ATC-pie user guide: Difference between revisions

* to play solo!

In solo games, you control virtual IFR planes, receiving and handing over strips to virtual ATCs depending on your position and aircraft's intentions. ATC-pie allows to train in different situations:

* or in airport mode, where three combinable positions are available:

** tower (TWR), controlling runways and immediate surroundings;

** departure (DEP), bringing departing traffic to their exit point;

** approach (APP), vectoring arrivals onto final.

When '''playing CTR''', your task is to transit the aircraft across your airspace, always ensuring separation, and to hand each of them over to the most appropriate neighbouring centre North, South, East or West of your sector. You can specify local navpoints in the location settings so that the system includes them as turning points in the randomised aircraft's routes. In '''airport mode''', traffic is either inbound or outbound. Assuming APP, inbound aircraft must be sequenced and vectored into tower range for handover, unless you are in the TWR position as well. Each inbound aircraft either requests ILS (you must clear them for ILS approach), or visual (they require vectors until they report the expected runway is in sight). Playing TWR, you must clear them to land and hand them over to ground control (GND) once they have vacated the runway. If landing cannot take place (too high, not cleared, etc.), aircraft will climb back up for go-around. Tower also manages outbound traffic, which appears ready holding short of runways. After take-off, hand over your strips to departure control, unless you are assuming DEP yourself. When doing DEP, you must hand outbound aircraft over to the en-route centre (CTR) once they are high enough and close to their exit point if specified.

! TWR only

| GND || DEP || APP || GND

'''Vectors''' are given by means of the vectoring assignment tool: click&drag on radar contact for heading; add SHIFT for altitude/FL and speed (see [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvA3MRlGJjU video 5] of the tutorial). '''Other instructions''' (''line up and wait'', ''clear to land'', etc.) can be sent from the instruction dock. Pull it up from the ''View'' menu if it is not visible. Instructions are issued to the callsign entered in the top field, which should fill automatically on aircraft or strip selection if the callsign is known.

* New traffic can be created at any time with a simple SHIFT+click&drag on the radar, specifying the place and face heading of the wanted traffic. A dialog pops up and allows you to choose a callsign, altitude and other details or accept the defaults. If near a runway threshold, you can place it on the ground ready for departure.

* Controlling the traffic is done in the same way as in solo sessions, i.e. through the vectoring tool (click&drag on aircraft bodies) and the instruction dock. The only difference is that you physically control the selected aircraft, regardless of your strip links and details. You therefore do not need to link strips with correctly entered callsigns before instructing aircraft. However, if you want ATC-pie to draw vectors and show assigned altitudes, it is a good idea to link a strip to your aircraft (use SHIFT+F2 to create a strip linked to the current selection).

'''Strip exchange''' is possible, either between both parties ("offline" exchanges) or between the student and the virtual ATCs (in-sim handovers). As the teacher, you must drop every strip on "Student" and select whom the strip should appear sent by on the student's side when prompted. As the student, drop your strip on any of the ATCs in the neighbours list to simulate a handover, or on "Teacher" if only showing it to your mentor. All student handovers are made visible to the teacher for supervision.

=== FlightGear strip exchange (handovers) and OpenRadar interoperability ===

The handover feature in ATC-pie is based on [[OpenRadar]]'s exchange server to enable ATC coordination between users of both software programs. However, it is to note that their philosophies differ in several ways:

For most interactions to work while still respecting both philosophies as much as possible, the following principles were chosen:

Detail note: wake turbulance category detail does not show in OpenRadar, but is preserved and visible to ATC-pie instances later receiving the strip.

 

In practice, in ATC-pie, a strip can be handed over by dropping it on the chosen ATC in the list of connected controllers in range. Received strips appear unlinked on the reserved rack, with an identification of the sender which disappears as soon as the strip is clicked on. For a full presentation about the feature, check [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQIud-cAlT4 tutorial video 6].

There are two ways to add images to the radar background. One is to import '''pixmap files''', which may contain transparency. The other is to write a '''text drawing specification''' file to draw coloured lines and label points. This allows to import anything from the most complex coloured height map to the the most schematic airspace outline. All images are positioned with lat/lon coordinates or navpoint names in radar range. The <code>resources/bg-img/Notice</code> file explains how to import and draw background images.

# The "download OSM background" option facilitates [[OpenStreetMap]] retrieval to import maps as radar background images. After specifying corners and a scale, a PNG map will be generated in the <code>output</code> directory for you to import.

First, a '''text alias''' is a dollar-prefixed word (like <code>$foo</code>) that ATC-pie will try to replace with a context-dependant value on message send. This allows to write and save formatted messages and avoid typing exact text in every message of the same format. For instance, anybody will enjoy the comfort of sending <code>Current weather is $metar</code>, whose alias will expand to the current primary station weather, instead of typing or copy-pasting a weather look-up for every such message.

Aliases can be predefined or custom. Predefined aliases take values that are specified by the program, e.g. <code>$metar</code> standing for the current weather, and are listed in the "quick reference", ''Text aliases'' section, with their meaning. Make sure you take a look. They can depend on the local environment (declination, airport elevation...), on your configuration (transition altitude, runways in use...) or on the current selection (QDM to airport, assigned route...). All other aliases will be considered custom, in other words to take values specified by you. You can define text aliases and replacements on world level, location (airport/centre) level and individual strip level. The first two levels make use of the integrated notepads; the latter looks inside your strip comments.

Moreover, ATC-pie strips everything up to the first pipe character (<code>|</code>), if any, before a message is processed and sent. You may check this with test line "stripped part|sent part" and observe that only the "sent part" makes it to the message contents. Since any entry already triggers a filtered pop-up menu of preset messages as yout type, '''pipe shortcuts''' can also make your life easier if you want to recall preset messages without pulling down the preset list. You can prefix your messages with a custom shortcut and a pipe, which will enable the automatic suggestion list to pull up the desired message line as you start typing the prefix. For example, the following preset message enables something like a dot-command for sending a bearing to your base airport in a few key strokes:

In airport mode, typing a single dot character '.' in an '''airport input field''' will instantly fill the box with your ICAO position. Use this as a shortcut from/to your airport when filling details.