On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Mathew McBride wrote: > I have some more info on this in a seperate thread: > http://seneca.me.umn.edu/pipermail/flightgear-devel/2003-January/014707.html
My message is probably fully off-topic here, but then again; maybe not... I'm a rookie here. Don't want to know the virtual damage I've done to the virtual planes I flew. I'd like to throw in a few observations based on comments you made, and some of my own. > 1) IVAO. This is more of a european network, but with much better > connections in other parts of the world (Australia). I belive they use their > own server, and you can download it from > http://www.ivao.org/network/default.htm. I use this network They've got a nice assortment of info in addition to the virtual live world. But it once again struck me that there is no open (as in, at least GPL/LGPL, or BSD styled) repository of aviation related data. I've pieced together some databases myself (country registration prefixes, airline data, aircraft data, ACARS codes), but I rate this collection Personal Use because of unclear licensing of the base data gleaned from web sites (and the way data is presented, such as on the IVAO web site, makes it pretty obvious that you're not supposed to feed that data into your personal database). Is there any web site that has a meta-database of available info, that specifies license restrictions? Am I overlooking any sources of data? Would a Sourceforge project dedicated just to avdata make sense to anyone? It's all window dressing as far as I'm concerned, but it is nice to be able to augment PH-HZF HV0992 H1 #M1BPRG/FNHV0992/DTEHAM,19R,77,014711,29C98F with B737-8K2 delivered 06/11/99 Flight: Transavia 992 Destination: Schiphol Apt, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Runway: 19R ETA: 01:47:11 without having to perform a gazillion of web lookups, followed by parsing the HTML response. > Some other FG comms stuff on my long term radar: > 1) ACARS. Hey, aircfaft don't communicate over voice completely. They do use > Text comms some times. In my copious spare time, I've been playing the sorcerors apprentice at DSP coding and come up with a Unix tool to decode ACARS from a radio receiver with a sound card. It sort of works (I'm not really impressed with the number of packets I decode successfully, but when working from recorded chirps my code seems to beat SkySweeper, and it certainly beats WACARS and KRACARS that I never got to work properly :-) Given how sparse ACARS info is, I think that free-text is the only viable part of ACARS to emulate. Even something as simple as a position report comes with many options to represent the data (some conflicting with observed practice; possibly as a result of comms error on board, but not showing up through parity error or CRC failure). As an illustration of just how perilous parsing ACARS data is without access to the airline specs, I've seen WACARS decode a weather report for traffic enroute to EGLL into "Wanxian - China" simply because "WXN" was in the string. The biggest brick wall I run into is lack of redistributable reference data; and, of course, lack of documentation on the data that travels ACARS. My personal impression is that most people collecting and publishing such data got bitten by con artists taking off with the fruits of their labor; a practice that seems common in the MSFS and MSTS communities; in that sense (as well as many others), FlightGear is a breath of fresh air. Anyway, I'm looking for guidance on how to approach this ACARS toy project of mine. It's easy enough to register the thing on SourceForge and put some code out, but it's a different thing altogether to bundle it with enough data to make sense of the packets, and not run afoul of licensing issues. The DSP bits probably make more sense in the HAM community, but the ACARS data components drag if firmly back into the realm of the aviation emulators (how's about the AI Tower Controller warning you about conflicting traffic that actually is overhead of where you're playing FlightGear, or even warning that TransAvia flight that there is a rogue Cessna in the pattern and would the Cessna turn left _now_?). Cheers, -- Bert -- Bert Driehuis -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- +31-20-3116119 If the only tool you've got is an axe, every problem looks like fun! _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel