Posts by max3max

  • Adding taxiway signs to existing airports

    chrispriv awesome, the sign heights look great with your custom elevation. Is there a way to automate generation of such elevation tiles for desired locations?

    Jet-Pack, as ApfelFlieger said, each sign is a separate object, but autoheight places them on a wrong elevation mesh. It seems that autoheight for custom POIs is using same elevations as displayed on Location screen (which in turn seem quite similar to SRTMGL1 dataset), but actual in-game airport elevation is different. Is there a way to get the POIs to be placed after the final airport elevation mesh is loaded, using that more precise/transformed mesh?

  • Adding taxiway signs to existing airports

    Hi all,

    ApfelFlieger and I have been working on a method to add taxi signs to the existing airports, and we made some good progress. I have made a converter for crowd-sourced sign data from Xplane Gateway, to make it suitable for conversion to TMB POI files. You can see some of the results in the attachments, taxi signs for Zurich, Basel and Geneva airports (latter 2 are attached); those should be installed in the custom scenery/poi folder (e.g. c:\Users\yourusername\Documents\Aerofly FS 4\scenery\poi\).

    However, we have run into an issue with object heights when placed on an existing airport - autoheight=true is not placing the signs on the ground, some are partially buried and some are floating. I believe it has already been discussed here a couple of years ago, that objects not in airport's main TSL file will not have the correct elevation with autoheight.

    That is why I have set the converter to create a separate TAP file for each sign, and to use an elevation dataset (COP30) to set the absolute altitude for that coordinate. But it is still not enough, as the actual in-game terrain elevation is different than that, as I believe that the game is using more precise elevation data and/or terrain flattening after loading and deciding the elevation of the signs.

    Is there a way to make autoheight behave correctly and place the objects loaded as POIs on the final ground elevation? It is not that practical to manually adjust elevations for 100+ signs per airport. Or at least is there a way to reliably calculate what will be the final in-game elevation of a coordinate? That way, at least, we could automatically set the correct absolute elevation of a sign in the converted files.

  • It is possible to use motion pitch and roll controls in VR

    There is a way to use motion controls in VR instead of holding your arms in the air or using imprecise controller stick - same as the "ergonomic" mode in Xplane. You grab/ungrab yoke or stick by pressing a button on the VR controller and control the plane by tilting your wrist up or down for pitch control, and rolling it for roll control. There is no need to hold your arms in the air, which is very tiring; you can rest them on your desk or legs. (and fly comfortably for hours this way)

    IPACS, please add this mode of control to the game, it is significantly more comfortable and precise than the existing options, a really massive improvement of the VR experience.


    Requirements: SteamVR

    Setup:
    - Install steam-vr-wheel from https://github.com/mdovgialo/steam-vr-wheel/releases (follow the instructions for vJoy installation)
    - Copy attached "_joystick.py" file to steam_vr_wheel_dist\steam_vr_wheel\ subfolder of the folder where you extracted steam-vr-wheel, overwriting the original file. I have modified virtual joystick config to be suitable for a flight sim (instead of emulating a racing wheel).
    - Start steam-vr-wheel-configurator.bat and enable all options except "Layout edit mode"

    Usage:
    - Start SteamVR
    - Start steam-vr-joystick.bat (must be started after SteamVR, and before controllers are connected). It should start displaying "Searching for left and right hand controllers"
    - Connect controllers. Message "left and right hands found" should appear.
    - "Grab" the joystick by pressing the stick button on either controller (L3/R3 on PSVR2 controller, for example). You should feel a vibration pulse in that controller. That controller will now control the virtual joystick.
    - Bind pitch and roll controls in game settings to the virtual joystick axes.

    Place the controller in a comfortable position every time before grabbing it, that will be the neutral position.

    To ungrab the virtual joystick, press either L3 or R3, and both controllers will vibrate twice (You can redefine this button in _joystick.py, line 110). This will return it to the neutral position.

  • FinalCallATC - working open source AI ATC

    So, I have created an AI ATC for Aerofly :). It integrates with avionics panel in Cessna 172 and Baron 58 (for now, can be used in other planes with less functionality), works both in VR and flatscreen, on Windows and Mac (wihout some functionalities). It is available at https://github.com/max8938/FinalCallATC

    Functionalities:

    - AI ATC (all services), working on actual airport frequencies (origin and destination airports from the active navigation plan).
    - Communicating with ATC using voice and hearing their replies.
    - Push to talk either by holding top button of the left VR controller (e.g. triangle on PSVR2 controller. OpenVR needed) or activating AUX switch/button on audio panel or holding PTT button in app's window.
    - AI can calculate heading and distance to the start of the final approach for the destination runway.
    - Working audio panel, radios & transponder controls on Cessna 172 and Baron 58. For other planes, radio panel cannot be controlled at the moment.
    - Individual radio volume controls.
    - You can hear ATC only if tuned to the correct frequency and radio is active on the audio panel.
    - ATC can hear you only if you are tuned correctly and the correct mic output is selected.
    - Random chatter between ATC and other airplanes (configurable how often messages are heard) on origin, destination, Center (134.00) and Guard (121.50).
    - Station distance taken into account, you cannot connect to the ones too far away (Guard and Center are always reachable).
    - Transponder code (and optionally the altitude) sent to ATC, depending on the selected transponder mode.
    - Plane telemetry sent to ATC with each message (location, heading, ground speed).
    - 10+ different voices.
    - Radio log & more detailed logs saved as PDF files, can be displayed in cockpit using 3rd-party tools.
    - Flight plan summary displayed on top of radio log (origin, destination, runways, altitudes, radio frequencies).
    - ATIS generated looping messages for origin and destination (if ATIS is available there).


    Requirements:
    - Windows for full functionalities. Most work on Mac as well, except radio panel controls; ATC can be controlled via its app window.
    - Python (v3.13 works fine for me) + all needed libraries installed
    - Deep Seek or OpenAI AI API access (Deep Seek gives a bit better responses, in my experience, but might be a bit slower)
    - Azure voice services API access
    - (optional) OpenVR for PTT control via VR controller
    - (optional) OpenKneeboard (or similar overlay app) for displaying radio log files in flatscreen and VR

    AI and Azure API access is not hard to set up. Costs: max couple of dozen cents per hour (if it is talking all the time).

    Support for more planes can be added, but this is not easy (need to find values in game memory for each one separately. This needs to be updated after each game update.). IPACS, please add state of all audio panel, radio and transponder controls to the integration dll to make this much easier.

    Wishlist for IPACS to make this better:
    - Add following to the integration dll: radio volumes, active frequencies, audio panel controls, transponder code/mode/ident button press, navigation plan, plane model, weather info (wind, visibility, clouds). Also would be nice: nearby airports.
    - Send traffic with UDP telemetry (XTRAFFIC object)

    Let me know what you think if you try it. Attached are sample chatter between other stations and radio logs from one flight.