-
Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:
- Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
- Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
- Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
- Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
- Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
- Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.
Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.
By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.
SimConnect Facilities List
- Thread starter FlapsOut
- Start date
SimConnect SDK
I'm using the Weather Facilites right now. I've written a couple utilities and added them to the menu bar.
One goes to NOAA to get the real-time METAR for an ICAO, that you can type in. If you pull the window downward, you also get a translation of the METAR.
One gets the FSX Metar data given an ICAO and
One gets the FSX Metar from the 'nearest' weather station.
So far, it looks good.
I wrote a METAR translator a long time ago, now I think I need an FSX METAR translator. After that? Getting and Setting weather should be pretty easy.
I can see how Active Sky made it's new facility to depict Hurricane Weather in FSX, cool stuff with Hurricane season coming.
So far, I'm writing all this as an .EXE for testing, but once started the Menu Bar takes over the selections. Later, I can incorporate it as a .DLL and start it with FSX.
Anyone else having fun with this stuff?
FlapsOut
I'm using the Weather Facilites right now. I've written a couple utilities and added them to the menu bar.
One goes to NOAA to get the real-time METAR for an ICAO, that you can type in. If you pull the window downward, you also get a translation of the METAR.
One gets the FSX Metar data given an ICAO and
One gets the FSX Metar from the 'nearest' weather station.
So far, it looks good.
I wrote a METAR translator a long time ago, now I think I need an FSX METAR translator. After that? Getting and Setting weather should be pretty easy.
I can see how Active Sky made it's new facility to depict Hurricane Weather in FSX, cool stuff with Hurricane season coming.
So far, I'm writing all this as an .EXE for testing, but once started the Menu Bar takes over the selections. Later, I can incorporate it as a .DLL and start it with FSX.
Anyone else having fun with this stuff?
FlapsOut
Last edited:
Now that I sort of understand the Weather API calls, I wanted to get back to the new Facility List API calls, that arrived with the SP1A update to the SimConnect API.
So, what I did was add yet another Sub-Menu to my test-bed program, which was started when we were talking about the Weather API.
The program is an updated version of the previous one and is located in the same place at:
http://www.innergears.com/InnerGears.zip
The new Sub-Menu is called 'Get Facilities', and it opens a window which contains four buttons.
If you click Airports, then I display the returned Facility List of Airports. I also added a curve-of-the-earth (not a straight-line or a point-to-point!) distance call to the dialog, and I then return the distance from my present aircraft position to all of the returned airports. This should be fairly accurate.
What I was hoping is that this might be a great way to determine where in the world I am at the moment.
And, it returned airports out to about a range of 100 miles.
Now, as I was sitting at my favorite Airport (KIAH), I immediately expected to see KIAH in the list...not so! Hmmm...
In fact, If it doesn't contain the airport I'm nearest to, then is it a complete list of airports in my range bubble at all?!? dunno, don't trust it either.
Ok, so I went a made a second button, called Waypoints which returns a Facility List of Waypoints. I get nothing here at all!!! Maybe it's me, but I doubt it.
Ok, so then I added a third button called NDBs which returns the Facility List of NDBs out to about 200-300 miles.
What I did then was move my aircraft over to Jolly-Old England to EGLL. Everything looks good.
Then, I moved my aircraft back to KIAH and saw that the NDB Structure returned was not updated to KIAH. The data remained EGLL. Not so good...
Ok, then I made the fourth and final button called VOR and it returns the Facility List of VORs out to up to 500 miles, I've noticed.
And, it seems to work ok, although after the Airport button, I don't trust it to be a complete list.
Anyway, the program is uploaded to my server for anyone wanting to take a look and see if they get similar results, and if I did something wrong, maybe what that might be?
Also, I read somewhere, that someone was able to modify the range of detection to further than the default, and I'd be interested to know how they accomplished that.
One more thing. There is a cryptic sentence in the documentation that says:
"Given that the list of returned facilities could be large, it may be split across several packets, and each packet must be interpreted separately by the client."
Any ideas on how someone would do this? Config File issue?
Maybe thats why my Airport List isn't complete? dunno...yet
FlapsOut
So, what I did was add yet another Sub-Menu to my test-bed program, which was started when we were talking about the Weather API.
The program is an updated version of the previous one and is located in the same place at:
http://www.innergears.com/InnerGears.zip
The new Sub-Menu is called 'Get Facilities', and it opens a window which contains four buttons.
If you click Airports, then I display the returned Facility List of Airports. I also added a curve-of-the-earth (not a straight-line or a point-to-point!) distance call to the dialog, and I then return the distance from my present aircraft position to all of the returned airports. This should be fairly accurate.
What I was hoping is that this might be a great way to determine where in the world I am at the moment.
And, it returned airports out to about a range of 100 miles.
Now, as I was sitting at my favorite Airport (KIAH), I immediately expected to see KIAH in the list...not so! Hmmm...
In fact, If it doesn't contain the airport I'm nearest to, then is it a complete list of airports in my range bubble at all?!? dunno, don't trust it either.
Ok, so I went a made a second button, called Waypoints which returns a Facility List of Waypoints. I get nothing here at all!!! Maybe it's me, but I doubt it.
Ok, so then I added a third button called NDBs which returns the Facility List of NDBs out to about 200-300 miles.
What I did then was move my aircraft over to Jolly-Old England to EGLL. Everything looks good.
Then, I moved my aircraft back to KIAH and saw that the NDB Structure returned was not updated to KIAH. The data remained EGLL. Not so good...
Ok, then I made the fourth and final button called VOR and it returns the Facility List of VORs out to up to 500 miles, I've noticed.
And, it seems to work ok, although after the Airport button, I don't trust it to be a complete list.
Anyway, the program is uploaded to my server for anyone wanting to take a look and see if they get similar results, and if I did something wrong, maybe what that might be?
Also, I read somewhere, that someone was able to modify the range of detection to further than the default, and I'd be interested to know how they accomplished that.
One more thing. There is a cryptic sentence in the documentation that says:
"Given that the list of returned facilities could be large, it may be split across several packets, and each packet must be interpreted separately by the client."
Any ideas on how someone would do this? Config File issue?
Maybe thats why my Airport List isn't complete? dunno...yet
FlapsOut
- Messages
- 317
- Country
It simply means that you might (probably will) get the results spread over more than one call to your SimConnect dispatch procedure -- i.e. more than one "SIMCONNECT_RECV_XXXXX_LIST" response. If you are correctly processing every one notified to you then you should get the complete list. Don't expect to send one request and get one reply, is all.
Regards
Pete
Split Packets
Well, then thats disappointing.
I was hoping it was something I had missed and that maybe the Facilities List worked afterall.
But, thanks for your response Peter.
So, as near as I can tell? NDBs and VORs are the only two calls in the Facilites API that are working properly.
FlapsOut
Well, then thats disappointing.
I was hoping it was something I had missed and that maybe the Facilities List worked afterall.
But, thanks for your response Peter.
So, as near as I can tell? NDBs and VORs are the only two calls in the Facilites API that are working properly.
FlapsOut
- Messages
- 317
- Country
Odd. Please report this via tell_fs@microsoft.com, with relevant data (SimConnect logging?) so they get fixed in a future SimConnect update (SimConnect is supposed to be subject to ongoing improvements, so there is never any reason to accept what we have).
I'm afraid I've not had a chance to check out this part of SimConnect, and there's really no application for it in what I need to do. it is a shame that runway data isn't available, as that would have made a difference for sure.
Pete