Showing some love for P3D users with a new major GSX update

[mpo910 2,112]

This is great news @umberto. Very much appreciated it and surely not "usual" these times getting such good improvements for free. I wanna Thank you and your team for this effort and contribution to the sim market!

Congrats with your anniversary! 

Regards

Marcus

[Chock 17,769]

Nice update, although to be slightly more accurate, you need to have the baggage cart not drive right under the wing; that's a very big 'no-no'. The rear baggage cart would typically come out of the inter-stand clearway facing rearwards to the aeroplane, then swing around to point forwards, to leave a baggage cart in line with the belt loader. in this way there is no chance of it hitting the aeroplane.

If Air Ops at Manchester saw anyone taking one of those carts under the wing like in the video, they'd probably take the driver's airside permit off them on the spot. In reality, the baggage cart truck servicing the rear hold does usually end up driving under the trailing edge of the wing a bit when pulling the next trailer up onto the belt loader, because that's unavoidable, but it does always turn back and head out from under it rather than carrying on all the way under the wing. It's also worth noting that when driving a baggage cart onto the front belt loader, you are actually supposed come at it the other way around to that seen in the video; i.e. you drive slightly forward of the leading edge, down along the wing toward the engine, then turn toward the nose when you get near the engine to align a baggage cart with the bottom of the belt loader. This is so you are mostly pulling stuff away from the aeroplane rather than toward it when you cannot see stuff towing behind your vehicle. It's not unknown to see people doing it the direction seen in the video, but that's usually only on stands where things are tight and there is other equipment preventing you from doing it the 'proper' way, such as the fuel truck being under the wing. You never block the fuel truck in either, this is so it can haul word not allowed out of there if there is an emergency.

All of this is why the cones are placed one metre out from the wingtips. This is especially the case with a 737 with scimitar winglets, where there are usually three cones placed around that winglet, to really box it off. The only vehicle which actually is allowed to go under the wing under normal circumstances, is the fuel truck. The only time cones are not used, is when there is a high wind warning in effect, in which case you just have to be careful and act as though the cones are there. Typically in a wind warning, there are no rear stairs placed on the aeroplane either because the tailfin makes the rear end of the aeroplane swing back and forth quite a lot, and more often than not, there are at least six chocks used rather than the more typical four used in a normal operation with calm winds to help alleviate that movement a bit. Any aeroplane which is on the ground for more than three hours is also fully chocked on all three landing gear sets as a standard procedure.

Below in the picture, you can see what happens when people ignore these rules; we all had to do a read and sign bulletin at Menzies in Manchester concerning placing nine cones around any 737 with scimitar winglets as a result of this incident pictured, even though this collision occurred at Heathrow and the driver really should have known better. A lot of the time I don't even attempt to move some vehicles out of the clearway until activity around the aeroplane has ceased and it has pushed out, especially when towing steps; there's just too much of a chance that you'd hit a wayward passenger or the aeroplane. On the subject of which, we do always use PIGs (passenger ideal guidepath) tapes to ensure people do not walk where they shouldn't, and these are usually tied to the bottom of the front steps, with the tape stretching to the PIG trolley, which is placed at the wingtip. There will be two tapes stretched out from that wingtip PIG trolley if there is boarding taking place at the front and the rear.

Whenever we are driving de-icing rigs around the aeroplane, the guy in the basket guides the driver over a wireless headset to ensure collisions such as the one above do not occur, because obviously you have to get a de-icing rig quite near to the wings and a lot of the time, the de-icing fluid completely obscures the windscreen view when it sloshes all over it.

On that picture below, you can see the inter-stand clearway (this is the bit marked with straight white lines with zig-zagged white lines alongside them). This is the area where GSE usually parks when awaiting the arrival of the aeroplane on stand, and where the GSE is parked after it has been used. It is out past the extremity of the wingtip so there is no danger of the wingtip hitting it when coming onto, or pushing off the stand. all this stuff is usually in place in this clearway before the aeroplane comes onto the stand.

Another thing you could add which is absolutely done all the time without fail, is have a rampie stand to the side of the cargo hold door to guide a vehicle onto it, as a banksman. Typically, the belt loader drives to the wingtip, tests the brakes at that point, then drives toward the aeroplane and at about six metres from the aeroplane, they test the brakes again, then the banksman guides them in to about one foot away from the aeroplane, then they raise the belt, and are guided the last few inches to end up with the belt about three inches away from the lip of the cargo hold doorway. There are usually at least a couple of people at the bottom of the belt putting the bags on the loader's conveyor, because one of them will be the rampie team leader who is counting the bags which are going on, because this has to tally with the SITA/BRS load plan before they sign it off. Banksmen are also always used for any vehicle which is reversing. Of course I realise that some of this stuff is the way it is as a function of how the host sim works and what it is capable of, so it's not really intended to be a criticism.

It's quite common to see the dispatcher (sometimes called the TCO - turnaround coordinator) walking back and forth to the belts during load ups to clarify queries about bags going on the aeroplane. Any bags which are not in the system, or are standby bags, or rush bags (ones which missed a previous flight and have been x-rayed again so they can go on a later flight), are tagged with these details and often have an additional red tag attached to them with 'do not load, refer to dispatcher' on it. It's not until these bags are checked by the dispatcher that they go on the aeroplane, so you typically see these placed on the ground at the side of the belt loader waiting for the dispatcher to check them. The dispatcher is also frequently seen going up and down the front steps to confer with the crew and get paperwork signed off, the fueler does this too after he's finished fueling so he can get his paperwork signed by the crew too.

You will also see both one of crew and one of the rampies doing walkaround checks. The crew member usually does this not long after arrival, the rampie does this the moment the anti-collision beacons go off upon arrival to make sure there is no damage to the aeroplane before his own GSE is placed on the aeroplane. After all the GSE is off the aeroplane, the rampie does this check again to make sure there has been no damage done to the aeroplane and everything is properly closed and locked. a typical walkaround starts at the nose on the starboard side, goes down the fuselage to the wing, then around the engine and along the front and rear of the wing, around the main gear, down the rear fuselage, around the tail and then back up the other side doing the same thing to end up back at the nose on the port side. The last check is done when the front steps/airbridge comes off, and its at this point the nose chocks are removed when the tug is already connected and holding the aeroplane on its tug brakes.

Sometimes you will see a belt loader go onto the aeroplane again shortly before it is due to push out after the aeroplane has 'finished' being worked on and is in theory ready to go; this is invariably because a passenger has not turned up but their bag has already been loaded; their bag has to be found and remove from the aeroplane hold, which is annoying since you literally have to check the tags on all the bags until you find the right one, but its not an uncommon occurrence. It happens so often on the BA Shuttle flights from Manchester to Heathrow that a lot of the time we don't even take the belt loader/ULD lifter off the aeroplane until we know for certain that everyone has turned up. This is an occasion where you will see the dispatcher and the ramp team leader going up to the terminal to chase things up and a lot of foul language will ensue lol. Another thing you see quite often, is 'gate bags' being taken to the aeroplane five minutes before the aeroplane is due to push out and put in the rear bulk hold of an A320 or the front or rear hold of a 737; nine times out of ten, these will be pushchairs.

You could also make thing even more realistic by having Swissport's drivers park their GSE in annoying and stupid places all the time, because that's certainly what they do in real life at EGCC. 🤣

Anyway, great job on the update. 🙂

[DAH4062 45]

Been waiting for this ever since I tried GSX2 at FSDT PHKO. 

 

Also appreciate the continued support for those of us still stuck on FSX😆👏

[Caveney737 66]

I would be happy if they got the basics right like people not walking through each other and baggage not protruding through the side of the air stairs as they walk down them.

[micstatic 4,340]

I need to work on my gsx skills.  I fly the Majestic Q400 often.  So walk in gates will probably be pretty valuable at some of the smaller payware airports I fly to.  I need to figure out how to better work with 2 exits of a plane.  On my first pass the pax out of door 1 do a great job.  But door 2 not so much. 

[Fragtality 127]

What a nice Present, great Update! Thanks FSDT! 🙂 

[chapstick 2,762]

Cool update, but it's going to need a patch for it to work right. At the moment you can't have more than one walk-in gate without GSX wigging out. 

[micstatic 4,340]

10 minutes ago, Chapstick said:

Cool update, but it's going to need a patch for it to work right. At the moment you can't have more than one walk-in gate without GSX wigging out. 

what does it do?

[virtuali 4,446]

1 hour ago, Caveney737 said:

I would be happy if they got the basics right like people not walking through each other and baggage not protruding through the side of the air stairs as they walk down them.

As explained, so many times already, doing this will just kill performances, because it would require, at each frame, every passenger checking its surroundings to not run into somebody else. And this will put an immense strain over Simconnect, spamming it with too many commands in a very short amount of time, likely disrupting other add-ons that also needs to communicate with the sim.

The issue can be greatly minimized if the Passenger Slider density is not set too high. There is a reason why we have a Default setting, and there is a reason why the highest setting is called "Insane", because IT IS.

About the baggage protruding outside the staircase, this should be reduced now, since we shrunk the area in which passengers can walk through then descending. Of course, the more we shrunk it, the more is likely we might run in the FIRST problem you reported, because not all passengers will move at the same speed, so the ones in different lanes will eventually overtake each other, and the more the lanes are closed ( lessening the "baggage protruding" issue ), the more it's likely you'll see passengers from different lanes bumping into each other.

And of course, if we fixed it by having them moving all at the same speed, you would then complain they'd look like an army of robots, because they would.

So no, we DO "get the basics right", but whatever stuff you might have read about modern avoidance algorithms ( there's plenty of literature about those ), usually can only be applied when you are developing the WHOLE game, that is everything is running inside the same code. We need to work within the constraints of being an add-on module that needs to communicate with the simulator using Simconnect, which is a client-server API designed for network communications, so it's not nearly as efficient as, let's say, writing an avoidance system in C++ for a game you are creating from scratch using Unreal engine.

[virtuali 4,446]

11 minutes ago, Chapstick said:

Cool update, but it's going to need a patch for it to work right. At the moment you can't have more than one walk-in gate without GSX wigging out. 

Yes, this is a bug, but we already explained a workaround until we came out with a proper fix, that is restarting Couatl from the menu after  editing each parking.

[Caveney737 66]

2 hours ago, virtuali said:

if we fixed it by having them moving all at the same speed, you would then complain they'd look like an army of robots

I would much rather have this than people walking through each other which IMO is very un-realistic.

Maybe an option to have them walk at the same speed if preferred? Don't know how hard this would be.

Otherwise, thanks for the continued P3D support!!

[787flyer 633]

Glad to see extra features being brought in to GSX. This makes the value of the package even better remembering these improvements are available at no additional cost.

 

[virtuali 4,446]

5 minutes ago, Caveney737 said:

I would much rather have this than people walking through each other which IMO is very un-realistic.

I don't think your preference is shared by many. Walking like an army of robots would be MUCH more un-realistic and MUCH more visible than the extremely minor case of passengers bumping into each other which, as I've said already, can be lessened a lot if not using too  high Density settings.

Also, the very bad and unrealistic effect of the "army of robots", will be more and more annoying and visible the farther your camera is, while the occasional bumping into each other won't be noticeable much anyway, unless you get very close and, again, at very high density settings.

 

Quote

Maybe an option to have them walk at the same speed if preferred? Don't know how hard this would be.

You cannot "just" change the speed, it would look unnatural. The overall movement is a combination of the translation speed and the actual animation, the pacing, the leg stride, they must all be correct otherwise, instead of the "army of robots", you'll get the "old silent movie" effect, which is the result of playing human animation at frame rates different than the original, and with foot sliding in addition to that. Someone fast pacing is not created by just playing a normal walk accelerated.

So yes, it's very hard, because we would have to redo ALL animations to make them intentionally look like robots, so they would eventually be able to be moved all at the same speed. And this only to "fix" a very minor problem which is mitigated easily by using normal Density settings, can only be seen close, and it's far less of an issue than the "army of robots" effect.

So no, it won't be done.

[Adrian123 1,015]

It is a Flight Simulator and not a..people walking simulator! 🙂

[Daniel Baker 20]

@virtuali Thank you so much for this update. I'm continually impressed with how much value you continue to bring to GSX, long after I paid for it. Tremendous customer experience and value.

 

Daniel