Automatic updating of airport files is coming!

[kiek 1,213]

Hi guys,

Tomorrow, Oct 24th, I plan to  release new major versions of my programs.

All data files (liveries, configuration, parking positions, airports) are in XML format in stead of plain text files. This is less prone to errors and it offers interesting possibilities for further automation.

PSXseeconTraffic will automatically update the airport files with parking positions with live (!) data from real aircraft starting from or parking at a gate in your Sim!

Example: if a Delta 767 ends it flight at gate E2 at EHAM,  DAL+B767 is added as option for gate E2 and the option generated by ParkPosGenerator is removed. If later that day or the following day or whatever, a KLM 788 starts at that gate KLM+B788 is added as an option for gate E2 too, and so on.

Every time you are at an airport your airport file will get better, resulting in more real parked static aircraft.

You could also place your user aircraft at an airport (with ground traffic) and let PSXseeconTraffic and RealTraffic run unattended for a day, or a few days, and you will get an airport file of far better quality than the one initially generated by ParkPosGenerator!

Tonight runs my final unattended run for EHAM (while I am sleeping) and if all goes well, it will be released.

🙂

Nico

[ZKOKQ 984]

Great news, It just gets better and better.

[Guevorkyan 69]

How can we change our present airport XXXX.txts to the xml format? I guess most of us have several .txts that will be overriden by the new xml when we run the ParkPosGenerator.

[kiek 1,213]

Well that is all described in the Manual section 4.4.4.....as indicated in the Release Notes.........

In short:

I assume you already have your manually created .txt files stored somewhere safe at your computer. Copy these files into the new parked_updates folder. PSXseeconTraffic will automatically convert your files to xml and use these xml files.

Your files will be locked for automatic updates by default. You can change that by pushing the Unlock button.

Do note that your files (compared wiith the new .xml generated files) miss the radius of each parking position ...

 

For airports with good ground traffic coverage I recommend to start fresh with a new XML file generated with ParkPosGenerator 7.0.  But if you are satisfied with your old files, you can just continue using them (keep the converted xml versions).

Nico

Edited October 25, 2018 by kiek

[Guevorkyan 69]

Fantastic, thanks!!

[jore412 0]

Thank you for the new version.

The convertion of the airport.txt files works well. But is it also possible to convert the AI_liveries.txt? In the manual, section 4.3.1 it says: "In this checkbox you can enter (the path to) the folder that contains the AI_liveries.xml (or -for still a short time- the AI_livieries.txt) file."

I entered the path to the AI_liveries.txt (it´s in the PSX Folder) but than the status line says that the AI_livieres.xml is not found. It would be creat to convert it because in my AI_liveries.txt there are hours of work of editing.

 

Thank you!

[kiek 1,213]

3 hours ago, jore412 said:

Thank you for the new version.

The convertion of the airport.txt files works well. But is it also possible to convert the AI_liveries.txt? In the manual, section 4.3.1 it says: "In this checkbox you can enter (the path to) the folder that contains the AI_liveries.xml (or -for still a short time- the AI_livieries.txt) file."

I entered the path to the AI_liveries.txt (it´s in the PSX Folder) but than the status line says that the AI_livieres.xml is not found. It would be creat to convert it because in my AI_liveries.txt there are hours of work of editing.

 

Thank you!

That text was for version 11.9, I forgot to update that in 12.0. It is now xml only, sorry.

However, you should never edit an intermediate file that is used for computer-computer communication... Always make your changes in the aircraft.cfg files!

Use AILGenerator version 3.0, it will create an AI_liveries.xml.

 

(Note that you can also write a simple script yourself, to convert thefile. The xml structure is very simple.)

 

Edited October 26, 2018 by kiek

[jore412 0]

7 hours ago, kiek said:

That text was for version 11.9, I forgot to update that in 12.0. It is now xml only, sorry.

However, you should never edit an intermediate file that is used for computer-computer communication... Always make your changes in the aircraft.cfg files!

Use AILGenerator version 3.0, it will create an AI_liveries.xml.

 

(Note that you can also write a simple script yourself, to convert thefile. The xml structure is very simple.)

 

Ah ok thank you. I just was confused because of the text in manual. But now its clear, new xml builded by AIL 3.0. 

Thanks. 

[kiek 1,213]

The next versions of ParkPosGenerator (7.1)and PSXseeconTraffic (12.1)  will provide further refinements of automatic updating of parking positions.

PPG will have a new option to generate the data about parking positions without any option, so just id, latitude, longitude, heading and radius.

PSXT will be able to cope with such a clean file. It will be a nice starting point for automatic updates.

The real live updates will have a new attribute hours. When an aircraft positions or parks at a gate the UTC hour will be put in that attribute.

The algorithm that parks a certain percentage of aircraft at gates will first, if available of course, try to match the aircraft with the current hour as best as possible.

The new functionality comes on top of what already is in place, it is backwards compatible so to speak, no worries 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2018 by kiek

[kiek 1,213]

On 10/28/2018 at 7:43 AM, kiek said:

The next versions of ParkPosGenerator (7.1)and PSXseeconTraffic (12.1)  will provide further refinements of automatic updating of parking positions.

PPG will have a new option to generate the data about parking positions without any option, so just id, latitude, longitude, heading and radius.

PSXT will be able to cope with such a clean file. It will be a nice starting point for automatic updates.

The real live updates will have a new attribute hours. When an aircraft positions or parks at a gate the UTC hour will be put in that attribute.

The algorithm that parks a certain percentage of aircraft at gates will first, if available of course, try to match the aircraft with the current hour as best as possible.

The new functionality comes on top of what already is in place, it is backwards compatible so to speak, no worries 

 

 

PSXT 12.1 and PPG 7.1 have been released.

Next challenge will be to gradually update the parked aircraft every hour...

[vkupchyshyn 2]

Hi Nico,

Amazing update - thank you!

I don't know if this is technically feasible, but as food for thought, now that the possibility exists for the program to write information on "real" parked aircrafts and time into the airport xml files it would be a great idea to implement an option to sync the relevant lines of the xml files containing the "real" parking variables with an online repository/database. It could be independent of the scenery used by various people if such sync would not affect the parking coordinates but only the lines containing "real" aircraft info and time (if possible).

It would allow everyone using this amazing software to contribute to the creation of an accurate real world database of gates used by airlines and greatly enhance the experience.

Vlad             

[kiek 1,213]

13 minutes ago, vkupchyshyn said:

I don't know if this is technically feasible, but as food for thought, now that the possibility exists for the program to write information on "real" parked aircrafts and time into the airport xml files it would be a great idea to implement an option to sync the relevant lines of the xml files containing the "real" parking variables with an online repository/database. It could be independent of the scenery used by various people if such sync would not affect the parking coordinates but only the lines containing "real" aircraft info and time (if possible).             

Hi Vlad,

Interesting idea, especially the abstraction from stock airports vs airport add-ons.  

Just a few thoughts:

* note that currently I abstract from day of the week, season, and so on. So is not perfect yet, and this info you need if you want to create a repository, I think.

* who is going to host such a  repository?

* the main function of PSXseeconTraffic is to show real live aircraft in your sim. Parked static aircraft was just nice to have.

Rgrds,

Nico

[vkupchyshyn 2]

Hi Nico,

Thanks for your quick feedback.

21 minutes ago, kiek said:

note that currently I abstract from day of the week, season, and so on. So is not perfect yet, and this info you need if you want to create a repository, I think.

I think that if an algorithm could be developed to sync and update only the necessary parameters in an xml file, it should be possible to easily include therein in the future any additional or new parameters you could, potentially, add further down the road. In any case the possibility to have more appropriate airlines parked at various airports is already there today thanks to you, so it is a matter of using the user base as a whole to create more efficiently and quickly an updated database for everyone (given that each one of us flies to different airports at different times and such database could progressively cover a pretty large amount of correct data). 

32 minutes ago, kiek said:

who is going to host such a  repository?

 I was giving it a thought as well and my understanding is that the xml files are pretty small in size (your detailed EHAM file is 66kb - and its a huge airport). A 5K airports repository should be less than 350MB in size. I am sure if this will be the only stumbling block a solution could be found.  

38 minutes ago, kiek said:

the main function of PSXseeconTraffic is to show real live aircraft in your sim. Parked static aircraft was just nice to have.

I agree. But again - you have already done the most complicated part 🙂 - adding the possibility for the software to store and save real parked aircrafts' positions into the xml files after each session and reading from them at the following session. So it is just a matter of sharing everyone's parameters in an automated and efficient way. It is not a question of having the exact livery and type parked at the correct gate each time you start PSXT but just a more correct depiction of the environment which I believe was the reason you thought of this feature in the first place.   

As I said it is just food for thought and I am sure everyone here is already immensely appreciative of your time and commitment spent to contribute to the realism of this hobby.Thanks again!

Kind regards,

Vlad

[kiek 1,213]

There is one problem. The gates in stock airports are not always named the same as in Add-on airports. For instance Fly Tampa EHAM has different (better) gate ids than the stock EHAM airport. Hence we cannot rely on that. Maybe comparing the lat/lon of a gate with the lat/lons of gates in the repository and conclude they are the same if they differ in distance say less than 5 meters?.

Edited November 2, 2018 by kiek