TopSky plugin 2.5 beta 7

[Juha Holopainen]

Until there is any documentation about possible new limitations to how plugins should work with all the recent changes to EuroScope, there's not much that can be done. Most of my plugin development is currently on hold until I know what would need to be changed, and I can't be testing everything and changing code with every new EuroScope version. Once the program gets to a stable state, I'll resume working and start to target the latest version. For now the code should work as intended on versions before 3.2.3. With EuroScope versions starting from 3.2.3, things may or may not work. Apparently most things do work as before, but then there are some things that do not. One thing that does not currently work is refreshing the background map when areas are automatically activated or deactivated, the latest EuroScope versions for some reason no longer honor the plugin's request to redraw the background map in that situation. In spite of the issues I encourage people to use the newer versions so that they could be reported to the developers, and eventually fixed.

Generally speaking, any issues present in the newer versions and not in the older ones (pre-3.2.3) should be brought up to Gergely so that he knows about issues resulting from his code changes. Whether he can do anything about them depends on the situation, but at least he could provide guidance on how the plugins should be changed in those cases where the EuroScope behavior is meant to be permanently different.

[Filipe Fonseca (1233530)]

To add a bug report, DCL/PDC clearances aren't work with me as well.

[Semir Gebran (1148433)]

On 28/02/2024 at 17:43, Filipe Fonseca (1233530) said:

To add a bug report, DCL/PDC clearances aren't work with me as well.

This is the case on my side as well.

[Felix Musselmann (1025793)]

Hi Juha,

i did some experimenting with the holding list function and had these ideas:

At the moment, when a new controller connects, details like assigned speed/holding/rates are not synced to the new connecting controller. Maybe you can check with the plugin if a new controller gets online and push the flight strip to him when he gets online?

Can you please sync the ETO of an aircraft in the holding? Maybe something like /hFIXNAMETIME/h in the flight strip, with the time being the last 4 chars, when the aircrafts get from the approaching holding into the holding state? With this the ETOs are not getting lost with a controller change.

Would it be possible to add the state "informed" as option for the List_Holding_States setting?

It is possible to set up dedicated holding lists per holding point with the option "List_Holding_Points". Would it be possible to make this more dynamic, like, when you click on the holding point name in the general holding point list with a right click, a dedicated list for this holding point is created. And when you close this dedicated list for this fix, the aircrafts go back into the general holding list?

Thanks
Felix

Edited March 15 by Felix Musselmann (1025793)

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

The Airfield Data window is not resizable for me, not sure if this is intended or a bug?

Edited March 16 by Max Kuhla (1157125)

[Juha Holopainen]

8 hours ago, Felix Musselmann (1025793) said:

At the moment, when a new controller connects, details like assigned speed/holding/rates are not synced to the new connecting controller. Maybe you can check with the plugin if a new controller gets online and push the flight strip to him when he gets online?

Technically possible but not a great idea to start spamming controllers with flight strips. Even if it's probably not used a lot anymore, the flight strip is still a valid data store (the TopSky plugin does use it). It's not possible to refuse a pushed flight strip to keep your own data, so if I or some other plugin developer started using flightstrip pushes to communicate data, it might create a lot more issues than it would solve. The other currently available way to communicate data, scratchpad texts, would be even worse as you'd then be spamming every controller in range when only one would really need the information.

While it would be great to have data like this synchronized, it would really be best done either on server level (would need FSD to be updated as this kind of data is not stored there as far as I know) or by EuroScope. Plugin-custom data and extensions to the basic data such as max/min rates and speeds etc. would not be communicated then but at least the basic values would.

8 hours ago, Felix Musselmann (1025793) said:

Can you please sync the ETO of an aircraft in the holding? Maybe something like /hFIXNAMETIME/h in the flight strip, with the time being the last 4 chars, when the aircrafts get from the approaching holding into the holding state? With this the ETOs are not getting lost with a controller change.

The plugin should send both the holding point and ETO when you transfer the aircraft. This happens using a scratchpad broadcast so every controller in range will receive it. This will fail to happen if the transfer is not started using the plugin's own menus and functions, or if either the sending or receiving controller is using an older plugin version that does not support this (I don't remember which version I added this feature in). If you have a logfile from a situation where the data is not transferred when it should have, I can take a look.

7 hours ago, Max Kuhla (1157125) said:

The Airfield Data window is not resizable for me, not sure if this is intended or a bug?

It's a bug. The window shares code with the corresponding window in the non-COOPANS version (QNH/TL window) which is not resizable, and the code that draws the window sets the window size to the fixed one on every refresh, overriding the result of the resize operation.

[Felix Musselmann (1025793)]

3 hours ago, Juha Holopainen said:

The plugin should send both the holding point and ETO when you transfer the aircraft. This happens using a scratchpad broadcast so every controller in range will receive it. This will fail to happen if the transfer is not started using the plugin's own menus and functions, or if either the sending or receiving controller is using an older plugin version that does not support this (I don't remember which version I added this feature in). If you have a logfile from a situation where the data is not transferred when it should have, I can take a look.

I have tested it, i did the transfer with mouse hovering + F4. This did not send the ETO, but it added the aircraft correctly to the holding list at the recieving controller, just with the current time as ETO.
If i transfer via the topsky menu, the ETO is send correctly.

Felix

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

Some things for version B:

 

• To attach QDM/SEP, in the real system you are able to click in the "empty space" in a selected label, it seems that you have to click on a label item or on the RPS. Is this possible to implement?
• To extinguish QDM/SEP, it is picky about where you right-click, can it be changed to be more reactive, so that you can click anywhere close (including the numbers) to cancel?
• To "pick up" the QDM, right clicking (picking up the closest end) only works on the end attached to a position/fix, not to aircraft, this should be possible to do with the QDM ends attached to aircraft also (same here about pickiness, including numbers as clickspot).
• When you have the "cross cursor" to place a QDM, the name of the points and a circle around the point should appear when you hover over them. That way you know it locks on the right point. Looks like holding ALT and hovering over a point (which is not a thing IRL) but in the same brown colour as the QDM (frequencies for beacons are not shown).
  • I sometimes have to right click twice to cancel the cross cursor, is there any way to make this more reactive?

[Juha Holopainen]

The plugin gets no information when you click on an empty area of the label, only when you click on a plugin-defined mouse area on the radar screen or a plugin-defined tag function. It is therefore not really possible to make the QDM attach in that case. The size of the click spots on the radar screen is a fine balance between being able to hit them and not have them covering too much of the screen or overlapping. There will be a scaling factor setting in the next version to fine-tune their size based on personal preference and aiming skills.

I'll add the QDM related functionality to the radar position symbols and the QDM label. When editing a QDM line, the label does change to show the name for the point being hovered over. There's no circle around the point but as far as I know there shouldn't be either. I don't know why it's not working for you.

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

18 hours ago, Juha Holopainen said:

The plugin gets no information when you click on an empty area of the label, only when you click on a plugin-defined mouse area on the radar screen or a plugin-defined tag function. It is therefore not really possible to make the QDM attach in that case. The size of the click spots on the radar screen is a fine balance between being able to hit them and not have them covering too much of the screen or overlapping. There will be a scaling factor setting in the next version to fine-tune their size based on personal preference and aiming skills.

I'll add the QDM related functionality to the radar position symbols and the QDM label. When editing a QDM line, the label does change to show the name for the point being hovered over. There's no circle around the point but as far as I know there shouldn't be either. I don't know why it's not working for you.

Regarding empty space in the label: I understand, that was my suspicion.

Yes, I get the text for points but not the circle, which is shown at least in ATCC Malmö.

 

I had a longer session tonight and experienced some issues: (using ES 3.2.9), will try next session on 3.2.3 and see if I have the same problems.

• Sometimes a new squawk code is auto generated on assume, as intended for traffic without a previously assigned code. However, when assuming traffic transferred from another position (already having an assigned and set code) a new code was (incorrectly) also generated.
• Transferring labels to adjacent positions was sometimes problematic, with the label "jumping" back to assumed state after maybe 30 seconds or so, without the pending transfer being shown. Transferring again usually worked and was shown to the other position.

 

And a wish from me (no idea if this is possible in the real system): Would it be possible to filter the "Current Operational Load" window to only show certain positions, e.g only for certain SI's?

Edited March 18 by Max Kuhla (1157125)
Bad source

[Juha Holopainen]

I'm going to try out just intercepting the mouse events directly and whenever a QDM line is being edited and a track label is in selected state, assume the click was done on an empty part of that label. Like all workarounds, this is likely to fail in some situation but we'll see.

The circle may be a feature of an earlier or later software version than the one the plugin is currently based on. Whether the plugin will in the future include a set of features from a later version depends on the amount and quality of information I come across.

The squawk and transfer issues sound like a temporary network issue or an issue with EuroScope. This plugin version is almost half a year old now with no reports of similar misbehavior - I don't remember when the last code changes would have taken place in those areas before that - and looking at the automatic squawk assignment code, the first thing it checks is if the aircraft already has an assigned code. If so, no other conditions are even checked and there will be no assignment. However, if the network data shows no assigned code and the default setting of not accepting the currently transponded code is set, a new assignment will be made.

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

My mistake. My source information was bad, there is no circle. Forget it!

[Felix Musselmann (1025793)]

I would like to give the text next to the flight leg drawing a different color than the flight leg line instelf. It looks like the color "Color_Information_FL" is used for the text (WPT/distance/time). But this color is also used for the part of the line with the status "Information FL". Would it be possible to get a color exclusive for the text?

Thanks
Felix

[Jakob Arne Bronstad (1000634)]

Label_AHDG_ShowExtra= 2 and 3 don't work.

[Juha Holopainen]

That would be normal for a "bool" (i.e. true/false) type setting, it's either 0 or 1.

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

Loving the beta!

A thing about the met messages (and Airfield Data), old METARs reappear when there is an update despite me removing them with the Del button and also not having them in Euroscope METAR list anymore. Any way to make them not reappear after deleting?

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

Sometimes the Waypoint menu gets bugged, usually fixes itself if i open euroscopes wpt menu once.

[Juha Holopainen]

18 hours ago, Max Kuhla (1157125) said:

Loving the beta!

A thing about the met messages (and Airfield Data), old METARs reappear when there is an update despite me removing them with the Del button and also not having them in Euroscope METAR list anymore. Any way to make them not reappear after deleting?

The plugin does not know which METARs are displayed in the EuroScope METAR list. Even if you remove them there, they are actually just hidden and still periodically updated by EuroScope - I don't know why that is. The plugin will then see a new METAR received and will display it. I could make the code block new METARs from a station that has been removed using the Del button, but I'd have no way to find out if the user had re-inserted the station into the EuroScope METAR list and now would actually like to see the message. There would then need to be a way to undo the Del operation. That might become unnecessarily complicated so I've decided that having the METARs reappear in the window is the lesser evil. I don't remember right now if I made it work better when the plugin source for METAR data is selected to be used instead of VATSIM.

13 hours ago, Max Kuhla (1157125) said:

Sometimes the Waypoint menu gets bugged, usually fixes itself if i open euroscopes wpt menu once.

Well that looks odd. I'll keep an eye for it but if you can find any specific circumstances that lead to that happening, please let me know.

[Juha Holopainen]

Actually never mind about the Waypoint menu, I think I got it. It seems to happen if you've previously scrolled the waypoint list for that or some other aircraft, and not happened to do one of the actions that cause the list parameters to reset (such as opening the EuroScope waypoint menu by clicking "Probe" in the menu). At least just letting the menu close by itself does not reset the list parameters as it should, leaving the list scrolling position at whatever index it was. If you then attempt to open the menu for another aircraft that does not have that number of waypoints, the list will still try to show the points from that index position onwards, ends up displaying just some of the waypoints or none at all and that messes up the menu display.

[Jakob Arne Bronstad (1000634)]

On 03/04/2024 at 08:47, Juha Holopainen said:

That would be normal for a "bool" (i.e. true/false) type setting, it's either 0 or 1.

Ok, then the excel sheet needs an update

[Juha Holopainen]

The setting is correctly identified as type bool in the spreadsheet. There is currently some inconsistency in the way non-bool type settings with numerical options are described (all of them show the possible values in the type/unit column but some additionally include the min/max values in the respective columns). That will be standardized, most likely by removing the min/max values as in those cases the setting doesn't really have an accepted range of values, but a list of possible options defined by numbers that just happen to be sequential. The min/max values would only be shown for settings that define a value from an actual range (like an altitude or time value).

[Martin Loxbo (811805)]

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but sometimes a QDM from an aircraft locks onto the aircraft itself. I can't find any way to get rid of it.

[Juha Holopainen]

How exactly do you manage to do that? There are checks in the code to prevent that from happening but apparently you've found a way to bypass all of them. Unless you've changed the settings, that also looks like a QDM from a fixed position to another fixed position (a/c to a/c label should only have the distance).

Having a QDM line like that visible is a great way to keep track of the local variation value at the track position, but should you not find that information vital for some reason, you can use the Alt-X keyboard shortcut to remove all QDM lines.

[Max Kuhla (1157125)]

For me, QDMs between Aircraft are showing just as the picture above, the QDM and not only distance. I miss the way it was shown in the stable version, only showing distance and in the middle of the line instead of the end showing QDM/Distande at the end, as above.

 

Multi-QDM groups is a great feature, I have not yet managed to "pick up" the QDM from one of the aircraft to continue adding lines in that same group. If i drop the last line on a fixed position then it is possible to pick it up again to continue adding QDM lines in the same group. This should be possible by pressing (on the middle AFAIK?) of the line when connected to an aircraft.

[Martin Loxbo (811805)]

On 09/04/2024 at 08:18, Juha Holopainen said:

How exactly do you manage to do that? There are checks in the code to prevent that from happening but apparently you've found a way to bypass all of them. Unless you've changed the settings, that also looks like a QDM from a fixed position to another fixed position (a/c to a/c label should only have the distance).

I was trying to put a QDM line between two aircraft that were close together, but apparently it snapped to just one of the aircraft.

I confirm what Max said that we see QDM and distance for QDM lines between aircraft.

I'll keep Alt+X in mind. Unfortunately I'm only able to remember like the 3-4 most common keyboard shortcuts. Is there no other way of removing QDM lines except of course right-clicking the line itself (xQDM?).