IVAO Connection

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|- preamble -|- menu -|- menubar -|- telnet -|- fgio -|- end -|

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Preamble

2011-05-19: Project SUSPENDED! After having tried to get in touch with Kenny and Filip back in December 2010, wrote a nice long explanatory email to IVAO Membership Director, partially 'inspired' by the fact that I was 'suspended' due to lack-of-use, but got a VERY unhelpful, single sentence reply! Just saying get in touch with Kenny and Filip, not offering any email address with which to do so, and, as far as I can see, _NOT_ copying them on this exchange. BAH! This feels like flogging a dead horse ;=)) Forget it!!! Have many other interesting things to do with my time than chase this 'connection'...

2011-05-08: Ever since November 2010, from attending FSWeekend2010 in the Netherlands, I have wanted to be able to use FlightGear as my flight simulator of choice on the IVAO Network. This is not yet possible, but have started to look hard at ways it can be achieved.

The basic idea would be to have a component, distributed by IVAO, perhaps called Fg-IvAp, (like X-IvAp...) which facilitates the 'connection' between the IVAO network and FlightGear - sends a flight plan, reports the aircraft position, speed, etc to IVAO, and gets back information on other nearby flights... Naturally such an application must be cross compile-able in all platforms supported by FG - unix/linux/windows/mac/...

FG keeps its runtime variables, like aircraft type, position, speed, etc in what is called its 'property' tree. Every such 'variable' can be read, or set through a telnet connection. These like 'public' variables control every aspect of the running FG. In addition FG has a very large number of IO possibilities, one of which is the multiplayer input, which can insert additional aircraft into the scene.

FG has its own multiplayer network, a visual view of the current fliers at any particular time can be seen through this link - http://mpmap02.flightgear.org - and while at this time I see no 'connection' between this fgmp network and that of IVAO, maybe some of the existing multiplayer output of information to a port can be used...

Under construction

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Some Menu Ideas

Addition of IVAO to the FlightGear Menu Bar is achieved by modifying the menubar.xml file

menu01.jpg 615x201 index 5

That file is part of the standard FG data. And each of the sub-menu items is also established by a simple xml file. That xml file can use built-in command to read and write to the property tree, and can also use 'nasal' (Not another scripting language!), a very powerful scripting language built into FG, to do more...

The Setup

setup01.jpg 399x195 index 7

These values will be stored in the FG property tree, and obtained by an external, separate program, Fg-IvAp, through a telnet connection, ready to connect and authenticate on the IVAO network.

Flight Plan

fp01.jpg 398x544 index 4

Like the above, all these values are stored in the FG property tree, and obtained by an external program, Fg-AvAp, through a telnet connection to FG, ready for transmission to IVAO

Connection

Make the Connection
comm01.jpg 398x124 index 3
Some checking can be done to ensure the person has completed the setup and the flight plan ...

ATIS

atis01.jpg 398x90 index 1
More though needs to be put into this aspect, as FG also has some ATIS capability.

Metar


metar01.jpg 648x80 index 6
Again FG has its own 'live' weather, so it is more a question of how to integrate this into FG. Should this be used to overwrite the appropriate property, and thus get 'live' weather generation. It should at least be an option.

Communications

chat01.jpg 512x399 index 2
This is a 'chat' interface, but there is also the question of speech to be addressed..

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MenuBar XML

The above is achieved through xml additions to FG 'menubar' xml file

Date Link Size MD5
2011/04/18 ivao_menu.zip 10,674 94433b98b947218731dc91ca24aa136f

 

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FG Telnet

FG exposes all its 'properties' through telnet. This is a set of perl scripts to experiment with that interface

Date Link Size MD5
2011/04/18 fg_telnet.zip 34,101 2097518bcb767a19681c788b1eac869a

Although the FG documentation tends to just show this feature is enabled by the simple command '--telnet=<port>', this only creates a 'polled' telnet interface, so can be VERY SLOW. To cause FG to poll this telnet interface more frequently one must use something like '--telnet=foo,bar,100,foo,<port>,bar' where the 'foo' and 'bar' are unused values.

The important thing is the request for a frequency of '100' Hz. Of course FG can not poll the interface faster than it own internal frame rate, which depends on many factor, but it ensures any request waiting will be dealt with every frame...

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FG IO

Some general experiments with FG IO, including the multiplayer output...

Date Link Size MD5
2011/04/19 fgio-src-07.zip 686,652 31b94e13f532ec2fb4018b692c4ea5fa

As stated these were just some quite messy experiments with 'sockets' in general, and more specifically in some of them, verifying and dealing with FG multiplayer output, output through the command '--multiplay=out,<Hz>,<Server>,<Port>'. And through using the multiplayer input, '--in,<Hz>,<Server>,<Port>' other aircraft can be injected into the FG scenery.

 

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To be completed! But since now 'suspended', maybe never will ;=((

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