VATSIM

[chief]

Is it every going to be compatible with VATSIM so you can see the other VATSIM pilots when they are online?

[Russell Gilbert]

Hi Chief,

FSHost is essentially a standalone server, with no interface to VATSIM. The only real benefit you'd get from using FSHost with Squawkbox is that you could see more than 14 VATSIM players near you in the game.  But I believe SB version 3 will work completely differently as far as how it hosts the session, so that shouldn't be a problem anyway.  Also, it wouldn't really work letting other people join your FSHost, since each one has to have their own connection to VATSIM via SB.

But anyway, there's a problem with SquawkBox 2. When it connects to any server other than FS2002 (i.e. when you connect it to FSHost), it doesn't send all of the proper messages according to the Microsoft spec., which causes FS2002 to not display the players in the game. You can see their names in the chat list, but you can't see the actual planes. The problem has been identified and reported to the current maintainer of Squawkbox.  See http://www.squawkbox.ca/ for more info on Squawkbox.

So it's best to use FS2002 with Squawkbox when connecting to VATSIM, and use FSHost when running a standalone server that everyone connects to.

Russell