Thanks, guys
Can you talk some more about the data acquisition and evaluation system changes? Are there more grades available (OK, No Grade, Fair, Cut)?
Well, previously the program sampled approach data every 50 ft and stored it in a fixed size table. Now it performs time-based sampling (four times per second) and store data in a variable length table, which gives me much more flexibility. If during beta testing this sampling rate appears insufficient, we'll try some other settings.
For an approach evaluation I will use the root mean square (or RMS) method, it's 'a statistical measure of the magnitude of a varying quantity'.
In our case these varying quantities are the glideslope and lineup deviations. However, do not expect full range of LSO grades in the initial beta release, this will take some time to tweak the program. Perhaps I will also ask you guys to share your logbook files - the more actual approach information the better...
To get a time of groove time of 12-18 seconds, will the program still work? What I mean is to achieve this time you have to fly a tight pattern, and you might not hit the vLSO trigger for ball call, what do you think?
I see. If they do it in real life, why not to do it in FSX? All we need is to somehow tell the program we're on a tight pattern, or, in other words, tell the vLSO 'I call the ball right here'. CAPT, in the first message you were talking about a button acting as a cue for the ball call. It's possible to make the program to response to certain FSX commands/buttons. Basically it looks like this - you assign a joy/keyboard button to an FSX command, tell the vLSO that this command is used for 'Ball' call and check 'Manual ball call' mark. From this moment the vLSO will not call the ball for you anymore, it will closely monitor your approach only from the moment you press that key/button. The same applied for 'Clara' call. I will try to add this feature to the next beta release.
It is also possible to use voice activated software, as SUBS17 proposed. For example, there's VAC (
http://www.dwvac.com/), which binds your words to FSX commands. I suppose it could well be used with the vLSO too...
Understand the issues with adding a carrier profile, just thought it could be eye candy for the debrief, did you see the example pictures I posted for this concept in an earlier post?
Yes, I did, but transformed profiles would look bad, real bad. Look at this picture, these profiles are scaled just 50%, not 20% as they should...
Finally, what is the status for uploading grades to a Greenie Board? Do we need a site or a server to do this? I guess it is not necessary now, just curious what it would take to make this feature work.
Yes, for a Greenie Board we will need a site which provides an SQL server (for storing data) and capable to run PHP5 scripts. I have some experience in MySQL and PHP5.
