Unfortunately the bug is still there, it depends on the altitude that you fly and the ISA conditions so is not present all the time. Here is a snapshot that shows the plane altitude in the sim, the ACARS reading using FSUIPC and VATSIM reading, you can see all different altitudes, this is driving us crazy.
Anybody else experiences this?
That’s because it’s technically not a bug, but a new, more accurate method of simulating atmospheric pressure gradients. Righty or wrongly, it would seems the ball is now in the courts of the various ATC clients to come up with a solution now.
I guess if that is the case the SIM should send that value to SimConnect/FSUIPC, why sending a different altitude? the ACARS is not doing any math to calculate the altitude, is just reading from the offsets published.
It’s not sending the wrong value, the aircraft is now physically at a different altitude, as atmospheric pressure gradients are simulated more realistically.
As Norman already mentioned, MSFS is the only sim as far as I’m aware simulating temperature effect on altimetry. The indicated altitude is therefore different from the true altitude above ground.
That’s still ok but somehow the SIM should send that altitude to an offset, so whatever is needed to change on the ATC/VATSIM side can be solved and not leaving the community to do some math calculation to get just the altitude…
I noticed it today as well when I was doing a online flight. I also saw a few others where there flight plan and the altitude they were showing was also wrong. You could almost guess who was using msfs.
It’s not that easy.
Even if a corrected altitude value is sent to the ATC client so you appear at the ‘correct’ altitude on their scope, it needs to work the other way around too. Otherwise the XP user that’s opposite direction, 1000’ below you, gets injected into your sim at the same level as you, because your actual position is 1000’ lower than what the ATC client sees.
It’s actually a really complex issue to solve, and I’m guessing will require some collaboration between all the involved parties. There’s some interesting and very detailed discussions on the issue in the forums here, by people with much more knowledge of the issue than me. Highly worth having a read.
Its not that easy, it could send indicated altitude for display on the controllers screen like a transponder would, thats already an issue because a transponder sends out pressure altitude and the local ATC station converts this to an altitude, but that would only work correctly if temperatures and QNH are the same across all platforms.
The next problem is where to position aircraft across different sims, some of which do not have this temperature effect simulated. Positioning you at the true altitude above ground would not work as some sims only correct pressure altitude for non-standard pressure but not for non-temperature, in other words two aircraft flying at the same indicated altitude won’t be shown at the same level.
Indicated altitude itself can’t be used as it would be depending on the baro-pressure used, if a user would change to standard pressure for example you would see them translate up or down. So that leaves pressure altitude which causes problems converting this to an altitude when pressure and temperature are not similar across the boards.
Be aware that you are actually flying at a different altitude compared to a user on P3D or X-plane, they have to somehow connect all those platforms together in a way that 1000 ft vertical separation is actually 1000 ft separation so people don’t bump into each other.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
