Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-16 Thread Martin Spott
Major A wrote:

 that there might arise some chance to let FG participate in a VATSIM
 network as - I didn't verify this information ! - significant changes
 to their network protocol are supposed to happen which could obsolete
 the political reasons to keep FG outside their network,
 
 That's very good news indeed!

Well, at least these are promising prospects - time will show if the
wishes come true.

Different sources agree on the assumtion that the only reason not to
publish the VATSIM network protocol is because the authentication
system is so terribly bad and they fear that publishing the protocol
could be understood as an invitation to everyone for hacking it. If
they now aim at overhauling at least the authentication this could lead
to interesting opportunities,

Martin.
-- 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-10 Thread Major A

Paul,

 How about this idea ...
 Since the X-Plane XSquawkBox module is cross platform why don't we just write 
 a proxy app for it that pretends to be X-Plane and interfaces directly to FG 
 in the background?

That sounds really good, although it's probably a lot more work than
just interfacing XP and FG -- remember XSquawBox has a GUI which must
be emulated!

 1. you don't need to purchase X-Plane and run it on another PC 

You don't need to purchase it anyway -- you don't need the scenery or
joystick input, and these are the only two things missing in the demo
version! I actually like the idea of running it on another PC because
having to type text messages to ATC on the same keyboard as the one
controlling the aircraft is a real mess. (Forget to press Return
before you type in XP and you can end up at FL380 with the gear
extending, A/P off, and reversers deploying -- no fun at all.)

I'm sure though that Sandy would help us by giving away which
functions of XP he uses in XSquawBox, i.e. which ones would have to be
emulated.

  Andras


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread Martin Spott
Major A wrote:

 I've just had an idea, maybe some of you find it interesting. I'm
 currently in a big dilemma -- I fly on VATSIM more or less regularly,

As you might expect we had the opportunity at our booth at LinuxTag to
talk to several people about this dilemma. One of our guests expressed
that there might arise some chance to let FG participate in a VATSIM
network as - I didn't verify this information ! - significant changes
to their network protocol are supposed to happen which could obsolete
the political reasons to keep FG outside their network,

Martin.
-- 
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--


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread John Wojnaroski






Major A wrote:

  John,

  
  
Interesting...

I'm about to delve into XPlane and have zero understanding regards how 
the third party plugins or datarefs work.

  
  
I'm afraid I can't say much more than that at this point -- the only
source I have myself is

  http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/phpwiki/index.php

But it does look a bit more orderly and sensible than with FSUIPC or
its new free competitor (forgotten the name).

I've just checked, and all the relevant parameters appear to be
there. There's even a "override_planepath": "Set item 0 to '1' to turn
off x-plane's flight model." -- very handy.

Just for the record, here's what information I think will need to
travel between FG and X-Plane:

FG-XP:

  -- position
  -- attitude
  -- time derivatives of position and attitude
  -- NAV frequencies
  -- transponder settings
  -- PTT (we might be able to use XPLMCommandButtonPress() and
   XPLMCommandButtonRelease() )

Certain of the first four, will have to poke around in the code for the
transponder. PTT ?? push-to-talk? I don't think there is such a
function in FG.

  

XP-FG:

  -- weather (we can generate a METAR to the plane from all the
   weather parameters? I can't see a direct METAR parameter)

FG has a real-time weather fetch capability from metar stations. Are
you aware of that?


  

Audio will be handled by X-Plane.

  
  
OTH I can do FG in my sleep. Perhaps there is any opportunity for some 
common sharing and help.

  
  
One other thought -- it might be better to use X-Plane on Linux, maybe
plugins can even be built using gcc?

  

according to Austin that should be possible. In fact, I'm banking on
it for some of the work planned with XPlane.

So I'll code up a network protocol to send the above selected data from
FlightGear to a XPlane plugin if you would take a crack at doing the
plugin. 

Regards
John W.




Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread Major A

John,

 FG-XP:
 
  -- position
  -- attitude
  -- time derivatives of position and attitude
  -- NAV frequencies
  -- transponder settings
  -- PTT (we might be able to use XPLMCommandButtonPress() and
   XPLMCommandButtonRelease() )
 
 Certain of the first four, will have to poke around in the code for the 
 transponder.  PTT ??  push-to-talk?  I don't think there is such a 
 function in FG.

I don't think we actually have a transponder, but that's also the
function that could easily stay with X-Plane for the time being since
it's not very often you play around with it during flight.

PTT is probably something FlightGear doesn't have, so maybe this is a
good time to add it to the property tree, so that whoever needs it can
wire joystick buttons and instrument functions to it. It's probably a
good idea to add more than one PTT -- how many are there in a real
aircraft? (I'm thinking of the old days -- the crew of a 707 was
something like 5 people, did they all have PTTs?)

 FG has a real-time weather fetch capability from metar stations.  Are 
 you aware of that?

Sure, and I think that's a great solution for the weather problem.

 So I'll code up a network protocol to send the above selected data from 
 FlightGear to a XPlane plugin if you would take a crack at doing the 
 plugin. 

I can give it a try once I've fixed my Linux machine at home so it
will run X-Plane at all... I just need to know how to handle the
network in a portable manner -- any ideas? I don't think X-Plane has a
network layer that can be accessed from the plugins, but I'll check
again just in case.

  Andras


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread Paul Surgeon
On Saturday 06 May 2006 03:39, Major A wrote:
 John,

  Interesting...
 
  I'm about to delve into XPlane and have zero understanding regards how
  the third party plugins or datarefs work.

I don't know what happened to my reply with all the SF mailing list troubles 
but ...

If we write a proxy app that actually emulates the X-Plane plugin 
interface/API we can :

1. Not need X-Plane or a second computer
2. Use both the IVAO and VATSIM networks with the XSquawkBox clients
3. Be cross platform (Mac, Linux and Win32) since the XSquawkBox clients run 
on all three
4. Still be using a network approved client

a.k.a.   VATSIM/IVAO = XSquawkbox = proxy app =  FlightGear

The proxy app to FlightGear side would be a piece of cake to code - only the 
X-Plane interface emulation would be a trick.

Paul


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread Major A

  I've just had an idea, maybe some of you find it interesting. I'm
  currently in a big dilemma -- I fly on VATSIM more or less regularly,
 
 As you might expect we had the opportunity at our booth at LinuxTag to
 talk to several people about this dilemma. One of our guests expressed
 that there might arise some chance to let FG participate in a VATSIM
 network as - I didn't verify this information ! - significant changes
 to their network protocol are supposed to happen which could obsolete
 the political reasons to keep FG outside their network,

That's very good news indeed!

I seem to notice that delivery of messages on this list sluggish -- is
anyone else experiencing this or am I the only one SourceForge is
messing with?

  Andras


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread Paul Surgeon
How about this idea ...
Since the X-Plane XSquawkBox module is cross platform why don't we just write 
a proxy app for it that pretends to be X-Plane and interfaces directly to FG 
in the background?

That way :
1. you don't need to purchase X-Plane and run it on another PC 
2. all FG users can access the IVAO or VATSIM networks via an approved client  
(without anyone needing to disclose the network code)
3. it'll run on Windows, Mac and *nix

Paul


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-08 Thread Major A

  The only big question is whether the internal FDM of X-Plane or
  MSFS can be overridden with external data just like that.
 
 Why would you need to override the FDM of X-Plane ot MSFS?
 Last time I played with WideFS all it did was put the slave MSFS machines 
 into 
 slew mode and pump them with a stream of co-ordinates, pitch, roll and 
 heading data. The VATSIM multiplayer code should smooth be able to smooth out 
 the jumps.

That's what I thought. I was wondering whether the internal FDM could
be stopped from interfering with the coordinates sent from FG (which
could mess up the view, if nothing else).

 In fact if we had such a module running in MSFS we could pass that data to 
 our 
 own MP servers and see VATSIM aircraft flying around in FG. One could leave a 
 FG MP aircraft at the major airports and see VATSIM guys arriving and 
 departing.

Good idea -- fly in VATSIM airspace without them actually
noticing... :) they only see a plane parked at a remote field while we
fly around them unnoticed with a stealth AN-225... :)

 Very interesting idea - I just wish we could have a native implimentation 
 running on Linux since not everyone owns MSFS or Windows or a spare PC with 
 the horsepower to run MSFS.

It might not even be necessary to run another PC. Thinking about it,
it has just occurred to me why X-Plane would make such a good VATSIM
proxy: (1) it's free (you only pay for scenery and the joystick
interface, neither of which is needed for this application); (2) it
supports three platforms: Windows, Mac, and even Linux/x86; (3) it's
leightweight, I guess it could even be run on the same (Linux) machine
as the one running FG if graphics was set to the lowest quality or
turned off altogether.

Earlier today I tried making a test plugin for X-Plane but got stuck
trying to build it -- whatever I did, X-Plane would always bail out
with SIGSEGV not long after (successfully) loading the plugin. It's
not the plugin because a HelloWorld plugin written by the author of
the plugin SDK does the same thing if I build it. But I also suspect
there might be something wrong with my set-up (I run X-Plane inside an
x86 chroot, which doesn't exactly make things easier to debug, and
I've done updates recently, and the Debian/sid repository is currently
in a rather poor state). I might try on a native 32-bit machine at
some point.

As to the network code, would it be necessary to actually modify FG,
or can all the necessary features be accessed through the telnet
interface (meaning that the X-Plane plugin would have to act as a
telnet client)?

  Andras


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-06 Thread Paul Surgeon
On Friday 05 May 2006 21:43, Major A wrote:
 Hi all,

 I've just had an idea, maybe some of you find it interesting. I'm
 currently in a big dilemma -- I fly on VATSIM more or less regularly,
 and I'm fed up with clicking radios etc. on the screen, so I'm
 planning to build my own flight deck. Now FG is the best simulator as
 far as customization and hardware connection go, and I'd certainly
 like to run it once I have the flightdeck, but there is no VATSIM
 support in FG (and there won't be, apparently, from what I've read.)

 Now here's the idea -- use X-Plane or MSFS for VATSIM, but fly FG! It
 would need two computers, but I think it would work like this: in
 X-Plane/MSFS, use the plugin system or FSUIPC/WIDEFS, respectively, to
 IMPORT the current position and velocity data from the other machine
 (running FG) on a regular basis, along with the NAV frequencies,
 transponder settings, and the PTT state. That would give you a view of
 all other flyers on the X-Plane/MSFS computer, plus it would relay
 your position to them as well. Voice comms would of course be on the
 non-FG machine.

Sounds like it'll work just fine and it shouldn't be that hard to accomplish 
either. You'd need probably just one proxy app (MSFS module) that uses 
FSDConnect or FSUIPC to do the job.

 The only big question is whether the internal FDM of X-Plane or
 MSFS can be overridden with external data just like that.

Why would you need to override the FDM of X-Plane ot MSFS?
Last time I played with WideFS all it did was put the slave MSFS machines into 
slew mode and pump them with a stream of co-ordinates, pitch, roll and 
heading data. The VATSIM multiplayer code should smooth be able to smooth out 
the jumps.

Also you could see the other aircraft in FG if you did a little bit of coding 
and passed the multiplayer aircraft positions from MSFS or X-Plane into FG 
via the MP network protocol we use. That could be done in the same FSUIPC of 
FDSConnection module on the MSFS machine.

In fact if we had such a module running in MSFS we could pass that data to our 
own MP servers and see VATSIM aircraft flying around in FG. One could leave a 
FG MP aircraft at the major airports and see VATSIM guys arriving and 
departing.

Very interesting idea - I just wish we could have a native implimentation 
running on Linux since not everyone owns MSFS or Windows or a spare PC with 
the horsepower to run MSFS.

Paul


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-05 Thread John Wojnaroski

Interesting...

I'm about to delve into XPlane and have zero understanding regards how 
the third party plugins or datarefs work.


OTH I can do FG in my sleep. Perhaps there is any opportunity for some 
common sharing and help.


Contact me off list

JW


Major A wrote:


Hi all,

I've just had an idea, maybe some of you find it interesting. I'm
currently in a big dilemma -- I fly on VATSIM more or less regularly,
and I'm fed up with clicking radios etc. on the screen, so I'm
planning to build my own flight deck. Now FG is the best simulator as
far as customization and hardware connection go, and I'd certainly
like to run it once I have the flightdeck, but there is no VATSIM
support in FG (and there won't be, apparently, from what I've read.)

Now here's the idea -- use X-Plane or MSFS for VATSIM, but fly FG! It
would need two computers, but I think it would work like this: in
X-Plane/MSFS, use the plugin system or FSUIPC/WIDEFS, respectively, to
IMPORT the current position and velocity data from the other machine
(running FG) on a regular basis, along with the NAV frequencies,
transponder settings, and the PTT state. That would give you a view of
all other flyers on the X-Plane/MSFS computer, plus it would relay
your position to them as well. Voice comms would of course be on the
non-FG machine.

Nobody will notice because, as far as VATSIM is concerned, you're
flying an approved client, and the only drawback is that FG won't
display the other traffic (but you can see that on the other
computer).

I would be more than happy to run two computers simultaneously if this
really was the solution to combining FG and VATSIM. Would anyone be
interested in coding a proxy that connects FG and X-Plane/MSFS over
the network? I'm willing to help, of course, even with coding if it
doesn't involve me delving too deeply into the internals of FG. I tend
towards interfacing with X-Plane, mainly because its internal
structures appear to be much more openly available (the plugin
interface seems to be rather clean compared to FSUIPC, and the SDK is
free). The only big question is whether the internal FDM of X-Plane or
MSFS can be overridden with external data just like that.

Let me know if this is all nonsense,

 Andras


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] possible solution to online flying (VATSIM)?!

2006-05-05 Thread Curtis L. Olson

John Wojnaroski wrote:


Interesting...

I'm about to delve into XPlane and have zero understanding regards how 
the third party plugins or datarefs work.


OTH I can do FG in my sleep. Perhaps there is any opportunity for some 
common sharing and help.


Contact me off list



I got far enough one time to verify that 3rd party plugins for x-plane 
can be built with cygwin on windows.  Then priorities shifted.


Curt.

--
Curtis Olsonhttp://www.flightgear.org/~curt
HumanFIRST Program  http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
FlightGear Project  http://www.flightgear.org
Unique text:2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d



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