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Disappearing AI Aircraft

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I never noticed this problem before. I decided to do some spotting at KCLT. I had Active Camera set up with a good vantage point set up. Planes started landing but as soon as they hit a point on the runway before turning off the taxiway, they disappear! Not one or two, but all of them. I have 100% traffic enabled. Thanks. Tom

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Guest FSIntegral

There may be other parking spaces, but if their radius is lower than aicraft radius, then the AI engine will consider that there is no parking available, and the aircraft will vanish too once it has slowed down on the runway.

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That makes sense. I had 100% enabled. I'll tone it down to 90% or so and see what happens. Thanks guys. I'm using an update to KCLT and it realistically filled most gates. Regards, Tom

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One of the inherent problems with 'realistic' AI traffic levels is that it runs about 20% higher than the number of gates at airports.This is because real world airlines have aircraft in maintenance, pushed back into temporary parking, etc.The key to a successful airport parking scheme is having enough uncoded overflow parking to handle the traffic volume.Realistic airport AFCAD files are worthless if they do not match the AI traffic plans on your computer.

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Guest PARADISE

I've always wondered what happens to the planes that vaporize when they are waiting to take off at the hold line and their 5 minutes of holding is up. Do they still complete their flight, ie- could you still see/hear them enroute and arrive at their destination, or is their flight plan cancelled for the day?John M

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AI airplanes normally only 'fly' about 100 nm - maybe 200 nm if they cross the entire sector where the user aircraft is located.The only way an AI aircraft completes an entire flight is if the user aircraft stays close to the AI aircraft for the entire flight.It can be done, I've followed an AAL B777 from EDDF to KDFW at 1x.Most of the time if an AI aircraft times out and disappears - it will be initialized inflight on the next 'load' pass of the traffic databases.FS reads all the traffic databases every few minutes.It will identify the AI aircraft as scheduled to be in an active grid sector at the current time - but that the aircraft is not currently active. It will create the aircraft at an inflight position and speed which is in the database.It is possible that by the time the AI aircraft times out, it is so late in it's schedule that it is supposed to be out of the active grid sectors. Then you will not see it initialized.I've seen both instances occur many times. Generally turbo-props will be created inflight and jets at busy airports will not - they travel too fast.We tend to think of AI flight plans as from airport to airport - but they really are not.They are a list of grid sectors and the time the AI aircraft should be in that sector. Each leg of the flight plan is broken down in to the necessary number of grid sectors and the time the aircraft should appear. (This is why altering the aircraft cruise speed to make forced arrival flight plans work is not a good idea - it messes the timing up and creates the likelyhood of duplicate aircraft - but that's another topic because timing in FS2004 is pretty bad).One traffic file may have an AI aircraft scheduled to be in a single grid sector many times during a week - but at different days & times for each occurrence.

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Guest PARADISE

Thanks for that detailed explanation. I have also experienced being able to fly long distances with the same traffic nearby for the duration. Of course you have to fly GPS direct courses since that's how the AI flies, but it's neat to have "company" when crossing "the pond", or other long routes.John M

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