One thing that really bugs me is how AI traffic handle the pushback procedure. What I see all the time is a short, straight pushback followed by a complete 360 turn and then the plan is on its way.

That, of course is not accurate. The plan should pushback and turn right or left, if need be, and then sit a few minutes complete engine start and checklist flow. I never see that.

I'm currently using World Of AI. The only program I have seen handle pushback accurately is  GSX from FSDT. There are other things I don't like about this product so I don't use it but it does a great job with pushback.

Does anyone know how pushback can be made to behave more accurately with AI aircraft? Thanks!

 

mlecec

I am also interested in a solution for this... It's very odd seeing the AI turn 360 at the gate...! I am using My Traffic 5.4b (or whatever the latest number is) and I was hoping such an addon would fix this, but no... Do other AI addons fix this?

There's probably not much that can be done for this and if there were, such as push back tugs for the AI, the performance hit would be enormous. Between the polys required for all the tugs and the animations required to do it, we would probably be looking at sub 5 FPS at large hub. Just consider how bad the FPS hit is if you use a product like UT2 where you can have the jetways activate to the AI planes. Just that in itself can tank FPS. 

 

It would be cool though if all the AI had their own GSX/AES style catering trucks, tugs, service vehicles and marshalls. It would really bring another dimension to the airport environment.

While there is the ability to define an airport with a push back direction, all the comments I've seen say FSX does nothing with it. GSX, as an external process to FSX, does read the push back info on the airport file and tries to mimic what is read. How detailed GSX can work with that data I haven't really followed. I *think* push back is only to the first "node" away from the parking space, so it's not like you can make a serpentine route around other aircraft.

There's probably not much that can be done for this and if there were, such as push back tugs for the AI, the performance hit would be enormous. Between the polys required for all the tugs and the animations required to do it, we would probably be looking at sub 5 FPS at large hub. Just consider how bad the FPS hit is if you use a product like UT2 where you can have the jetways activate to the AI planes. Just that in itself can tank FPS. 

 

It would be cool though if all the AI had their own GSX/AES style catering trucks, tugs, service vehicles and marshalls. It would really bring another dimension to the airport environment.

 

I don't even want or ask for all that: I would just like to see the AI moving back and aligning with the taxi way as it should. No need indeed for performance hitting stuff (I don't own GSX), but it's just odd to see the AI make a 360 turn. Changing that behaviour should be possible without any performance hit. Just some line of code that needs to be rewritten, so it seems to me.

I don't even want or ask for all that: I would just like to see the AI moving back and aligning with the taxi way as it should. No need indeed for performance hitting stuff (I don't own GSX), but it's just odd to see the AI make a 360 turn. Changing that behaviour should be possible without any performance hit. Just some line of code that needs to be rewritten, so it seems to me.

I agree. I'm not into code and all the tech stuff but I have think there must be some way to simply make these planes do what they are supposed to do.

To get AI to push-back or even follow correct taxi routes is quite complex. One usually needs to set up an afcad with quadrouple taxiway routes i.e. from the runway and back to the runway. For taxiing down the rwy and doing an about turn at the end to line-up the rwy centreline has to be extended in the direction if the turn in order for AI to follow it. Also for straight through parking the taxiway links have to be carefully aligned.

It has gotten so to the point that I keep my nose in the cockpit most of the time and that I way I see very little of the AI circus acts around me.

 

 

the AI circus acts

 

LOL

I think the only AI program, that may be able to do something here would be VOXATC, since it does it's own AI logic. I don't believe this can be done with FSX AI systerm, because I don't believe what runway for takeoff is chosen is set until taxi request, which comes after pushback. In my ATC modifications I tried unsuccessfully to identify the departure runway so I could add it to the clearance instruction, and it simply wasn't known at that point.