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Guest jase439

MS AI Traffic Engine - A Lunatic's Story

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Guest jase439

Artificial - that's for sure. Certainly should not have "Intelligence" placed anywhere near this sim. I just experienced one of the most insane ATC-directed approaches I've ever been privy too. I want someone's stripes!So here we are...a nice cozy descent into Atlanta's 26L. I can see traffic lining up on final. TCAS is a mess - there are clusters of aircraft all within arms length of each other zooming about back and forth across the approach path at about 2000'. The closer I get, the more of a hailstorm this becomes and I realize that it's raining aircraft much harder than the raindrops striking the windshield.Precariously, I wind my way down the ILS...adjusting speed behind the 737 ahead of me. I'm blind as a bat, swathed in clouds, TCAS blinking RED and YELLOW all around me. Tower calmly tells me I'm #1 to land (I'm actually #3). The airspace from the surface to about 3000' is crawling with VFR lunatics, roving about aimlessly through Class B airspace in sub-VFR conditions. I glance out my side window only to hear the buzz of a turbo prop go sailing over my head, who then banks sharply left and pulls in front of me and tower gives HIM clearance to join the ILS.Foof...out of the cloud deck we pop, and there...maybe not 1000' from the threshold sits the 737 that just landed. Delta is apparently equipping their newer 737's with VTOL these days because this aircraft is just sitting there about 1500' down the strip as if it were nothing more than a Travel Air that had just dropped onto a crop dusting strip. Naturally, Tower panics...and tells the twin prop that just cut me off to go around - which of course, is ignored and the twin and the 737 are now congregated together for coffee and biscuits just short of the Echo 7 turnoff. It isn't log before I'm given the go around. I decide not to argue the point and proceed to execute the go around...full throttles, flaps 20, nose up...runway heading to 5K and a right turn to TROYS. And I'll be darned if I don't see a string of pearls lined up dead ahead of me on the reciprical runway heading for 8R! We again, decide not to argue as "clusters" of aircraft come raining down the 8R ILS at us. We bank sharply away from rendezvous with disaster.The trip around the pattern is fairly uneventful...we entertain ourselves by watching the stray VFR pilot who is apparently blind as a bat in these thick clouds - narrowly missing another aircraft before landing about 300' short of the field...as I imagine REIL's, tail fins, and grass being strewn about in a gory mess. Amazingly, they're building planes a bit tougher these days - as he proceeds to taxi through the earth through the asphalt and pops up just in time to take the nearest high speed taxiway.Meanwhile, Atlanta Tower is clearing traffic to land on 26L and 8R simultaneously (obviously someone at Redmond slept through that chapter on simultaneous approaches?) and as I look out my right window, the whole thing looks like a badly choreographed airshow spawned from hell, awash in a flurry of strobe lights - like some bad 1970's disco scene. "Cessna 58Charlie You are cleared to land" "Cessna 58Charlie you are not cleared to land. Go around." "Cessna 58Charlie you are not cleared to land. Go around." "Cessna 58Charlie exit the runway" "United 1354 Heavy you are cleared to land #2" "United 1354 you are not cleared to land" "United 1354 you are cleared to land #1" "United 1354 go around"Apparently, after a go around you're on the "there for the grace of God, go I" procedure as to how to get your arse back into the pattern (although the ATC window was more than happy to let me cancel my IFR clearance and/or request touch and go - touch and go! that's JUST what I want to do on a night like this!!!). Wondering if I should be circling around for 8R, I realize the point is moot - as there are an equal number of aircraft on final for 26L as there are 8R. What the heck? Right? Hell, if you can stop a 737 in a 1000' feet of runway, why waste the other 9000'? Land them in both directions! Hey! Why not. It's a crap shoot, I decide...26L it will be.Resigning myself to this ridiculous scenario, I decide "what the heck" let's join the party and turn a right base for 26L (at this point I was more interested in seeing how much more ridiculous this scenario could become rather than opting for one of the other runways). Once more a glance out the left window reveals what looks like a C7 barrelling down on me. It was BIG and it was CLOSE. Shortly before giving me a haircut at 3000', this aviation monstrosity reveals itself to be not ONE, but two aircraft - twin turbo props not more that a wing's breadth apart - they nearly end up shaving my fool tail clean off, had I not presence of mind to dump the nose and descend. I finally get back on the ILS for 26L...slow my speed to a snail's crawl to allow room for this tandem set of twin props, who at this time have BOTH received clearance to land on the same runway (nevermind the 747 on final for 8R ;-) It's a free for all! Needless to say...the tower recants and tells them both they are not cleared to land...one pilot lands, the other goes around...and to my surprise, tower clears me to land again. Yay...so I'm not forgotten ;-) (for some reason the only ATC option open to me at that point was to declare a touch and go ???) So here we go once more...amazingly, the one twin that did land forgoes the coffee and biscuits this time and leaves the runway. Hooray...I have a clear runway to land on! I can see the 747 going the opposite direction on about a 3 mile final. To heck with it - he can go around for me ;-) 100...50...20...10...gently now...touch down..."Delta 1850 you are not cleared to land, go around" Too late for that, as I'm now spoilers out and full reversers slowing through 100 knots...when what to my wondering eyes should appear? Why it's a United 737 who has decided to exit off the taxiway and subsequently BACKTAXIS up runway 8R - nevermind the fact that 2 aircraft are landing in front and behind him - one on final for 26L the 747 just passing over the numbers on 8R...nevermind the fact that I'm squarely in front of him barreling down at 70 knots. That doesn't seem to bother him much as he merrily taxi's THROUGH my aircraft - turning me into a glorious puff ball of flame and debris while he continues on his way.As I sit burning on the ground, the last thing I hear before the sim resets, "Delta 1850 contact ground on 120.9, Good Day..."Radar Contact, where art thou?

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Awesome story. I had a similar one where I was approaching Heathrow in the fog and ATC was so busy that I didn't have a chance to acknowledge my landing clearance. Once I had touched down an irritated guy in the tower cancelled my IFR flightplan. :-lol The AI mess was exacerbated by a dynamic scenery Virgin 744 that kept taking off on 27L after taxiing through a whole queue of AI aircraft. I had forgotten to delete the corresponding .bgl. A few tips though to make approaching a busy hub airport less harrowing:1. Either delete all VFR and small GA aircraft flightplans going into certain airports, or disable VFR flights under Options>ATC. I simply deleted all flights for the small GA aircraft as I only fly airliners. Little Cessnas and Barons have no business being at KATL at rush hour!2. Make sure you use AI flightplans that use only as many aircraft as the actual given airline has. A great deal of AI plans available on the net (e.g. WorldAI by Ian Webber) use one aircraft for every flight in the schedule and turn weekly flights into daily flights. This causes far more congestion than necessary and creates an unrealistically large fleet. (Each AC# entry in the flightplans.txt file represents one individual aircraft!)3. Use a program like FSMeteo to lock in the weather data for your destination airport a good 70-100 nm in advance of reaching your destination. This will prevent sudden wind direction changes as you cross other METAR reporting stations on your descent and will ensure that ATC doesn't vector traffic to opposing ends of the same runway. The FS2002 ATC machine loads the traffic for any given airport when your aircraft is about 40-50nm away. If the weather you're flying through at that point doesn't correspond to what you get when you actually reach the airport, you get a lot of artifical idiots playing chicken on the runway. I usually set the Lock to Destination feature in FSMeteo at 100nm to ensure that ATC doesn vector me in the wrong direction during descent.4. Don't quite know what to do about the airtifical idiots backtaxiing on a runway when there's plenty of taxiways available. Usually it has to do with too many conflicting overlays in AFCAD. The safest way to manage ground traffic flow is to not have more overlays than runways and to always put the airport reference point for any given overlay in the middle of the landing runway used for that overlay. This should usually ensure that traffic uses the proper taxiways exiting the runway. Cheers, :-waveMisha

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Man! your a fantastic writer, that was just as good as a Tom Clancy novel! - LOL, man that was funnyciao!Brian S


Ciao!

 

 

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LOL! What a great story! I laughed all the way through it. :DI haven't experienced anything quite that severe. The worst I've had is ai planes coming in to land head on towards me as I'm taking off. I got a "haircut" from a heavy while taking off at KORD. Of course, the heavy was told he hadn't been cleared to land, but that made little difference at that point. ;)KP

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Guest ssurjap

LOL. Hopefully they'll fix all that in FS2004.Of course one of my all time favourites is when I'm on a "one-lane" taxiway with another aircraft staring right at me on the same taxiway and ATC tells both of us to HOLD POSITION, neither one of us moving. Needless to say, I say the heck with it and go on the grass, mowing down taxiway signs to get to where I need to go :D. Let my airline handle the replacement costs :D.

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Guest outtatimeiii

LOL! That story was funny! LOL I want that to happen to me!About the worst thing (well, it was pretty funny actually) happened when I was flying in close formation in a P-51 with a Dash 8 going into KORD. The approach was pretty uneventful, although the ATC was screaming my head out with "TRAFFIC ALERTS". About 15sec till touchdown is when a MD-83 just CAME OUT OF NOWHERE and nearly made both me and the Dash a wreck pile. All 3 of us managed to touch the runway at the same time and the AI told all of us to go around. By this point, the Dash was around 80kts and tried to take off again. He pulled back hard, retracted gear, stalled, and smashed into the runway and dissappeared. LOL After that experience, I took off again looking for another AI plane to chase, finally found a semi fast plane, a Caravan, landing at Meigs. I kept ruining his landing by flying close formation and making him go around. By the time that guy landed, he was on his 3rd or 4th go around (lost count) before I was nice enough to let him land LOL.The FS2002 AI seems to be a bit buggy, but that makes it a lot more fun.

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Guest

LOL...it's too bad there isn't a way to patch FS2002, so that when one plane taxis through another, both turn into a ball of flaming wreckage. That would cancel somebody's flight plan.Great story...excellent reading.

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Guest

:-lolWonderful story! Beautifully written! :-dI wish I didn't delete some screenshots that were very applicable this thread earlier this morning. I had two rather interesting shots, one of two 737s flying (well...nearly flying) with their tails up against the outside edges of my 757's wings. the second featured the same 737s molding into one awful monstrosity beneath me, eventually smashing into my aircraft's belly. :-8 :-lol

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Guest B52Drivr

Absolutely fantastic -- well told and believable! I would have loved to be just sitting on the ground watching all this........it must have been a real riot!Best to allClayton T. DopkeMajor, USAF (retired)"Drac"B52Drivr@aol.com

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great story and a good read.I to was awaiting the upcoming release? of Radar Contact but have since written it off. It just has been way too long in the development cycle and may not make it this year, as I would have expected some type, (any type) of promotion prior to relese. One would not expect a promotion within just a few days of release, therefore I assume mid December best case. Also, I know that RC can not handle AI therefore your scenario will still exist with RC installed. I would expect MS ATC to be improved on the next cycle which is most likely on 9 months out from a RC release.Loved the previous version but have not used it since FS2k2, but time will tell.


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Man, you have some writing skills!Great story, there is no doubt the MS AI engine needs ALOT of work. I have had more than a few head-ons with other a/c because of the AI directing another plane to takeoff at one end of the runway while I landed on the other.

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we're coming, though this will probably happen with rc as well, at least you can declare a missed approach, and try again ;-)

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