FSDT releases major GSX update

[ZKOKQ 984]

The latest update today has better pax boarding sound. No more " Hello, i'm good"

[Shomron 251]

Weird I don't see any indication of another release following the major release from June 30th.

https://www.fsdreamteam.com/couatl_liveupdate_notes.html

[ZKOKQ 984]

47 minutes ago, Shomron said:

Weird I don't see any indication of another release following the major release from June 30th.

https://www.fsdreamteam.com/couatl_liveupdate_notes.html

Not every update is posted in neon lights 🙂 Just run Live Update. I got notification in P3D.

[MarkW 1,491]

How come the GSX vehicles keep smashing into each other.  The fuel truck backs up into the baggage carts, the catering trucks backup right though them as well.  I would have thought they would know where they are relative to each other and avoid driving through each other.

[virtualstuff 758]

8 minutes ago, MarkW said:

How come the GSX vehicles keep smashing into each other.  The fuel truck backs up into the baggage carts, the catering trucks backup right though them as well.  I would have thought they would know where they are relative to each other and avoid driving through each other.

I think because it's off the vehicle path of the particular AFCAD in use...

That probably makes the animation a difficult job in the boundaries of P3D.

[pete_auau 1,158]

4 minutes ago, awf said:

I think because it's off the vehicle path of the particular AFCAD in use...

That probably makes the animation a difficult job in the boundaries of P3D.

exactly

[MarkW 1,491]

I have no clue what that means but I believe you !

[virtualstuff 758]

11 minutes ago, MarkW said:

I have no clue what that means but I believe you !

Apology Mark, but every airport has an AFCAD (airport layout for gates, runways, taxiways, and also vehicle paths, etc)

Vehicle paths are used by vehicles to drive on (P3D is very strict about this, no free world driving around)

Without this it's difficult for the software (especially at gates) to avoid collisions with other objects or to follow the expected path.

Hope it's helpful, a bit of rudimentary explanation of how it works. 

Edited July 4, 2019 by awf

[MarkW 1,491]

9 minutes ago, awf said:

Apology Mark, but every airport has an AFCAD (airport layout for gates, runways, taxiways, and also vehicle paths, etc)

Vehicle paths are used by vehicles to drive on (P3D is very strict about this, no free world driving around)

Without this it's difficult for the software (especially at gates) to avoid collisions with other objects or to follow the expected path.

Hope it's helpful, a bit of rudimentary explanation of how it works. 

Yes this helps, thanks.

[virtuali 4,421]

11 hours ago, CaptKornDog said:

Heck, all I'd be looking for is maybe a top-down with a click and drag arrow rather than cumbersome slewing.  Or even just taking A2A's "towbar" feature and manually steering my own push/tow.  In my mind, simpler would offer more flexibility.

The top-down view, you can of course set it up yourself.

About the mouse clicking, our code is ALREADY READY FOR THAT! The issue is, there's an API call in the P3D SDK which is supposed to returns us with the Lat/Lon coordinates of a click and, for some reason, it doesn't seem to work. We asked LM for help, but it still doesn't work so, there's possibly a bug in the simulator, or a bug in the documentation, or possibly both. 

So, for the time being, we disabled that code in the release version, but it's already there, ready to be enabled again when we'll find out why that call doesn't work, or if LM would eventually release a fix, if needed.

[virtuali 4,421]

2 hours ago, MarkW said:

How come the GSX vehicles keep smashing into each other.  The fuel truck backs up into the baggage carts, the catering trucks backup right though them as well.  I would have thought they would know where they are relative to each other and avoid driving through each other.

This has been explained so many times on our forum.

GSX vehicles are NOT aware of each other, except in very few cases. Being aware of each other, would put an enormous strain on the simulator, due to the increased traffic over Simconnect (which would disrupt other add-on using it ) because, in order to be aware of each other, it means each vehicle should know the position of all the others, meaning continuously asking the simulator their actual position, at least those that are moving but, of course, to know if they are moving, we would still have to ask the simulator IF they are moving. So, it's a lot of traffic on Simconnect we would rather not have, before people will start to complain about "GSX has blocked my realtime weather updates", or "GSX is making my AI stuttering", because that would be the effect of spamming Simconnect with too many commands at once.

Having said that, most of the collisions between GSX vehicles can be easily solved by changing their starting positions.

This cannot be made automatically, since GSX doesn't know anything about the actual scenery building, it knows only about the AFCAD so, if we just placed the vehicles on starting position far away from each other, we would likely have them starting *inside* a terminal building. 

By default, their are placed starting with the parking radius, but many AFCAD are designed with a radius smaller than in real life, to play with AI assignment, for example to be sure two large airplanes wouldn't be placed in nearby parkings at the same time.

It's only with a proper customization based on the *actual* scenery that you can fix most of the clashing problems. For example, moving the baggage carts and loaders starting position a bit up, as far as possible towards the terminal without going "into" it, will surely fix a possible clash between the arriving catering truck and fuel hydrant.

Edited July 4, 2019 by virtuali

[virtualstuff 758]

1 minute ago, virtuali said:

This has been explained so many times on our forum.

GSX vehicles are NOT aware of each other, except in very few cases. Being aware of each other, would put an enormous strain on the simulator, mostly because of increased traffic over Simconnect (which would disrupt other add-on using it ) because, in order to be aware of each other, it means each vehicle should know the position of all the others, meaning continuously asking the simulator their actual position, at least those that are moving but, of course, to know if they are moving, we would still have to ask the simulator IF they are moving. So, it's a lot of traffic on Simconnect we would rather not have, before people will start to complain about "GSX has blocked my realtime weather updates", or "GSX is making my AI stuttering", because that would be the effect of spamming Simconnect with too many commands at once.

Having said that, most of the collisions between GSX vehicles can be easily solved by changing their starting positions. This cannot be made automatically, for the obvious reason GSX doesn't know anything about the actual scenery building, it knows only about the AFCAD so, if we just placed the vehicles on starting position far away from each other, we would likely have them starting *inside* a terminal building. 

By default, their are placed starting with the parking radius, but many AFCAD are designed with a radius smaller than in real life, to play with AI assignment, for example to be sure two large airplanes wouldn't be placed in nearby parkings at the same time.

It's only with a proper customization based on the *actual* scenery that you can fix most of the clashing problems. For example, moving the baggage carts and loaders starting position a bit up, as far as possible towards the terminal without going "into" it, will surely fix a possible clash between the arriving catering truck and fuel hydrant.

Thanks Umberto for stepping in and a more thorough explanation, love the update for GSX 2 appreciated,  amazing to think of at what point in flightsim history we are coming from.

[AnkH 2,261]

8 minutes ago, virtuali said:

Having said that, most of the collisions between GSX vehicles can be easily solved by changing their starting positions.

This works pretty well, and for most sceneries, adjusted starting positions anyway further enhance the immersion. Many config files are already available for download, so you do not even need to do this on your own.

However, while you can change the starting position, you can do nothing to prevent other crashes. One thing continously bothering me: if both cargo doors are served by a bagage car with three trailers, they overlap for example with planes of the size of an A319. That really looks silly and could be avoided if the bagage car and trailers serving the front cargo bay would perform a little bit more pronounced left turn.

[Bigt 192]

So I'm making use of their sale and I'm finally upgrading to GSX Level 2. I haven't updated the base product yet tho. After purchasing Level 2, do I simply need to run that installer or do I need to do anything with the base product first to ensure both are fully updated?

[virtuali 4,421]

1 minute ago, Bigt said:

So I'm making use of their sale and I'm finally upgrading to GSX Level 2. I haven't updated the base product yet tho. After purchasing Level 2, do I simply need to run that installer or do I need to do anything with the base product first to ensure both are fully updated?

Just run the current full installer which includes everything. No need to uninstall.