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Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 14 Jan 2020, 00:01
by Hussman
Hello There,

I'm new to these forums, and fairly new to flight simuations too, so please bear with me and try to repsond using as little jargon as possible. Thank you.

I use p3dv4 and have a number of saitek / logitechg panels. I have 2 radio panels.

I use spad.next to control the data input to these panels and for the most part they work really well and perform as expected.

However, I have a problem which I can't seem to work out, and was wondering whether you Guy's could help perhaps?

I am trying to set up the top right display on my lower radio panel to display the radio/radar height of my aircraft. (Aircraft in question is a Piper Saratoga from Just Flight)

I have used the spad.next program to program the radio panel as in the picture. I used the display RADIO HEIGHT option.

When I save and restart spad.next, and my aircraft is on the ground, the display gives a value of 4.0

I assume this is correct. See picture.

All, therefore looks well. However, I have noticed that once I take off the guage seems to be unable to "keep up" with my height. The numbers indeed increase but at a slower rate than those shown on the altimeter.

Also, more bizarrely, is that when I land the guage values are clearly wrong. As in the picture. I am on the ground so the value should be 4, but it clearly isn't. It is showing a reading of 359.8 (although you can't see if from the photo - the value is reducing down, but should already be at 4.0)

If I sit on ground and wait the guage eventually drops to a value of 4, but it is my understnading that the radio/radar height should be an instantaneous reading?

Interestingly, if I pause the simulation all the other readouts pause (as you would expect). However, the radio/radar height readout continues to climb or decent even with P3Dv4 paused. I can upload video of this if required.

I expect I am doing something wrong and would be grateful for any suggestions or comments please.

Many thanks in advance.

Hussman :)

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:06
by c0nnex
hmm that's most likely caused by the sim sending too many updates and they queue up in SPAD.neXt.
SInce Saitek Devices tend to crash if hammered with updates there is a hardcoded limit of 10 updates/sec for any saitek device, to prevent that.
I'll change that the radio height will only report full meters diffrences in next update. that should do the trick.

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:30
by Hussman
Thank you very much for taking time to answer my question.

That makes sense.

Please can I ask when the next update is due, no pressure. Just curious.

Thank you in advance.

Hussman

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:34
by c0nnex
Next Beta update (which will have this change) is scheduled for today.
Next Release update = when ever it's done and the beta is stable and *cough* bugfree

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:37
by Hussman
Thank you. That is very helpful.

I’m delighted.

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:39
by c0nnex
Oh checking the definitions i see it's already limited to 1 update per 1 meter difference. So that's still to much.

Before twiddling around with that, I will add an option to the display stuff to "Only use latest value", so it will skip all queued updates and only use the latest value. (Will cause number jumping, but well if you decent fast that's ok i guess)

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:42
by Hussman
Yes that’s fine.

I only really want to use it on final approach when the value will be less than 200ft so I can work out my exact height above ground as I come in for landing.

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:46
by c0nnex
You can also add a condition to the display to only show if Height above ground is < 300 or such. Dunno if that gets delayed as well since SPAD.neXt will check the condition for every update. I think the "no queueing option" is best.

IF you check your SPAD.neXt logfile it should have a lot of "THROTTLE" warnings in it, when this backlog of data happens.

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 17:49
by Hussman
Yes, I have tried that but the number always seems to play “catch up”.

I think, as you have said, it’s a buffering issue.

Re: Radio / Radar Height

Posted: 30 Jan 2020, 18:21
by thedazman
I tested this the other day and I flooded the radio with radio height fractions two, took 5 minutes after pausing to flush the buffered events. Adding format “0” helped but still lagged behind a second or two

Daz