9/24/2018 Google Maps VRS 2.4.2 and Global Map

Hi everyone,

ADSBx got a nasty surprise with Google Maps new pricing model. Google's new pricing increased the cost of Google Maps over 40x. That's a 4000% increase in the cost to use Google Maps!

Our bill went from $100-$175/month to $4040 for the first 3 weeks of September! Just 3 weeks.

Yes, you're reading that right over $4000 USD for 3 weeks of Global Radar View using Google Maps.

We upgraded to VRS 2.4.2 on all servers. There have been many complaints about the look and design of VRS 2.4.2, and many emails in all caps.

If your caps lock is stuck on, please get a new keyboard before sending an email.

All complains regarding VRS design and look can be directed to the forums at VRS. http://www.virtualradarserver.co.uk/

There are 30 VRS servers for the Global Radar View, it was a 20 hour process over 2 days to upgrade and migrate.

Dan and I are still working on making sure everything is working.

James
ADSBx

 

Hi James

Thanks for the effort!! Im still seeing flights with missing Callsign. Is this a known issue or only on my side?

Johan

 

Not every aircraft broadcasts a callsign. Not every call sign is decoded. Check hide empty labels.

I've been looking at the global map and not seeing obvious missing call signs. 2.4.2 could be buggy - who knows.

 

Thanks will continue monitoring.

 

Hi James

Here is an example my custom VRS feed shows the callsign, but the global site does not show it. Could it be that 2.4.2 has problem with the VRS feeds?

Johan

 

probably has bugs .. report to andrew @ http://www.virtualradarserver.co.uk/

 

Choices must be made with regard to leaflet markers.

Unless someone wants to write a style sheet switcher for VRS.

 

Probably not a lot you can do about it, but one of the problems for me with Open Street Maps (in general, not just on VRS) is that around the Middle East and Far East all the place names are in Arabic (I assumed that's the language). Just tried to track an aircraft using the flight history data and I'm still none the wiser where it went
Unless I'm missing something obvious I can't see any way in changing the language

 

I'm not sure how to fix that. Thank globalization and everyone being offended at the English language.

 

From OSM:

OpenStreetMap is not just for English-language readers (or more broadly for those familiar with latin alphabets). The standard map on the main website is largely there to assist those who are actively contributing to the map, and as such it favours use of local names. Where non-local names have been used it is often a sign that we have failed to develop a strong local community.

Also the main map is created as a set of bitmaps (raster tiles) and the names are 'hard-baked' and not responsive to language settings. In the future it is anticipated that we will use vector tiles which will provide more flexibility, but for the reasons stated above the main map will still feature the name as used locally.

 

Aside from rolling our own code base of VRS, I've been looking into trying to figure out where the basemap is embedded and where that map can be replaced.

If the OSM base map is hard coded into VRS - and I suspect it is - then changing out the base map is going to be a laborious process.

Aside from the stability issues, and the utter inefficiency of the VRS web server (the internal .NET http library) - hacking our own code base of VRS is not something I want to tackle.


It takes 30 VRS instances pf running on 3.8Ghz servers in a data center to serve that "Global Radar View" - and it barely works without constant maintenance.


I've tried working on serving the static files with something like Apache without much success. Lot's of stuff in VRS is either built on the fly or hard coded into VRS - at least that's what it seems like.

There has been discussion on the forums at VRS that the next version of VRS will use some Microsoft web server. It's likely Global Radar View days are numbered unless we want to pay outrageous Microsoft licensing fees.