Yemen, and after 1 min i just got to KLAX static for about 1 second on the radio.

 

Nope it's still connected to KLAX yet im in Yemen. The KLAX tower and radio frequency is still tuned on my radio.

 

LOL.

 

 

Wow i just talked to KLAX from, Yemen. Just told the controller the scenario. "That is strange he says"

 

EDit; Finally after 6 - 7 mins plus it seems to have stopped.

 

Edit: Final edit ...it's still connected after 10 mins.

Please let me know if it's a XS setting i need to change.

( I had to shut down X-plane to break the connection. )

Thanks.

[Wade Williams 877539]

You can call it a bug or a feature - your choice. It just doesn't disconnect the voice server until you quit X-Plane.

[Steve Willis 1027702]

Thanks Wade.

 

Nothing to worry about then.

 

Have a good day.

[Keith Smith]

Disconnecting from VATSIM doesn't make the plug-in quit the voice room. Suggestion: before disconnecting from VATSIM, change freq, wait for it to leave voice room.