How to keep planes grounded in airports?

[VeryBumpy 272]

So I load up a major airport and only see like 4 planes at terminals. If I look at the AI plane list (see pic below) there are TONS of planes but most are flying and well out of view.

Setting the traffic slider to maximum helps a little but airports are still very barren.

 

How can I remove the planes in the air and put many of them at terminals in the airport?

 

[Kaly 22]

Not sure,but I think you would have to edit the relevant traffic BGL.

I used Traffic Tools in FS9.Not sure what you would use here.

Maybe others can chime in.

[sweetmusic 9]

Not to hijak the thread, but it would be nice to be able to sort the Air Traffic list by distance from the airport. Possible?

[ti_dabbelju 6]

Venustus is right, you need to modify the AI flight plans.

 

If realism is not so important to you, I always like to recommend AI Traffic Enhancer by Gunnar Daehling. You can specify airports used, time on ground and select the airlines you want and it will generate new flight plans for you. You can enable/disable these new plans anytime. The website is in German but the program is in English.

 

[SteveW 1,792]

With the FSX SDK you can make your own plans and schedules for Ai traffic but it is a lot of trouble.

 

To save moving the traffic slider up, there is at least one addon available ;-) that automatically schedules in Ai aircraft of your choice around your flight plans, placing lots at terminals and they are setting off or landing soon, can have hand edited schedules and can provide special plans for the Ai traffic, cargo and military types are placed at cargo and military ramps.

[VeryBumpy 272]

I'm surprised no one has popped in here and stated UT2 or My Traffic or Traffic X will easily do this. Those 3 programs must be for something else or more realistic routing only?

 

AI Traffic Enhancer looks interesting and I'll have to try the demo of IF some more to try and witness this behavior.

[SteveW 1,792]

I think the major traffic programs mostly recreate the regular air traffic schedules, the FSX slider just adds loads more in the sky. Set IF up for max AI in the Flight Gen page and go into the selection window and click on planes you want. Turn off the FSX slider for a test to see what IF injects, you can sit in the tower with the full version.

[Daveo 36]

If you are running the deluxe edition or I guess acceleration and have the traffic toolbox installed from the SDK you can use the traffic explorer and right click on the aircraft and have them land. Just sort the destination airports to the one you are at. Personally I use Supertraffic board to do that work when needed.

[VeryBumpy 272]

I can't seem to get Airport AI Enhancer to work. Instructions are rather sparse. Upon loading a large airport, the airport is no more crowded than what FSX slider setting injects.

 

Ideal Flight does however seem to work reasonably well. It indeed loads up nearly all the terminals/gates at the airport BUT to do so it requires FSX traffic sliders to be set to max. This in turn causes TONS of traffic in the air.

 

I just want my airports to be maxed out full but have only a few planes in the air.

[SteveW 1,792]

Ideal Flight does however seem to work reasonably well. It indeed loads up nearly all the terminals/gates at the airport BUT to do so it requires FSX traffic sliders to be set to max. This in turn causes TONS of traffic in the air.

 

With Ideal Flight turn the FSX Traffic Slider to zero. With Ideal Flight you DO NOT NEED THE FSX AI SLIDER SET at all, set it to zero!

Steve

 

I just want my airports to be maxed out full but have only a few planes in the air.

 

Hi VeryBumpy,

 

That's EXACTLY what IF is designed to do! Fills the terminals with just a few in the sky/landing and a few setting off, you have up to 4 additional airports with IF traffic en-route, and then when you get to your destination, you have the same situation, plenty at the gates and a few in the air/departing.

 

 

 

All the best.

[VeryBumpy 272]

With Ideal Flight turn the FSX Traffic Slider to zero. With Ideal Flight you DO NOT NEED THE FSX AI SLIDER SET at all, set it to zero!

 

Yes there were a bunch with Airliner slider at 0 but I got definitely more grounded planes with the slider set to 100. For info sake, I was testing at KSFO. BTW I'm not complaining, just relaying what I see.

 

What would be a nice feature to see is the ability to seperate and choose exactly how much grounded, in air and depart/land traffic there is. Not sure if that is possible however.

 

FWIW, I will be buying your IF tonight. Between the missions, detailed/hassle free plans and injecting grounded traffic; it has become a buy for me. Your demo sold finally me.

[SteveW 1,792]

Thanks very much for your support!

 

The slider only controls FSX Ai, IF Ai is entirely separate. So turning up the slider will naturally introduce more planes in the sky and on land - FSX Ai planes. Whereas IF default settings put most IF Ai on the gound.

 

IF introduces the Ai Aircraft as you want them, you can set the percentage ratio between sky and ground, and all sorts.

 

in IF settings.ini - play around with these:

 

[FlightParams]

AiMinSelection=10 <- minmum 10 Ai planes per flight

AiSelectionPercent=50 <- choose from half the Ai list of planes

AiMaxPercent=50 <- 50% of the airport parking spaces count

AiRatio=50 <- 50% at dept and dest, 50% at airports en-route

AiParked=65 <- on the ground

[Ken_Stallings 2]

It seems what you are really asking is if you can cancel an AI flight (thus grounding an AI airplane) and still have it on the ramp. The short answer is that any AI traffic only appears if it has a flight plan created, which directly means it will eventually fly. Now, if your sole goal is to have lots of airplanes on the ramp at a particular airport, then the answer is fairly easy.

 

Using an airport scenery program you go in and remove some of the ramp parking spots and in those same places you lay down an airplane as though it is a building -- meaning fixed place scenery objects. Be mindful, that when you remove a parking spot, you should also remove any taxi or apron route legs that connected the now deleted parking spot to the overall airport taxiway network.

 

Airport Editor is particularly adept at making this GUI based and fairly easy. Then you add the revised airport BGL scenery file to your FSX Scenery library. If you ensure this revised scenery BGL file is higher in the pecking order than the original file, then you have done exactly what you desired -- you have put airplanes on the ramp that are perpetually grounded.

 

The reason you have to delete the parking spot is that if you don't you might have an AI plane park there and you can have overlapping airplanes, which of course would look bad. In creating airports for some freeware and payware projects in the past, I have done exactly this to create the effect you speak of.

 

Ken

[SteveW 1,792]

The Ai Traffic engine need only add planes with [this bit's a secret] and voila! They are occupying places that cannot ever be filled with other Ai. Some aircraft occupy spaces in IF but will never fly away. The upgrades planned will allow finer adjustments and other fun stuff to do with Ai.