GSX across networked client visual computers

[navymustang]

I am just posting this topic to get ideas from folks like me who may be curious if there is a way to get GSX (ground services) to run across multiple PCs (as in a three channel projector setup using PCs on each projector).

So far my reading has said it's impossible to coordinate, even worse, I can't find a way to fire off GSX from WideView driven aircraft on the clients.

Any ideas?

[tersekie]

Hey there navymustang,

I'm hoping maybe you've possibly come up with a solution for this.  I'm trying to do the same thing.  Any luck?

[navymustang]

I have not read of any solutions to this. And when I spoke with GSX folks they said the audience for this solution is so small they would not commit time to do it.  That was last year, hopefully we can bend their ear a little more at FlightSim Expo this next month.

[zillmer]

So, without wanting to raise expectations I am messing about at the moment with some code which could develop into something which is an alternative to WideView and WideTraffic.

The WideView alternative is working nicely; on my setup at least it seems that using the PDK (which is a lower level hook into P3D) rather than SimConnect leads to a much smoother experience.

I also have (in an early alpha phase) some code which syncs Airline and Ground traffic across networked P3D instances. It is performing OK, and includes GSX created objects, but there are some limitations. In particular GSX looks to me like it is using some custom code, enabled by the P3D SDK, to animate some of the objects, and this leads to some odd depictions when using my code. (For example the pushback truck ends up oriented at 90 degrees to the aircraft). I'm very much an amateur at this and learning as I go along, so it may be that I can resolve this.

I have no desire for this to be commercial, so I am considering uploading the codebase onto GitHub. Are there any other C++ / C# coders out there who would be interested in contributing?

Regards

Simon

(Author of the EFC737 app).

[navymustang]

Simon - let me give you an early thanks for starting this effort. I (and I'm sure many others) will be so grateful.

[tersekie]

Thank you for the reply navymustang....even if that news isn't good.  And zillmer, as navymustang stated, thank you for making an effort!  I'm currently attempting a very different approach to the problem.  I recently came across a platform called iscsi (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface).  It's an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities.  The take away here is that with iscsi installed on client PCs, it literally makes a network hard drive appear as a local hard drive to any client PCs that are pointed to the target device (the network hard drive).  This means that (in theory) only one installation of GSX on an iscsi target drive can support Wideview clients. So far I have successfully  tried this approach with 3rd party scenery addons and so far, it works very well.  So that's where I'm at now.  If this works with GSX the only other hurdle I can think of is to send keystrokes to the Wideview client(s)  to simultaneously send commands to GSX...and as I'm sure you probably know there is software available to do this.  ANY input on this approach would be appreciated as my working knowledge with the GSX software itself is very limited. I will keep this thread updated with my progress.

[zillmer]

tersekie,

I am very much experimenting and learning as I go along, so I encourage anyone to do the same. In terms of your specific solution I'll call out a few things to think about:

(i) Multiple connections to an iscsi target

I have a NAS storage device on which I have iscsi targets configured as part of my home server solution. I'm no expert but I would have thought that there might be issues of contention if you have multiple devices all connected to the same iscsi target at the same time. I'm not sure how file locking, read and write buffering etc works if you have multiple connections. You might need to read up to see whether this is good practice or not.

(ii) Licensing

I'm not entirely sure how the way in which you are using a single copy of GSX on multiple installations of P3D would be from a GSX license perspective.

(iii) Syncing.

From what I understand you are considering sending keystrokes across the network so that, in effect, multiple instances of GSX are triggered at the same time with the same commands. This will only work well if you can be sure that there is minimal latency, and that GSX has no randomisation of timings, vehicle selections etc in its implementation.

Good luck with your endeavours.

Simon.

[tersekie]

Hi Simon,

I know iscsi targets are designed for multiple connections so I'm not worried about that too much.  I'm curious, what software are you using to create the iscsi targets on your server? I had a hell of a time finding software that would work on Windows 7. Anyway, as I said, this solution is testing well with scenery addons with two clients connected to the same target.  That said, GSX is a different animal altogether and I'm too ignorant on the subject not to at least try.

Your other two points are all genuine concerns I share as well.

[FredK]

Syncing would definitely be an issue I think. For example, weather (clouds) and AI traffic will not sync across WideView unless broadcast from the server continually.

That said, non-broadcast movement of objects like jetways might be acceptable since the movement happens within a very short period of time.  So any latency differential between individual screens may not be perceptible.

Would love to see a solution for this though.

Fred K

[zillmer]

All,

I am pleased to say that I will imminently be releasing for public beta testing two new add-ons for Prepar3d. These are SimSync and TrafficSync.

SimSync will synchronise the user aircraft across a network to client instances of P3D. It synchronises the aircraft position, sim time and visual model animations, including custom animations specified by the user.

TrafficSync will synchronise AI (or VATSIM/IVAO/PilotEdge) Traffic and Ground Vehicles across network instances,  including support (with some minor limitations) for GSX ground vehicles. Support for GSX includes all the custom animations. So you can now see the animated passengers, marshaller, pushback tugs etc across your multiple P3D instances.

At present, there is no support for synchronising SODE (which includes GSX) jetways, but I am in dialogue with the developer of SODE and it may be that a solution to this may be found in the future.

Both applications use PDK functionality to deliver good performance, and include my own custom smoothing algorithms that deliver, at least on my setup, very smooth synchronisation, both of the user aircraft and  AI traffic. Gone also are the annoying ghost aircraft that would often appear when synchronising traffic using the existing payware solution for this...

I am finalising documentation and tidying up some code and hope to release this weekend.

Regards

Simon.

[navymustang]

OMG - we have been wanting this for years - YEAH !!!!!!!

[FredK]

Simon -

Terrific!  Looking forward to testing it!

Fred K



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[Trevor Hale]

Simon,  this indeed is stellar News.

Thank you for posting this information, and I really look forward to experimenting with this in the near future.

Trev