mihai-dinculescu
commented
1 year ago I'm happy to have this added, and as you've said, it should be easy to modify the COM broadcaster.
I'm unsure of some of the fields we're currently not following (although we could).
- Cross Track Error
- Desired Track Magnetic
- Active Waypoint Identifier xxx (xx)
- Bearing to active waypoint (degrees x10)
- Moving Map Primary Route Data
Some are easy to guess, and some aren't. The complete list of what MSFS makes available is at https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv5/sdk/references/variables/simulation_variables.html.
kirkbysound
Historically a lot of hardware aviation GPS units manufactured by Garmin were interfaced with the Aviation In RS232 Standard.
It's quite hard to find documentation but it exists in the GNS 480 installation manual in section B.2.1.1 and goes also by the name "Mapcom"
I've done a bit of poking around myself with the data and can reliably have a GPSMap unit follow aviation in from a serial device driven in Processing from a mac. My knowledge of rust is limited though so I'm not really equipped to look at how to add the feature myself. It's a fairly simple format in terms of serial messages written. I'll paste in my commented code from Processing below and maybe someone with a bit more rust knowledge than me could integrate it into GPS Link? It would be massively useful to allow these older devices to connect as many are built into virtual cockpits.
If I get time I might look at doing work on this myself but I think it would be a breeze for someone to copy and adjust the COM port page with the outputs adjusted to work. I can throw this into an Arduino and parse NMEA to convert into the format below but it seems rather a clumsy solution.
Sending the following at 9600 once a second causes a GPS in simulation mode with aviation in selected to update as expected.
As follows: