Question regarding multicrew flying possibilities in VATSIM

[Tero Partanen]

Hi!

 

Firstly, let me apologize for the length of this posting. I just want to be thorough in describing the problem at hand. I will also make a reference to a discussion in IVAO forum. I hope this is OK, and I am by no means comparing anything here; just to give additional information on this subject of mine. I did mention there that I was not going to come back to VATSIM, but that was just a joke . I have nothing against flying in VATSIM.

 

In short. What I would like to accomplish in an online flying network. This currently does not work in IVAO, but I am wondering if it would work in VATSIM (I started flying online here, so it would be easy for me to return here). Think of this like a "requirement spec" of some sort.

 

- Two pilots in two different locations, using two different PCs in their own homes.

- Both pilots using the same multicrew-capable aircraft; in my case Maddog 2008 by Leonardo. The cockpits of both pilots are fully synched by the MD software itself. This already works; it's tried and OK.

- The networked aircraft should only send ONE target to the VATSIM controller, ie. only one connection from this "joint cockpit" should be sent to the VATSIM network. (for obvious reasons)

- Both pilots should, however, see the same VATSIM online weather and the other aircraft logged in on the network (ie. the same weather and network data should be transmitted to both pilots, on this bundled connection of theirs)

- Both pilots should be able to listen to and in the PNF's case also transmit on the same ATC voice channel/frequency

 

At the moment this setting works in IVAO with the exception of this:

 

- The SW responsible for bundling the two pilot client connection as ONE, for the network to see just one target (for obvious reasons), requires both pilots to log in with the same pilot client userID & p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]word. If not, the other pilot is cut from the bundled connection. Now, when they are logged with the same ID, the next problem is the voice arrangement: IVAO uses Teamspeak for voice, and all IVAO TS servers accept only ONE connection from the same userID. Thus, with the working bundled connection to the network, only one of the pilots can connect to the ATC voice channels -> Impossible situation; both pilots should obviously be able to listen to the ATC, and at least the PNF should be able to transmit. Well, IVAO are looking into changing the connection proxy SW to not require same IDs, but this could take long; I have no idea.

 

More information and discussion from IVAO forum: http://forum.ivao.aero/index.php/topic,101406.0.html

 

Do you think that currently in VATSIM it is possible for:

 

- Two pilots to login to SB3 in a way that the other pilot's position information is NOT sent to the network? Maybe using a connection proxy to bundle the two connections as one (pcproxy?), OR something else (FSINN has this feature where the other logged pilot can be an invisible copy of the other one, but not sure if FSINN is good otherwise).

 

- Two pilots to be on the same ATC voice channel, if they are essentially logged in as "ONE", whatever the connection scheme is (I don't know how to do it in VATSIM in the first place).

 

- Both pilots' voice client to auto-tune to the same channel, when either cockpit COM freq is changed? (IF the pilot clients can connect to the same voice freq at the same time this should be no problem, since MD transfers the same freq data to the other cockpit, and that in turn tunes the local cockpit to SB3 connection to the ATC channel).

 

I / We have no trouble in configuring port forwards, NATs, firewalls etc. etc., so if there is not a ready-made solution to this, please feel free to suggest also a tad complicated solutions for this.

 

Thank you for reading and thank you already for any possible information you might be able to give .

 

rgds,

Tero Partanen

[Charan Kumar]

Hi Tero,

 

multicrew operations on VATSIM are possible. You will have to be using FSX and FSInn (for FS9 you can use gates.to but my knowledge and experience is limited to FSX only). All instructions can be found at the following site: http://mbev.net/wikka/ConnectingAsCopilot

 

Blue skies to you and your crew!!

[Kenneth Haught]

As a note, if you are operating behind a firewall the host aircraft will need to forward the ports used by FSX. These are ports 6112-6122 I believe.

It is not necessary for the co-pilot to do this as far as I know, although if you have successfully particpated in a 'shared cockpit' offline it should be the same procedure with the addition of FSInn setup.