How to add vehicle traffic?

[hsung 3]

How do you add (and adjust level of) vehicle traffic using ADEX?I have tried adding vehicle taxipaths outside of aprons with default Traffic Scalar of 0.7 (in Airport Properties), but cannot see any traffic.

[Art_P 6]

If you add vehicle parking on the airport, fuel trucks will appear, and they will use the paths to travel to AI and user aircraft. If scenery is set to extremely dense additional vehicular traffic will appear on airports. I don't know the logic followed in determining where and when they go.

[hsung 3]

If scenery is set to extremely dense additional vehicular traffic will appear on airports. I don't know the logic followed in determining where and when they go.

What scenery are you referring to? When I edit roads or vehicle taxi paths, there is no Image Complexity field to change density.

[Art_P 6]

What scenery are you referring to? When I edit roads or vehicle taxi paths, there is no Image Complexity field to change density.

Roads (vectors in ADE) and airport vehicle paths are two different things. My reference was to the airport vehicle paths. Scenery complexity is set in the FSX settings, not in ADE, and it affects airport traffic among other things. Fixed scenery objects can be set in ADE to appear at different complexity levels, up to extremely dense.The last I heard, ADE was unable to create road traffic. Exclusion polygons can be used to delete road traffic.

[hsung 3]

Roads (vectors in ADE) and airport vehicle paths are two different things. My reference was to the airport vehicle paths. Scenery complexity is set in the FSX settings, not in ADE, and it affects airport traffic among other things. Fixed scenery objects can be set in ADE to appear at different complexity levels, up to extremely dense.

OK, my FSX scenery is customised with Extremely Densed Scenery objects, and I have vehicle traffic in some airports, except for the ones I created with ADEX :(

The last I heard, ADE was unable to create road traffic. Exclusion polygons can be used to delete road traffic.

So ... what can create road traffic?

[scruffyduck 4]

So ... what can create road traffic?

SBuilderX. We had the ACES guys look at why we have a problem with freeway traffic but we never got to a solution before they were disbanded. It is still on the list to fix.

[scott967 62]

I think there's 4 different traffic:1. gate related (bag conveyor, push tug)2. fuel (needs a vehicle parking)3. random airport4. road (aka freeway)1 and 2 I think are controlled by airport design. 4 requires a vector terrain line oftype "freeway". I think 3 and 4 are dependent on the traffic density slider in FSX.Also, a file lwcfg.spb (living world configuration) determines the mix of vehiclemodels for the airport random and freeway traffic. This is set on a "per worldregion" basis. The amount of freeway traffic possible (ie., with slider to 100%)is determined by the populationdensity.bgl file.scott s..

[hsung 3]

SBuilderX. We had the ACES guys look at why we have a problem with freeway traffic but we never got to a solution before they were disbanded. It is still on the list to fix.

How do you open/import the AFCAD .ad2 or bgl into SbuilderX?Cheers.

[hsung 3]

I think there's 4 different traffic:1. gate related (bag conveyor, push tug)2. fuel (needs a vehicle parking)3. random airport4. road (aka freeway)1 and 2 I think are controlled by airport design. 4 requires a vector terrain line oftype "freeway". I think 3 and 4 are dependent on the traffic density slider in FSX.Also, a file lwcfg.spb (living world configuration) determines the mix of vehiclemodels for the airport random and freeway traffic. This is set on a "per worldregion" basis. The amount of freeway traffic possible (ie., with slider to 100%)is determined by the populationdensity.bgl file.scott s..

Hi Scott,I have seen the freeway traffic used in custom AFCAD's that show plenty of road traffic with my custom Scenery configuration. However, when I put the terrain vector of freeway traffic in my AFCAD, there is no road traffic :( How do you configure the populationdensity.bgl file?Cheers, Harry

[Art_P 6]

How do you open/import the AFCAD .ad2 or bgl into SbuilderX?

You don't. SBuilderX creates separate .bgl files. There is a tutorial in the AVSIM library.

[scott967 62]

How do you open/import the AFCAD .ad2 or bgl into SbuilderX?Cheers.

If you have terrain in your ade project, you can get the terrain (only) into SBX by the following:1. Compile your ade project.2. Start SBX and create a new sbx project3. When you compile your ade, a set of files for the terrain will be left behind in the ADEX\FSX\shapes folder. CAUTION: EVERYTIME YOU COMPILE AN ADE PROJECT THESE FILES ARE OVERWRITTEN. In SBX, you can file-> append the terrain files in this folder. They will have .shp file name extensions. The file name is an indication of the class of terrain, but you will probably lose some of the attribute info after append (for example, you might have to reselect the specific road texture you want to use.) Once you have appended the .shp files you want you can save your sbx project and start working from there. For example, if you have a road line in your project, you can copy it and give the copy the attribute of freeway traffic.Something that I like to use, a little more complicated, is I set the road line width in SBX to an appropriate value (this setting has no impact on the width you see in FSX -- that's determined by the terrain.cfg texture you select.) For example, you might use 40m. Then in line mode select the line and do a "make poly from line". This puts a poly on top of your line that's 40m wide. Now go to poly mode, select this poly, and "convert to line". (Or, try doing a poly copy first and convert on e of the copies. The other one you can give a texture to to create a grassy right-of-way for example like UTX does (UTX calls this encasement). Once you convert the poly to line you can set to freeway, split the line at each end (and delete the small "closing" line segment) and now you have two parallel "freeways". Set direction as needed for left-hand or right-hand driving. You can watch the traffic in FSX and fine tune the width you use so the lanes of freeway traffic track your road texture.For population density, you can look at the default file in tmfviewer.exe to see what is set in your project area. You can create modifications using resample using a grayscale bitmap file, where the grays you use are from 1 -100. SBX doesn't support this, but you can fake it by using the landclass tool, and only assigning landclass values that fall in the 1-100 range. you can compile that landclass and throw it away, but SBX will leave in its work folder the .inf file and "raw" file that you need. Just edit the .inf file for population density and manually run it through resample. scott s..

[hsung 3]

If you have terrain in your ade project, you can get the terrain (only) into SBX by the following:1. Compile your ade project.2. Start SBX and create a new sbx project

Thanks for this suggestion.

3. When you compile your ade, a set of files for the terrain will be left behind in the ADEX\FSX\shapes folder. CAUTION: EVERYTIME YOU COMPILE AN ADE PROJECT THESE FILES ARE OVERWRITTEN. In SBX, you can file-> append the terrain files in this folder. They will have .shp file name extensions. The file name is an indication of the class of terrain, but you will probably lose some of the attribute info after append (for example, you might have to reselect the specific road texture you want to use.) Once you have appended the .shp files you want you can save your sbx project and start working from there. For example, if you have a road line in your project, you can copy it and give the copy the attribute of freeway traffic.

I used ADEX to add a freeway traffic vector, and compiled the AFCAD. Then, I appended the PKXwork.shp file into SBuilderX per your instructions, but only a land class polygon was imported.I also tried to add a freeway traffic line using SBuilderX, and found the land class polygon was not aligned with GoogleSatellite. Anyway, I compiled just the freeway traffic line, and I think the _cvx.bgl created by ADEX was overwritten. I went into FSX and can see the freeway, but there was no traffic?

[scruffyduck 4]

How do you open/import the AFCAD .ad2 or bgl into SbuilderX?Cheers.

You can't. You need to create a separate bgl file in SBuilderX containing the freeway traffic information

[scott967 62]

Thanks for this suggestion.I used ADEX to add a freeway traffic vector, and compiled the AFCAD. Then, I appended the PKXwork.shp file into SBuilderX per your instructions, but only a land class polygon was imported.I also tried to add a freeway traffic line using SBuilderX, and found the land class polygon was not aligned with GoogleSatellite. Anyway, I compiled just the freeway traffic line, and I think the _cvx.bgl created by ADEX was overwritten. I went into FSX and can see the freeway, but there was no traffic?

the PKX file will contain ParKs (what MS called landclass texture polygons). Note that there are two components required. You need a road (RDX file) which supplies the texture and possibly some autogen, as well as preventing unwanted trees or houses from appearing. One advantage of using SBX for this is that it shows you what the actual texture looks like. When you have the road, you then need a freeway. The freeway has no texture. It just causes the vehicles to spawn and travel along the line. So typical is to copy the road and make the new copy a freeway.IMHO if you are doing a few roads or streams right around your airport you can get the job done with ADEX. But if you need to make your terrain more extensive, you might have a better time with SBX.Note that filenames for terrain bgl from ADEX are of the form XXXX_CVX.bgl while for SBX are cvx_XXXX.bgl.scott s..