Episode: 3881
Title: HPR3881: Xplane_VatSim_2022
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3881/hpr3881.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 07:14:06

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3881 from Monday the 19th of June 2023.
Today's show is entitled X-Playing Vatsim 2022.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 20 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is I talk about Vatsim and X-Playing Obsession.
Hello everyone, welcome to the episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host Operator.
I'm going to be talking about X-Playing Flight Simulator series.
Now this is an old, I'm going backwards and I'm going to try to go backwards and get to
my newer content.
But this was from two years ago it seems like, so I'm going to try to recollect and piece
together what I was looking at and working on then.
The farther time goes by, the less I care about and amintensisated and can provide context
around HPR episodes.
But this one in particular is very cool if you want to get obsessed about something.
I think X-Playing started out just being able to, my son, my seven or eight-year-old son
at the time, was interested in that stuff or was interested in simulators or whatever
and I said, you know what, but he would like, explain.
So I think I loaded that up and started messing around with it and figuring it out.
And there's a whole world that I completely missed back in 2002.
I did a HPR on this.
And I don't know if it was around when I did or if it was just not something that existed.
But it's called Vatsim.
I don't know what it stands for, but it's basically a simulation network for stuff.
And you can basically train on it.
You can learn everything you need to learn.
They have here in Atlanta, they have an ATC chapter.
You can join where you learn all the stuff and you take tests and whatever and it's all
like, you know, supported by community people and whatever.
Let me bring up some of this stuff while I'm thinking about it.
So it's really fun.
I got into it.
I started to test, test, practice for the test, enough to be a, you know, a controller.
So telling helping people land and all that stuff.
And then eventually you get to work at like the tower or, you know, taxi people in.
But the idea there is I used to have a fair amount of time during the day to do stuff and
be available.
So I like during the day I could be like an ATC guy for the Atlanta Vatsim.
And the it's like there's no barrier and entry or anything.
You just have to be able to pass the tests and you can start doing whatever.
But it's all legit.
Like it's all like there's no really missing around.
You can be banned.
You have a, an ID that's bound to your, to your account.
So if you do shenanigans, you basically have to create another account.
And then you could, I guess, ensue hilarious and it's there.
But for every email address you'd have a new account and that account could be banned
and there's moderation and stuff.
But generally everybody's very helpful because they know it's like all kind of volunteer
stuff.
But they're very serious about, you know, people are very serious about their opinions and
there's drama there too.
But anyways, I wanted to share my experience with the plugins and different features and
all kinds of stuff that you can do.
Anything is scenery.
You can download some for free sometimes, custom scenery, custom things.
I'm going to upload the GitHub stuff because I don't know why I deleted it.
I think I cleared up my GitHub and I deleted some of this stuff because it wasn't super
useful.
But yeah, there's all document documents for training, but the cool thing is actually
logging in to Vatsim and talking back to the controllers and the tower and actually
landing and doing the right things and getting the call signs right.
I never really got there.
I got obsessed with it with the software side of it.
So I'll kind of tell you my side and my experience.
When I was running it, they had just switched to like Vulcan 3D which is either like a
slower or faster, better.
So the plugins were kind of all over the place.
I don't know where they're, where they left off at.
But there's multiple services you can pay for, like tracking stuff so you can bind like
the latest and greatest flight nav.
I think it's called like flight nav stuff that you can bind to.
Let's see if I can see Vatsim notes.
I got a Vatsim folder somewhere around here.
I ended up paying.
When it was all said and done, I ended up paying probably 100 or so for all the different
services that are available for Vatsim.
So I'll kind of go over those quickly as soon as I can find them.
So I have 14.
Delta VAA.org, they are, I think it's like the Delta Club so you can, you know, if you
can name your plane a DL or whatever and be in like the Delta Club fuel plane errors
or like mapping out what your fuel is going to cost and that I think connects to other
software like Navigraph and can help with that.
There's more online maps.
Rocket Route is kind of like a free mapping navigator, flight pan creator.
So you create a flight plan on a website generally and then you download that flight plan and
import it into your Nav, I don't know even any of the terms, the little computer that's
on your, on your jet, usually I do all the fancy, you know, Java 7's or whatever has
to all the computer stuff.
And then once you do that, you can sort of kind of just fly that route and go from there.
Sometimes you have to go in and edit it and things like that, but in general you can just
download the flight plan.
So Navigraph is the paid one that will sync up with stuff somehow and give you extra good
things.
Pilot to ATC, I think that's part of a piece of software that, yeah, that's a piece
of software that will do the mapping locally.
So that it will basically the pilot to ATC will do create kind of real time, whatever
maps you want.
And then that will sync with the game too.
So as the map, you know, as you're playing the game, it will sync up and show you where
you are at and the thing and then they have like overlays and stuff.
So there's all kinds of plugins and stuff you can do.
It's simply.com, some form apps again, Skyvector, same kind of thing.
There's vatsim.net, which actually has like stats and stuff.
So you can see the actual people that are playing the game, yeah, I have it.
It's all the vatsim network stuff.
I haven't liked it in a while, but it will show you, yeah, I kind of even have an account
because I'm probably idle too long or something.
USA, same thing, maps, explain that org is their forms.
They have a store where you can buy certain kind of things like maps or I think you can
buy textures through, I can't remember, different, I think you can buy different, yeah, you can
buy different airlines and jets and scenery, they have scenery packs you can buy.
So they have like a Georgia scenery pack.
You can create your own with software.
So you download the software and you tell it how detailed you want to pull in, how much
you want to pull in, you want to pull in the elevation data and then you tell it and
then that will import whatever you tell it to import and basically ruin your machine because
it takes a lot of CPU resources to do some of this stuff.
So that's a lot of what I struggled with was doing the scenery and stuff, ortho, for
XP, or THO for XP.
That was where I usually did most of the overlays and stuff, but you have to get it in the
right order.
So you can buy different overlays and different textures, but if you put them in the wrong
order, it will be all screwed up.
So if you get like super detailed texture and then you overlay it with the elevation data
or you vice versa, you put the layers in the wrong way, it won't look right.
So you'll have like a super detailed flat map or you'll have like the elevation and the
textures won't be there because the textures will be under the layer that you put the elevation
on or something to that effect.
So the script I made was a work in progress to do a bunch of things.
It would check for admin, it would check for the explain binary, it would see if you had
a configuration in your plugin resources, and then it would import that, it would prompt
to install stuff if there was stuff in your ortho XP folder or AL pilot X, which I think
is another thing for creating maps and textures, automate, common plugin installs like traffic
and lighting, models, planes, etc.
Some of the things I pulled down was Zibo, ZIBO, 737,800, and that was like a model that's
supposed to be like super accurate to 737.
I got another ultimate 737-700, ultimate 737-900, flight factor, and then there's like
a default 747-400, I don't know if I did this, I think those are the ones I didn't mess
with that much, but the ZIBO one I had, it was referenced in a lot of things.
So depending on like the computer that you have or whatever, and depending on what software
you have, the models might work better with that particular piece of software or particular
plugin, so it just depends, like it's all just an open book, and that's kind of the problem,
it's like just go, you could go crazy.
Live traffic is interesting, I think that one's free, it's a plugin that gives you like
live traffic data you can import into, so if you're flying around ADC, there's actually
the planes that are actually around Atlanta are the ones that are in there, or I think
also either, or it just creates random traffic for you, so like that way you're not bored.
And you might even be able to combine both beyond ADC and, or beyond VATSIM and have live
traffic running, so you have like a little bit of both, some other plugins, single pilot
assistant for ZIBO mod, yeah that's why, because it was an assistant app for, for explain.
Now this is two years ago, so probably everything is completely changed, and there's all
kinds of new stuff, that's a problem with these, you know, comb grown things.
Auto gate is like a, is a plugin to help you with gating, so like it though, the little
machine will pull up and come up and pull up and give you the little guy that comes out,
but the machine pulls you into the gate and pushes you out to the gate, it's kind of cute.
Fly with Lua, it's like a Lewis script based thing, which I don't think I messed with once.
I did have a, a like auto pilot thing that would land the plane for you, grass the plane
for you, that was pretty cool.
It didn't particularly work great, but you could basically tell it, you say, oh, where
the airport's near me, and you picked the airport, and the idea is that it would fly an
approach to the airport for you and land the plane, but most of the time you were going
way too fast, or coming in from the wrong direction, or whatever, you would like get all
upset, go into circles, so it wasn't perfect.
That was all Lewis scripts.
I think it sky's a cool one, airport, environment, HD, I never looked at terrain radar, heavy
tab.
I'm going through random stuff here, but the key is an X-squark box, it's kind of cool.
I think that was one that would do like a random noises and stuff like chatter that you
need to figure out.
Anyways, I wanted to go over my vatsim script, which this is called, the application is
called VRC, and that's depending on what ATC in your area, depending on what chapter
or whatever, depending on what software they use, will determine what you use for your
to be the ATC person.
They use VRC, another one is called, don't remember the name of it, I would know if I was two
years ago, but we use VRC, and in VRC you put in different frequencies to listen for in
the client, so you have the game running, but you also have a VRC running, if you want
to do both, you can play and be in vatsim and do run VRC at the same time.
That's where you keep track of people, if you have depending on what permissions you have,
you can tell people to land or you can send them messages and things like that.
You start out as a read-only person, and you're actually not even supposed to be logged
into vatsim for some instances, so if you get assigned an ID for vatsim, even if you
log in and you start chatting or you start trying to do stuff, you can get that account
banned.
You have to know what you're doing and take the guidance from your chapter or whatever,
so you don't piss anybody off, because the last thing you want to do is mess with these
guys, because all they do is sleep and breathe this stuff, but I had macros that would
basically fill in all that information for you and fire up vlc and share the vatsim,
so I actually had an open vlc server that you could connect to, and you could hear
the chatter for our vatsim network, which was actually kind of cool.
What about what else did I have?
Audio for vatsim, yep, and that was like changing, looks like a lighting, lighting lights
on, so sim lighting lights on, so I guess I had some huckies for sending lighting lights
and stuff, so the other one was, that was my vatsim configuration stuff, the other one
was a plug-in helper, which would automatically go in and scrape, or though XPE download
folder, let's see, you would check for admin, I'm some of their cool stuff, it would set
up the scenery stuff, so if you had scenery, it would set up the paths for you and put
them in the right place, again, this probably has all changed within the past two years,
but I'm just telling you some of the use cases I used it for, some download new WKit,
download latest ortho XPE, so it actually would download the latest ortho XPE for you and
run it, looks like, wow, this is old, I've already done all kinds of cool stuff, I can
make this really cool, this is chocolatey, are you installing stuffy at chocolatey?
Yeah, it's actually installing chocolatey, navdata, so you can pull down navdata from
nava, and it's older, and that's why you pay for something like, you pay for the vatsim.net,
no, NaviGraph is where you get your latest and greatest charts, because the stuff from
the FAA is old, and you can do it, but a lot of the integration and stuff is in the paid
services, so if you want easy, you can improve everything, you usually pay, I think I paid
it, NaviGraph, I paid him $160 or something, one of them I paid a bunch of money to, and
then pilot to ATC, but those two were paid services, and they gave you a lot of integration
and stuff that I really liked, and it looks like they're still all pretty active yesterday
Friday, May 28th, so there's some activity in that space still, so it would set up all
that for you, let's see where I was at, so it would pull down flight data for you, it
looks like it would install and have data, it would pull out the, it would remove the
old Zebo stuff if you had these existing Zebo plug-in stuff, and it would pull down the
newest one, it would pull down better pushback for you, but the idea was to make it so like,
people had an easy way to like add scenery and common plug-ins to, because for example,
like if you've ever, if you haven't played, not space engineers, but Curvel Space program,
please get it, the old one is good, don't get the new one, but Curvel Space is cool,
because you can like, is it open environment, you can download plug-ins and stuff, there's
Mekja, but they have, and what I call what I was getting at, is they have a thing called
like a manager, like a download, a plug-in manager, so you can just point and click download
whatever plug-ins, so that's what I was trying to create with this was some kind of way
for people to easily add in plug-ins and scenery to their existing installs, but it's pretty
complicated and it's pretty, it's pretty depends, so it depends on if you want to go with
this site, or if you want to go with this other site, in the different ways you can get
extra textures, and if you go too crazy, then it'll run like poop, at one point in time
I had like really good textures, but it ran like poo, because you know, I had it in the
wrong level, I had it in the wrong order, or just my GPU was a piece of junk, but you
know, I ran with it for probably, I've got to test it for about a month, starting
studying for the vats and stuff, getting really involved with the UI and trying to figure
out better ways, and then they said, oh, we'll switching from VRC to whatever the other
one everybody was using, like that view or some view or something like that, and I was
like, well, that doesn't particularly make me happy, and also I have ADD, so I'm kind
of like already getting bored with this, because I didn't get a lot of feedback from
the work that I was doing, a lot of people were just like, hey, you know, it works and
it's really hard to set all this up, but once you do it, you know, it's kind of, you're
kind of done and want to done, and I was like, well, if we make it easier for people to
join and help, then we can get more people and stuff like that, but at the same time,
if it's just because you make something easy for someone to contribute to, it doesn't
mean you're going to get someone that provides value, so if they're willing to go through
the effort to figure out instead of the software and get it done and understand how it works,
then they're probably going to have the same motivation to actually help with and be consistent
and a new value community member or whatever. So, anyways, that's most of what I got for
you in the Flight Sim world. Philosophon, I will post probably the text, because it's
vats and things, pretty much, Jesus, the vats and script is pretty useless, but there's
a plugin helper, which is kind of interesting, and maybe some notes with that, so I'll
post that up with here, and hopefully I can do some more of these for you guys.
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