How to get the correct Departure Runway ?

[Chock 17,769]

3 hours ago, tooting said:

the military dont care about it.  they care about training using VR.

Yup true. Chances are military training on P3D is using a real person on a headset to do any controlling which might be required for mission training  (as is the case on most high end training simulators). They don't care about lovely wave reflections on water or realistic cloud shadows etc, they'll be more bothered about whether it can simulate the correct parabolic arc a retarded Mark 83 bomb will take when it is dropped from an F-16 flying level at 450 knots at 300 feet AGL, and that sort of thing.

Back in the simulator though and comparing that to the real thing, for real operations at Manchester, we use a system called Chroma, which feeds information to various companies which are using the airport. Along the top of the screen where we do all the planning and stuff, it has a big yellow strip with up to date information on things to do with the airport, such as which stands are not operational and which runway(s) are in use. This is the info that airlines can feed to their airliners via things like long range radio or ACARs or whatever.

A few years ago you used to be able to sort of simulate that kind of thing in your flight sim with Flight Keeper, which had an ACARS gauge you could add to your aeroplanes, and that would indeed tell you which runways were in use at your arrival airport long before you got anywhere near to actually using the runway, but it is sadly not available for P3D. However, the forthcoming Global Ops expansion from PMDG may add some of that functionality to aircraft. I know a lot of people were a bit underwhelmed by PMDG's announcement of Global Ops, since many of them were expecting news of maybe a 787 or some such, but the moment I found out that it would have a stab at making ACARS realistic, I thought it might actually be a real step forward for how airliners are simulated. It's worth bearing in mind that Aerosoft's new Airbus Pro which was released recently, is the first third party airliner to promise compatibility with that.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Chock

[SteveW 1,792]

Basically ATC is instructed by the weather, mainly winds. So in your weather app set up the weather that most likely causes ATC to choose the runway 'direction' you want. The actual runway will be decided based on the Ai traffic around and your location nearby the runway.

[SteveW 1,792]

19 hours ago, officercrockey said:

I hope there will be an easy software where you can choose what runway is used in the simulator.

That's not likely as that would mean the weather would have to be generated to correspond with that requested runway. Although IF10 does it by doing it that way more or less.

[officercrockey 196]

Just now, SteveW said:

That's not likely as that would mean the weather would have to be generated to correspond with that requested runway. Although IF10 does it by doing it that way more or less.

Not true.

The wind does not give you the right answer. If the wind is 310 at 5 knots, it does not mean, you have to take off and land from runway 31. It can make perfect sense to still use runway 13, depending on the airport.

So just to rely on the internal decision gives you wrong results most of the time. It is just not flexible enough.

And if I understand it correctly, something like this is announced already.

[SteveW 1,792]

No. I said to set the weather so that is DOES get ATC to choose the runway direction you want. 5knt is probably going to prove indeterminate.

[SteveW 1,792]

7 minutes ago, officercrockey said:

just to rely on the internal decision gives you wrong results most of the time. It is just not flexible enough.

Sure your weather app works properly?

[officercrockey 196]

Sorry Steve, but I have to feeling you totally misunderstand what the OP is talking about. Why should someone want to change the weather. He wrote he is using PFPX with real weather.

It is just a fact, that P3D's runway selection is wonky at best and it can be necessary to change that selection. How is it related to my weather app?

[SteveW 1,792]

Sorry David I interpret it as if he wants to have a plan to start from a certain direction and a flight that corresponds with that. So ATC has to be instructed by the winds (mainly as I said). However you'll need to set more than 6knts because of certain problems.

Weather in the sim is complicated by location, the nearby other weather stations, terrain, and the features of the airport and the Ai traffic. So you might need to set 10 knts to get more reliable direction at another location. In AS you can get it to pre-set up the winds so that ATC does it (I think).

And I do it all the time in IF and that is as reliable as I can expect from the system as well. It's good advice.

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by SteveW

[officercrockey 196]

That's a hack and not a solution. I don't want to change the weather to use a certain runway, I just want to use it. That's how it happens in real life as well. ATC doesn't change the weather but they choose a certain runway according to the weather and other restrictions/rules. And that's what I (and many others) also want to do.

[SteveW 1,792]

3 minutes ago, officercrockey said:

That's a hack and not a solution. I don't want to change the weather to use a certain runway, I just want to use it. That's how it happens in real life as well. ATC doesn't change the weather but they choose a certain runway according to the weather and other restrictions/rules. And that's what I (and many others) also want to do.

In the sim we are talking about though right? SO in the sim then weather stations transmit out the weather into the sim Sorry if you don't understand how the sim works

So ATC works by mathematics - right? I am saying it works reliably, the situational outcome is fooling you -  you are saying that ATC chooses runways by random? Not sure where you are going here David....

[SteveW 1,792]

Seems odd to turn this into a fight. It's plain and simple - ATC/AI traffic is an algorithm, you get it to find the outcome you desire - in the sim it's kind of not like real life.

[SteveW 1,792]

So retracing steps the comment I saw was about a possibility of a program that we can choose the runway and voila! It would be nice and it may come. With the current sim the ATC/AI traffic algorithm is not so flexible.

The way the sim works is key to my point - and I'm allowed to make my point even if its been mentioned in the comments it may be worth repeating.

The weather in injected - that is the weather is set up in a radius around each weather station and the situation in-between is interpolated. ATC starts after the weather is injected so then it decides on things, across a large area and includes AI traffic and all the interpolations between weather stations, time of day and other factors. This is-set up in an heuristic system so it is difficult to predict exactly what the algorithm produces. Since it is heuristic we can by definition find a value close to it.

So we have to make a plan based on what the weather will be in the sim - a bit like real life. It's hit and miss unless we take some precautions. Generally setting a strong enough wind direction produces the outcome I desire 95% of the time. Parking in the spots closer to C gives me C but this maybe only 30%.

Edited November 9, 2018 by SteveW

[SteveW 1,792]

...by heuristic, I mean that each input, for simplified example the wind strength value, the wind direction value, time of day value and the other factors have 'weighting' attributed to each factor which would require the actual code so we can guess that direction and speed of winds will take on a high weighting.

Hopefully ATC/AI code is to improve and become more flexible. Weather apps I think AS does it, can stress the windspeed initially to force more reliably the direction, but yes it can be called a cludge if you like to but usually these are requested features.

Edited November 9, 2018 by SteveW

[simbol 5,767]

59 minutes ago, SteveW said:

the current sim the ATC/AI traffic algorithm is not so flexible.

Correct, that is the source of the issue and therefore we need to work very hard trying to improve this area.

Regards,
S.

[JoeFackel 760]

2 hours ago, simbol said:

We will see about that.

NDA's, made by the devil 😎