Monday, December 18, 2017

EasyATC...

EasyATC is a free third party air traffic control plugin for X-Plane.
EasyATC V4.Beta released
See the updates here

Download EasyATC 4.Beta
(and please check the executable file updates)
X-Plane.fr
X-Plane.org

A first video using EasyATC 2.0 in a VFR flight!



An IFR flight using EasyATC 1.1.



Cruise Altitude

When you Enable EasyATC, a dialog is displayed asking for the cruise altitude (among others items). The value you select replace any "9999" Altitude value of waypoints of the flight plan.
That means that when you create a chart of a flight plan and you put "9999" in the Altitude column that means that this value will the Cruise Altitude you pick-up when you enable EasyATC.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

How to create a flight plan with the X-Plane map?

Only in EasyATC V3.0.
  • Open the Flight planner
  • Click Flight plan/New to clean the list of waypoint
  • Check the item Helpers/Record
  • In X-Plane put your plane on flight at the cruise altitude you wish and just above the airport you want to take-off from
  • Move back to the flight planner and click somewhere in the window (the flight planner must have the focus)
  • Press the space bar of your keyboard
  • The first line of the list should now be filled with the main fields EasyATC needs to do his job!
  • Go back to X-Plane, move to the next waypoint you wish, go back t the flight planner, press the space bar, a new waypoint is added, ect...
  • Repeat this for all the waypoints you need for your flight until the arrival airfields
  • You can save the flight plan (Flight plan/Save)

How to create a flight plan from a FMS file?

  • Get a .fms file (flight plan format for X-Plane) from your favorite tool (for example OnlineFlightPlanner.org)
  • Once you have the fms file somewhere in your hard drive, open the EasyATC Flight Planner
  • Clic Flight plan/Load FMS file and browse to your file
  • The Flight planner should now display all the waypoints of the route, the coordinates and maybe the altitudes (if the fms generator you used has generated some altitudes)
  • Select all the rows of the list (clic on the first one and clic on the last one while pressing the Shift key)
  • Clic Helpers/Auto complete/All columns
  • Answer to the questions.
    • NavAids - EasyATC will ask you to confirm the NavAid he found in the X-Plane data is the one of your flight. This occurs because a lot of NavAids identifiers are not unique and can exist in different places in the world!
    • Airports - EasyATC will ask you to pick up the runway(s) you would prefer to take-off from and the runway(s) you would like to land on (I add "s" because you can create a flight plan with more than two airports!). Note that the orientation could change depending on the wind direction.
  • The waypoints list should now be filled with all the information EasyATC needs to do his job the right way. Note that some fields are still blank but it doesn't matter. Those fields can be used in advanced/realistic flight plans...
  • Clic Flight plan/Save. Don't change the initial folder (flight plans MUST BE saved in the DATABASE_FlightPlans directory)
  • Clic Flight plan/Save as active flight plan. Don't change the initial folder (the one and unique active flight plan MUST BE saved in the ACTIVE_FlightPlan directory). This second save registers this flight plan as the one you want to fly now!
The flight plan is ready. On X-Plane, put the plane on the starting runway you chose in the flight plan, clic ATC/Enable, set your radio to the first waypoint frequency and request for the flight clearance... Enjoy your flight!

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

How to create a realistic flight plan?

If you want to experience realistic conversations with the ATC, you need to edit a realistic flight plan from scratch. Following, an example with an Ajaccio to Nice IFR flight...
  • First of all, you need the SID and STAR our flight plan is based on. In this tutorial, I will only do the Ajaccio SID chart. Once you will have done one chart, you will be ready to do any other chart.
  • Note that it’s better to think "modularity" by creating separate charts than one single big flight plan so that you can re-use the charts in different flight plans. Once the charts are created, it’s very easy to add them into a new flight plan associated with other charts! And maybe, one day, you could share your charts with the community!
  • This is one of the Ajaccio IFR SID charts...

Fields

Identifier
You take-off from Ajaccio airport so click on the first cell of the first row in the list, Identifier column, and type “LFKJ”.

Type
On the Type column, since you take-off from this airport, select RWY. Note that APT would be selected if the plan was to fly above the airport without landing or taking-off. By selecting RWY, the ATC is informed we effectively land or take-off from this airport. Actually, in the case of the very first checkpoint of the flight plan, the ATC guesses that you are going to take-off from this airport.

ATC callsign
On the ATC Callsign, enter the name of the controller that is supposed to manage your take-off. In this case Ajaccio. Actually, you can write Britney Spears if you want. It’s just the callsign the ATC will use when talking to you.

ATC type
In the ATC type column select the appropriate kind of control that the planes are supposed to talk with. In this case, tower controllers are the one who deliver take-off and landing clearances. So select the TOWER item.

ATC frequency
On the ATC frequency column, type the frequency of Ajaccio tower “118075”. Note that we omit the decimal in the frequencies. You must use 6 digits for frequencies (this is to fit the frequencies format in X-Plane, even if in most of the planes, the last digit is not used)

Transition altitude
On the Transition altitude, we can enter a value or left the field blank. If you let this field blank, the default transition altitude will be used in the messages.

Altitude
On the Altitude column, let the cell blank. That means that the ATC will not expect any altitude (but you could type here the cruise altitude you expect to fly at)

Speed
On the Speed column, type the maximum speed allowed in the waypoint. There is thousands people living here and there is some speed and noise restrictions in this place! Type 180.

Heading
On the Heading column, type the heading of the runway. Always think about the point of view of the ATC: you are expected to take-off with the 203 heading! So enter 203 in this cell.

Latitude/Longitude
Let the Latitude and Longitude blank for the moment

DME distance
We are not expected to follow a DME arc at this waypoint so we let the DME distance field blank

NavAids identifiers and frequencies
We don’t use any navaid when taking-off. Our only navigation objective is to keep our heading to 203 until the next waypoint. So we don’t fill any of the NavAid1Freq NavAid2 and Freq columns.
Actually, these fields are not used by the ATC yet. 

Extra message
On the Extra message column, you can add anything you would like to hear from the ATC at this waypoint and that cannot be processed with the other values.

Linked checkpoints
On the Linked checkpoint column, you can enter the identifier of the waypoints the ATC can give you as direct flight as soon as you will have left this waypoint. The ATC will pick randomly among the available identifiers and the probability to pick-up one of the alternate waypoints can be edited in the Constants (20 % is the default value).
In the case of our take-off from LFKJ, we can enter in the cell “AJO07;IS;LONSU” for example. I’m pretty sure it does not happen in real flights since the plane would be too close to Ajaccio city when flying from the runway directly to LONSU or even IS. But you can add all the links you want. Note that those links don’t need to be in this chart, and will be ignored if they cannot be found within the following charts of the flight plan.

Now you can fill the three following waypointsAC015AJO07 and IS the same way...

Auto-complete...
  • Select all the waypoints rows and clic on Helpers/Auto complete/All columns. The auto-complete  looks for the waypoints identifiers into the airports, navaids and fixes X-Plane data. Each time an identifier is found, the auto-complete fill some of the fields.
  • For the navaids and the airports, the auto-complete ask you to confirm the identifier is really the one you need.
  • For the airports, he asks you to choose the runway. This is used when there is several charts for a given airport: there is usually one chart for each runway direction. This allows the ATC to pick-up the right chart depending on the wind direction.
Save...
  • Click on Chart(s)/Save and give a name to save the chart file.
  • The chart is then saved and reloaded to update the colors of the rows. The green rows are there to highlight the first and the last waypoint of the charts. It is especially helpful when editing a full flight plan
Flight plan...
Now the chart is ready to be integrated into a flight plan.
  • Clean the grid by clicking on Chart(s)/New and then create the IS to NERAS chart the same way we did for this LFKJ to IS chart. And after that you can do the same for the third and last chart, the STAR NERAS to LFMN.
  • When the three charts are saved, clic on Chart(s) (or Flight plan)/New and clic on Chart(s)/Add three times to import the three charts into the grid.
  • Pay attention on the current selected waypoint (the blue line) before adding a chart: an imported chart is always added AFTER the selected checkpoint.
  • Clic Flight plan/Save, give a name and save the flight plan file. This way, the flight plan is saved in the DATABASE_FlightPlan folder. But the flight plan is not the active flight plan yet
  • Clic on Flight plan/Save as active flight plan. This way, the flight plan text file is duplicated in the ACTIVE_FlightPlan directory.
You can now close the flight planner (or not), move the plane to the Ajaccio airport, enable the ATC and request for take-off...

Note that for a full realistic flight, you can now insert one or more taxi charts!

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Updates...

V4.Beta updates...
  • NEW! VFR can now be very close to reality thanks to the use of advanced Taxi charts when flying Region Flight Plans. Advanced means that Taxi charts can now contain extra informations like TMA(s) information (size, ceilings and floors), FIS or region controls
  • NEW! Left hand or right hand runways can be edited
  • NEW! Missed approach charts are supported (Not tested for quite a long!) 
  • NEW! Different kind of reports avoilable (VFR): position, altitude, radial, when leaving area, after a given time, traffic pattern (VFR).
  • NEW! Reverse fligth plan check-box allow to fly reverse a fligth plan without extra edit (not used a lot, probalbly buggy!) 
  • NEW! AFIS is now supported with different behaviour than actual TOWER control
  • NEW! Tens of features here and there (sometimes no bug free yet!!):
    • ATC can close the airport temporarily and cancel your approach
    • ATC can ask fo a go around at the last moment
    • ATC can ask you to wait at a holding pattern if you are to high above the expected altitude
    • ATC can advise you of restricted/prohibited airspaces
    • Etc.
  • NEW! Synthesized voices can be mixed with radio effects for more realism
  • When requesting GUIDANCE (new request), the ATC gives you precise vectors to the next checkpoint until you leave its airspace.
  • The ATC talks to other planes but!... "virtual" planes at this stage! I mean these planes are randomly generated within EasyATC for communications but not for visual display. Their requests are randomly generated depending on their state in the flight plan (take-off, landing, leaving area, etc.). Requests and clearances are not accurate at all. It's just to bring some life and being more realistic: you have now to ba aware of the callsigns to react when the ATC calls is for you!
  • The ATC can be paused if you need keyboard input for another app for example
  • Some warnings are displayed when saving charts to avoid many issues when using the flight plan
  • Top-of-descent and Awake ATC requests added. No problem if you don't use these requests. I just added to make ATC conversations matching what happens in IFR flights as can be seen in this video
  • Flight plans can now be edited by "recording"the plane positions in the X-Plane map!
  • When flying a Region flight plan and asking for landing to a given airport, EasyATC dynamically update the flight plan with the most appropriate STAR from the available arrival charts. The controller then ask to proceed to the entrance waypoint of the STAR.
  • When auto-filling a flight plan message boxes are displayed only when necessary.
  • When saving a flight plan, a message box is displayed if something wrong or something that could downgrade the flight experience is detected on the waypoints. A Help button opens the appropriate web page in the EasyATC blog to help in solving the issue.
  • ATC sometimes makes mistakes (and rectify immediatly, of course!). This looks pointless but when heard, gives definitly a sense of humanity to the synthesize voices!
  • ATC sometimes ask the pilot to repeat his last request!
  • Not necessary to merge the STAR, SID or Taxi charts in the flight planner: pick a "Cruise" flight from a given fix or navaid to another (usually SID exit and STAR entrance) and EasyATC automatically loads appropriate charts to fulfill the flight plan by searching among all the available charts.
  • After landing, if the ATC is busy (or randomly if not busy), he asks for transponder standby
  • When a holding short in the Taxi chart is close to the middle of the runway, the ATC asks to backtrack the appropriate runway
  • Now voices sound like radio voices. Better immersion for sure! Blended radio noises are separated wav files that can be customized. The radio effect can be disabled.
  • "Microsoft Speech" synthetic voices now work (only "System Speech" voices was working in previous versions). 
  • When filled in the first waypoint of a STAR chart, the Custom message field  is used as the name of the approach when the ATC says the expected landing message.
  • Random altitude changed by the ATC was full of bugs (too often, yo-yo effect, was breaking SID and STARS, was sometimes giving a too low altitude so that the communication was lost!, etc...). Now fully debugged
  • DME arc in IFR was pretty buggy too (unconsistent out of the track message, bad headings, not enough error margin, etc...). All seems fixed now.
  • Alternate waypoints/shortcuts was completely broken! Still some hidden bugs probably but much better now...
  • In IFR the ATC was asking for reports too often
  • Some fixes in STAR update in IFR flights: was changing too often, better processing of the wind direction when picking-up the appropriate STAR
  • Fixes in Altitude change request.
  • All states and messages are written in a Log.txt file (reseted each time the ATC is enabled). Nice thing to help me in debugging your failed flights!
  • In SIDS or STARS, the ATC can now ask for speed changes
  • The voice speed rate changes in some circumstances (see Voices section)
  • All the constants of the program are now customizable.
  • Autofill of the cruise altitude in the flight planner now fits precisely the flight rules (was sometimes wrong)
  • Listening to an ATIS does not reset the last contacted ATC!
  • Hundreds of bugs fixed... and new ones unfortunatly!
Released V2.3 updates...
  • Flight planner - Invalid fequencies are automatically fixed (in previous versions last digit was always "0". For example 118.020 is now 118.025)
  • You can now prevent the ATC voices to match the language you selected. This allow EasyATC to use all the installed voices instead of using always the same one(s).
  • ATC can sometimes change the cruise altitude and ask for a climb or a descent
  • The ATC can repeat his last message even after a "did you copy?" message
  • ATC gives the QNH only when flying below the transition layer or when descending from above to below transition layer.
  • Better processing of the waypoints to avoid U-turns to move back on track while the next waypoint is pretty much straight forward.
  • New request : after a landing, the pilot have now to say that the runway is vacated (RunwayExit request) before the Tower asks to contact ground.
  • Transit out request can be used when taxiing: in this case, the pilot asks for leaving the frequency.
  • When the NavAid1 contains the "ILS" string ("ILS" or "ILS N2" or whatever...) and the Freq 1 field is filled, the ATC gives the ILS frequency when saying the expected landing message.
  • Emergency bugs fixed and better handled by the ATC
  • In Taxi charts, you can now put the Identifier you want for the holding points (but the first line must remain the name of the airport and be APRON Type). Custom message is not used anymore. See Taxi chart section for more detailed information...
  • Tens of bugs fixed...
Released V2.2 updates...
  • Taxiing is now availale!
  • Play sound in flight planner is back
  • Say again request bug fixed
  • Pilot's voice can be muted
  • Pilot's auto-readback can be disabled. You must press a key to readback
  • Take-off runway depends on the wind direction
  • Alternate airports
  • "Regional Flight Plan": an easy way to have a simplified ATC without editing a real flight plan for the guys who want more simplicity! 
  • Airfield traffic pattern: when approaching an airport, press the Landing Pattern key and the pilot will talk the expected phraseology depending on the position and heading of your plane (downwind, cross wind, left or right hand, etc.)
Released V2.1 updates...
  • When using a key for requesting, the key input work anyway in others applications (the key event was stopped in EasyATC in version 2.0)
  • Help icons open this web site
  • Coordinates converter is opened only when double-clicking on coordinates columns
  • Coordinates are in the right columns when importing fms file in flight planner
Released V2.0...
Next planned updates...
Planned for V4.0. By priority...
  • Refine airfield infos in Taxi charts (ILS...)
  • Make the ATC talking to other planes
  • Line-up on runway before take-off
  • Expect visual approach message
  • Confirm cleared to land and/or approach
  • ATC complain when landing on the bad runway
  • Taxi code clean-up
  • Be able to fly without any flight plan by loading X-Plane airports data dynamically.
X-Plane dataref access
  • Something more relevent that txt files...

Bug tracking...

Known bugs in EasyATC 2.0...

Requests and clearances
  • When requesting to land after take-off, the ATC gives a clearance to land but does'nt change the flight plan and so still ask for flying away from the airport (climb, heading, etc.)
  • Heading change request is available but is not working properly yet. The clearance is delivered but then things can go wrong in many ways
  • Pilot's requests/Disabled does not work as expected
  • Say again request does not work when asked after the message loop interval if the ATC had nothing to say on last speech)

ATC...

Requests...
To listen the ATC you must request first. See the Requests section for the available requests. If the ATC still not talk, have a look to the FAQ...

ATC Type...
The ATC you talk with can belong to one of the following kind of control areas. The ATC type is edited in the flight planner through a dropdown list.
As in real life, the clearances or information the ATC will give depend on the kind of ATC it is: you cannot have a taxi clearance from a CENTER or DEPARTURE controller!
The ATC Type is also used to build the callsign of the ATC in the messages. ATC callsign (for example Dallas) and ATC Type (Departure) are concatenated to build the whole callsign (Dallas Departure).

APPROACH or DEPARTURE
At this stage there is no much difference in terms of ATC behaviour between Approach and Departure. Select the one you want for the spoken callsign. When talking to that type of ATC...
  • VFR flight becomes VFR special 
  • Landing information (not clearance) can be delivered
  • APPROACH can ask for holding patterns (only IFR)
  • Can deliver flight clearance (see Taxi chart section)
CENTER or FIS
GROUND
INFO

  • Same behaviour than CENTER and FIS
  • Not that this Type is used as a "tag" when editing the runways in a Taxi chart

TMA
TOWER
ATC behavior...
Many things can be improved in the way the ATC gives you clearances. That the most interesting part of the plugin to program! So feel free to give me feedbacks...
WIP...

Debug display...

The debug information is displayed underneath the messages display.
The typical debug display...


Plane states...
To/From
  • To/From - The Identifiers of the waypoints the plane is the closer.
  • Distance - Distance between the plane and the waypoint 
  • Trigger - The radius of the waypoint (when distance is lower than trigger and you fly reasonnably at the waypoint altitude as defined in the flight plan, the next flight segment is activated)
Out the track
  • Indicates if the plane si triggering or not the track between the two waypoints 
 Track altitude
  • Indicates if the plane altitude is between the two waypoints expected altitudes. See Waypoints section for details on how triggering works...
ATC cannot talk...
If the ATC cannot talk to you "ATC COMx CANNOT SPEAK..." is displayed underneath plane state information. The following reasons can be displayed...

Unable to find an ATC with xxx frequency
The frequency you use on your COM1 (COM2 is not implemented yet) is not in the flight plan

 Pilot didn't talk to xxx
You didn't request (or your request has been lost, bug...)

COMx is muted
Make sure your COM1 is not muted

ATC frequency (xxx) is different from plane COMx frequency (xxx)
I think this is deprecated now...

Plane is xxx miles from xxx (xxx miles max.)
You are too far from the closest waypoint that have this frequency (in the flight plan). Note that the altitude matters! The more you fly high, the farther you can talk to ATCs!

Expected state...
Most of the states are labelled the same way than the Plane state but the values can be different! Imagine you have planned to land on a given airport but you fly above it without landing, the ATC will remain stuck on this airport until you land on it! So the Plane state values will indicate the closests waypoints from your plane, but the Expected state will indicate the ATC expectations.
Extra expected states are...

Back on track
  • When the ATC considers the plane is back on the track. Should be removed on next updates (just for me when debugging)...
  • The flight mode the plane is for the ATC
  • This can be temporary. When flying VFR, for example, in some circumstances, the ATC can handle the plane in VFR special mode within a given time frame before setting him back to VFR.
Holding short
  • The name of the holding point you are supposed to taxi before bein cleared to take-off, and the distance between your plane and this point. See Taxi charts...



Charts...

A flight plan is a bunch of waypoints. A quick-start flight plan can be made of one single group of waypoints. A group of waypoints is a chart. A realistic flight plan should be made of three charts at least.
  • The SID
  • The "en-route" chart
  • The STAR
Google that if you are not familiar with those terms. SID and STARS are generally IFR flight stuff but many airports have some VFR approach and departure rules and waypoints. The flight planner allow to edit that kind of realistic procedures.

Let's see first what kind of flight plans you can do. Then we will have a look on how exactly a chart is edited in the flight planner...