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.

 

Thank you very much for the reply and info virtuali, much appreciate it. Good to know that you're addon is being improved for future features. Looks like I will consider GSX in my next FS addon purchase.

 

Thanks again!

Up until recently I was thrilled at the fact that a company as so well regarded in the sim world as FSDT were finally doing a Canadian Hub, And at that point had no reservation of purchasing another (I have all the FSDT sceneries) addon. But after reading that they are abondoning AES in favor of there own GSX, my decision is easy. This will be the first one I pass on.

 

I've support AES from day one and have alot of addon sceneries, and will usually base my decision on purchases based on what is or what will be supported by AES. The fact that the major difference between them is that GSX is available at default airports doesn't effect me at all as I NEVER fly into default airports.

Sure some may say it's visually better, but time will tell what improvements are made to AES. For the time being, I'm happy supporting AES in other addons. I quite aware it's FSDT's decision to move forward with there own product, as It will be my decision to keep my credit card safely tucked away when CYVR released.

We'll see if I'm alone with this decision.

Will certainly be your loss. I have a feeling CYVR will be fantastic and to forego that just because it doesn't support AES seems like a mistake. Certainly yours to make though.

Up until recently I was thrilled at the fact that a company as so well regarded in the sim world as FSDT were finally doing a Canadian Hub, And at that point had no reservation of purchasing another (I have all the FSDT sceneries) addon. But after reading that they are abondoning AES in favor of there own GSX, my decision is easy. This will be the first one I pass on.

 

I've support AES from day one and have alot of addon sceneries, and will usually base my decision on purchases based on what is or what will be supported by AES. The fact that the major difference between them is that GSX is available at default airports doesn't effect me at all as I NEVER fly into default airports.

Sure some may say it's visually better, but time will tell what improvements are made to AES. For the time being, I'm happy supporting AES in other addons. I quite aware it's FSDT's decision to move forward with there own product, as It will be my decision to keep my credit card safely tucked away when CYVR released.

We'll see if I'm alone with this decision.

 

Given the fact that GSX works for free at FSDT airports, I can't fathom giving up a beautifully rendered FSDT scenery. That's your loss. I use both and I'm very happy even with their differences (or rather similarity).

Geddy_2112 you aren't alone on this one. I will be passing on Vancouver as well. I don't fly into default airports either and only use addon airports. With other developers continuing to use AES, I won't be short of destinations to fly to around the world. I respect FSDT's decision and I have made mine

Well, I for one think that a decision to pass CYVR for not supporting AES is a wrong one. I also think that AES is way too expensive. Just calculated what it would cost me to AES all my airports, and the numbers went into a 3 digit area... and that is for a bit of entertainment, and a realism of "moving jetways". Seriously? Rest is provided by GSX, and by that much more realistically...

 

On the other hand, if you own 3 airports in FSX, and have to get 10 credits, then the whole story is different.

 

Anyway, I am not passing up the CYVR.

AES isn't just moving jetways.

 

I also use FS9 so those airports which are both FS9 and FSX only require the one set of credits. So it suits me.

I know very well that AES isn't just moving jetways. Only saying that what AES is doing, except moving jetways, GSX does better imo.

 

Well, it's all up to the position on is in. I have no more FS9, so...

And now we finally come to the point of this whole thread!

 

Customers start to divide over why one scenery designer decides not to support one of the two airport services software (AES or GSX)... And at long last it is an AES supporter who complains about the non-compatibility of the future FSDT product with its pet ground services software!

 

AES supporters don't understand why FSDT does that to AES, but no one really wondered why Aerosoft and some other designers (Fly Tampa, Imagine Sim, etc) were blocking GSX by refusing to make their jetways mobile (as per FSX standard) thus pushing their customers to AES!!!

 

And we are talking of a very limited flight simming market, not Apple vs Samsung! Why would developers wage such a stupid and pointless proxy war aggravating customers? Do we have a choice of two or three sceneries for each airport to justify this? Then one would understand and select the scenery that supports its preferred airport services, but we now eliminate a purchase because of one item that we feel improves the experience we like while on the "ground". Is that good marketing gentlemen or a narrow-minded business attitude?

 

Sooner or later, competition is bound to appear and the way we react then tells a lot about our business strength. Will Aerosoft choke FSDT until it drops GSX by freezing all its airport scenery jetways, or will FSDT strangle Aerosoft until it forgoes on AES? Neither will happen, we already know that, and it is good for the hobby. But time has now come for AES to rethink its business model that was very lucrative as long as no competition was on the horizon, trying to block its competitor by refusing a FSX standard feature won't suffice, at least not in the long term. I am pretty certain that FSDT will reconsider its "blockade" of Vancouver to AES then!

 

Back to your business plans gentlemen and stop this immature bickering!

I use both. GSX has made some good changes with the updates. At first it seemed the choice for pushback (left or right ) was confusing being a longtime AES user they seemed to be the opposite. A recent update removed that confusion. Right now I prefer AES at my payware airports and use GSX at non paywares.The great part is just like the same with IFly vs PMDG. We have a choice between 2 great products. In each case people have their preferences.

I very much agree. Seems like we have a war of airport operators. I guess that those two simply can't find a middle way to work together. It's simply a thing called competition. And I would rather call it narrow-minded business attitude. Unfortunately.

 

I don't think (I didn't read any topics on this one) that FSDT is blocking AES on purpose, but rather for their own good, to be able to provide what they want to provide. It's much like if they can't make AES work together with the wishes what GSX can do, then who is going to be disabled? AES of course.

 

I also think that Aerosoft guys should rethink their strategy and scenery developers should always follow default FSX ways, so that anyone can develop on it, not support one product, because it has a monopol.

I'm sorry--there is no way in hell I would not purchase any airport Umberto makes. Especially over a ridiculous argument over gate services software. His work is exceptional and is among (if not the) the top of the FS World.The fact is I will probably use both AES (which I use) and GSX (which I am downloading).

 

Buncha babies around here sometime.

Indeed. FSDT and PMDG are for me the must-have addons (and Flightbeam as of recent). I don't even think if I'm buying their airports. I just do.

I don't think (I didn't read any topics on this one) that FSDT is blocking AES on purpose, but rather for their own good, to be able to provide what they want to provide.

 

The issue is, we are start thinking of ways to replace the jetway animation system with our own and, one thing for sure, our system will not have jetways included in the AFCAD, which means they will not be excludable by AES.

 

This is very similar to our docking systems: I don't think anyone ever complained that AES support files for our sceneries don't include docking systems, they are are provided by GSX, and you will have to install and use GSX to use them, because it's been a while since we abandoned our previous "ParkMe" system and migrated into the more capable GSX. It wouldn't be very useful to replace a system that comes with the scenery which already works very well.

 

The same will be true with jetways: we can't use the easily excludable system based with jetways placed in the AFCAD, as the FSX standard requires, and any custom kind of jetway systems will have to be fully integrated with GSX, its parking selection system, and the docking/marshaller systems too.

 

I am pretty certain that FSDT will reconsider its "blockade" of Vancouver to AES then!

 

We haven't blocked anything, we simply won't actively support it: since the scenery will use FSX standard jetways, they can still be easily excluded by AES and replaced with other jetways. Supporting AES, doesn't really mean much, other than separating the terminal from the jetway at the modeling stage, and provide mr. Pabts with the jetways Gmax source file. But any scenery that has to use FSX default jetways, must have the terminals separated from jetways anyway, and we sent source files for our jetways already.

 

This means, it's still technically possible to create AES support for CYVR without our support, in the worse case jetways might not look *exactly* like the ones provided with the scenery, but I'm not even sure we used different models compared to KLAX or KDFW, which means this is not an issue either, the old source files might still be valid.

 

But we are not advertising the scenery to be AES compatible or support it, because we don't want to end up in an awkward situation in the future, should we replace the default jetways system with our own, because this could risk having to break AES compatibility AFTER people bought credits for it, which is something we don't want to do, but at the same time we need the flexibility to do our custom jetway system without being bounded by keeping compatibility with AES too, at least for this scenery.

 

In any case, there's another issue at play here: as anyone using GSX and AES knows, using them together it's not the easiest thing to do, because AES vehicles pops out at the parking as soon as you open the AES menu, while GSX vehicles don't do this until you select an actual service. If AES worked like GSX, it would have been easier to use a service from one product and another service with the other one.

 

See this post of mine dated October 2011, which discussed both the issue of using them together, and the issue of we stopping AES support with our first FSX-only product (CYVR IS FSX only!)

 

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=4816.msg44541#msg44541

 

About the issues of doing some changes to AES to not have all vehicles popping out as soon as the AES menu is opened, there were some hints from mr. Pabst that he would looked into this issue, but now, 6 months after GSX has been released, nothing has changed, although he had his complimentary copy of GSX since the release date.

 

Now, it's should be pretty clear we have been more than fair to AES so far: we alerted of its existence years ago, we made it clear and in public that we would stop AES support as soon we stopped FS9 support with a year in advance, we made GSX menu not placing vehicles automatically to purposely allows users to use it together with AES, which was the most we could do from our side, on the other side, nothing has been made to improve the ease of use for those wanting to use them together, so I wonder why we should keep supporting it.

 

Not that "supporting" here means much. As I've said, it's nothing more than a moral support, but there aren't any technical reasons for the scenery not being AES-able, since its jetways are being already separated from the terminals, and the jetway models themselves are basically the same as KLAX.

 

So, I'd say that, should AES being improved in the way that was discussed several months ago, to ease interoperability with GSX at the same airport, we might as well reconsider our lack of "support" (see above what this really means...)

Well... I gotta give one thing to Umberto: he is by far the only developer who actively posts here (on his topics of course) and will explain everything (or at least a lot) that is happening behind the scenes. It is the one thing that I really appreciate. You ever seen Oliver Pabst post like this? I didn't...