vLSO Beta release

[GOONIE]

Pyro, just shot you a PM, hopefully that works 

[pyroperson87]

Got the PM, but the video refuses to play.  I load up the URL, I see the video player and the preview image, as well as the length of 15:08, but when I click play, nothing happens for about 30 seconds and then the length changes to 0:01 and there's nothing. I'll try to download it and see if I can play it locally.

[Paddles]

Guys,
Here's my quick WIP report (mostly with new GUI features)

[ExNusquam]

Looks great! Looking forward to the release.

On the symbols; maybe you could just swap the moon out for a yellow 3? For day Case 3 approaches, you can just have a 3 on a blue background.

[Orion]

I agree with Joe.  I feel strange having a column mixed with numbers and graphics without a legend.

[Paddles]

No objections  
My thought was that all night approaches are CASE 3 so I decided to use a moon symbol instead of a number..

Yellow 3 on a black background will be fine. Just as black 1, 2 and 3 on a blue bkg for all possible day CASE variations (not shown on those screenshots).

Will give it a try and show you its new look  

EDIT
See the attached screenshot. If you have no questions, then we hit the spot 

[pyroperson87]

Nice work Paddles. The slight color change for the daytime Case 1,2, and 3 looks great.

[Orion]

I actually feel sort of out of the loop -- I know there are different cases (as indicated by the numbers), but what do the different shades of blue represent?

[ExNusquam]

On a limb here; I'd assume they represent worse weather as you move from visual recoveries to instrument recoveries.

[Paddles]

Correct! The heavier skies the darker shades of blue. I thought this would help for easier CASE tracking

[pyroperson87]

Paddles,

Over on the VRS Forums I've been trying to help a guy get vLSO running on his machine, and after running out of ideas he mentioned that he didn't have acceleration, so obviously vLSO won't work. Adiemus then suggested that future versions of vLSO could incorporate an FSX version checking utility of sorts to warn if they are using an unsupported version of FSX.  Or you could just tell them to RTFM 

[Orion]

Do the background colors correspond to different weather conditions or different cases?

I think the number alone would be sufficient to inform the user of the case.  I think it would be simpler and more intuitive if the background color only conveyed one type of information.  For example, dark for night and bright for day, instead of that and also different colors for different cases/weather conditions.

[Paddles]

Orion,
The colors correspond to different cases (which usually have certain conection with weather conditions, right?). To my personal taste, different colors would help differentiate one case approaches from others... 

[Paddles]

Ok, guys
Once again about the colors... 

During my last FCLP tests of the program I thought that it would be convenient to color all passes of the same period, so you could easily spot qual or FCLP period passes, as well as tell one qual/period from another (that's the purpose of a subtle color difference of two adjacent odd and even periods on the attached image).

What do you guys think? Is it worth implementing?

[GOONIE]

Paddles,

Looking good. I like it. Another thing LSOs do besides grade approaches, is report trends. Could vLSO do this for a given period? Up for discussion and I understand could be a significant amount of work. What I was thinking is after a period if you are continuously (LO)AR or Fast at the X, you would get a trend note (not sure how to implement, or what is considered a trend? +3 times?), so you know what to work on for next time. Just a thought. Don't want to slow down the release of beta .8, can't wait!

Also wanted to share that I found out what the number in the lower right corner of the PLAT cam is, it’s rate of descent in ft/sec. You need to multiply by 60 or just 6 to get the ft/min.

GOONIE