FS2020 parking lights

[DaveG1999 0]

Hi All

I'm new here, recently bought FS2020 as my first commercial flight sim in a decade (had FSX on disc) 
 

Does anyone know if there will be the lights telling pilots when to stop. I think it;s the stand guidance system or AGNIS VDGS (link below). I personally think this would be a great addition to the game Simulation. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_guidance_system

 

Kind Regards

Dave

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

Would be interesting if a tester could shed some (parking) light on this 🙂 Im hopeful that maybe the handcraftet airports have them. 

[109Sqn 1,557]

Just now, Andreas Stangenes said:

Im hopeful that maybe the handcraftet airports have them. 

That would be my guess.

[G-RFRY 1,710]

I have them in P3D.

[bonchie 2,305]

I doubt it. Most airports don't have those and they can't take the time to sort through which ones do and don't.

When someone is making a singular add-on airport, they can add details like that. When it's 37000 airports, features have to be generalized in the most plausible direction.

 

[badderjet 181]

7 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

I have them in P3D.

Fine, but are you talking about the standard sim? Skipped P3D so I have no idea what it’s like.

 

7 hours ago, bonchie said:

I doubt it. Most airports don't have those and they can't take the time to sort through which ones do and don't.

Uhm, why would you think most don’t have them? At bigger airports it’s more a rule than an exception, I’d say… or are you talking about the total number of 37k airports? But by that standard you could also say most don’t have jetways so why model them. Yet they’re there (luckily so).

In general though, even if they modeled them for some iconic airports, I’d really love if they created the most frequently used systems (which aren’t that many I suppose) and make them available to 3PD scenery designers via some sort of library. That way they’d look consistent everywhere. But then again I have no clue about scenery design. Last time I did that was with FSASM, for the old and grey who remember… 😂

Edited July 26, 2020 by badderjet

[Mace 1,909]

41 minutes ago, badderjet said:

Last time I did that was with FSASM, for the old and grey who remember… 😂

Hey I'm not old and grey and I used FSASM!  I think it or SCASM had Pilot Controlled Lighting and other neat capabilities.  I don't remember it having parking stand systems though.

It would be a pleasant surprise to see VDGS or similar in there by default.

[suncoastflyer 685]

1 hour ago, badderjet said:

Fine, but are you talking about the standard sim? Skipped P3D so I have no idea what it’s like.

 

It would've been either with an addon scenery using SODE or through GSX.

[G-RFRY 1,710]

1 hour ago, suncoastflyer said:

It would've been either with an addon scenery using SODE or through GSX.

It`s an addon 12 pilot VDGS been available for ages, to much time just reading and posting on MSFS a few weeks and you can sim again. 

[Janov 2,383]

Guys, this sim has the bird migration, train timetables and Jovian moon ephemeris right...you can *** well bet that they will include full blown AGNIS at every airport! Azure will take care of you!

 

[tweekz 2,165]

36 minutes ago, Janov said:

Guys, this sim has the bird migration, train timetables and Jovian moon ephemeris right...you can *** well bet that they will include full blown AGNIS at every airport! Azure will take care of you!

Are you salty? 😄

[bonchie 2,305]

5 hours ago, badderjet said:

Fine, but are you talking about the standard sim? Skipped P3D so I have no idea what it’s like.

 

Uhm, why would you think most don’t have them? At bigger airports it’s more a rule than an exception, I’d say… or are you talking about the total number of 37k airports? But by that standard you could also say most don’t have jetways so why model them. Yet they’re there (luckily so).

In general though, even if they modeled them for some iconic airports, I’d really love if they created the most frequently used systems (which aren’t that many I suppose) and make them available to 3PD scenery designers via some sort of library. That way they’d look consistent everywhere. But then again I have no clue about scenery design. Last time I did that was with FSASM, for the old and grey who remember… 😂

The rule? Maybe in Europe. But “bigger airports” make up a tiny portion of the total airports and your average airport with commercial traffic doesn’t have them. 

The jetways comparison is a bad one. Distinguishing between jetways is easy via orthos given the system they use. You can see them from the top to annotate them. They’d have to have a human compile and analyze individual pictures of every commercial airport on earth to insert details like parking guidance congruently. Not possible. 

Edited July 26, 2020 by bonchie

[RALF9636 1,951]

37 minutes ago, bonchie said:

The jetways comparison is a bad one. Distinguishing between jetways is easy via orthos given the system they use. You can see them from the top to annotate them. They’d have to have a human compile and analyze individual pictures of every commercial airport on earth to insert details like parking guidance congruently. Not possible. 

But aren't SODE and GSX already doing that (the parking guidance) for any airport in P3D?

Edited July 26, 2020 by RALF9636

[Chock 17,769]

As it stands, most flight simulator airport ramps are a bit of a blag in comparison to what they are in the real world with regard to stand guidance. The centreline on the ramp at real airports has a number of nose wheel stopping points marked, and these are of course where the aircraft is guided to halt at either by the Safedock system, or a marshaller. In a typical flight sim airport (even the really detailed ones), there's usually only one stop marker on that centreline, which is not how it is in real life.

In fairness having just one stopping point would (most of the time) work at an airport providing the jet bridge can articulate enough to be positioned onto the aircraft, but most of the time you don't actually have to steer the jet bridge much to do that because the stand invariably has similar aircraft types using it, with very little difference in height and position of the forward passenger door. So putting the bridge on is not normally that much of a faff.

It's worth bearing in mind (with regard to the potential difficulties of simulating a Safedock system) that (in real life) first up, you have to unlock the Safedock system on the ramp by scanning your ID badge (if you have that capability on your work ID badge), then you have to select the aircraft type on a little LCD screen (these often burn out or get damp and are nearly always really hard to read as a result of that). Having selected the aircraft type, the Safedock then displays the aircraft type on its main guidance display unless there is something amiss (for example if the jet bridge is not fully clear of the ramp, the guidance display text will say 'bridge in', to tell you to move the jet bridge out of the way a bit). The stand number illuminates to indicate to the approaching aeroplane that this is their stand, then when they turn onto the stand, it uses lasers which scan the approaching shape of the aeroplane and based on the doppler delay of the lasers etc, it can tell how far away it is from the correct stop point and whether it is central to the line.

This is why it's not a good idea to have an airliner livery which is black, as this makes it difficult for the Safedock system to read the Aeroplane's position, and when that happens, the Safedock system just gives up and displays STOP, and you have to get a marshaller out to guide the thing on, so the system itself is not perfect even in the real world.

So then it starts displaying how far the aeroplane has to go (in metres), and whether to keep going straight, or steer left/right, then when the aeroplane gets close, it drops to decimal fractions of a metre, until the aeroplane stops on the correct spot, at which point it displays STOP, and then if the aeroplane has stopped in the right spot, it displays OK, or, TOO FAR, if the aeroplane has overshot the mark, in which case a tug and bar is attached and the plane is pushed back a bit. In reality, the dispatcher/TCO stands next to the Safedock controls whilst the aeroplane comes on stand so that he/she can press and emergency stop button if something is looking like it will go wrong, for example, sometimes airport vehicles can cut up aircraft (they are not supposed to, but it happens occasionally), or sometimes some ground service equipment, such as steps, might be a bit too close to a wingtip as the aeroplane comes on stand. In such cases, the TCO will hit the emergency stop button and the Safedock will display STOP to the aircraft. When this happens, sometimes you can't reset the Safedock system and that means you end up having to marshal the thing on stand manually with wands.

Even with all this Safedock stuff, in reality at many airports, especially in bright sunlight or at night in rainy conditions, it can be very difficult to see the ramp centreline from a cockpit and sometimes impossible if there is a tight turn involved, in which case a follow me car will guide the aircraft onto the stand (this is always the case on Stand 27 at EGCC for example, since it requires a really tight turn of about 120 degrees to get onto the centreline of the ramp from off the taxiway, so you can't see the turn point from the cockpit).

So as far as simulating all this, the bit where you turn on the Safedock and type in the plane type can be assumed, since your sim knows what plane you have loaded. Since ATC will direct you to a stand, this too is easy - all the sim has to do is light up that stand and pull the jet bridge out of the way. The sim could easily read the contact points of the aeroplane's wheels to know where it is and use this data to display the stand guidance, but for absolute realism, it would also have to be aware of which stopping point on the ramp was the correct one for the type, or if not, and it used just one stop point, it would have to have a jet bridge capable of articulating to that location correctly. This is something where the SDK for airliner production would need to state how to input this data correctly for any add-on aeroplane, or it would have to be something the users could tweak.

From a realism standpoint, this kind of operation also needs to know what vehicles and personnel are working on the aeroplane when it is departing, since the jet bridge is the last thing to come off the aeroplane, with a quick visual check of the door and probes near the door where the jet bridge was in contact with the aeroplane to ensure there is no damage just before the thing pushes back.

All of this can be done in a flight sim, but it does require a bit of work and an AFCAD (or whatever system the sim uses) which visually matches the graphics accurately. It looks to me like Asobo have done a lot of this in the new sim, but to what level of detail and accuracy is hard to say although one suspects it will only be at the 'handcrafted' airports, with probably the more auto-generated airports having a nod to this kind of thing but without having gone into massive tweaking detail. So this is probably going to be one for the TPD scenery designers in a lot of cases.

 

[bonchie 2,305]

1 hour ago, RALF9636 said:

But aren't SODE and GSX already doing that (the parking guidance) for any airport in P3D?

Addons do lots of things. But ASOBO has enough to worry about fixing vs. trying to sort through 37000 airports and placing automated parking guidance for airliners where it should be when the majority of airports serving commercial traffic don’t have it. The addition of ground handling is already a step forward.

I’m probably saying too much, but my warning to people would be to realize there are much bigger problems to work out before (and after) release.

Regardless of discussions on its worth, the original question was if ASOBO was going to include this. I can firmly say their focus is elsewhere 

Edited July 26, 2020 by bonchie