FSUIPC Determine Takeoff & Landing Distances

[Zoolander64]

Greetings All,

We are looking at having a Virtual Valdez May Day Fly-In. I am curious if there is a way, using FSUIPC / lua, to extract or determine takeoff and landing distances for our multiplayer pilots? A quick search turned up nothing but possible payware apps. We try to make sure all of our events do not require additional purchased software to have fun. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-Todd

[Pete Dowson]

We are looking at having a Virtual Valdez May Day Fly-In. I am curious if there is a way, using FSUIPC / lua, to extract or determine takeoff and landing distances for our multiplayer pilots? A quick search turned up nothing but possible payware apps. We try to make sure all of our events do not require additional purchased software to have fun. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

If you know how to compute it then I'm sure you could do it in any sort of small program, whether a Lua plug-in or a separate program. Not sure where FSUIPC comes into it. You need weather data, certainly, but you'd input that from the METAR reports you'd need during planning in any case. You need aircraft weight, but you need that too to compute your fuel. And you need airport altitude and runway length to compute your V1 speeds. Landing distances are probably more complicated but there will surely be tables for that stuff in the AOM.

If you know how to put all this together then any programming language, including Lua, could be used, or possibly even a series of equations in a programmable calculator or smartphone app.

I'm afraid I'm not the person to tell you how to do this. I'm a programmer, yes, but not an aviation expert. But the data should be accessible quite readily I should think.

Regards

Pete

[Zoolander64]

Greetings Pete,

Always a pleasure hearing from you. I was thinking some possibly a little simpler as I am a KISS type of person. I was thinking I could use LUA to extract CurrentLocationA when the airplane is stopped, but ready to take off, find a variable that denotes that the airplane is airborne (or just determine when the airplane is above the field altitude) as a flag to grab the CurrentLocationB, and "subtract" the two in order to get the distance rolled during a takeoff.

Do you think this information is readily available using FSUIPC and LUA to extract from FSX?

I am just looking for that jumping off point, as I can dig into whatever documentation or research.

Thanks Pete. Hope all is well with you and Happy Holidays.

[Pete Dowson]

Greetings Pete,

Always a pleasure hearing from you. I was thinking some possibly a little simpler as I am a KISS type of person. I was thinking I could use LUA to extract CurrentLocationA when the airplane is stopped, but ready to take off, find a variable that denotes that the airplane is airborne (or just determine when the airplane is above the field altitude) as a flag to grab the CurrentLocationB, and "subtract" the two in order to get the distance rolled during a takeoff.

Oh, sorry. When you said "take-off and landing distances" I thought you meant what those terms usually mean -- the predicted amount of runway needed for either operation, so you know whether it is a suitable runway.

Do you think this information is readily available using FSUIPC and LUA to extract from FSX?

Yes, of course.

Regards

Pete

[Zoolander64]

Great thanks for the response. I am going to dig into this. If I get something, I will post it here as others may want this LUA script.

[AK Mongo]

Great thanks for the response. I am going to dig into this. If I get something, I will post it here as others may want this LUA script.

Thanks, that would be neat. Valdez is pretty impressive stuff!

[pilotjohn]

Thanks, that would be neat. Valdez is pretty impressive stuff!

I'm working on a Flight Critic script which does this already, and will also "grade" your takeoff/approach/landing. It's not quite ready yet, but if you want to try it out just so you have the distances, PM me and I'll send it to you. You'll find that determining the takeoff/landing points get a little complicated to calculate if you bounce and or are taking off on rough strips (grass/gravel off-airport etc.)

If you do try I would also appreciate if you would send me whatever flight logs it creates so I can collect flight analysis data for figuring out a good mechanism for grading.

[pilotjohn]

I should be able to post my script by the end of this weekend. Here's a sample output from it:

Analyzing... 9427 records.
  Flight: 00:15:42, 41.0nm

  Takeoff/Rotation
	Ground Roll: 00:00:25, 2154ft, 120kias
	To 35 Feet: 00:00:27, 2526ft, 127kias
	To 50 Feet: 00:00:28, 2583ft, 127kias
	Comfort: 88%
	Skill: 86%

  Climb/Enroute/Descent
	Min./Max. IAS: 96kias, 215kias
	Min./Max. TAS: 86ktas, 208ktas
	Min./Max. GS: 75kts, 215kts
	Min./Max. VS: -2543fpm, +5577fpm
	Min./Max. Altitude: 172ft, 3939ft
	Comfort: 96%

  Approach
	Path Angle: 3.2deg
	Comfort: 98%
	Skill: 91%

  Landing/Flare
	From 50 Feet: 00:00:24, 2940ft, 114kias
	From 35 Feet: 00:00:23, 2790ft, 114kias
	Ground Roll: 00:00:10, 753ft, 95kias
	Comfort: 83%
	Skill: 76%

[pilotjohn]

I posted my Flight Critic script in the User Contribution area, here: http://forum.simflig...gradingscoring/