TCAS

[Keith Smith]

Good news, got this working with the existing multiplayer system again!

Also, skiselkov, after looking more closely at how this all works, there are existing TCAS data refs (read-only). Xplane reads the multiplayer locations, sets the tcas datarefs and then the tcas displays are driven from those refs. I talked with Austin & Ben, they are very open to making those tcas datarefs writeable (including the active plane count). This would allow us to not be tied to the multiplayer system at all.

At least there is a working solution in the interim which will be compatible with all aircraft. The only danger is if people have coded custom traffic displays which use the multiplayer datarefs instead of the TCAS refs.

I'll get this build out (including dual comm support asap).

[Keith Smith]

Also,I moved this thread to the xplane forum. Please try to select the appropriate forum for each post, especially when it's sim specific. There is value in having all xplane-specific discussion in one place rather than having some of it live in the 'pilot' forum, which isn't sim specific.

[skiselkov]

Thanks, greatly appreciated (also the dual-com support on the new PE client, wonderful!). I always felt the multiplayer DR hack was nasty. IMO, those datarefs should always have been writable even without the "other aircraft" loaded. Just to clarify: how does the PE client determine which aircraft to place in the DRs if there's a limited number available? Does it use proximity? Or simply "first come, first served"?

[NameCoin]

Earlier in the year, I had written some code to pull down traffic data provided by the PE client. (It is output in ForeFlight's string-based format, but I converted it to the GDL90 format, the standard used by all portable ADS-B devices.) My plan was to combine the data with some mathematics to develop a basic TCAS, e.g. an algorithm design. I'm very interested in this area - is that what we're doing here? Or is the discussion about using inputs and outputs from a built-in X-Plane TCAS function?