VZDV Sector Datastore Version 2 RELEASED!!!!!!!!!

The Virtual Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center is proud to announce the release of Sector Datastore 2.0.

The majority of you probably don't know what Sector Datastore even but if you do, you'll remember the great program that we used years ago to look up important charts and data for controlling. Unfortunately, the program stopped working and we stopped using it.

About two years ago an attempt was made to make another version of the software but that too never happened.

I'm happy to say that the second attempt to recreate this software was successful!

Features

Above, you'll see the main screen. As you can see it's very small and simple. This is because it is designed to go on top of your VRC window, at the very top, and stay there. That way you wont have to minimize or shift windows around to get to it.

From the main screen, you will be able to type various simple commands to access different parts of the program. For example, typing "C KDEN" will take you to the image viewer and list all of KDEN's associated charts.

This is the chart viewer. The most important part of this is how simple it is. You'll see the whole point of this program is to offer FAST access to all the information you need, rather than getting it from various websites. The program is designed for you to store all charts on your computer locally so the charts pop up instantaneously, rather than waiting a few seconds for a download. Having all of the charts on your computer will cost about 100MB of hard drive. Anymore, this is a very small amount, however, I have left it optional. If you elect not to have them stored on your computer, the program will download them off the internet in about 3-5 seconds, depending on your connection. I will also make available chart pack, where you can elect to have only certain charts on your hard drive. For example if you are student who is not center certified, there is no need for you to have charts for every single zdv airport on your computer. The charts are stored as images, not PDFs which is to save load time. Again the whole point of this is to offer INSTANT access to data. This of course means you cannot zoom in like you can on a PDF, however the charts are sized so that all the data on the chart is visible.

Another feature of the chart viewer is access to various ZDV SOPs and Cheat sheets as well. searching for the airport "DATA" gives you access to this information.

This is the automatic Landing configuration tool. This automatically downloads the current METAR for KDEN and determines what the landing configuration should be based on winds, visibility and ceiling.

This is the Traffic Management screen, and what I am most proud of. (it's also the only part that is still a little buggy). This is a recreation of a monitor used at real-world air traffic control facilities to plan for large traffic surges. The way it works, is it downloads the current traffic VATSIM traffic data, then graphs all the inbound planes for a selected airport in the form of a time line. You can then easily see how many planes are inbound and when (approximately) they are going to arrive. It is based on VATSIM data so it's not perfect because it cannot account for erroneous data (such as paused pilots or pilots using time acceleration) but this will prove to be an invaluable tool during our events. As you can see above, it will work with any airport, not just zdv airports. The chart automatically refreshes every 5 minutes. As far as I know, no other VATSIM traffic program recreates this timeline style of data presentation.

Download:

Program: http://www.noahbryant.com/sds/SDS.zip (19MB)
Mirror: http://denartcc.org/sites/default/files/SDS.zip (19MB)

To install, cimply copy the Sector Datastore main folder (contained in the zip) to any location you wish and run the program.

Chart Packs:

D01 Chart Pack (14MB):
http://www.noahbryant.com/sds/d01charts.zip

KBJC
KLMO
KGXY
KEIK
KFTG
KBKF
KFNL

Extra Chart Pack (52MB)
http://www.noahbryant.com/sds/extra.zip

KLAX
KLAS
KSLC
KABQ
KMSP
KVEL
KRKS
KBYG
KHYS
KGCK
KRTN
KGUP
KGCN

ZDV Chart Pack(62 MB)
http://www.noahbryant.com/sds/zdvpack.zip

All other ZDV Charts

To install a chartpack, just copy the charts folder in the zip to your main SDS folder and replace files if prompted. <!-- m -->