Fellow FS9 followers and fans of realistic AI traffic (100%, no less ;-)), I am sure you are as excited as I am about the fact that Michael Sagner is working on a version 2 of AI Smooth for FS9. With improved features.-> http://www.sg-flightware.deDoes anyone have any additional information? Time frame? :D Suppose we can speculate a bit about the improvements. And what exactly will AI Commander do?Here are some tidbits from the 1.20 manual, which may or may not be included in V2:- In a later release, you will be able to define holding patterns in fixed locations for each runway, and the planes will first turn toward these locations and fly to a fixed starting point for the particular holding pattern.- (About the heading tolerance) In a later release of AISmooth, it will be possible, in addition to the global settings, to specify individual settings for each airport, and in fact for each single runway and runway direction (including parallel runways) for each airport.- (General note at the bottom) The next AISmooth beta version will

Mike:Thanks for the heads-up on this; didn't know that a newer version was being worked on.Hey... would you happen to know if AISmooth works with WideFS (i.e., installed on an alternate machine besides the one where FS runs)? I checked the documentation but didn't see anything about it, though I swear I've heard that others use it this way.Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.

Works just fine over WideFS :)

>Works just fine over WideFS :)Brian:Much obliged! Thanks for the info.

That's great news. I hope he improves how the AI responds to the user's aircraft. I actually turned off this feature off, but this points out how well the program is designed. There are so many other options available that I long ago settled on a configuration that yields reliable results (patterns that make sense and that I can "slot" into) without the AI actually responding to my aircraft.

>That's great news. I hope he improves how the AI responds to>the user's aircraft. I actually turned off this feature off,>but this points out how well the program is designed. There>are so many other options available that I long ago settled on>a configuration that yields reliable results (patterns that>make sense and that I can "slot" into) without the AI actually>responding to my aircraft. Clipper:I don't understand this. You're saying that AISmooth still works rather well and you're able to slot yourself in just fine without the "User Plane Response" option enabled? I haven't tried this and was really wondering if this was the case.If so, why even put the option in there? I thought that checkbox was entirely mandatory.

Yes, that's right, I don't enable the "User Plane Response" option. I turned it off because I was getting too many AI go-arounds when I taxied to the departure runway. I know AIsmooth has has "user aircraft on ground recognition," but that never seemd to work well for me. I might revisit this option however. I might also try disabling the option for departure and enabling after departure. I use the following settings:Distance of AI to landing aircraft: 6Distance of User to landing aircraft: 10Heading range for intercept: 50Global approach fix: 20Min. seperation time: 90I also checked "Reduce Speed on Approach"

Clipper:Thanks for the information. As I'm still tinkering, I'm going to try your settings as well. After mucking with AISmooth for the better part of a weekend, I, too, was getting quite a number AI go-arounds.I'll have another look at the settings; thanks again for getting me started!

It's exciting to know that I'll have some competition. I take it this will be for FSX as well?

Nice, Im really looking forward to the 2nd version of the AI Smooth tool.Bill