The other day I brought up how the seasons in our simulated world don't very often match the real life seasons and what you see looking out your window which I personally find quite annoying.

Today I came to think of one other thing that always annoyed me quite a bit and wanted to hear if I'm the only one and if there's some kind of fix I overlooked even when I doubt that since I guess it's all on each developer.

What I'm thinking of today is how the vehicles on the apron when you're using airport scenery that comes with such seem to be totally blind as well as liberated from any kind of intelligence running straight through your aircraft and sometimes even into each other, will never stop and give way and in general behave like they had quite a few too many drinks before positioning themselves behind the steering wheel.

Will airport scenery developers ever come up with apron vehicles that don't behave like this? I guess it must be extremely hard considering for how long we've seen this same behavior and still do in 2017 regardless of airport developer (or at least those I ever bought an airport scenery from).

I think it's important to remember that most add-ons we currently have were initially developed with 32-bit technology and therefore had to have at least some limitations to avoid OOM crashes. Now that we have 64-bit Sims we are open to a whole new world of possibilities, but we will have to wait as computers improve and developers create new products. Things haven't even truly begun with 64-bit simming.

17 minutes ago, cleonpack93 said:

I think it's important to remember that most add-ons we currently have were initially developed with 32-bit technology and therefore had to have at least some limitations to avoid OOM crashes. Now that we have 64-bit Sims we are open to a whole new world of possibilities....

I don't think 32 or 64 bit versions of P3D have anything to do with what the OP is talking about as far as developers overcoming apron vehicles crashing into objects. Probably was more of a programming or sim limitation (not memory related) as to why it still happens.

Didn't realize some kind of simple "don't smash into things around you" technology would be that demanding but maybe you're right.

Well, time will tell what 64 bit will bring in this regard.

And edited to add, let's hope this will also set us free from vehicles with wheels not spinning but more looking like they were painted onto the vehicle.

You have to consider that the guys that drive these vehicles are only apprentices, hired on zero hours contracts and they've been told in no uncertain terms to cut costs, drive up profits, and at the end of the task "One of you WILL be fired". I'd drive the same !

 

Regards Brian

27 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Didn't realize some kind of simple "don't smash into things around you" technology would be that demanding but maybe you're right.

The vehicle would have to know exactly where everything within a finite range was located. Every time it moved, there would have to be checking to expand that area, see if anything has moved out of the area, is the vehicle within xx pixels of anything, etc etc - a whole lot of time consuming processing going on. Not a trivial task to program.

Vic

24 minutes ago, SpaceMonkey said:

You have to consider that the guys that drive these vehicles are only apprentices, hired on zero hours contracts and they've been told in no uncertain terms to cut costs, drive up profits, and at the end of the task "One of you WILL be fired". I'd drive the same !

 

Regards Brian

Well, I'm pretty sure most of the apron vehicles drivers in my simulator anyway would be fired for reckless driving rather than for any other reason 

2 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

The vehicle would have to know exactly where everything within a finite range was located. Every time it moved, there would have to be checking to expand that area, see if anything has moved out of the area, is the vehicle within xx pixels of anything, etc etc - a whole lot of time consuming processing going on. Not a trivial task to program.

Vic

What you say makes sense but at the same time this kind of situational awareness has been seen in other types of simulators and games for ages so I guess it's mostly about developers prioritizing and saving on the performance for other things.

Still I'm hoping the day will come when you see how a bus will give way for you when you're on your way into your designated gate.

1 hour ago, WebMaximus said:

Still I'm hoping the day will come when you see how a bus will give way for you when you're on your way into your designated gate.

Shoot. That doesn't even happen in the real world. If I had a dollar for every time I had to stop a push for a vehicle failing to yield, I could have retired five years earlier.

The problem relies with the ESP engine, apron vehicles are still driven by the AI engine, so this is similar to the nonsense of ATC and AI planes racing to land at the same time.

This is why I disabled crash detection it is hopeless.

Simbol 

2 minutes ago, simbol said:

This is why I disabled crash detection it is hopeless.

+1

 

If I remember correctly in the days of FSX some of the Aerosoft Airports with the Airport Enhancement Services (AES) system included had airport vehicles that stopped at least for the user aircraft.

Unfortunately AES did not make it to P3D yet.

 

AES was using its own AI engine for airport vehicles that is why it worked.

Simbol 

1 hour ago, mwilk said:

Shoot. That doesn't even happen in the real world. If I had a dollar for every time I had to stop a push for a vehicle failing to yield, I could have retired five years earlier.

Wow...

Well, if the developers find a way to fix this further down the road maybe the real world can learn something from it too 

58 minutes ago, simbol said:

The problem relies with the ESP engine, apron vehicles are still driven by the AI engine, so this is similar to the nonsense of ATC and AI planes racing to land at the same time.

This is why I disabled crash detection it is hopeless.

Simbol 

Yep, crash detection disabled here too now.

27 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

If I remember correctly in the days of FSX some of the Aerosoft Airports with the Airport Enhancement Services (AES) system included had airport vehicles that stopped at least for the user aircraft.

Unfortunately AES did not make it to P3D yet.

 

Yep, I remember this too now that you mention it.

This makes me think about SODE and how lots of developers have started to relay on it for certain functionality.

Imagine if a similar tool was developed which handled the vehicle AI traffic on the apron where the airport developers could use that for their apron traffic in the same way they use SODE for animated jetways for example.

46 minutes ago, simbol said:

AES was using its own AI engine for airport vehicles that is why it worked.

Simbol 

Exactly.

Why not come up with a similar tool airport devs could use in P3D.

Focusing on planes at the moment, maybe my runway control tool might force the apron vehicles to behave different, but I will see this at a later stage as it is not the priority.

Simbol