If I understand your idea correctly, this sounds very much like what WorldTraffic is doing, although it gets the positions of taxiways from lat/lon coordinates.
 
The problem with WorldTraffic is that nobody creates proper flight plans.

 

Yep, this is the plugin I was referring to which uses prerecorded routes from flights done by the user. I guess it just places a plane object onto a recorded flight plan and the planes just follow static routes. I was thinking that someone could build on this idea and actually calculate the routes from real world data like the plugins do for FSX. 

Yes, and with how easy it is to integrate stuff like google maps you could easily create a set of waypoints for a flight plan, copy a STAR or even if you dont have that information you could take some predefined ones to apply to any airport.

 

    Only thing you might miss is that if it's not an aircraft you might now have information available, like forces, cross winds etc but that is only for effect, like landing in crosswind with yaw etc.

 

   Now, who is going to do snoopy on his doghouse..

I guess it just places a plane object onto a recorded flight plan and the planes just follow static routes.

 

Yes, basically that's correct, although it is a bit more complex in detail. It has a simple ATC system to avoid conflicts between planes, incl. the user's plane. Also the planes made for World Traffic are animated properly (i.e. flaps, gear, lights).

 

 

 

I was thinking that someone could build on this idea and actually calculate the routes from real world data like the plugins do for FSX.

 

Is there an online source which exports real-world flight data in an easy-to-use text format?

 

If yes, maybe a Python plugin (or any other language ...) could be written to access and process the data and create flight plan files for World Traffic. (I say World Traffic because we wouldn't need to care about the animations etc.)

 

 

Is there an online source which exports real-world flight data in an easy-to-use text format?
 
If yes, maybe a Python plugin (or any other language ...) could be written to access and process the data and create flight plan files for World Traffic. (I say World Traffic because we wouldn't need to care about the animations etc.)

 

I used to use this one http://www.edi-gla.co.uk/fpl/login.php?go=/fpl/index.php, which gave you a simple flight plan of recent flights. I think creating a flight plan from simple text information should be fairly easy. I remember the FSX plugin used to also get all the departure and arrival times as well from somewhere and also show the correct liveries, it was a really good application and bought airports to life.

For me weather, AI and a more elegant seasons solution.

 

Particularly weather: I'm not sure it's ben possible with the way XP10 handles weather by cells, but I'd love to be able to see weather in the distance and avoid or fly through banks of clouds, rather than have them just suddenly appear or disappear around me.

 

Oh, and the Jag, Tornado, Beaver and all the other promising aircraft being developed by people with dayjobs to get done.

Thanks for the link, although this requires users to have an account there, which might not be optimal for an automated solution.

 

 

 

I think creating a flight plan from simple text information should be fairly easy.

 

Yes. For creating a flight plan for World Traffic, if we had a given flight plan with some waypoints, we would just need to transform the waypoint names into lat/lon coordinates. This could be done by parsing X-Plane's nav data base(s) which, IIRC, include the lat/lon coordinates of the waypoints. Maybe some interpolation between waypoints would also be needed, not sure currently.

 

In case of duplicate waypoints of the same type (i.e. the same waypoint name is used for more than one location) maybe the one which is nearest to the previous and next waypoint could be chosen...

 

Maybe some more information would have to be stored in the generated WT files (certainly the airline and aircraft types, as well as times), but I'm currently not sure which (it's a long time since I used WT...)

 

 

- Visibility improvements from high altitude

This is particular is high on my wish list. 

 

Better weather I suppose but in fairness the X-Plane developers can only work with what there given.

tonywob and Alpilox have the scenery thing all wrapped up but would love to see some Orbtx type Airports.

Cheaper Airports, 27 Euros is a ridicules price to pay for 1 airport. 

I would like decent scenery for EGKK and OMDB (they are the world busiest airports but very poor quality atm).

Weather "smoothing" or METAR blending has always been an issue with flight simulators.  In FSX, ActiveSky products have worked on this for years.  One of the main stumbling blocks is the trade-off between what can be done and the cost in framerates.  It takes a very powerful computer to run with cloud and scenery distance settings firewalled which is what is needed to be able to blend and display weather in the radius around the aircraft.  I think it's not so much a software problem as a hardware limitation.

Just clicked on the ORG site and EGI Southampton Airport has just been released at 19.95 Euro by the Pilot Plus Team, looks great, very happy with price. 

 

http://store.x-plane.org/EGHI-Southampton-Airport_p_354.html

"– Understand that scheduled times to ship on products -do not- become shorter by adding more warm bodies."

 

Tell you what: Let's compete.

 

We both have to add generic but properly placed buildings to 300 airports. It's the last step before we publish our update.

 

YOU do it alone.

 

I will use 15 qualified artists.

 

How do you think this is going to end up?

With good technical talent, good project management skills, a strong focus on quality and the ability to understand your teams ability. = 360 deg success. Of course testing is a different animal. Core testing is usually the best  most can do, then use the public to fine tune the testing.

 

So what skills is the XP team lacking?

 

Bob 

x

 

 

"– Understand that scheduled times to ship on products -do not- become shorter by adding more warm bodies."

 

That should actually depend on what they are used for. If you add say 10 people to work on parts of a project that others are dependent on, or there work is dependent on completion of others work, then you are right, it probably will have little affect on completion schedules. If however they are working on parts of the project, that have no dependencies and can be done parallel  with other work, rather then sequentially if those resources weren't available, that could significantly reduce the completion time of a project.

Another DCL for X-Plane released on Steam,  Airport Wilmington on sale for 15 Euro, Normally 20 Euro. 

Also the Carenado C185F Skywagon released for 32 Euro.