Tacview, the ACMI for DCS World – Official Thread

Tacview 1.4.3 is now available to everyone!

Tacview 1.4.3 is now available to everyone!

http://www.strasoftware.com/download/tacview

On the way to Tacview 1.5 and 2.0, this release was supposed to be a minor one… It turned out that it is finally quite an improvement over the version 1.4.2; thanks to the multiple fixes and mainly to the preliminary support of KML files for static objects and custom terrain textures.

Custom terrain textures

Tacview will now display custom terrain textures of 1 by 1 degree stored in the %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\ or %APPDATA%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\ folders.

You must follow the same naming convention as SRTM3 and SRTM1 files. For example, to replace the north-west corner of Corsica you should create a tile named:

C:\ProgramData\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\N42E008.png

Tacview supports textures of any size as long as they are recorded in PNG or JPEG files. Both 24-bit and 32-bit formats are supported. Which means that you can use the alpha channel of PNG files to smoothly blend an overlay on top of Tacview native terrain.

Now it’s your turn to unleash your creativity and to show everyone how you like to see the battlefield in Tacview!

KML aka “Google Earth files” support

This version will automatically load and display any object declared in any .kml file stored in the sub-folders of your choice under: %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Static Objects\ or %APPDATA%\Tacview\Data\Static Objects\

Please note that this is a preliminary support of the most basic features of KML format. Later complex polygon shapes will be supported. The KML format will also be extended to add points of interests in Tacview world like navaids, beacons, ILS, runways using Google Earth to position objects in space easily and accurately.

A static object “debugger” should be available in Tacview 1.5. The legacy xml file format is now deprecated, it will not be updated anymore and may be dropped in Tacview 2.0.

FEATURES & CHANGES

• Added support for custom PNG & JPEG terrain textures
  
• Added preliminary support of KML files for static objects
  
• Added flight path angle in telemetry and labels
  
• Korean translation by 번역 - ihopi [NAVER JTWF SQUADRON]
  
• Russian translation by Scorzy
  
• Hebrew translation by אריאל פרץ
  
• Imported last Nevada terrain from DCS World 2.0.1.49921
  
• Added a raw-telemetry tool which will display soon all available data for selected objects
  
• Dropped support for Windows XP
  

FIXES

• DCS World IAS was not properly exported since DCS World 1.5
  
• Distances are now properly switching between feet and nautical miles at 1 nm
  
• Fixed minor glitch at the edge of some terrain tiles
  
• The charts windows were using a bit of CPU when they were idle and visible
  
• The debug log was using a bit of CPU when it was idle and visible
  
• Wrong error message displayed when the flight data was recognized but not supported
  

thanks~

The TAD images are suitable for this use?

vyrtuoz, could you use TC-1 map as terrain file?

BTW this keeps getting better and better! Thanks

wuao! ;)

Wonderful tool! I have been using it for a while, and it's very useful.

I have two questions,

1) The Mavericks AGM 65D are not recognized, and shown as a box "weapons.missiles.AGM_65D". Is it possible to simply specify in a setup file that it should use the AGM 65H (for instance), instead of importing meshes files and all that? What's the easiest?

2) Would it be possible as a future improvement to make the camera move more easily? For now using the free camera is a bit awkward IMHO, using the mouse wheel to advance in the direction we are facing.

Instead, it would be nice to be able to pan in any direction (maintaining Ctrl or Alt, for example), and rotating around the ground point under the mouse. Typically, I believe users like to look at a scene from a different perspective, in the current version the user has to point to another direction, move there, then look back at the object, instead of being able to rotate around it directly, and "strafing" left / right / forward / ... I know part of it is possible by selecting other objects, but then you have to get your telemetry object back later.

Constructive criticism but I agree with the camera control being awkward. I fumble with it every time I start a video.

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Can someone provide a map/kml/link for the nttr as shown in the screenshot from Vyrtuoz?

Hello and sorry my English at 1st. Is it me or rockets haven't ID of launched player anymore? Also in event list no names who shot down target. Thx.

About maps:

I don’t know about TAD images. I guess if you can find them and convert them to PNG or JPG they should be displayed in Tacview.

I think the TC-1 map may work too if there is not too much distortion between DCS World and the corresponding projection in the 3D world.

I’m currently focusing on developing the new features of Tacview 1.5. So this is up to you to build your own tiles. For example, it is laborious, but quite simple and straightforward to build 1x1 degree tiles by taking screenshots of GoogleMaps or SkyVector (for example) and stitching them together using any image editor like paint.net. The same will probably work with any flattened maps.

About objects:

I will create in the coming months a public object database to address the issue of wrong objects names and meshes. So in the future anyone can fix this kind of issue…

About the camera:

Remember that you can already pan in any direction using the keyboard like in any FPS game when you are in freecam mode using AWSD keyboard keys.

That said, in Tacview 2.0, it will be much easier to rotate around a group of objects. For example, it will be possible to choose which of the selected objects will affect the camera. So you can have telemetry for some objects without necessarily looking at them.

About player’s IDs:

Chichco, without much data I’m not sure exactly where the problem is coming from. With the current exporter, Tacview has to guess who has fired each weapon. If, because of lag, rockets were "spawned" far (like 100m) from the launcher aircraft, it is possible that Tacview was not able to properly associate them to the corresponding aircraft. This is something which should be improved in Tacview 2.0.

Can you share any .txt.amci file so I can investigate this issue?

About the camera:

Remember that you can already pan in any direction using the keyboard like in any FPS game when you are in freecam mode using AWSD keyboard keys.

 

That said, in Tacview 2.0, it will be much easier to rotate around a group of objects. For example, it will be possible to choose which of the selected objects will affect the camera. So you can have telemetry for some objects without necessarily looking at them.

That's a good point, but it doesn't seem to work very well here, I don't know if that's the same for other people. It's only moving after 1-2 seconds, and quite slowly (even with the SHIFT key), which makes it impractical, whereas the mouse if very responsive and more natural.

But it was only a suggestion, I'm sure there are a lot of features you'd like to implement first :)

Can you share any .txt.amci file so I can investigate this issue?

In this logfile all rockets haven't player name for me, but in v1.4.1 names were shown w/o problems. Also if red airplane emergency drops bombs/rockets they now shown as blue, I dont remember how it was before.

tacviewlog.txt.rar

Hi Vyrtuoz,

There is a mode where the distance measurements switch from nm to feet.

Could you make the switch happen at 2nm? (2nm=12000').

The reason for this is that the vast majority of US gun pippers tick down feet from 12000' and down. In addition, a lot of formation and SRM shot range criteria are described in feet and typically fall inside this range.

Hi Vyrtuoz,

does Tacview use the magnetic heading or the true heading?

kind regards,

Fire

• I have fixed in Tacview 1.5 the bug of camera starting to move after 1 second when playback was paused (Tacview was sleeping to much to save CPU ;)).
  
• Thank you Chichco for the data! I’m will get back to you as soon as I have the time to investigate this bug.
  
• The distance auto-switch distance has been increased to 2nm in Tacview 1.5 as requested by several people.
  
• Tacview displays true heading. The magnetic one is not supported yet (I will consider it in future releases).
  

Nice.

Another feauture that could be quite useful would be the ability of selecting a unit by clicking on it.

CTRL + LEFT or RIGHT click on the object in the 3D view

Check the help menu for more shortcuts

Nice.

 

Another feauture that could be quite useful would be the ability of selecting a unit by clicking on it.

Damnit, missed it the first time I looked at shortcuts. Thanks!

With the new texture objects in 1.4.3, would it be possible to implement route information when selecting a unit or do you then need to read that information from the mission file? It could be used when practice staying on route and also hitting waypoints on time. Don't know but I think it could be a good tool for a training instructor when assessing players performance and precision after the mission have finished. We do see much today as it is but it would visualize the briefing a bit more. :)

EDIT: Oh by the way. Great work on these new features! :thumbup:

could you add ground distance travelled in telemetry? or a measuring tool for ground distance covered between 2 points?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The traveled distance (calculated in 3D) in already available in the charts. The traveled “ground” (2D) distance will be available in Tacview 1.5 charts as well.

There is currently no easy way to measure distance between two arbitrary points. I will add a tool for that in Tacview 2.0.

Tacview 1.4.3 inaccurate ammo type information

The Tacview flight log shows the number of weapons/ammo fired with indication of weapon/ammo type. While the totals seem to be correct, the type information seems "simplified". So if (based on the ACMI file) my Bf-109 has fired 48 each rounds of 13mm APT and 13mm API, plus 96 rounds of 13mm HEI, plus 34 rounds of 30mm HEI and 34 rounds of 30mm MGsch, the Tacview flight log says that I have fired 163 rounds of 13mm API plus 97 rounds of 13mm HEI.

Also the hit counts by ammo type don't match what I see in the DCS debrief.

And the flight log says that I hit the rockets that the P-51 dropped, while the debrief says I hit the P-51. Not sure who is right here.

The attached zip file includes an Excel file with the details.

I compared the hits vs the DCS debrief, and the "fired" counts with the ACMI file. Unfortunately I didn't find out how to get the hits from the ACMI file; maybe you can tell me your little secret?

Anyway, I would really appreciate if you could fix these issues.

TacviewIssue_20160330.zip

is it possible to add new aircraft models, so that our mod doesn't look like an A-10?

Dear Vyrtuoz,

Would you kindly please give me complete list of country codes (like: ru) used in XML export?

Example:

<PrimaryObject ID="37105">
			<Type>Aircraft</Type>
			<Name>Su-33 Flanker-D</Name>
			<Pilot>OZthewizard42</Pilot>
			<Coalition>Allies</Coalition>
			<Country>ru</Country>
			<Group>501</Group>
		</PrimaryObject>

and how they correspond to country Id tags from Mission file after DCSW 1.5.x ?

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2733068#post2733068

@LeCuvier

I think that this kind of issue is unavoidable with the currency way data are exported from DCS to Tacview. For instance, the LUA script is not ultra-accurate (time wise) and may miss some “events”.

For instance, DCS World does not send any event to Tacview: just objects positions. I have done my best over the years to cleverly guess what is happening on the battlefield. This is why sometime you can get some inaccuracies regarding the number of shot and impact for example.

Also, like some users have noticed, during network flights, fast weapons (like guns) are not perfectly replicated the same way for each client, this may lead to discrepancy during flight replay.

I’m going to rewrite from scratch the exporter soon and I hope to be able to improve the accuracy of data recorded.

@gospadin

Yes, you can add your own 3D models to Tacview. The procedure is explained here: http://tacview.strasoftware.com/documentation/3dobjects/

@shamandgg

These are the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

Here is the conversion table you can find in TacviewExportDCS.lua:

	CountryCodeLookupTable=
{
	[ 0]				=	"ru",
	[ 1]				=	"ua",
	[ 2]				=	"us",
	[ 3]				=	"tr",
	[ 4]				=	"uk",
	[ 5]				=	"fr",
	[ 6]				=	"de",
	[ 7]				=	"xu",		-- USAF Aggressors
	[ 8]				=	"ca",
	[ 9]				=	"es",
	[10]				=	"nl",
	[11]				=	"be",
	[12]				=	"no",
	[13]				=	"dk",
--		[14]				=	"",
	[15]				=	"il",
	[16]				=	"ge",
	[17]				=	"xi",		-- [insurgents] (free for use ISO code)
	[18]				=	"xa",		-- Abkhazia
	[19]				=	"xo",		-- South Osetia
	[20]				=	"it",		-- Italy
	[21]				=	"au",
	[22]				=	"ch",
	[23]				=	"at",
	[24]				=	"by",
	[25]				=	"bg",
	[26]				=	"cz",
	[27]				=	"cn",
	[28]				=	"hr",
	[29]				=	"eg",
	[30]				=	"fi",
	[31]				=	"gr",
	[32]				=	"hu",
	[33]				=	"in",
	[34]				=	"ir",
	[35]				=	"iq",
	[36]				=	"jp",
	[37]				=	"kz",
	[38]				=	"kp",
	[39]				=	"pk",
	[40]				=	"pl",
	[41]				=	"ro",
	[42]				=	"sa",
	[43]				=	"rs",
	[44]				=	"sk",
	[45]				=	"kr",
	[46]				=	"se",
	[47]				=	"sy",
},