Suggestions for finetuning

[DLH7LA 3]

Hi Nico 🙂

22.7 seems totally stable to me but I noticed a couple of things that I think could profit from some finetuning.

- The pushback logic works great but if the pushback is longer than the 2.5 gate radius, the plane makes the weird turn on the taxiway before making again a weird turn when it starts taxiing. This happens especially at bigger airports and wider taxiways with pushbacks from smaller gates. Maybe you could either implement something like 'no turns for 2 minutes after push initiated' or 'no turns if new heading more than 180° difference' or maybe a combination of both? I timed a couple of pushbacks I performed at work and basically I always need more than 2 minutes from commencing the push until I can give the clear signal (The only exception would be, if a pull forward with the tug happens as part of the pushback path).

- Again a US problem, some airlines (AAL,SWA,FFT) seem to leave the transponder on when on ground, even during nightstops resulting in many small position updates so the AI gets spawned parked at the correct gate but after some time they start shifting around the position, turning wildly on the stand etc. Maybe there is a way to make those "sticky" to the gate until they get a real position update? I dont know if this is even possible with the ADSB data... If it helps, those planes have barely ever a flightplan loaded to the transponder and are usually either shown with their registration or the flightnumber from the inbound flight.

- Personally I miss the user set destination (at least the option to have it), when approaching a bigger hub the airport is always empty when on the downwind and I always verify with the airport file if I entered the correct gate ID as many developers use different designators on the afcad (gXX, rXX etc.) so the PSXT valid gate check was always a help.

Id be very happy if you could spend a minute to check out the possibilities of my suggestions 🙂

Thanks so much!

[kiek 1,215]

Hi,

Thank you for your fine tuning suggestions.

Will have a look at it when I am back home (June 6th)

Nico

 

[kiek 1,215]

On 5/30/2021 at 2:45 PM, DLH7LA said:

- The pushback logic works great but if the pushback is longer than the 2.5 gate radius, the plane makes the weird turn on the taxiway before making again a weird turn when it starts taxiing. This happens especially at bigger airports and wider taxiways with pushbacks from smaller gates. Maybe you could either implement something like 'no turns for 2 minutes after push initiated' or 'no turns if new heading more than 180° difference' or maybe a combination of both? I timed a couple of pushbacks I performed at work and basically I always need more than 2 minutes from commencing the push until I can give the clear signal (The only exception would be, if a pull forward with the tug happens as part of the pushback path).

- Again a US problem, some airlines (AAL,SWA,FFT) seem to leave the transponder on when on ground, even during nightstops resulting in many small position updates so the AI gets spawned parked at the correct gate but after some time they start shifting around the position, turning wildly on the stand etc. Maybe there is a way to make those "sticky" to the gate until they get a real position update? I dont know if this is even possible with the ADSB data... If it helps, those planes have barely ever a flightplan loaded to the transponder and are usually either shown with their registration or the flightnumber from the inbound flight.

- Personally I miss the user set destination (at least the option to have it), when approaching a bigger hub the airport is always empty when on the downwind and I always verify with the airport file if I entered the correct gate ID as many developers use different designators on the afcad (gXX, rXX etc.) so the PSXT valid gate check was always a help.

The (artificial) pushback (controlled entirely by PSXT) is fixed at 2.5 times the gate radius and includes a 90 degrees turn in a direction that looks likely but might be totally wrong. That's why you may see a second 180 turn if the first real live position forces it to do so. I see no easy additions to this heuristic that may work better over all. The whole thing is rather tricky.

I already had a mechanism in place to  suppress that "position noise". Every new position within 55 meters from the gate is rejected. I have now changed that to 72.5  meters (will be available in 23.1)

To bring back the setting of the destination is technically not very easy to do. The whole notion of origin and destination has been removed from the program. It internally only deals with a parking airport and there is a mechanism in place to detect that. I might further fine tune that mechanism to detect that you are at the downwind leg, although that will not be easy because PSXT has no notion of the airport layout.
But hey pilot, why are you looking down when you are at the downwind leg? You should continously switch between looking at your instruments and outside in front of you! 😉. You can be sure that PSXT will put the static aircraft at the airport when you are at the ILS and below 2500 feet above the runway. And live aircraft at the airport were already visible when you were at the downwind leg.

Regards,

Nico

. 

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by kiek

[DLH7LA 3]

12 hours ago, kiek said:

The (artificial) pushback (controlled entirely by PSXT) is fixed at 2.5 times the gate radius and includes a 90 degrees turn in a direction that looks likely but might be totally wrong. That's why you may see a second 180 turn if the first real live position forces it to do so. I see no easy additions to this heuristic that may work better over all. The whole thing is rather tricky.

And it is working very well most times, but I totally get thats its nothing that can be fixed easily. _{(Maybe its the next step of PSXT to get the taxiways and runways from the AFCAD to have the planes aligned more to the sim scenery? Looking forward for PSXT version 43.1 but I probably cant afford that as it will be the most expensive addon for any flightsim 🤪)}

 

12 hours ago, kiek said:

I already had a mechanism in place to  suppress that "position noise". Every new position within 55 meters from the gate is rejected. I have now changed that to 72.5  meters (will be available in 23.1)

Perfect, thanks!

 

12 hours ago, kiek said:

To bring back the setting of the destination is technically not very easy to do. The whole notion of origin and destination has been removed from the program. It internally only deals with a parking airport and there is a mechanism in place to detect that. I might further fine tune that mechanism to detect that you are at the downwind leg, although that will not be easy because PSXT has no notion of the airport layout.
But hey pilot, why are you looking down when you are at the downwind leg? You should continously switch between looking at your instruments and outside in front of you! 😉. You can be sure that PSXT will put the static aircraft at the airport when you are at the ILS and below 2500 feet above the runway. And live aircraft at the airport were already visible when you were at the downwind leg.

The new feature works good for me, the old one was just a little bit more convenient for me as an IFR-flyer as I usually dont change the destination inflight 😉 Also it can be a little bit difficult with some scenerys, ORBX Burbank for example has the surrounding airports enhanced as well, so when on approach to rwy 08 PSXT finds the airport file for Van Nuys where PPG created a file because it is in the same folder. PSXT then selects Van Nuys until after touchdown in Burbank. Of course deleting the airport file for Van Nuys is a one time workaround so its not a big deal!

And I totally get your point on why I am looking out the window, but on the bigger hubs they usually keep you quite high until you are at the end of the sequence so until its my turn (thanks to the RT radar that is a little bit ahead of PSXT its easy to find a gap in the sequence) I have not much to do 😄

Thanks for your endless effort 👍