+xAre you saying it caused a problem in SkyDemon when it was enabled?
Tim,
You probably won't remember, but this was why I first contacted you about the display of bearingless targets 5 months ago. Lee will probably come on and clarify the position, but as far as I recall it went something like this.
In a development version of PilotAware, back in January, Lee introduced the small piggybacked aircraft to denote bearingless targets, which changed colour in a similar way to the Flarm rings to denote increasing threat level. IIRC at this time they displayed relative altitude and Reg. At a later date - I thought early March, but see below - Lee then introduced alternating Flight ID/Reg for both ADSB/P3i and bearingless targets, I think in response to a change you made to allow this in SkyDemon. This worked fine with ADSB (and P3i) targets (and still does), but interfered with the colour changes of the piggybacked bearingless aircraft, so Lee had to make a choice and opted for retaining the alternating Flight ID/Reg for both ADSB/P3i and Bearingless but we had to accept that the piggybacked aircraft no longer changed colour. I amongst others felt this was a retrograde step as we no longer had any visual indication of changing risk, though PilotAware now has direct audio warnings from the Raspberry Pi, which partly compensate for this loss.
Postscript: Just checked my screen grabs - which confirm my recall was slightly awry. In the early January configuration, we got the piggybacked colour changing aircraft and relative altitude for 'bearingless' Mode S targets. By 16th January we had Aircraft Reg + relative altitude for bearingless targets, but the piggybacked aircraft had lost their colour and become white. I can't be specific re ADSB, but certainly by 16th January these were displaying alternating REG/Flight ID and relative altitude. I think it was trying to adopt the alternating Reg/Flight ID that stopped the piggybacked 'bearingless' aircraft from changing colour. Lee should be able to confirm this.
Lee subsequently decided to return to the FLARM standard colour changing rings for bearingless targets in SkyDemon, but has allowed other Nav systems to display this information in their own way, by producing variable data sets for the different nav systems, selectable by PIN. (EVFR for example display multiple bearingless targets on colour changing warning banners at the top left of their screen with Aircraft Reg and other details displayed on the banners). For SkyDemon, he elected to suppress the alternating Flight ID/Reg presumably assuming this would still 'corrupt' the colour changing rings. If this is NOT the case, the general feeling within the PilotAware SD community is that adopting the alternating Fight ID/Reg for Bearingless to make them the same as ADSB/P3i would be beneficial for the reasons I stated in my earlier post. If alternating is possible, I think it's a fairly simple fix for Lee to re-enable this data. If alternating Flight ID/Reg is NOT possible for bearingless, I personally would favour fixed Aircraft Reg + Relative Altitude as we had back in late January (assuming this doesn't affect the colour changing rings) as this would cover most aircraft we are likely to encounter.
I know Lee has been very busy today, so will drop him a text to let him know you are asking for confirmation.
Regards
Peter