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ovek

I had this crazy idea....

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Hello EveryoneThis is the first time i post, although i've been a lurker on this and other fs-forums for ages.The reason i decided to come out of hiding today is something that hit me last weekend, and I haven't been able to get it off my mind.On saturday, I got up early and treated myself to a little saturday-morning-run in fs9, before the rest of the household woke up. just a short 30min-hop between two local swedish airports in the Boeing 737-200 "Tin Mouse". When I was on the short cruise, I started thinking a bit about what I was missing in FS, and it was really quite clear. Before i started the flight, i had gotten the actual weather from ActiveSky, built my flightplan and planned my fuel in fsbuild, got maps, sid/star and aprroaches online and printed out. I had calculated v-speeds for takeoff and set up the nav radios and MCP and for takeoff. All this feels "right", and adds to the illusion of being there. But, then it's time to get a clearence, and it falls apart. They won't route me through the SID i just printed out, they always say "fly runway heading". If i wanna fly my SID, i have to turn off ATC, or hard-code it into the flightplan, which doesn't feel realistic. I could also go online (to be honest, I haven't taken the plunge into that yet), but checking servinfo, all of Suecia FIR is totaly dead, which is not too strange considering it's early saturday morning. I almost always turn off ATC (unless i'm VFR, for that i think it's ok). But just imagining the controller in my head just doesn't feel right.Then i got the idea; Would it be possible to feed the ai-aircrafts from an external program? The same way you do with VATSIM/IVAO, but without having a human pilot behind each aircraft? And, then idea number two hit me; would it be possible to make this program run on a server?, and then interconnect with i.ex. VATSIM to sort of "fill in the gaps" to make the skies more crowded, and to make the ai actually behave like they should? Maybe even make it possible for online ATC controllers to give command to these ai aircrafts as well, to make their experience more realistic. The program would be some kind of basic flight-sim, that makes the ai react at least plausible to different flying conditions. On top of that some kind of ATC-program that controls where the AI flies, and also gives ATC-commands to the player, if no human controller present. Having something like this "in the cloud" seems like a good idea, everyones navdata and ai would be syncronized, program can continously be updated, etc. It would also open up for cross-platform compability (X-Plane). I realised quickly that this, if doable, would be a project of HUMONGOUS proportions, and probably something that would need to come from a major company. I know almost nothing about program development, or network communication, and I'm sure there are millions of catches to this that i haven't even begun to think about. But, still, I haven't been able to shake the thought off. So i decided to share it here.So, whattcha think?NOTE TO ADMIN; I put this in fs2004 forum rather than add-on developers forum, because the topic is not really something i'm working on, but rather me daydreaming about what i would like to have. Feel free to move it if it's not right.

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Nice dream, and who knows what can be developed. I doubt it for FS9 though.I really don't have an isue with default ATC since I program the SID and the STAR into the FMC (PMDG 737) and follow instructions until takeoff. Then I engage the AP, select LNAV and ignore all instructions from ATC. I do respond to the first heading instructions as I don't want to have the FPln cancelled, but stay on my programmed course. Soon enough, ATC catches up to my FPln. I haven't experienced any mid-air accidents yet. I follow the same procedure when flying the STAR. ATC will badger you to make the changes for vectoring, but if you reply the first time and then ignore them, ATC will eventually catch up again and clear you for landing.Works for me.Jim D.

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It won't be able to control Ai aircraft in the way you suggest but as an alternative ATC program Radar Contact does a far better job in getting you from A to B than the default ATC in FS9.Find out more by clicking the Radar Contact link in my signature or visiting the forum here on AvSim.


Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
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