[Release] LSOBot - A Carrier Landing Grading Tool
-
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.
-
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.
-
…. 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:
-
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.
-
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)
-
You sure it was a touch and go??? I have used that line MANY times, lol.:D
-
You sure it was a touch and go??? I have used that line MANY times, lol.:D
AKA code for “forgetting the hook.”
-
AKA code for “forgetting the hook.”
We at the 1st call that ‘pulling a Shady’……[emoji1]
Sent from my SM-G920W8 using Tapatalk
-
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
-
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
nope cause the code - shared memory doesn’t provide such info… same problem as AISPY of F4Awacs app. He might be able to see a flight that is parked and waiting… but is a flight shown as traveling along the carrier?
-
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
You won’t have a valid centerline reference. Also, you wouldn’t be able to park in the same exact spot each time.
You might be able to make some judgement about high/low, left/right, fast/slow, but it would be 100% estimation of the individual.
-
Well you could paint a parking space on the deck like we have for EORs so the lineup and nose wheel would be close. As for the camera reference lines, what about modding the no cockpit art HUD only view that one player has as a dedicated Landing Signal Officer. Maybe even a human pilot wouldnt be required if the HUD view was taken from the LSO a/c tactview’s HUD view.
Thats until BMS 43x comes out with a PLAT view in 3-4 BMS weeks of course.
-
Late to the game on this ( don´t visit these forums much ). This is very impressive Tyrant.
-
Cool utility! A suggestion, if I may… the colors of the glidepath circles is a little misleading. In the world of naval aviation, green, yellow, and red correspond to angle of attack, as depicted on an AOA indexer. Red means fast, yellow is on-speed, and green is slow. (Yes! The on-speed cue in the AOA indexer is an amber donut in Navy airplanes, unlike the F-16
.) In fact, when waving a pass, an LSO can see a representation of the angle of attack (and hook state) via a tiny stoplight-esque box on the nose gear strut. I would recommend replacing the current color scheme of the glidepath dots with those colors to represent fast/slow angles of attack, and removing the smaller AOA dots altogether. (Or perhaps change them to light blue dots if you want that extra granular data.) Just a humble suggestion from a “squid.” -
Cool utility! A suggestion, if I may… the colors of the glidepath circles is a little misleading. In the world of naval aviation, green, yellow, and red correspond to angle of attack, as depicted on an AOA indexer. Red means fast, yellow is on-speed, and green is slow. (Yes! The on-speed cue in the AOA indexer is an amber donut in Navy airplanes, unlike the F-16
.) In fact, when waving a pass, an LSO can see a representation of the angle of attack (and hook state) via a tiny stoplight-esque box on the nose gear strut. I would recommend replacing the current color scheme of the glidepath dots with those colors to represent fast/slow angles of attack, and removing the smaller AOA dots altogether. (Or perhaps change them to light blue dots if you want that extra granular data.) Just a humble suggestion from a “squid.”First of all, thanks for the feedback! Always glad to hear suggestions and comments.
I’ve made a note of the idea. I think it’s a solid one, but I’d have to play with it to make sure I do it right, and that it’s an improvement over what’s there. I certainly like the idea of leveraging in-the-jet symbology like the colors. I could see maybe even using the indexer symbol itself.
Just to set expectations, I have been spending a boatload of my free time working on another utility that I hope will see the light of day in the coming weeks, so I won’t be allocating any time to LSOBot soon (unless someone reports a critical bug). I do expect to come through and make enhancements to LSOBot at some point, though, especially since the 401st at the 1st VFW (our Hornet squadron) makes frequent use of LSOBot.
Thanks again!
-
Tyrant, goes without saying we are all very impressed with your virtual LSO, it is a really nice work and stunning it works on a web based platform. Obviously the Hornet is the obvious place start and I think a great feature add for down the road would be to add the V/STOL grading to your LSO Bot. Very similar to the grading on the Hornet, except they have a few additional graded items: AR (approaching the ramp), + (cross over), Ho (Hover), VL (vertical landing) ect. Think about us Harrier drivers too
-
Tyrant, goes without saying we are all very impressed with your virtual LSO, it is a really nice work and stunning it works on a web based platform. Obviously the Hornet is the obvious place start and I think a great feature add for down the road would be to add the V/STOL grading to your LSO Bot. Very similar to the grading on the Hornet, except they have a few additional graded items: AR (approaching the ramp), + (cross over), Ho (Hover), VL (vertical landing) ect. Think about us Harrier drivers too
Oh interesting - hadn’t even occurred to me. This will probably happen about five minutes after I start playing with the Harrier myself.
Idea noted - thanks for the feedback!
-
Oh interesting - hadn’t even occurred to me. This will probably happen about five minutes after I start playing with the Harrier myself.
Idea noted - thanks for the feedback!
Tyrant you and whoever helped you are the heat!!! Don’t mean to bring up “that other sim” but your program using Tacview means it works perfectly for it too!! As a member of a virtual naval squadron I’m tearing up a bit I never found this until just now. Really hope you can find time in the future to add teh V/STOL grading in as well, but either way, thanks for this!
-
Tyrant you and whoever helped you are the heat!!! Don’t mean to bring up “that other sim” but your program using Tacview means it works perfectly for it too!! As a member of a virtual naval squadron I’m tearing up a bit I never found this until just now. Really hope you can find time in the future to add teh V/STOL grading in as well, but either way, thanks for this!
Huh - never occurred to me that it might work with…other sims. Cool!
For the record, it was Shady and Flounder at the 1st who were instrumental in developing LSOBot. We had many long discussions about how to build the thing.
And hey, thanks for the kind words. Very glad you find it useful!
-
Would it be possible to have it working for BMS 4.34?
Thank you!