Hi Both,
That’s not strictly correct, Steve. PilotAware, 360Radar, Glidertracker and Virtual Radar Server (VRS) are all separate, independent organisations, which each utilise data from a variety of sources to feed their own displays.
Glidertracker gets its feeds from the OGN servers, so presumably uses the standard FLARM symbology, PilotAware on the other hand gets most of its data (ADSB, P3i, Mode C and S altitudes)
direct from aircraft, and uses the FLARM traffic convention to pass this data to EFBs - each of which is then free to use its own convention to display the aircraft. PilotAware supplements this ‘directly received’ data with FLARM data received directly by its Ground Stations and then uplinked directly to individual PilotAware aircraft ‘on request’. This same ‘FLARM’ data is also fed back automatically to the OGN servers, but these servers are
not the source of the data you receive in your aircraft.
360Radar also runs its own network of Ground Stations, which feed 1090ADSB and Mode C / S data to its servers, from which its users can download this data via the internet to ‘see’ aircraft. The principal link between 360Radar and PilotAware is that 360Radar supply us with MLAT data to allow us to uplink positions for Mode-S equipped aircraft to PilotAware aircraft via our ATOM base stations - again ‘on request’ for that data from the individual aircraft. In return for this service, we add our 1090 data feeds from our Ground Stations into their network to help increase and improve MLAT coverage. To my knowledge, neither PilotAware nor 360Radar have any direct influence on the developers of VRS.
Virtual Radar Server (VRS) is an open-source .NET application designed to run a local web server for the display of aviation traffic - see
https://www.virtualradarserver.co.uk/ . It is designed to be downloaded and run on a laptop, PC or other device by aviation enthusiasts, who then use it to display traffic data accessed by a variety of means, including direct from their own receivers. This was how we used it in the early days to display traffic from our individual Ground Station receivers, but setting it up and linking and combining the various traffic feeds was to say the least complicated (and probably too difficult to be implemented by many of our Ground Station owners). The way aircraft are displayed in VRS is governed by the VRS software, not by PilotAware.
With the development of the ATOM / GRID Network, Lee incorporated VRS software into each individual ATOM Ground Station, making it a simple matter to see traffic locally, by logging on to the Ground Station with a laptop, PC, phone or tablet and then selecting the ‘Radar’ display option from the Home Screen. This then automatically displays the traffic on the device screen and has the extra advantage that the display also benefits from traffic relayed from adjoining stations via PilotAware’s secure ATOM-GRID Network. (It also has a further advantage that each user can customise the display on their device independently - though we suggest restricting
direct access to the Ground Station to those running / maintaining the stations). It is however, now a relatively easy matter to set up a large screen display in your Clubroom and by using a single board computer (SBC) such as a Raspberry Pi 3 (or a spare laptop or PC) to display the traffic on a suitable monitor or TV screen on VRS via HDMI.
This of course all sounds complicated - and is probably why these display anomalies creep in, but at the end of the day, the way VRS displays traffic is predominantly down to the VRS software (unless of course Lee knows different ?).
I hope this helps clarify the situation.
Regards
Peter
