Wanted - a more realistic Ai package than MyTrafficPro

[Christopher Low 5,338]

Personally, I would want to see all AI traffic at an airport that is supposed to be there. I never seem to have a problem finding a gate wherever and whenever I land in the UK or Ireland. However, I use custom installed AI flightplans rather than a specific AI package.

[FalconAF 213]

There is one possible twist to even the AI that aren't injected hours early still taking a long time to depart their gates.  I can't offhand remember where I saw the issue posted, but it was known (discovered?) that if you have "ground traffic" enabled in the sim for airport ground traffic vehicles, and if the airport is large (like Heathrow) and a large number of AI get spawned at it at the start, there will not be enough refueling trucks to get around in a "timely manner" to even some of the soonest aircraft scheduled to depart their gates.  I don't know the actual time parameters involved, but if you start your flight sim at someplace like Heathrow with a LOT of AI aircraft being spawned at the gates, AND if you have airport ground traffic enabled, it can take quite a while for some of them to meet the "fueling requirement" for them to start taxiing.  I have personally seen this happen myself at large airports with high AI settings when loading the sim.  

If you have the airport ground traffic turned on, try turning it off and see if there is a mad rush with tons of airplanes all trying to taxi to the departure runway right from the get-go.  If airport ground traffic is turned off, all spawned AI supposedly get loaded with fuel ready to go, and there will be a mad rush of departures then.  That opens up a LOT of gates for arriving AI aircraft to get spawned.  But if you then sit at YOUR gate too long setting up your FMC, etc, you are gonna be in a long line of aircraft waiting for takeoff by the time you taxi to the runway.  

I don't have any particulars about the above other than what I posted.  I just know that at someplace like even KLAS, it works even with high AI settings.  

Note in Christopher's case posted above me, he WOULDN'T find a problem of not having a gate to go to on an ARRIVAL at someplace like Heathrow.  By the time he flew there, enough of the "waiting for fuel" AI's WOULD have departed by then.

Never a dull moment with our flight sims.  

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

Hi Rick,

Very interesting point. I'll try this tomorrow after a test flight I'm performing today. Sounds very logical.

[FalconAF 213]

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Hi Rick,

Very interesting point. I'll try this tomorrow after a test flight I'm performing today. Sounds very logical.

Let me know how it works for you.  Also, I should have mentioned it can vary from airport to airport too.  It supposedly happens a lot at payware mega-airports where you CAN enable the airport ground traffic, but the developer didn't include enough fuel trucks to roam around the airport in a timely manner.  

[Dave_YVR 968]

9 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

But MyTraffic doesn't run to optimise traffic. It just provides the BGL and aircraft files which are static. It's surely up to the Sim to obey the timetables allowed for in the BGL format from AI Traffic.

Pete

 

 Nope, it' doesn't run like that at all. BGL traffic has it's schedules compiled within the BGL. The only variance the sim provides is on arrival when they end up going around over and over again due to the ATC system not being able to handle the amount of traffic. Other that that, the sim has no control over timetables at all, it's just doing what it's given from the bgl. 

[Pete Dowson 558]

15 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

Nope, it' doesn't run like that at all. BGL traffic has it's schedules compiled within the BGL

Yes, as I said. 

15 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

Other that that, the sim has no control over timetables at all, it's just doing what it's given from the bgl. 

You seem to have completely misread what I wrote. Yes, the Sim should be doing what it is given in the BGLs. So why does it stick aircraft at gates more than 2 hours before their scheduled departure time? THAT's what I said shouldn't happen if the sim was properly obeying the FIXED timetables in the BGLs!

Pete

 

[andreh 125]

On 11/01/2018 at 9:25 PM, FalconAF said:

My biggest pet peeve with AI yet is when they do "carrier trap landings" on a 10,000 foot runway, stop in the first 300 feet, then take 3 minutes to taxi 1/2 mile to the first turn off, causing the 3 flights behind them to have to go around.

haha! Couldn't help but smile at this

[simbol 5,818]

6 minutes ago, andreh said:

My biggest pet peeve with AI yet is when they do "carrier trap landings" on a 10,000 foot runway, stop in the first 300 feet, then take 3 minutes to taxi 1/2 mile to the first turn off, causing the 3 flights behind them to have to go around.

haha! Couldn't help but smile at this

And it is a problem that has been present since FS9..

S.

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

On ‎11‎.‎01‎.‎2018 at 10:25 PM, FalconAF said:

My biggest pet peeve with AI yet is when they do "carrier trap landings" on a 10,000 foot runway, stop in the first 300 feet,

That can be adjusted. You need to alter the "toe_brakes_scale" (and possibly "min_throttle_limit") parameter in the aircraft.cfg of the AI planes. There are a couple tools doing that for you.

Best regards

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

Some very good news. Oliver (Lorby) sent me a new Remove AI Sleepers program this morning and not only is it removing all Ai aircraft with a departure time of current + 90mins (user-adjustable) it's also updating whatever Super Traffic Board is reading and the changes are reflected in that within 30 secs. All 'deleted' Ai now have a status of Departed nn:nn where nn:nn represent the time of the deletion.

I am now adjusting my Ai settings in both P3D and the limiter in FSUIPC until I can get a decent frame rate. Initial experimentation shows Ai Traffic of 70%, no limiter used in FSUIPC gives around 70 aircraft to depart EGLL in the next 90 mins and frame rates are around 24fps.

This means far more ground movements instead of gates being hogged by aircraft that won't be departing for up to 9 hours.

He'll be updating his site soon and will also be posting here when time permits.

[Nemo 1,305]

1 minute ago, Lorby_SI said:

That can be adjusted. You need to alter the "toe_brakes_scale" (and possibly "min_throttle_limit") parameter in the aircraft.cfg of the AI planes. There are a couple tools doing that for you.

Best regards

Should'nt this be done already by ai a/c providers, at least the payware should have correctly adjusted and  reasonable "toe_brakes_scale" (and possibly "min_throttle_limit") parameters imo . Why should a customer hassle with aircraft.cfg. It is already enough work to add ai repaints (speaking from UTL).

[simbol 5,818]

34 minutes ago, Nemo said:

Should'nt this be done already by ai a/c providers, at least the payware should have correctly adjusted and  reasonable "toe_brakes_scale" (and possibly "min_throttle_limit") parameters imo . Why should a customer hassle with aircraft.cfg. It is already enough work to add ai repaints (speaking from UTL).

The problem is not the aircrft.cfg file settings, the problem is the AI ESP Engine.

Changing the Aircraft.cfg is a hack, not a documented solution.

Best Regards,

Simbol

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

Hello @ll,

so much for principles. After giving it a little more thought, the "RemoveAiSleepers" has been updated and it is again available as a free download on the Lorby-SI website.

It will remove all AI from your simulator that is a) sleeping, b) has a departure scheduled later than the (adjustable) time frame and c) is in range (1-80nm). The tool still is a external SimConnect client, so it is not hacking into the simulator internals in any way.

Please note: "RemoveAiSleepers" cannot work with any of the "Utlimate Traffic" products. Those programs inject AI aircraft without a schedule, so it is impossible for the removal tool to know when they should depart (also see the post from Pete Dowson). I have included an in-sim menu where you can cut the number of sleeping AI in half across the board, but that doesn't seem to have much effect on UT either - it looks to me as if they are constantly respawned after having been deleted. YMMV

Best regards

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

22 minutes ago, simbol said:

The problem is not the aircrft.cfg file settings, the problem is the AI ESP Engine.

Changing the Aircraft.cfg is a hack, not a documented solution.

Best Regards,

Simbol

So what you are saying is, that the result of incorrect parameter settings is the fault of the logic processing them? That is one way to look at it. Fact is, that setting the brake parameters correctly will result in a realistic AI landing. 

I'm with Nemo on this one: the AI package developers should invest the time to make their aircraft models land correctly. It is possible, it is just a lot of work. Can't see the "hack" in it, when the developer himself creates something that works out of the box. I would call that "quality control" instead.

But I'm also a realist, so personally I have always been more than happy with adjusting the parameters. As far back as FS9 there always was a programmatic tool to do that.

Best regards

[simbol 5,818]

14 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

So what you are saying is, that the result of incorrect parameter settings is the fault of the logic processing them? That is one way to look at it. Fact is, that setting the brake parameters correctly will result in a realistic AI landing. 

I'm with Nemo on this one: the AI package developers should invest the time to make their aircraft models land correctly. It is possible, it is just a lot of work.

Personally I have always been more than happy with adjusting the parameters. As far back as FS9 there always was a programmatic tool to do that.

Best regards

Well we can disagree don't we? :) the fact is that since FS95 nobody (MS, DoveTail, LM, etc.) has adjusted the ESP engine / ATC to handle AI traffic accordingly.

The problem with the breaking scalar factor setting is that it doesn't work perfectly as AI will not always brake to exit the runway at the correct relative exit point, so you still get AI backtracking the runway or taking long time to exit the runway, it also has some issues as sometimes different simulator platforms will interprete this setting differently (IE FS9, FSX, P3D V3, P3D V4, etc.), as a result you need to change the setting and test it accordingly for each individual AI model under different platforms and circumstances, this is the reason why you don't see developers changing these settings, it is impractical since their objective is provide AI traffic solutions for multiple simulator platforms.

All these of course is my personal opinion, and I believe we all need to stop doing these stupid hacks and attack the problem at the source which is the ESP AI Handling.

Regards,
Simbol