GSX V2 Announced- SODE Jetways and Animated Passengers

[Victoroos 205]

15 minutes ago, virtuali said:

 

- Yes, we will rewamp the Pushback. This should be the next planned update to the core GSX program (which means it will be FREE). Same as last year, when we took the existing not-so-good Refueling procedure and remade it from scratch, Pushback will be taken care of, making it more flexible, with the ability to define multiple custom routes for each parking, and save them and, with Push/Pull ability, which makes every kind of exit possible, in addition to allowing gate-to-gate pushback and push-ins to.

Pushback has always been one of the cornerstone of GSX so, be sure we are not neglecting it. It's just that improving jetways and having animated passenger was the most requested feature by users by far, so we worked on that one first.

Some other things people might have missed:

We'll have two L: variables that airplane developers can use: one they can *write* into, to tell GSX the number of passenger to board/deboard, from the airplane point of view, instead of having GSX estimating it from the station load. And, while boarding/deboarding, another L: variable the airplane code can *read*, will keep a running counter of the passengers that entered/exited the plane, so they can do anything they want with it, like updating the airplane load and change the W/B in realtime. The next update for the FSLabs A320/319 will feature this, and I spoke to several airplane developers both at the Flightsimexpo and privately, and they seem to be eager to add this feature, since it's very easy to use.

Same for jetway power and air: we'll publish two L: variables, so airplane developers can check whether a jetway with either a power unit or an air unit has connected, and eventually turn on the related systems in their own simulation.

Thansk for the explanation.

Any e.t.a. on the PB thingy? as in..after level 2 I guess then? :S. really miss that somehow :D. (eham has some nifty pb.. I worked really hard)

And I love the jetway power / air to airplane integration. not to speak of the dynamic weight and balance ! nice job!

[ErichB 3,643]

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

We'll have two L: variables that airplane developers can use: one they can *write* into, to tell GSX the number of passenger to board/deboard, from the airplane point of view, instead of having GSX estimating it from the station load. And, while boarding/deboarding, another L: variable the airplane code can *read*, will keep a running counter of the passengers that entered/exited the plane,

Smart

[nealmac 260]

4 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Can’t help wondering whether these comments regarding passenger movement are coming from an American audience where aircraft flights around the country are treated more like bus transportation. In the UK my experience while boarding a flight, any flight, is much more leisurely and controlled.

Mike

I fly between the UK and Ireland pretty much every week. And while I agree that boarding the aircraft is very well controlled, there is always a long line of people waiting to board. Not 2 or 3 people at a time.

[Pete Dowson 558]

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

However, for human animations, it's best not overdo it and not set an fps value much higher than the one the animation was originally made for (usually 30), because a too different value might result in an "old Chaplin movie" effect, with walking cycles starting to look funny.

The passengers seem so spread out though. Boarding at that rate will take far too long surely? In my experience folks are in quite a close line and even clustering at the bottom of the steps waiting to go up almost heel to toe. As far as I'm concerned they can dawdle provided they get closer together! 😉

Pete

 

[Mitch24 194]

3 hours ago, JoeFackel said:

Walking slowly in the speed of the pushback is pretty fine, the only thing that buggers me a bit is his "zombiespeed" back to the ramp 😉

Ideal would be if the animated people have slight different speeds: some faster, some slower (like the old grandma with her cane ;-))

Of course it can be a limitation of the animation engine, i'm sure Umberto can lighten us up about the speedrestriction. 

Hmmm there should be a check box option for grandma with her cane I think....

Also it's 2018, there's no more grandmas with their canes, they are all grandmas in wheelchairs now.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Mitch24

[Guest]

Orbx seem to have correct and natural walking pace with People Flow - but I suspect that's different coding so not comparable.

[AAN1718A 20]

23 hours ago, Woozie said:

Follow this link for a short video, showing animated PAX boarding in action

https://www.simflight.de/2018/06/10/fsdreamteam-gsx-2-0/

 

That does look amazing. Nobody has any carry on luggage though .. Definitely getting this when released.

[Lenny777 299]

On 6/11/2018 at 1:20 PM, Woozie said:

Follow this link for a short video, showing animated PAX boarding in action

https://www.simflight.de/2018/06/10/fsdreamteam-gsx-2-0/

 

Wow. Looking forward to this!

[Jim Young 2,356]

10 hours ago, F737NG said:

 

Surely this is the ultimate pax bus / jetway design.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshuamarks/6101073338

Used at Dulles.

 

Those are not buses.  Mobile lounges that you walk into from the Gate, go to the aircraft and they raise or lower depending on the aircraft and the passengers enter the aircraft.  No messy ops where one has to walk down to a bus, drive across the tarmac to the aircraft, climb out into the wind and rain and climb stairways into the aircraft.  Primitive...

With mobile lounges operating at an airport, buses to/from the terminal would not be appropriate so airports like Dulles will have to turn off the bus option.

[Jim Young 2,356]

This new and updated program is absolutely awesome and look forward to purchasing and using it.  Thanks FS Dreamteam!

[KL Oo 700]

11 hours ago, virtuali said:

Some other things people might have missed:

We'll have two L: variables that airplane developers can use: one they can *write* into, to tell GSX the number of passenger to board/deboard, from the airplane point of view, instead of having GSX estimating it from the station load. And, while boarding/deboarding, another L: variable the airplane code can *read*, will keep a running counter of the passengers that entered/exited the plane, so they can do anything they want with it, like updating the airplane load and change the W/B in realtime. The next update for the FSLabs A320/319 will feature this, and I spoke to several airplane developers both at the Flightsimexpo and privately, and they seem to be eager to add this feature, since it's very easy to use.

Same for jetway power and air: we'll publish two L: variables, so airplane developers can check whether a jetway with either a power unit or an air unit has connected, and eventually turn on the related systems in their own simulation.

This sounds fantastic! I love the idea of greater integration between complex aircraft and others services (GSX or FSCaptain etc). It makes for a much more real expirence.

 

I hope you get some of the bigger (we all know who) developers onboard to introduce these features!

 

[Mitch24 194]

2 hours ago, Jim Young said:

Those are not buses.  Mobile lounges that you walk into from the Gate, go to the aircraft and they raise or lower depending on the aircraft and the passengers enter the aircraft.  No messy ops where one has to walk down to a bus, drive across the tarmac to the aircraft, climb out into the wind and rain and climb stairways into the aircraft.  Primitive...

Real life "Wall-E"

[virtuali 4,421]

14 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

The passengers seem so spread out though. Boarding at that rate will take far too long surely? In my experience folks are in quite a close line and even clustering at the bottom of the steps waiting to go up almost heel to toe. As far as I'm concerned they can dawdle provided they get closer together! 😉

Pete

 

We could easily make them more/less spread apart, it's just a single parameter to change, which is the random time between each generated character.

However, we would likely run in the following issues:

- Creating passengers closer to each one, would increase the chance of collisions between them since, in order for the crowd to look natural, they don't walk at the same speed and don't have the same stride. Of course, creating a full-blown crowd simulation, with full avoidance agents, might be a bit overkill. Yes, we researched it and we know about the possible approaches and maybe we'll eventually get there, in a future version, with even better hardware.

- The more the passengers are close to each other, the more you see of them on screen at the same time, which will of course start affecting fps at a certain point, in a way that is not easy to predict, since lots of the process has slight randomizations to keep it natural and not robotic.

Perhaps, we might have some kind of user-controlled slider for passengers density.

[Pete Dowson 558]

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

Perhaps, we might have some kind of user-controlled slider for passengers density.

That would be good.  I understand the potential problems.

BTW collisions do happen in real life, especially with someone like me with very narrow vision and more interest in looking at the aircraft movements around the airport than looking where I'm going! 😉 )

Pete

 

[nealmac 260]

3 hours ago, virtuali said:

We could easily make them more/less spread apart, it's just a single parameter to change, which is the random time between each generated character.

However, we would likely run in the following issues:

- Creating passengers closer to each one, would increase the chance of collisions between them since, in order for the crowd to look natural, they don't walk at the same speed and don't have the same stride. Of course, creating a full-blown crowd simulation, with full avoidance agents, might be a bit overkill. Yes, we researched it and we know about the possible approaches and maybe we'll eventually get there, in a future version, with even better hardware.

- The more the passengers are close to each other, the more you see of them on screen at the same time, which will of course start affecting fps at a certain point, in a way that is not easy to predict, since lots of the process has slight randomizations to keep it natural and not robotic.

Perhaps, we might have some kind of user-controlled slider for passengers density.

I honestly wouldn't mind if it's a bit "robotic". However an impact on frame rate would indeed be a huge negative.