[simpits-tech] OpenRJ

[dabigboy at cox.net]

Interesting. FWIW, I'm working on a network-based OpenGL glass cockpit display (well, adaptable to simulated steam gauges too, of course), which is fairly far along now. It's also written in Python, coincidentally, making it wonderfully cross-platform. Most of my development work stopped/paused late last year because it's reached a point where it takes care of most of my immediate needs, but soon I will be moving ahead with engine instrumentation and more nav stuff.

I've been toying with the idea of releasing it eventually, if folks are interested? I know there's already a host of glass display software products out there now, but I think I may have something a little unique in certain areas (for one thing, I'm not trying to simulate the glass in a Boeing or Airbus-something like 99.9999% of other products out there, it seems). The great thing is it uses an extremely lean and simple UDP scheme for the data to move to the host PC, literally just a nice tidy string containing ordered values for each data item (airspeed, RPM, etc), that gets unpacked on the client/display PC, and from there, sent to the various instrument modules that require such info. This keeps me from being tied to any one sim.....all you have to do is write a simple plugin for your sim of choice that gathers the info required, packs it into a single (simple, well documented) string, and spits it to the listening IP/port via UDP. All the input filtering and range-checking happens on the client PC, and doesn't care what sim you're using. And any inputs or data that need to come FROM the display/instrument PC to the host PC are sent in a similar fashion (so you can run Phidgets, phcc, Arduino, etc on the instrumentation PC(s) if you so desire, further simplifying the interfaces to your actual host sim PC). Flight and engine instrument, and annunciator info (what data it's tied to, image source for the artwork, size/position, etc) are stored in handy ASCII files. I'm also going to write code to tie INI files to N-number as sent from the main sim PC, so you can tailor instrument setup to each plane. Instruments can now be moved (but not scaled yet) with the mouse, then a simple keypress saves your new coordinates to the current INI file(s). Panel setup is stupid easy, especially if you're in the panel-cutout club like me. :)

Speaking of Phidgets, I've also got code in my software to run my servo-based turn coordinator (yes, includes the ball), and my servo-based airspeed indicator, as well as driving my landing gear annunciator lights (Phidgets again) and a few other goodies connected to output channels on my Phidgets I/O card. I will probably tidy this up and include it as boilerplate code if I release the app.

Right now my software is setup for a mid-size turboprop GA aircraft, and will soon be tweaked further to approximate the typical avionics package in a relatively updated Learjet 30-series. The software is also completely scalable, meaning you can literally have as many client/display instrumentation PCs as you wish (well, up to 253 without fancy LAN-bridging, but ya know....). I don't have a current count on the packet size, but I'm guestimating it's still in the low-hundreds of bytes, if that.

All this is running in Python under Linux right now (and tested under Windows XP 32bit and Win 7 64bit), so it will probably run on just about any sim-worthy platform out there. X-Plane is my sim of choice, but as I said, the app would work with any sim that you can get data out of via UDP. Of course, you can run the software on the same PC as your sim, just send to 127.0.0.1.

Alright, I will stop plugging my stuff now. :P

Matt

---- Sean Galbraith <Sean.Galbraith at pacificsimulators.com> wrote: 
> Hey Gene, yep seen RJGLass, but my "simple" project is FS9 based...
> OpenRJ It comes with source code, so I may be able to butcher it to suit
> my needs :)
> 
> It appears, after a short search of the internet it appears that this is
> an abandoned project.... shame, it's really nice, and also talks to
> flightgear, which may make this project into an excuse for me to use
> flightgear as well :)
> 
> SeanG