vLSO Beta release

[WilliamCall]

One more question - when flying, are your vLSO's SimConnect and FSX indicators green?
If yes, you can also try to start the vLSO after FSX.

Serge,
Yes, they are green.  I will launch vLSO after I launch FSX.  Will report back later.  Thanks!


Later - I just tried running vLSO after launching FSX, no joy in free flight mode.

[SUBS17]

One issue mentioned if AI carrier spawns near an FSX AI carrier on the move the vLSO goes to the FSX AI carrier.

[K6952]

 Here's what we've found so far on the FSXCarrierOps beta test so far:
-For some reason, it won't work when configured to autostart with FSX.
-The abeam fix seems to be incorrect. Altitude should be 600'.
-There seems to be some discrepancy between the trap record and the carrier itself. Occasionally it will record bolters as traps and some traps aren't given wire numbers.
-As mentioned repeatedly above, the groove length is too long. The clock shouldn't start until the aircraft is wings-level in the groove.

The rest of these are requests/ suggestions from the team:
-More of the parameter data should be directly editable in the .ini file if possible.
-We'd like to see it wave-off a bad lineup if possible.
- Multiple skill levels on the profile so newbies won't get frustrated by constant waveoffs and give up.

I've included 3 skill levels and refined the standard profile to smooth it out.

Level 1 is "FUNGUS" as in "F*** you New Guy You SUCK". It won't wave you off unless you're out of the limits for safety of flight.

[Locus]

Range.1 = 5600, 2500, 1.3, 1.3, -1.6, -1.6

Range.2 = 2500, 2200, 1.3, 1.3, -1.6, -1.6

Range.3 = 2200, 2000, 1.3, 1.3, -1.6, -1.6

Range.4 = 2000, 1600, 1.3, 1.3, -1.6, -1.6

Range.5 = 1600, 1300, 1.3, 1.3, -1.6, -1.6



Next level is "RAG".

[Locus]

Range.1 = 5600, 2500, 1.3, 0.94, -1.6, -0.95

Range.2 = 2500, 2200, 0.94, 0.91, -0.95, -0.90

Range.3 = 2200, 2000, 0.91, 0.89, -0.90, -0.85

Range.4 = 2000, 1600, 0.89, 0.86, -0.85, -0.82

Range.5 = 1600, 1300, 0.86, 0.75, -0.82, -0.75

 
 Finally, there's "Fleet level".

[Locus]

Range.1 = 5600, 2500, 1.3, 0.75, -1.6, -0.77

Range.2 = 2500, 2200, 0.75, 0.68, -0.77, -0.72

Range.3 = 2200, 2000, 0.68, 0.66, -0.72, -0.71

Range.4 = 2000, 1600, 0.66, 0.57, -0.71, -0.60

Range.5 = 1600, 1300, 0.57, 0.45, -0.60, -0.45

[GOONIE]

Serge,
Did you see my earlier post on the "smoking hot break" trigger, and OK score? Just curious what you thought.

I have had similar discrepancies to those K6952 posted, with wires not being recorded in vLSO after trapping and bolters being counted as traps (this has happened only a few times).

I noticed that the vLSO comes to life (audio) when you watch your approaches from the LSO platform in FSX, very cool!  

Thanks again for all your efforts on this amazing program
-CAPT

[Paddles]

One issue mentioned if AI carrier spawns near an FSX AI carrier on the move the vLSO goes to the FSX AI carrier.

SUBS17,
Do I get it right that you're using AICarriers utility? The vLSO looks for a carrier within 4000 m, or some 2.2NM,  radius from your aircraft. Thus, if you spawn another AI carrier in front of a (moving or static) FSX carrier, then the vLSO will 'catch' this FSX carrier first, because it's closer to you. And vice versa, if your moving carrier is at, say, 6 NM and you spawn another AI carrier at 5 NM, then the vLSO should work with the latter...
I just took these 4 km by the rule of thumb... 

[Paddles]

K6952,
Thanks for your detailed input!

-For some reason, it won't work when configured to autostart with FSX.
How do you autostart the vLSO? In a .CMD file or what?

-The abeam fix seems to be incorrect. Altitude should be 600'.
Right now the abeam altitude is limited by 800'. I agree that this is probably incorrect, but what the upper margin should be? 650' or even more? And, what should be the vLSO's reaction when you fly above that level?..

-There seems to be some discrepancy between the trap record and the carrier itself. Occasionally it will record bolters as traps and some traps aren't given wire numbers.
Yes, I know. I'm still working on this issue.

-As mentioned repeatedly above, the groove length is too long. The clock shouldn't start until the aircraft is wings-level in the groove.
In the beta 0.3 the timer will start as soon as your aircraft is wings level, i.e. bank angle is less than 5 degrees.

-More of the parameter data should be directly editable in the .ini file if possible.
No problem, what parameters?

-We'd like to see it wave-off a bad lineup if possible.
Surely will be done.

-Multiple skill levels on the profile so newbies won't get frustrated by constant waveoffs and give up.
I like this idea. The .INI file parameters are there already  One could keep three or more copies of .INI files with various locus settings and change them at one's own discretion.

[Paddles]

Did you see my earlier post on the "smoking hot break" trigger, and OK score? Just curious what you thought.

Yes, I did.. An OK is already there, but temporarily disabled...  As for the hot break, I think it's possible, but I'll have to figure out how to do that.

[MacK]

I didn't realise I was always pulling to the left on my landings.     

Cracking program - absolutely superb and a great help!     

Thanks very much.

 

[WilliamCall]

One issue mentioned if AI carrier spawns near an FSX AI carrier on the move the vLSO goes to the FSX AI carrier.

Subs,
Thanks for the reminder.  I mentioned that in the other forum, maybe not this one.  That does appear to be my problem.  I depart Oceana NAS to meet Javier's carrier, but vLSO doesn't work.  I fly a few miles up the cost to Norfolk ship yard and see the Microsoft carrier coming into port.  I do an approach to the Microsoft carrier and vLSO suddenly works.

Serge,
I notice on the landing log page, in the date column, the letter N or D after the date.  Does that mean DAY trap or NIGHT trap?  If so, then I've got another problem.  The traps that I made using the vLSO mission all have an N after the date, even though they were all flown during the day time.  The traps that I've flown usinf free flight mode, all have a D after the date, and all were flown during the day time.


What I'll do is continue testing, varying time of day, and see what haapens.  I'll also do some flights, changing my departure airfield.

[Paddles]

I notice on the landing log page, in the date column, the letter N or D after the date.  Does that mean DAY trap or NIGHT trap?  If so, then I've got another problem.  The traps that I made using the vLSO mission all have an N after the date, even though they were all flown during the day time.  The traps that I've flown usinf free flight mode, all have a D after the date, and all were flown during the day time.

Yes, these letters mean Day and Night. There are three times in FSX - day, night and dusk/dawn. You can play with your calendar [in free flight] and see how these times change. Another good example are runway lights, which FSX turns on when it decides that the day time is over. The dusk/dawn was my big concern, because it's hard to programmatically determine when it becomes really dark, so I've decided that the program would consider dusk/dawn periods as night, too. Yes, sometimes you'd say that early dusk or late dawn do look like day.

[WilliamCall]

Well, I still can't get this to work in free flight mode.  I just did two flights, no joy!  First flight, I took off from Oceana and landed on the carrier. Then I paused FSX, started vLSO, and resumed the flight.  I stayed in the pattern and landed on the carrier, no LSO calls.  I stopped the flight, looked at the vLSO log, no new entrys.  So I quit vLSO, started a new flight departing from Pensacola.  I landed on the carrier, paused the flight, started vLSO, then resumed the flight.  Again, I stayed in the  pattern and landed on the carrier, no LSO calls.  Exactly, what is the procedure for getting vLSO to work in free flight mode?

[Paddles]

Oh boy...  
Then I have some questions. Is there a carrier in your free flight? What time of day you take off from Oceana, where to fly to find that carrier? I'd like to re-create your situation here and see what's wrong with the program...
Does this carrier have a working FLOLS and arresting gear? Another place to look at is your FSX/SimObjects/Boats folder, with two subfolders named veh_carrier01_high_detail_sm and veh_carrier01. There are sim.cfg files in each. Please look at each and tell me what read their title= parameters?
Thanks!

[SandPro]

Serge, a big thanks for this software. Great work !

In case you have missed it (post by Burner on the 14th), I would also like to let you know I have several pilots that are experiencing intermittent... or NO audio with ver2. I am also seeing like reports on another forum. Personally, I have NOT experienced this problem. I have attempted to help these folks by going through all the normal diagnostics, with no joy.  This includes from how they unzipped and run vLSO (including using Admin rights), computer settings, etc.  Two are using XP and one using Win7. I know that is a little vague. Was wondering if there is anything "special" required to invoke the audio... not knowing how the audio is attaching within the exe.  For example.. Is there a possible conflict; depending on which java version they may be running? As of yet, I have not been able to isolate or help them resolve this issue.

[WilliamCall]

Oh boy...  
Then I have some questions. Is there a carrier in your free flight? What time of day you take off from Oceana, where to fly to find that carrier? I'd like to re-create your situation here and see what's wrong with the program...
Does this carrier have a working FLOLS and arresting gear? Another place to look at is your FSX/SimObjects/Boats folder, with two subfolders named veh_carrier01_high_detail_sm and veh_carrier01. There are sim.cfg files in each. Please look at each and tell me what read their title= parameters?
Thanks!

Serge,
I'm using Javier's CVN68, it does have a working FLOLS and arresting gear.  I've installed "carriertracks1and2", which have several compiled traffic .bgl files.  Two files of interest are: trafficNASeast.bgl and trafficNASeast2.bgl, which are located in Addon Scenery/scenery folder .  These traffic files allow the carrier to follow a traffic "flight plan".  By using these traffic files, they allow the carrier to show up in free flight mode, cruising on a given course and speed.  I'm not sure what goes into creating the .bgl files, I'm guessing it's compiling the .FLT files.  So, maybe the title in the .FLT files are important, which are:  Carrier Oceana, and Carrier Pensacola, respective.  Before I start free flight mode, I set the time of day as Day, everything else defaults to current year and day of month.

The title in the veh_carrier01_high_detail_sm config file is the same: veh_carrier01_high_detail_sm .  Same goes for veh_carrier01 config file:  VEH_carrier01 .  These are great questions, and by the nature of these questions, I'm guessing that the titles in the .FLT files (Carrier Oceana and Carrier Pensacola), which were used to create the compiled .bgl files, is the problem.  Let me know if there is anything I can do, and thanks for looking into this.

[Paddles]

SandPro,
thanks for reporting this issue. Here's how the program works...
All the sound samples are stored in the Sound subfolder, within a folder where the vLSO.exe, vLSO.ini, SeanHand.ttf and Logbook.dat (this file appears after first run of the program) files are located. So, first make sure that this subfolder is present and there's a bunch of .WAV files in it.
Next, this program doesn't depend on Java or any other interpreting systems, it's a standalone, self-sufficient piece of software which doesn't need any usual windows installation procedures. All you have to do is to properly unzip the downloaded .ZIP to a folder of your choice. Again, properly means 'keeping its folders structure', i.e. the Sound subfolder has to be there. What it really does depend on are FSX Acceleration and its SimConnect componenet.  

Hope this helps..