I think there should be some option to "trick" GSX into thinking the jetway was in place.

 

Regards,

Flo

 

There is a way to do this, its in the manual. In fact a lot of the things that were complained about with GSX can be over come using the built it editor to create custom .ini files for each airport/parking spot you want to customize to your liking, including the placement of vehicles, push back options, etc. Really there is a lot the user can do IF they read the manual and customize themselves.

 

On a side note, Umberto has said that at some point they plan on replacing the default jetway animations with their own so that they work correctly, there by not needing the assistance of AES for jetway docking that really works the way it should. Of course this will just be for FSDT airports, not globaly.

There is a way to do this, its in the manual. In fact a lot of the things that were complained about with GSX can be over come using the built it editor to create custom .ini files for each airport/parking spot you want to customize to your liking, including the placement of vehicles, push back options, etc. Really there is a lot the user can do IF they read the manual and customize themselves.

 

On a side note, Umberto has said that at some point they plan on replacing the default jetway animations with their own so that they work correctly, there by not needing the assistance of AES for jetway docking that really works the way it should. Of course this will just be for FSDT airports, not globaly.

Thanks for pointing that out. I must have missed that out, because I haven't yet updated GSX IIRC,because in the alst time I did mainly bush flying in the PNW, so all of AES's of GSX's services were unnecessary. Gonna do that as soon as possible.

Hmm, maybe. But the GSX pushback doesn't really know where the correct taxiway line is to position you on

 

The GSX pushback surely knows where the correct taxiway line is, that's the whole point of working over the AFCAD data. It will follow it 100% accurately with default airports, where the AFCAD representation and the visual representations are the same. On 3rd party airport, which usually have custom taxiways with non-AFCAD lines, it's clearly the scenery developer responsibility to have the underlying AFCAD lines matching their visual representation in the scenery.

 

 

and the follow me vehicle goes all over the place

 

It surely doesn't. If you have such example of the follow me going in places where it shouldn't, please provide a case with airport used, gate requested and your position when you asked for a follow me car. Most of the times, we found that problems with the follow me cars are a result of AFCAD mistakes, like overlapping nodes, orphaned parking spots, and similar issues.

 

and almost impossible to follow especially on corners.

 

I don't find it very difficult to follow it. Again, this isn't usually a problem with default sceneries, were the visual line represent the AFCAD, but it might appear differently, and so more difficult to follow, especially on corners, because while the default AFCAD has a predictable way of handling corners, 3rd party AFCADs to be used with a fully customized ground scenery, usually don't.

 

Note that, since GSX works everywhere, we tend to tune it on default airports, because their AFCAD are made with a very consistent standard.

What annoys me about GSX is primarily the poor vehicle movements. About ~75% of the time I use GSX I get vehicles moving in physics defining ways, doing double takes, driving through objects, my plane or each other.

 

GSX vehicles don't know about the scenery itself (the visual scenery) nor they interact with AI airplanes, because this would easily create unsolvable traffic deadlocks in the airport.

 

Of course, we could have solved it in the easiest way: by unrealistically have vehicles "pop-up" to the parking as soon as you called them, instead of driving through the airport along the AFCAD lines (respecting the vehicle paths IF the scenery designer used them, which would minimize the chance of clashes with AIs), as they do now.

 

In any case, most of the issue you reported, could be attributed to too cramped parking spaces in the AFCAD, so vehicles have to work with what info they have, but this could be easily fixed by using the scenery customization options in GSX.

No one has mentioned the ADE trap in connection with GSX. This is that ADE produces airports with no pushback directions (i.e.Pushback value of <None>) and therefore any airport built with ADE will have all ramps and gates listed as <Pushback = None>. Somewhat confusing for GSX.

 

Of course there are ways around this such as updating the Airport files to include push back options or use GSX to modify each parking position and assign pushback directions. But for a new user trying GSX out this glitch may very cause the user to misread what is going on.

AES is custom built to the airport which is why it costs a modest amount. GSX is one size fits all which is ok as we'll just not as polished in my opinion. But that's what's good about more than one product.

 

That's a very common misconception, and it's just not the case. GSX can work in TWO ways over any airport: by reading just the AFCAD, which is the default method of operations, and with a customization file.

 

All FSDT airports, for example, are customized, and the customization can go very deep, because we can specify, for each parking positions, everything that controls the program behavior, from vehicles starting positions, to which service are available, to which parking assistance is available (marshaller, docking system, etc.), the exact stopping position, which can be even further customized by airplane type, and also custom pushback routes with custom messages which might be more intuitive to follow than just "Left/Right" but, for example, offer choices like "end up on the intersection between Taxi A and C6", and this can be set independently for each parking.

 

Also, a GSX custom airport can have its parking selection menu to be more easy and realistic than the FSX one and, combined with the "Warp me there" feature, it can replace the default FSX positioning menu, which is limited because, for example, it can't support things like "JFK Terminal 4 parking B10", or "Heathrow Terminal 5 parking 10A", so scenery developers had to use strange naming conventions in the AFCAD, but GSX allows to override this and can regroup all parkings in the scenery AFCAD to be specific to the airport.

 

On top of that, a scenery customized in GSX,can be FURTHER customized by the USER, and GSX is of course the only program that allows this, and users can freely share their scenery customizations and 3rd party developers can offer a GSX scenery customization without having to ask us anything, since all the tools to create a customization for a scenery are available for the user too. The only things that are not user-customizable YET are the docking systems and the custom pushbacks, but this will soon change, at least the docking systems editor will surely come out, so everybody will be able to add docking systems to their sceneries (default or 3rd party).

 

To sum up, GSX can work as:

 

1) Entirely automatically, just using the info found in the AFCAD

 

2) Customized by GSX internally, like all the FSDT sceneries and some 3rd party sceneries that come with GSX

 

3) Further customized by the user, both if the scenery had no customization before, but also if it was already customized internally, the user customization will always augment whatever previous information GSX had about the airport.

 

So no, it's not that GSX is "generic", opposite to "custom". GSX can be generic, custom and also user-customizable.

As a previous assisting designer on GEX i know that Anthony has talked abut making GEX for X-Plane 10. What the result will be is not yet decided, but there is allways hope.. So the difference is large between fs and xp in regards to landclass/terrain texures, but in know for a fact that it is possible.

Of course there are ways around this such as updating the Airport files to include push back options or use GSX to modify each parking position and assign pushback directions.

 

There's an easiest way: since the scenery editor that comes with GSX, works in multiple selection mode too, when using a scenery with all pushback positions set to "None", it would be enough to select the "root" node in the left tree view, which is the node with the airport ICAO, and this means that any change will affect ALL parkings at once (the GSX dialog will also indicate how many parkings are currently selected). Selecting all parkings at once this way, and changing the pushback preference to "Both", will instantly enable pushback with those AFCADs made with ADE.

 

 

Do any of these Airport service addons function/work with the AI planes when they land/takeoff?

 

GSX has some interaction with AI airplanes: if you select a parking to be serviced by GSX after you landed, the GSX parking selection menu will display a list indicating if the parking is taken by another AI and will also say "available soon" if the AI is going to depart shortly. There's no interaction between AIs and service vehicles that in GSX comes from afar (some GSX vehicles starts at the parking spot, others drive through the airport).

 

In the future, GSX will probably do more things with AIs, since all the informations about their locations and schedule times are already handled now.

I don't own it, only tried the Demo, but it pushes you back to the back of beyond when I was trying it at Milan once...

 

There are some parking positions that are programmed with very long pushback in the Milan demo, this is of course was made intentionally just to show that GSX can do any kind of pushback, not just the plain Left/Right (backup a bit, turn left/right 90 deg, and that's it), but it's not how GSX normally operates on a generic airport with no special customization made for it.

 

Never thought, until now, that someone would think GSX always pushes you "back of beyond", and surely not that it might be seen as a bad feature.

 

In fact, one of of the most asked questions, before GSX was released, was about its ability to do long pushback routes, for example from the last parking stand on a pier, were the only possible way of exit would be all the way along the terminal, to meet the first taxiway, and the long pushback routes at Milan were made that way just to show that GSX CAN do that...

Never thought, until now, that someone would think GSX always pushes you "back of beyond", and surely not that it might be seen as a bad feature.

 

In fact, one of of the most asked questions, before GSX was released, was about its ability to do long pushback routes, for example from the last parking stand on a pier, were the only possible way of exit would be all the way along the terminal, to meet the first taxiway, and the long pushback routes at Milan were made that way just to show that GSX CAN do that...

It wasn't so much the distance it pushed me back, as the fact that it pushed me back past multiple points where it could have stopped and you'd have been able to mosey on. I was sitting there for like 5 mins getting pushed back. I didn't know then though that you could customise it. As I said though, I still think it's great, but as a complement to AES, I already have credits for that and don't mind supporting Oliver, I shall look into buying GSX though now that I found out you can customise the pushback and parking spot.... Was that feature there right from the start or added in an SP?

 

Regards,

Ró.

No one has mentioned the ADE trap in connection with GSX. This is that ADE produces airports with no pushback directions (i.e.Pushback value of <None>) and therefore any airport built with ADE will have all ramps and gates listed as <Pushback = None>. Somewhat confusing for GSX.

 

Of course there are ways around this such as updating the Airport files to include push back options or use GSX to modify each parking position and assign pushback directions. But for a new user trying GSX out this glitch may very cause the user to misread what is going on.

 

 

During the development of ADE 3 years ago I had Jon code new parking spots as <Pushback = None.

 

Now why did I do this? Because regardless of what is in the XML for the pushback attribute, FSX does not recognize it. The SDK says,

 

pushBack --------------- The behaviour of parking pushback is to pushback the aircraft either one wingspan radius, or to the first taxiway node, whichever comes first, do a 180 degree turn, and then proceed along the taxiways. There is no control over which way the aircraft will turn the 180 degrees, but if the pushback of one radius is too far, entering a taxiway node closer to the parking area will shorten the pushback distance.

The settings for this attribute have not been implemented. NONE, BOTH, LEFT and RIGHT are not implemented.

 

By default many of the stock airports with terminal type parking have a pushback of Left, Right or Both. Many other type parking spots have None listed as the attribute. ADE does not change any of these stock pushback codes but only sets NONE if a new parking spot is added.

 

This is in no way a ADE trap. GSX has decided to use FSX coding that FSX does not use. ADE9X was not developed for GSX but developed to make a airport look and work better then the stock airport.

 

It is on the ADE update list to expose the pushback attributes and let airport designers set the pushback. Keep in mind that setting this code for anyone using FSX without GSX does nothing.

 

In the mean time Virtuali as stated above and coded GSX to set airport pushback where needed.

 

jim

It wasn't so much the distance it pushed me back, as the fact that it pushed me back past multiple points where it could have stopped and you'd have been able to mosey on. I was sitting there for like 5 mins getting pushed back.

 

It's the same issue: that pushback wasn't really thought to be the "best" pushback, it was just made to be long, to show that GSX CAN push around you the whole airport, if needed. It's not configured as such at all parking spot at LIML, just some.

 

 

I shall look into buying GSX though now that I found out you can customise the pushback and parking spot...

 

Please note that "you can customize the pushback" really means WE (FSDT) can customize the pushback, while GSX users can customize other things related to the parking spot: like radius, starting positions of every vehicle, if there's a static/fake jetway (so front stairs will NOT appear), the maximum airplane wingspan accepted, the Left/Right/Both pushback preference, the Marshaller distance from the building, etc.

 

This can be done individually for each parking spot, or over a multiple selection of several parking spots and it's possible to select either a whole group (like a terminal) of parking spots, or even the whole airport.

 

The next versions of the editor will allow to customize the kind of parking assistance (marshaller, several types of docking systems). We are not sure right now if we'll ever add the user to create custom pushback routes, because it's kind of a boring work and haven't thought an easy to use interface for it.

 

Was that feature there right from the start or added in an SP?

 

A lot of the features we have now, have been added with updates: GSX has been out for about 6 months now, and there has been about 20 updates since then, you can read the release history here:

 

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/couatl_liveupdate_notes.html

 

The most important updates were the support for ULD pallets, the Scenery customization editor and the Airplane editor, but we keep adding things like new airplanes, new liveries for ground operators (there are about 100 of them now) and of course bugfixes, and there's an updated notification system, so you are alerted if there's a new version out, and if it's not a major upgrade, it will be downloaded and installed automatically without even restarting FSX.

 

GSX is a far more capable product today that it was when it was released, we can only hope that, since it's entirely free to use at all our airports, the (few) people that might have tried it in the past and didn't bought it, would at least get to know about its constant progress, if they have at least one FSDT scenery installed.

GSX is a far more capable product today that it was when it was released, we can only hope that, since it's entirely free to use at all our airports, the (few) people that might have tried it in the past and didn't bought it, would at least get to know about its constant progress, if they have at least one FSDT scenery installed.

Indeed I think I tried it on the first or second day of release and left it there. I don't have any of your sceneries though yet, they're not quite the kind of flights I like recreating at home... :rolleyes: But sure I may as well get one to test it out... If progress has been made sure I'll check out the demo again...

 

Regards,

Rónán.

By default many of the stock airports with terminal type parking have a pushback of Left, Right or Both.

 

That's why GSX honors that data. Since we ARE replacing the FSX pushback, and found the information in the default airports to be mostly accurate, it would have been silly to not use such valuable data, just because FSX didn't use it also because, one could always hope that future versions of it (maybe in P3D) will use it at some point.

 

During the development of ADE 3 years ago I had Jon code new parking spots as <Pushback = None.

 

Well, you could have as easily coded it as "Both"...since it doesn't make any difference in FSX anyway...

That's why GSX honors that data. Since we ARE replacing the FSX pushback, and found the information in the default airports to be mostly accurate, it would have been silly to not use such valuable data, just because FSX didn't use it also because, one could always hope that future versions of it (maybe in P3D) will use it at some point.

 

 

 

Well, you could have as easily coded it as "Both"...since it doesn't make any difference in FSX anyway...

 

Yes, it is a pity that ADE does not allow for coding the pushback options. I have taken to modifying ADE airport files using AFX then then storing the output in a folder I called "Ovelrays" this is near the top of my scenery cfg and allows the advantages of ADE designed airports along with specific push back needs as per the AFX file.

 

Whilst GSX allows the tailoring of pushbacks one has to use and operating FSX with an aircraft at a gate/stand in order to do it, thats not really an issue but I prefer to go the AFX route in many cases because I can grab a whole bunch of gates/parking spots and do a mass change of from pushback = none to pushback =both without firing up FSX.

 

The one issue I have with GSX is the ability to dictate which parking spots are used by my cargo loaders/ buses ( I fly feeder aircraft that don't use gates and passengers usually walk or bus to their aircraft). It is a nuisance when the passengers are well and truly boarded having a short walk from the terminal building whilst the cargo loader takes forever to come from the far side of the aiport even thought I have thoughtfully put a vehicle parking spot nearby the aircraft gate.