Tower View

Starting a simulator session

The old architecture

The following picture shows the original architecture from 3.1.

There was two different kind of simulation setup. One for SweatBox server, and another one for the standalone simulation where EuroScope itself had a built in FSD server. The second one had some restrictions like: Only one trainee was able to connect. This two way simulator caused a lot of extra work. Therefore we decided to terminate the support of the internal FSD server of EuroScope and keep only the SweatBox model. This setup has many advantages like: Multiple trainee, multiple pseudo pilot, etc. But we know that many of you used the simulator on your own without connecting to VATSIM. This feature is still available in v3.2 as the originally built in FSD server is now available as an executable installed by EuroScope.

Separated FSD server

The following picture shows the newl architecture from 3.2.

The architecture changed in two ways:

  • The built in FSD server is moved out from the code of EuroScope. It is available as a standalone executable.
  • We separated the simulator engine, the EuroScope instance that runs the planes, from the pseudo pilots.

The first one is easier. This help us cleaning the code by not supporting two different kind of architecture. The EuroScope FSD server is the same lightweight server that was originally inside EuroScope. No permission checking, nothing special is built inside. Be sure to use it for your own environment, and not too often as public. But this way the structure is completely the same as the SweatBox version. It also made us possible to built the tower simulator – see below.

The second improvement makes it possible to run the scenario itself in a dedicated EuroScope session and meantime connect several other EuroScopes as pseudo pilot. The pseudo pilot only connections does not simulate plane movements at all, but sends instructions to the scenario runner one. The pseudo pilots can get /driver/ access and transfer of it like tracking the AC in a normal session. It is still possible to connect to teh server as normal trainee client.

EuroScope FSD server

The server is installed in your computer along with EuroScope. You can run it from the start menu. It looks like this:

There are not too many things you can do with the simulator itself. Just run and minimize. Yo may check the messages if something is not straight.

The EuroScope FSD simulator is free to be used by the VATSIM community. But as it is a central item of a commercial product, it has an active license checking. The server will connect to EuroScope WEB site and downloads licence information from there. The license is time limited (we will update the validity time to time), and also connection number limited. The VATSIM licence allows 2 controller and 2 P3D/FSX connections. That is more than you were able to do with the built in FSD server, but still not enough to build a complete 360 degree tower simulator. The server has limited number of restarts without accessing to EuroScope servers for licensing data. Even it is not planned, but we still keep all the right to cancel the licence upgrade of EuroScope FSD server any time without prior notice.

  • Licence data – The first line contains the licence validity and the last time download.
  • Scenario file – This area is obsolete now. It was planned to share a single scenario file between multiple simulator engines. But as the engine runs now in one EuroScope it is no more interesting. But you still may define the scenario file here and not at EuroScope.
  • TS server port – The FSD server contains a TeamSpeak server for voice communication. It is not yet utilized, but later there will be a VCCS plug-in for EuroScope.
  • System messages – Yo may see what is happening around the server, who is connected and how.
  • Simulated planes – A list of the planes currently simulated.

Note: Session value is always 0. The server is capable running multiple sessions parallel, but it is not utilised from EuroScope.

Note 2: If you would like to give access to your FSD server to external clients you need to open (and/or forward) the following ports:

  • 6809 – Standard FSD port for EuroScope client connections. This will be used by the simulated planes as well.
  • 6811 – This port is used by the FSX/P3D connector. The connector itself should run on the same machine as the FSX itself.
  • 9988 (or any other specified in the dialog) – For TeamSpeak client connections.

Tower Simulator

Using the EuroScope FSD server it is possible to connect multiple FSX /P3D sessions that show the simulated traffic from tower view. It is a completely different solution than the Tower View from EuroScope session:

Using the FSX connector program, you can connect the FSD server and a running FSX session. There may be as many FSX connector uses as needed for the size of the view. Note that it is limited to 2 in VATSIM licence.

To enable the most from the tower view you need an AI plane package like Ultimate Traffic (http://ut2.flight1.net/) or MyTraffic 2013 from Aerosoft (http://www.aerosoft.com/). These packages has several thousands of different aircraft types and liveries.

Once a connector is connected to the FSD server, the scenario runner is informed about it. That increases the position update from 1 update/5-6 seconds to 1 update/1 second. That enables a real smooth movement of the planes in tower view.

FSX Connector

The connector is installed in your computer along with EuroScope. You can run it from the start menu. It looks like this:

  • Aircraft definition folder – It points to the FSX library that holds the available aircraft paintings. In most cases it should be C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects. The connector scans all aircraft.cfg files under tis folder. Checks the types, the liveries, tha engine positions, the lights, etc. When the simulator is looking for a specific type/painting planes from this folder will be created in FSX.
  • Type/livery override file – It is just a backdoor. The file is a TAB delimited text file with AC type, livery and FSX model name. If the requested type/livery pair is in the file, then defined model will be created. It is much better to define the exact plane in the SIMDATA. That utilize the full data of the aircraft.cfg files.
  • EuroScope FSD server – the computer name or IP address of the FSD server.
  • AC definition – An information window with the number of different aircraft types scanned.
  • Callsign – Use this callsign when connecting to the FSD server.
  • FrameRate – How many times the simulated planes should be updated in a second. Check the best value for your environment.
  • Startup connect delay – The connector automatically connects to the FSD server as well as to FSX after startup. Define tie delay in seconds here.
  • Reconnect delay – If the connection fails then try connecting again after this amount of seconds.
  • Ground clamp – Used only with P3D, but not with FSX.
  • METAR entries – These are not used at the moment. METAR data is set as global, not by stations.