[Release] LSOBot - A Carrier Landing Grading Tool
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Summary
LSOBot is a carrier landing grading tool. It analyzes TacView .txt.acmi files to display, grade, and analyze carrier traps.Installation
LSOBot requires TacView, but is itself simply a web page and does not require installation. Visit https://candera.github.io/lsobot to get started.Description
LSOBot was conceptualized by Flounder and Shady, pilots of the 401st VFS Hornet Squadron of the 1st VFW. It was inspired by vLSO. Flounder and Shady wanted a way to improve their traps using the type of automated analysis vLSO provides. They approached me, and I agreed that the project sounded like an interesting one. A few months later, here we are.Instructions
To use, record ACMI of your traps in BMS, convert them to .txt.acmi using version 1.5.0 or higher of TacView, and open the resulting file in LSOBot. Help is available in-app by clicking the little blue circles with question marks in them.I made a video that walks you through the process:
FAQ
Q: Where should I ask questions, report bugs, and make suggestions?
A: Right here in this thread, the official support location for LSOBot.
Q: What browsers does it work in?
A: We’ve tested it in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. It may also work in other browsers.
Q: Why does it require TacView?
A: TacView solves a lot of the hard problems around pulling data out of the .vhs files that BMS generates. LSOBot may eventually evolve to read .vhs files directly. Also, TacView is totally awesome.
Q: Is it open source?
A: Yep. The project lives at https://github.com/candera/lsobot.
Credits
I’d like to thank Flounder and Shady, both of whom put many hours of testing, design conversations, and thought into the construction of LSOBot, not to mention coming up with the idea of doing it in the first place. It definitely wouldn’t exist without them. Thanks!
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Thanx m8 . I must add it 2 my hotlist.
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Thanks for doing this Tyrant.
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Tyrant, I would highly recommend that this tool be adapted to create a similar tool for land-based runway landings. Having observed literally thousands of landings in MP over the years, there is obviously a serious need for pilots to improve their runway landing skills.
A runway-based tool like this would hopefully include not only the approach analysis as your excellent LSObot does, but also a grading analysis of the pilots ability to remain at 10-13 degrees after WoW for air-braking as long as possible to take the demand off the mechanical brakes.
Being a software coder (not sims, but…) for 30+ years, I’m fairly confident that 90% of the code that would be required is already in place in your LSObot work. I particularly admire how you’ve made this a multi-platform browser-based tool.
I know that I would certainly use such a tool to help me objectively evaluate and improve the qualities of my landings, and I would hope that many others would take advantage of such a tool as well, because they sure do need a little help with their landings. And truth be told, I suspect that the BMS devs have always ‘relaxed’ the RL landing criteria/limitations to account for less than professional approaches.
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Tyrant, I would highly recommend that this tool be adapted to create a similar tool for land-based runway landings. Having observed literally thousands of landing in MP over the years, there is obviously a serious need for pilots to improve their runway landing skills.
A runway-based tool like this would hopefully include a grading analysis of the pilots ability to remain at 10-13 degrees after WoW for air-braking as long as possible to take the demand off the mechanical brakes.
I know that I would certainly use such a tool to help me improve the qualities of my landings, and I would hope that many others would take advantage of such a tool as well, because they sure do need a little help with their landings.
Thanks for the suggestion. You’re not the first person to ask for this, so it’s clear there’s a need/desire. I don’t foresee adding it in the near future, but I’ve made a note of it and will consider it as we prioritize improvements in future releases.
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Thank you Tyrant! … Very nice!
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Same feeling here, this would be one more great gift to all naval Falconeers, IMHO.
With best regards,
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OK a few things:
1.) This. is. awesome. The only bad part about it is that it’s also shown how lax I’ve gotten with my carrier landings but seeing as it gives me some awesome feedback I’ll get better.
2.) Are you familiar with the vLSO mod for DCS made by VFA-113? They’re a DCS only Hornet group who are holding out for ED’s version and filling in with some pretty cool mods for now.With that said, they have an awesome PLAT cam mod - I’ll link it here:
Do you think a mod like this is possible for BMS? I try doing it with the eyefly cam but we all know the limitations of that
3.) Another possible suggestion: export to png/jpg/whatever. I’ve been taking screenshots but it’s just something that might be easier.
-Bullet Magnet, VFA-141
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OK a few things:
1.) This. is. awesome. The only bad part about it is that it’s also shown how lax I’ve gotten with my carrier landings but seeing as it gives me some awesome feedback I’ll get better.
Glad you like it. And if you think your traps are bad, you can always watch some of mine.
2.) Are you familiar with the vLSO mod for DCS made by VFA-113? They’re a DCS only Hornet group who are holding out for ED’s version and filling in with some pretty cool mods for now.
With that said, they have an awesome PLAT cam mod - I’ll link it here:
Do you think a mod like this is possible for BMS? I try doing it with the eyefly cam but we all know the limitations of that
Obviously, vLSO was a big inspiration for LSOBot. I hadn’t seen the PLAT cam mod, though: very cool stuff there. If you’re asking whether a live view like this is possible…maybe. That would be hard without support from the BMS dev team, though - the existing sim doesn’t make this sort of thing easy to achieve. I’d have to think if it’s even possible, although I have some ideas about how to pull it off. But I don’t see myself doing this any time in the near future, if at all.
If you’re talking about something that’s done after the fact, via ACMI, like how LSOBot works, that’s a lot easier. I still don’t think it’s something we’re likely to do soon, but it would be easier than a live view by quite a lot.
Which of those scenarios were you hoping for?
3.) Another possible suggestion: export to png/jpg/whatever. I’ve been taking screenshots but it’s just something that might be easier.
Interesting idea. I’m not sure how much work it would be worth to replicate something that the operating system already gives you for free (screenshots) but I can understand the desire for one-stop shopping. I’ve added this to the list of things to maybe do at some point, but it won’t be coming in the short term.
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I’d swear I posted a response to openchan in this thread yesterday.
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I’d swear I posted a response to openchan in this thread yesterday.
Same issue here - I knew I replied to Tyrant as well… weird.
As for Tyrant’s question:
Which of those scenarios were you hoping for?
Short answer: live view. This would allow for live corrections and recordings via video editing/recording software.
As for the screenshot thing I understand - simply an idea I was thinking of seeing as people will want to use it for debriefing.
Thanks again!
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Right. What I was saying before is that we haven’t found a way to get a PLAT view (yet).
First idea was to use a ‘Top Gun’ view mounted on the deck at the PLAT location. That doesn’t work. Something to do with the carrier object type/model …. there’s no place to ‘anchor’ a Top Gun camera.
Second idea was to use the Eye Fly camera. That works pretty well (video link below with an ‘LSO border’ added), but it’s a PITA. You have to ‘fly’ the camera there each time you want to set it up, so it’s really only a one-off use kind of thing.
Eye Fly ‘PLAT’:
No new ideas yet.
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Right. What I was saying before is that we haven’t found a way to get a PLAT view (yet).
First idea was to use a ‘Top Gun’ view mounted on the deck at the PLAT location. That doesn’t work. Something to do with the carrier object type/model …. there’s no place to ‘anchor’ a Top Gun camera.
Second idea was to use the Eye Fly camera. That works pretty well (video link below with an ‘LSO border’ added), but it’s a PITA. You have to ‘fly’ the camera there each time you want to set it up, so it’s really only a one-off use kind of thing.
Eye Fly ‘PLAT’:
No new ideas yet.
I do have a few ideas here, but implementing them is pretty far down in my coding queue, and I’m not even sure some of them are possible. Nevertheless, let me outline them in case someone with more time on their hands finds them useful.
So, there are a few basic problems we have to solve. One is knowing where the heck things are in the world. Shared memory does an excellent job of telling us where the piloted aircraft is, and provides basically no information about any other objects. That makes it sort of hard to figure out where you are relative to the carrier, which is kind of important. It might be possible to use ILS, but I’ve seen drift problems with that suggesting that it may not be a workable approach at the moment.
ACMI provides excellent information on where most things are, but a) the temporal resolution is not very good (something like 2-4 Hz), and b) it’s only available after the fact.
Idea #1: The .flt files from which ACMI is built are written during flight. It may be possible to monitor these in near-real time to suss out the location of things like the carrier and provide something like a PLAT view. Or a decent AWACS view, for that matter. The issues here are that a) the .flt format is not documented as far as I know, b) for a variety of technical reasons it might not be possible to read from the file, and c) this is a sort of “clever hack”, also known as an “insanely broken idea”.
Idea #2: If all we’re after is positioning the camera via EyeFly, it may be possible to rig up a sort of autopilot for it. Using either keyboard/mouse emulation or a virtual joystick driver like vJoy, it may be possible to write an external program that would monitor the position of the camera via shared memory and provide control inputs that would maneuver the camera into the right place. This, of course, a) assumes that EyeFly positioning is reflected in the shared memory data (easy to check, but no idea whether it’s true) and b) that we know where to put the camera (but see idea #1).
Far easier than the above crazy ideas is having an after-the-fact PLATcam-style rendering of the landing, since that’s just an alternate presentation of the information that LSOBot already draws. But it might require using WebGL rather than SVG in order to get decent frame rates, which would be a lot more work. Not sure. Certainly doable in any event.
So those are my ideas, for what they’re worth. Having a dev come along and say why they’re impossible would be pretty handy, as it will prevent me from wasting my time trying them out some day, which I do plan to do. That day is probably quite a way off in the future, though, since I have a long list of things I need to do first, including trying to suck less at flying.
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…. I have a long list of things I need to do first, including trying to suck less at flying.
But …… but, you may never code again if this is your priority. Please say it ain’t so.
:rofl:
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But …… but, you may never code again if this is your priority. Please say it ain’t so.
:rofl:
You’ve flown with me…you know getting better at it is clearly not my #1 priority.
Also, Fox 3 close, mofo.
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Love the overlay in that. I think we’re going to have to do the same if we want a PLAT in our videos as well. I’ve used Eye Fly to get LSO screenshots (take a look below) but haven’t tried PLAT cam style shots yet.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/iMoFPes.png
(This was a touch and go, btw)
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You sure it was a touch and go??? I have used that line MANY times, lol.:D
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You sure it was a touch and go??? I have used that line MANY times, lol.:D
AKA code for “forgetting the hook.”
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AKA code for “forgetting the hook.”
We at the 1st call that ‘pulling a Shady’……[emoji1]
Sent from my SM-G920W8 using Tapatalk
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Would a parked jet near the fantail pointing in the correct direction and its camera views be used as an adhoc platform for the plat camera?
Nice work Ty