Distance tool problem

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

Hello lads!

 

I have a problem with distace tool. For example, i want to anchor two or more planes to final approach fix. When I do that, values overlapp and they are unreadeable. Ok, i have some informations in top left corner but don't have times to that fix. What should I do?

[Gergely Csernak]

Nenad,

 

Sorry to say but I do not have too many suggestions. All the distance lines you requested are displayed without any kind of overlapping/overwriting test. The only thing you can do is to display less amount of them.

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

Thank You for reply, Gergely.

 

Do you have in mind to fix that in new versions? That is a major problem because "time to" is most important thing from that tool.

 

 

I made this shoot just for example. You can see that values are unreadable with only two planes, imagine what would be with 5 or more.

[Oliver Gruetzmann]

Especially in that case

 

Okay, enough fun

 

Guess you mean the situation when both are flying towards the fix? Why don't you use the separation tool? (.sep)

Or is there anything else but possible conflicts you want to detect?

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

Nononono and no. I just took example screenshot from ACC (or CTR, what you like) but I'm firstly talking about APP position. There you need times to FAF (final approach fix) to deteminate who goes first, then second etc. This is tool No1 for radar vectoring for ILS app.

 

This is what I'm talking about....

 

 

Ok, I made this in simulator but imagine that JAT301 is also a ATR72. Without times to FAF, i can't use speeds to slow down or speed up to make a good separation.

[Martin Loxbo]

You can see the ETA by displaying the flight leg (route draw) as well, but of course this also shows the text for both aircraft in the same place, so you need to turn the display on and off individually for each aircraft.

 

FYI, the system used by Maastricht UAC in real life has almost the same problem, or at least did when I worked on it. There the text would be at the end of the distance line though, so if you drew a line from aircraft A to point B, the text would be close to point B, but the same line drawn from point B to aircraft A would have the text close to the aircraft.

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

As you can see, VRC have good solution for this...

 

[Todor Atanasov 878664]

I really don't see the problem...many real systems works like that, the SATCAS also works like that. Just don't start the dist tool from the track to the point, start it from the point to the track.

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

Hehe, good try but in that case you have only distance, not time. To get time, you have to select airplane first.

[Michael Pike]

I don't agree it's a "major problem" as you called it. I do mainly approach controlling ad I've never used that feature, mostly because the flight paths don't go direct to the final approach fix. I have to use judgment and experience to decide the order.

 

But I agree, it is useful as a guide. Surely you can simply check each aircraft in turn and make a mental note of the time for each and decide the likely order?

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

I don't agree it's a "major problem" as you called it. I do mainly approach controlling ad I've never used that feature, mostly because the flight paths don't go direct to the final approach fix. I have to use judgment and experience to decide the order.

 

But I agree, it is useful as a guide. Surely you can simply check each aircraft in turn and make a mental note of the time for each and decide the likely order?

 

But I never use STARs for approach Why let pilot to fly all around when he can fly direct to ILS. Traffic flow speed just after safety. And if I use STARs, they are leading to FAF, surely. Ok, maybe this is not place for talking about ATC techniques but I personaly find it very handy and i know that RL APP in Serbia are trained to use times for vectoring.

[Jonas Eberle]

If you depend on timing, you can also use the leader line of the aircraft, set at "min" instead of "NM". With some left/right mouse clicks you can adjust the leader.

 

That said, lets think about how inadequate timing is for an aircraft descending to lower airspaces: Groundspeed reduces and p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ing FL100, most pilots are reducing by themselves even more.

 

Numbers that are not cluttering are indeed a nice feature, but also hard to implement (I did that once on a project). You would need one algorithm for each text element that iterally outputs "preferred" positions for that element, then check for free space (via a record of all element boxes on the screen) and, if succesful, put the element there. This would create some odd results in some cases if you do not check if one element has only succeded on (e.g.) the 5th run (aka 5th preferred position, so to say very far from the planned position) while all others succeded on the 1st run - in these cases do the whole thing again and see if you can find a better position for the given element if you put other elements on an n+1 position... It is time consuming to do that right. Next time I would do that I would go for a ready library that provides these functions...

[Ross Carlson]

Numbers that are not cluttering are indeed a nice feature, but also hard to implement (I did that once on a project). You would need one algorithm for each text element that iterally outputs "preferred" positions for that element, then check for free space (via a record of all element boxes on the screen) and, if succesful, put the element there. This would create some odd results in some cases if you do not check if one element has only succeded on (e.g.) the 5th run (aka 5th preferred position, so to say very far from the planned position) while all others succeded on the 1st run - in these cases do the whole thing again and see if you can find a better position for the given element if you put other elements on an n+1 position... It is time consuming to do that right. Next time I would do that I would go for a ready library that provides these functions...

 

I know what you mean, since I had to do exactly that for VATSpy, but for this particular feature, I wouldn't go that far. I'd just change the location of the data. I'd either put it near the aircraft datatag (similar to how VRC does it) or put the data at the middle point of the line. (This is how VRC does it for the "ruler" tool.) I realize these solutions might be a departure from how the real-world systems work, but from what was said earlier in this thread, any solution would be a departure from reality, since the real systems apparently have this same overlapping text problem.

[Gergely Csernak]

I found it to be quite easy to allow not only

.distance

but also

.distance

I modified the code to show the same data in the second case but at the plane end of the line. Then you have to move the TAG itseft to avoid overlapping.

[Nenad Grubanovic 1002068]

Great, Gergely! It is really good news

 

Can we modify code in present ES version or that will be availeble in next?

[Stephan Boerner 945550]

in next