I like that I could be helping contribute, although I have yet to see a feature on here where you can see a general overview of airtraffic like I have seen on other sites. But I can say that if I was not already aware of the ability to port over the data from piaware to Virtual Radar Server, I would find the data presented by the built in web interface depressing and likely return or sell the parts to recoup some money spent. If it is a bad user experience, it is not worth doing, unless you sole intent is to provide data to FA for what ever they end up doing with it.
On my VRS I can customise what is shown and it brings me good feelings being able to see the full name of the type of plane model, images right there of the aircraft, silhouettes of the kind of aircraft, vertical speed to know if they may be taking off or landing, what is the operator (in English, not a brief code).
So, my request is for a feature to customise the data shown to provide a good user-experience. Unless you are a robot, seeing:
is not acceptable.
I hope what I have said makes sense to people. I love this capability of seeing what is jetting around me, I just wish the “out of the box” experience was actually worth while and that I did not need to always leave my PC running with VRS on it in order to get the benefits from the Pi I have set up.
If you click on the blue line that you showed, or if you click the aircraft on the map, you will see a whole load more info about the aircraft. You can get flight info by clicking Visit Flight Page and photos of the actual aircraft by clicking See Photos. That covers pretty much everything you had in your screenshot. See an example below which I took from mine. Make sure you’re running the latest PiAware, version 3.6.3.
Alternatively, under Ident in the table the FDX5220 is a link to all the information you want.
It will launch another page here. with so much more information.
If all the extra data you require is downloaded into Skyview it would lead to a very significant increase in data and make it impractical to have receivers in remote locations, especially those that are fed over wireless data.
I do not recall off the top of my head but there’s still things that does not show I think. Plus I like looking through a list. I don’t think it is very efficient to stop, click, look, go back, stop, click, look, go back and go through each individual entry. On VRS I easily see tons of information that is interesting, all at a glance.
This expanded view is better, but it still cannot be customised. It’s not possible to show the plane brand, model, the airliner or who ever it’s registered to.
My preference for “immediately noticed” info from the list, is a mini image of the kind of plane it is, is it civilian or military? How close is it? What is the actual plane called I am seeing? things like that.
Sure, some of what I want to see is there in the extended view if I forsake the map (with VRS I see both at the same time), but it is not customisable so that I can show exactly what I want to see.
I sometimes swap and change some things but I am hoping developers see this and consider enhancing the Skyview to make it more usable, more enjoyable for people to look at and see what their interests are focused on etc.
I think VRS may be a better fit for what you want here, skyview deliberately tries to be a fairly lightweight view into what your receiver is doing, it’s not trying to be a replacement for things like VRS. Or use modesmixer, or whatever software you prefer - the piaware images make data available externally (on port 30005 etc) exactly so that advanced users can plug in whatever software they prefer.
To be fair I’d like to say that I think the out of the box experience with PiAware is fantastic, both in ease of setup and availability and presentation of information in Skyview, with the latest updates to show extended Mode S data making it even better.
On top of that we have extra information a click away, the various hooks for linking in to specific requirements such as VRS, and then we have a whole host of system tweaks and add-ons to customise things even further. There’s a wide user base and something for everyone no matter what they want.
Well since the data is there, it would be nice to choose what to show on the list view. In order for me to get what I personally want from it, I have to have a PC, leave it turned on, leave VRS running and use it’s web interface. If I do not leave it running I cannot go back in time with the same interface and see what was detected during the night or while I am at work etc. Yes Skyview is good at providing technical data and showing blips on the map. We should not have to click, one, by, one, to see, what airline or operator a plane is flying as or other non-in-code. Yes tail numbers are useful and I show them on VRS but having just a list of tail numbers and hex codes is not a good at-a-glance user experience.
There are different versions but I have no idea. Logging is one thing but just even the live view would be nice to actually configure it. I have no idea why this is not already a thing. Let people choose to enable such a thing or not, yes getting the operator and manufacturer and what not may use up more internet, so let people have a switch to customise the interface with live-obtained added data about the planes etc.
I guess the main development focus is to have a simple, lightweight and reliable image that runs unattended and with no maintenance for a long time.
A lot of those feeders live in hangars, roofs, radio masts, attics and other remote locations. If they go down, there might not be someone around to fix them. Or get the necessary spare parts. If it is a FA flightfeeder, they have to probably send out a new unit.
The current Skyview is actually a great step compared to the way the interface looked before that. Nevertheless, VRS sole purpose is to combine and display the data of different data feeds, so it is no surprise that it does this better than any of the generic feeder interfaces.
There is no doubt that there are other people like you who want more or different information, and they do it with different software, or changing the code directly, just look for allkissacks modifications or the adsbreceiver project, which has a logging facility, iirc.
Also, for many this is part of the fun, if it were perfect out of the box, it would not be a hobby where you build and learn new things.
I guess the more concrete you’ll name a feature, like being able to choose which fields are shown in the table, the more likely FA will be willing or able to incorporate it in a future release. Or maybe someone here is able to show which files have to be modified to achieve your ideas
