Why does AI traffic avoid addon airports?

[Colonel X 1,428]

I recently installed Mister X airports and Drzewiecki NYC airports only to find out that X-Plane's own AI traffic (which is has great perf. since XP11) will avoid them - they won't spawn at gates (even if there are free gates) nor land at them. Pretty much rendering these airports useless for now (unless you like dead airports). On top of that, X-Plane's static AC won't spawn at Drzewiecki NYC airports - meaning they will remain completely empty. I doubt anything can be done about this? What a waste...

[Jimm 437]

There is an alternative: http://jardesign.org/x-life/www/

It works pretty well on the whole, but you may get decreased performance, and the aircraft spawned at the airports, aren't always appropriate, meaning that you may get some foreign airliners ate airports that don't run from that airport.  If you can overlook that, then the addition of the AI aircraft via X-Life is a pretty good and viable solution (and a free one at that).

[Janov 2,383]

2 hours ago, frontendrob said:

I recently installed Mister X airports and Drzewiecki NYC airports only to find out that X-Plane's own AI traffic (which is has great perf. since XP11) will avoid them - they won't spawn at gates (even if there are free gates) nor land at them. Pretty much rendering these airports useless for now (unless you like dead airports). On top of that, X-Plane's static AC won't spawn at Drzewiecki NYC airports - meaning they will remain completely empty. I doubt anything can be done about this? What a waste...

This may be due to the fact that these airports were made pre XP10.50 - when the new technique to place "dynamic static" aircraft at the gates was introduced. An airport needs a dedicated effort to set this up - you need to specify a few parameters per ramp-start (spawn point) for it to work.

You can certainly do something about this. Download WED, import the airport, change the rampstarts to reflect the new data.

Cheers, Jan

 

[Colonel X 1,428]

Oh I have tried X-Life - it's nice but the inappropriate airlines and the bad ATC (I don't want plain text written in the middle of the screen...) kind of ruined it for me. And you can't use it with XP's ATC because even when set to real weather, X-Life chooses different runways than XP itself. Also, there is no traffic at your destination airport (even when it's supported - deal breaker right there) - I mean it's free but just an incomplete solution for now.

In XP10 I had a pretty extensive setup of WT, but I am holding off that until 3.0 arrives (if it happens in this lifetime).

I turned back to XP AI for four reasons:

1. Great performance, running with XP11 planes (no dumbed down AI planes), easily 6-8 possible without performance loss, and you get instant action at any airport, no setup, waiting, loading, ect. - it just works. That amount is pretty good given the way it is implemented in the sim.

2. No annoying on screen messages - you can listen to ATC by speech output only. Menu for ATC interaction is fun in XP11 and doesn't look like it's 1982 (like WT or X-Life). Best immersion.

3. You are part of the traffic - departing, arriving, you will see action in front and behind you, no matter where you go. You will hear ATC talk to them. I made copies of the XP11 planes just for usage as AI, so you can even give the planes appropriate callsigns (such as AA405 for the American 738).

4. ATC in general has been greatly improved in XP11, completing an IFR flight is the normal.

[Colonel X 1,428]

7 minutes ago, Janov said:

This may be due to the fact that these airports were made pre XP10.50 - when the new technique to place "dynamic static" aircraft at the gates was introduced. An airport needs a dedicated effort to set this up - you need to specify a few parameters per ramp-start (spawn point) for it to work.

You can certainly do something about this. Download WED, import the airport, change the rampstarts to reflect the new data.

Cheers, Jan

 

I guess that's possible yes. I expect payware creators to do this for me though, especially when the product is advertised as XP11 compatible. But overall the Drzewiecki NYC airports seem pretty poor by todays standards - they don't even feature HDR night lighting. They're cheap, too.

[CVEP 13]

I believe it has to do with the use of transparent runways. That's what Mr X told me in another forum. He is looking into it.

[gpb500 10]

5 minutes ago, CVEP said:

I believe it has to do with the use of transparent runways. That's what Mr X told me in another forum. He is looking into it.

That's exactly the problem.  This bug was introduced around 10.5x so it has been broken for quite a while and  I asked ben last september when this would be fixed.  He made it sound like it was a rather large issue.  But it used to work fine.  So when we build a custom runway texture to better resemble the runway at the airport being modeled and set the default runway to transparent (transparent is useful because XP still manages all the runway lights), XP AI looks at the airport and says in the log (when logging for AI is enabled) something like there is no runway long enough.  I've tried overlaying non-transparent runways but ran into some other issue with that, can't recall at the moment what it was.  Hoping it gets fixed soon.

[Jimm 437]

56 minutes ago, frontendrob said:

Oh I have tried X-Life - it's nice but the inappropriate airlines and the bad ATC (I don't want plain text written in the middle of the screen...) kind of ruined it for me. And you can't use it with XP's ATC because even when set to real weather, X-Life chooses different runways than XP itself. Also, there is no traffic at your destination airport (even when it's supported - deal breaker right there) - I mean it's free but just an incomplete solution for now.

This is all true, but that's the reason why it's free.  The paid version has solutions to those issues you mentioned. 

 

[Jimm 437]

54 minutes ago, frontendrob said:

But overall the Drzewiecki NYC airports seem pretty poor by todays standards - they don't even feature HDR night lighting. They're cheap, too.

And what would "today's standards" entail exactly?  Everyone has their own expectations and tastes...one person's disdain is another's delight.  I appreciate opinion, just like anyone else, but don't look a gifthorse in the mouth.  XP11 is still evolving, and with that, a lot of innovative features will come down the pipe.  For instance, if you look here:

http://developer.x-plane.com/2017/04/lets-get-physical-at-night/

Notice the difference?  This is a welcome sight as well as an innovation that will truly bring more realism to the night environment.

[Colonel X 1,428]

20 minutes ago, Jimm said:

And what would "today's standards" entail exactly?

Support for major XP10 features such as HDR lighting and the aforementioned support for traffic / static AC . The scenery is X-Plane 9 standard essentially, also looking from a more general modeling / texturing viewpoint. It's really cheap ($20 for 3 airports) so I don't have hard feelings anyway.

 

[Jimm 437]

2 minutes ago, frontendrob said:

Support for major XP10 features such as HDR lighting and the aforementioned support for traffic / static AC . The scenery is X-Plane 9 standard essentially, also looking from a more general modeling / texturing viewpoint. It's really cheap ($20 for 3 airports) so I don't have hard feelings anyway.

 

Well as I've stated before, XP11 is evolving, and is far from complete.  You are essentially comparing an older, finished version with one that isn't complete yet.  There are many different features in XP11 that are being worked on right now and with that, LR is very open to people's issues, with Ben's blog as well as the XP Q&A, which is a great place to lodge complaints or issues and see if they need escalated to the bug reporter.

[Colonel X 1,428]

Just now, Jimm said:

Well as I've stated before, XP11 is evolving, and is far from complete. 

Well I said XP10, not 11.  That's the whole point...

[Jimm 437]

6 minutes ago, frontendrob said:

Well I said XP10, not 11.  That's the whole point...

Gotcha.  I had to re-read your last statements a few times to realize that your issue is with DD Washington XP, and not necessarily with XP11.  I figure the issues you pointed out with their airports, stem from them porting their FSX/P3D versions to XP and not putting forth more effort to incorporate some of XP's advanced features, but that could change in a version release, if they so choose.  If that's the case, they may also wait until LR has these features nailed down and running correctly before making any changes.

[Kuragiman 227]

I snagged the Drewdeski New York airport pack and discovered too late that it is NOT ready for XP11.   It was definitely made with an older X-Plane in mind.    I poked around it since I am creating airports for XP11 myself and attempted to start converting his airport to XP11 standard.    First thing first was assigning all the gates proper Airline coding, flagging them as gates and all the jazz.   The test run I did worked great.    Tons of traffic spawning in around La Guardia.   The problem is WED pulled in other data from the APT.DAT file and what I ended up with was taxi edge lines, taxi lines and other markings Doubling up... one set from Drewdeski's custom airport art and stuff from Xp11's line art packs.    

It can never be simple.    Basically it was pulling in XP11 airport data for La Guardia and laying it on top of Drewdeski's texture work for the airport.    If I can poke at it a bit and and figure it out I'll continue mofidying so the airport has life.     World Traffic works just fine at Drew's airports though with some proper setup... ei, Routes created, ATC Network created (which Drew's lacks any such thing) and Ground Routes.