RTW Event Manager - Feedback Requested

[apollosmith]

My Event Manager is done - well, at least in beta. It is intended to be a tool that we can use to help us keep track of and visualize the race legs and plan additional hops.

A few notes:
- The system will log a series of flight legs, showing lot's of information about each leg and the event itself.
- You can use the tools to find current weather, airport information, and detailed flight plans for any destination.
- You can use it as your own flight logging system, from cross-country adventures or international flights.
- I did not add a log book feature, as I'd rather have the logging for the race be done here on the forums. The forums are the official record for the event and the passing of the baton is done here.
- I did not include a scheduling feature, as I assume this will be done more effectively here. There is, however, a simple message board where you can post whatever you want.

Please take a look and give me any feedback or suggestions you have. Please create a username or if you rather, use username:test and password:user to log in. You can add new events or legs or whatever.

http://smithplanet.com/fsevents/

Edit: Doh, forgot the link!

Smitty

[TornadoWilkes]

That is fantastic, a really good job. I would suggest some sort of security feature to prevent "scuppering" ;-)

I love the search nearest facility although in practice we'll have to see how useful it will be to do this using a text interface rather than a plain map.

Love the instant mapping feature. We must however ensure that the map is a tool to follow the race, rather than a tool to control it. Do you have mod ability to move or remove legs when things awry and legs are disqualified without much trouble???

[apollosmith]

Hmmm.. scuppering. Thank goodness for online dictionaries (and I had to use the British dictionary at that). ;-)

I'm not sure what else I can do. Any ideas? I trust that those that go will probably behave - we have a pretty good group here. If someone does 'scupper' it, it's easy to fix. The worst they could do is add a leg, but the can only do that when the baton is free, which isn't going to be for very long, right? Right?!? Hint, Hint!

> I love the search nearest facility although in practice we'll
> have to see how useful it will be to do this using a text
> interface rather than a plain map.

I think I'm going to build it so that you can select a range, rather than just a maximum distance. For instance, you could select "All airport between 50 and 100 miles to the North". This would probably be more useful as you can match it to your planes maximum (or 2 hour) range.

> Do you have mod ability to move or remove legs when things
> awry and legs are disqualified without much trouble???

Yes. I can assign anyone to be an administrator and they can just click a button to mark legs as "incomplete" or delete legs.

Thanks for the feedback.

Smitty

[TornadoWilkes]

Instead of having to keep hitting refresh to see the map, I've just discovered a whole new way to view this and get it updated.

Have a map on the desktop that updates itself automatically every ten minutes!!!

For those with XP try this:

[li]Right click on you desktop
[li]Click properties
[li]Select the tab entitled "Desktop"
[li]Click "customize desktop" button
[li]Select the tab entitled "Web"
[li]Click the "New" button
[li]In the URL Paste this: http://smithplanet.com/fsevents/images/1.gif?rand=0.3816939621
[li]Set the Synchronization to occur whenever your desktop has been idle for 10 minutes and remember to fill out the password section.
[li]Resize the map, by grabbing the borders

For Win 98 and ME users there are a couple of steps at the beginining. You must turn on active desktop by

[li]Right clicking the desktop
[li]Point to Active desktop
[li]Click either "View as webpage" or "Show Web Content"
[li]Go into Display properties and click the "Web" tab.


Do not go the Microsoft Gallery when asked as it is not very good apparently.

[salt_air]

This is a great help, TW. Thanks a lot, should come in very handy during the event. Looks like I can use this on other things as well.

Regards,

[salt_air]

Hey Smitty,

Gave the program a go and added a leg myself today. Excellent work a lot of information available on one page. Really a nice job and just in time to put it to good use. One question, is there a way to increase the distance the planner will look ahead? Might make a difference in your choice as to where you would give the baton to the next guy.

Thanks for holding fast to your promise made months ago to have this up and running in time for the event.

Best regards,

[Tony G]

That is two great additions for us, thanks to Smitty for putting that together, and thanks TW for the linking to the desktop. Might be a good idea if we could put some sort of password on the website to prevent anyone else from gaining from this.

[apollosmith]

> One question, is there a way to increase the distance the planner
> will look ahead? Might make a difference in your choice as to
> where you would give the baton to the next guy.

I'm going to rework the flight planner in the next few days to give more flexible input (i.e., show me all airport within 100 and 150 miles to the north). This involves quite a bit of nasty math as you have to convert latitude and longitude coordinates and then do math to figure out which ones are a specific direction and within a specified distance. I'll start thinking about after my mind recovers from the weekend.

Thanks for the recommendation.

As far as password protecting, I think I will probably allow only the one event for flightsim.com to use for the race. This way I can add some customized info, such as proposed route maps, etc. After that, I'll make it available to anyone.

Smitty

[FunkyMunky]

The system looks great;

Will there be seperate events listed for Avsim/Flightsim/Sim-Outhouse to use, or is this a flightsim.com only page?

[JohnMueller]

Hi Smitty

Darn, I missed you guys online yesterday! Hopefully we can "meet up" next time!

Your system is really niiiice! How can we integrate our two sites? (or at least communicate between the two)? We'd need to have it as simple as possible for the flying pilots but have as much information as needed for the strategy and lots of eye-candy for everyone watching (motivation for possible pilots!)... What do you think?

Another question on the side: If I can extract the current location + attitude of the pilot with the baton, do you think we could map this on your system? (If flying on a FSHost, you can read the /XML, + I have a small plugin for other networks or offline) I was thinking of something like a position update every 5-10 Minutes - live charting! :)

John

[apollosmith]

You missed a great time! We're going to continue the McKinley challenge another time.

I'm not sure about integration. The server I'm running supports ASP, so I guess that stuff could be moved over to mine.

As long as the server is FSHost, then yes, I can (and was planning to) map the current locations of everyone online.

(I hope this works, I just got an e-mail saying my account has been deactivated!?!)

Smitty

[TornadoWilkes]

My desktop as described above, along with local weather charts and a webcam from my local town!!! No need to keep hitting refresh now: