Short NATO aircraft names for WWII aircraft

[Russ]

I'm currently working on a tool to export packet captures from a WWII arcade style game into Tacview. The only aircraft currently showing up properly is the Spitfire. I don't have an issue adding meshes for missing aircraft (or just switching them to Spitfire) but I don't know if I just need to map my informal names to names that Tacview can better understand. The documentation is a little vague on how to name aircraft, but the best I can find is "short NATO code of your aircraft". I can't find NATO aircraft codes for WWII aircraft. Is there a way to get a list of current meshes with in Tacview and the names Tacview currently associated with each one? My aircraft list currently is

AichiVal
AichiVal-T
B-17
bf109
Corsair
Ilyushin
Ju88A
Mustang
SBD
SBD-T
Spitfire
Stuka
Yak9
Zero

[Vyrtuoz]

Hello Russ,

I think that the best it to use the ICAO Aircraft Type Designators:
http://www.icao.int/publications/DOC8643/Pages/Search.aspx

I have updated my documentation to reflect this.

Note Tacview database does not contains many WWII aircraft yet. I am going to add most of your list soon. Also, if you have 3D models, free of copyright, you would like to share, I will gladly add them in Tacview.

I am curious about your WWII game, can you PM me its name?

[Russ]

If you are already going by IACO, any chance of matching unknown aircraft based on engine type and engine count? Eg, if I put in Zero, there's no model, but it's a single engine piston aircraft, Tacview would search it's single engine piston aircraft and display something like a Cessna or Spitfire. It could then also check the object tags to try and narrow it down further.

I haven't seen any 3d models yet, my current plan was just to include a tool to extract in game data for Tacview use.

[Vyrtuoz]

Yeah, I have planned to replace the old Tacview database by a much smarter system which will automatically better associate objects with the appropriate 3d models.

Until then, I must manually add each aircraft name in the database.

Can you share me some of your telemetry recordings? I will gladly add your objects names to the database of Tacview 1.6.1+

[Russ]

Ok, I'll go ahead a link a recording. I don't have projectiles yet as they are all client side, so I need to add the code to calculate their position, velocity, etc. Here's my currently matching mappings:

B-17            Name=B17,Type=Air+FixedWing+Heavy
bf109           Name=ME09,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Corsair         Name=CORS,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Mustang         Name=P51,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
SBD             Name=SBD,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
SBD-T           Name=SBD,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
Spitfire        Name=SPIT,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Yak9            Name=YAK9,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Zero            Name=ZERO,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Mosquito        Name=MOSQ,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
C47             Name=DC3,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium


And here's my mapping that don't currently have an IACO identifier. I made one up for each, it looks like they need to be max 4 letters:

AichiVal        Name=D3A,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
AichiVal-T      Name=D3A,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
Ilyushin        Name=IL2,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
Ju88A           Name=JU88,Type=Air+FixedWing+Heavy
Stuka           Name=JU87,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
BF110           Name=B110,Type=Air+FixedWing+Medium
AW52            Name=AW52,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Goblin          Name=F85,Type=Air+FixedWing+Minor
HO229           Name=H220,Type=Air+FixedWing+Light
Natter          Name=B349,Type=Air+FixedWing+Minor
WasserfallRocket Name=EMW2,Type=Air+Missile+Minor
Flettner        Name=F282,Type=Air+Rotorcraft+Light

[Russ]

Here's one of the track files:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hwarayju4ohmj2k/test.acmi.gz?dl=0

I don't think I quite have rotation worked out correctly yet. Some other things I haven't done are projectiles, hit events, ground textures, and 3d terrain. In this game, players can enter and exit vehicles, changing the pilot name, coalition, and color. I'm currently destroying the vehicle and creating a new one when that happens which breaks interpolation.

[Vyrtuoz]

Wonderful job Russ!

I have already added some of the planes ID to Tacview 1.6.2. Will add more in the following revisions.

Tacview telemetry engine supports real-time change of any property like the player name, coalition and color. Some of this remains to be implemented in the high-level graphical interface of Tacview to reflect the all the changes in real-time in the 3D view.

Can you share me another file in which you do not re-create the objects, so I can use it as a benchmark to improve the way the 3D view handled telemetry data?

Also, you can reduce the produced file size by removing unnecessary trailing digits the telemetry data. You can find more about this at the end of the following reference documentation: http://www.tacview.net/documentation/realtime/en/

For example: you should not export time-frame with more than two digits after the decimal point. Same for the altitude: 1 cm resolution is more than enough, even for infantry.

Let me know as soon as you have new samples of data, I will gladly test them.