New Version of AI Smooth on Avsim

[jvile 1]

FS9 and the FSX deluxe version gives us only 2 ways to control the behavior of any AI Plane.The first is what AI Smooth and AI Seperation use. It is the TrafficToolbox.dll module that ships with FS9 and the FSX SDK. For the most part both Utilities place the AI Plane in slew mode and use key events to either slew the AI Plane into a circle before vectors to final or back slew the AI plane once it is on final.Each User of FS9 and FSX has the ability to do the same thing if they open the TrafficToolbox.dll module. AI Smooth and AI Seperation are using what MS/ACES gave us and automate the process so we do not have to do it ourselfs (see picture)...http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/4581/at1uf6.jpg[/img][/url] ..There are many options on how you the User can manipulate any AI plane including sitting in your plane and actually flying a AI plane through the TrafficToolbox module (stick and rudder). If a AI Plane refuses to obey a user imput command then AI Smooth and AI seperation have the option as per the trafficToolbox module to delete the offending AI plane for that one single leg/waypoint or landing (which in some cases that occurs).The developers of both AI Smooth and AI Seperation found that the best way to control the AI Plane on the fly was to use the Slew mode. Someone else may come along eventually and write a program that can use a different set of instructions other then the slew mode but again it is done from within what FS9 and FSX gives us.I can only assume that MS had plans to use a better seperation code for AI behavior since they use portions of the Traffictoolbox.dll to control a flyable AI Plane but it has not made into the list of FS features yet.There is another way to control any AI Plane but that requires writing a different set of instructions for each runway at each airport using XML (one additional bgl per airport). The default AI Traffic/User ATC uses a default vectors to final that can be changed for each entrance point which gives the AI plane heading instructions without a slew mode. This technique is used for some of my airports that have a lot of AI traffic and places additional seperation responsibility on the ATC engine rather then the FS9/FSX trafficToolbox.dll module.We can surly hope that the efforts in working with ACES in open forum at FSdeveloper will prove positive for a future version of FS and expand the seperation/control of AI planes that have been in place for some time now.