New GSX preview

[virtuali 4,421]

9 hours ago, Alaska738 said:

For the Pro package and Lite, can we use both at the same time?

Sure. They are installed together so, for all that matters, it's just a product that happen to place two (shortcuts to ) packages in the Community folder, not any different than, let's say, an airplane with an extra livery.

We designed all models that *could* be used as a default ground vehicles to be compatible with the default ground vehicle system in MSFS but, in addition to that, become smarter when they are driven by the GSX engine.

This achieved several features:

- The same GSX vehicles you use for your plane with GSX, will be serving AI planes. In default mode, of course, doing only what default vehicles can do, but at least you get the better graphic and huge variation of liveries you get from GSX

- If you feel using, let's say, AmbitiousPilot's Pushback Toolbar, you surely can, and it will use the GSX vehicle, with its hundreds of different operators.

- GSX vehicles will wander through the airport as well, as Living World vehicles.

This (in addition to Jetway replacements), is all part of the "GSX World" package (the marketing doesn't want me to use the word "lite"), which just works by existing in the Community folder, without requiring any software to run.

 

It's when you start the real GSX that the magic happens, that's "GSX Pro": the same vehicles which worked before as "dumb" default vehicles, will change their behavior completely, because will now be driven by the GSX software, which will bypass the default system completely, and do all the things it's known for. And of course, add all extra vehicles which don't have any match in the default system, like Deicing, FollowMe, Towbar Pushback, Cargo Loaders, Fuel Tankers, Fuel Hydrants, etc.

We made this way easier than it used to be, because we modified the Couatl engine to run as a Tray bar Icon (not starting with Windows!), so you can exit from it when you don't need it, restart it again, start it multiple times after the flight started. You could foreseeably decide to start it before you need GSX, exit after takoff and start it again on arrival so, at any time during the flight you can alternate between having GSX to behave "just" like a Ground Vehicles + Jetway replacement program, or as a full blown GSX.

[Bernard Ducret 790]

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

GSX vehicles will wander through the airport as well, as Living World vehicles.

Umberto, MSFS has this strange behaviour to send service vehicles on taxiways, and sometimes even runways, was this something you have been able to control and overcome with GSX, or should it be corrected only by Asobo?

[virtuali 4,421]

41 minutes ago, Bernard Ducret said:

MSFS has this strange behaviour to send service vehicles on taxiways, and sometimes even runways, was this something you have been able to control and overcome with GSX, or should it be corrected only by Asobo?

We don't have any control over which paths the Living World vehicles will take, no matter how good they look...it's something only Asobo can fix.

The only thing we can choose, is which vehicles goes were, which is "by region" for pure Living World vehicles, or "by airport" for Airport Services vehicles that services AIs (but possibly your plane too, if you don't start the full GSX )

Edited August 15, 2022 by virtuali

[WestAir 2,522]

I'm so hyped for this! I'm already going to buy it day one!

A few questions I had. Just things I assume can't be included, but I figured I'd ask on the off chance the team was able to do it:

• Does the de-icing feature work within the icing simulation of the sim? (Will it remove the ice weight + texture when you call for de-icing trucks?)
• Do the virtual pax dress for the season or region? (Bulky winter jackets in December in London, shorts in December in Sydney?)
• Will PAX spawn from the gate queue at FSDT sceneries with internal terminals?

[Ricardo41 5,948]

Let's hope the shufflin' grandma has been retired......

[virtuali 4,421]

2 hours ago, WestAir said:

• Does the de-icing feature work within the icing simulation of the sim? (Will it remove the ice weight + texture when you call for de-icing trucks?)

Not possible with the current SDK. The icing factor variable can be read, but can't be written, like anything else related to weather. We can only turn off ice protection on the plane, sending the standard command, exactly like in P3D, where even if we could write to weather variables, the wasn't any icing simulation.

 

Quote

Do the virtual pax dress for the season or region? (Bulky winter jackets in December in London, shorts in December in Sydney?)

GSX supports that, and we used it for Marshallers, several of them are dressed in at least 3 different variations ( normal weather, hot weather, winter ), so it wouldn't require any extra code to do that for passengers. But it will require modeling them, we already have more than 50 different characters, and it took us months to do them, so it would take a similar amount of time to add seasonal variation to them. It's something for a later time.

 

Quote

Will PAX spawn from the gate queue at FSDT sceneries with internal terminals?

The integrated editor has been improved so, not only it can create Walk-In gate for passenger waypoints when not using a Bus, but can also create a separate number of walking "loops", that can be used to generate passengers that walk inside terminals in endless loops, regardless of GSX boarding/deboarding process. This can be done for any scenery that has visible terminal interiors.

[virtualstuff 757]

Let's have it Umberto 😇using the first GSX version till the latest can't wait for the MSFS version since P3D left the building 🤪

Edited August 15, 2022 by awf

[Alfrez 33]

Can’t believe the amount of work behind this. Is gonna be massive, can’t wait!

[Riche 5]

Will the ground crew give you a load sheet after loading the aircraft with a close calculation too let’s say how much you loaded in simbrief??  Really looking forward to release 👍👌🤙

[chapstick 2,757]

1 hour ago, Riche said:

Will the ground crew give you a load sheet after loading the aircraft with a close calculation too let’s say how much you loaded in simbrief??  Really looking forward to release 👍👌🤙

It's getting close to that... apparently it now has Simbrief integration, so when it needs to know how many pax to board, it'll pull it directly from your flight plan. 

[Gate99 246]

6 minutes ago, Chapstick said:

It's getting close to that... apparently it now has Simbrief integration, so when it needs to know how many pax to board, it'll pull it directly from your flight plan. 

Now that is sweet!

[DaWu 779]

As a VR only user I wonder if gsx will be added to the toolbar or as an external app which I can’t see or use in VR

[virtuali 4,421]

8 hours ago, DaWu said:

As a VR only user I wonder if gsx will be added to the toolbar or as an external app which I can’t see or use in VR

Yes, of course it's a standard toolbar.

Using an overlaid window would have been much easier, but we'd lost compatibility with VR, so it didn't felt like a proper native app. So we had to do a fairly complex interaction between Html, Javascript and a very lightweight Wasm module, to allow the external app to use a Toolbar menu, at least during all normal use.

The only time when you'll see a separate window, is for the aircraft and scenery customization dialogs, which will look exactly as in P3D, since we didn't see any value in redoing that kind of interface. We assumed VR users would have switched off from VR when doing scenery/aircraft customization in any case.

[DaWu 779]

9 hours ago, virtuali said:

Yes, of course it's a standard toolbar.

Using an overlaid window would have been much easier, but we'd lost compatibility with VR, so it didn't felt like a proper native app. So we had to do a fairly complex interaction between Html, Javascript and a very lightweight Wasm module, to allow the external app to use a Toolbar menu, at least during all normal use.

The only time when you'll see a separate window, is for the aircraft and scenery customization dialogs, which will look exactly as in P3D, since we didn't see any value in redoing that kind of interface. We assumed VR users would have switched off from VR when doing scenery/aircraft customization in any case.

AWESOME! First day buy in this case

[Tuskin38 6,468]

apparently press copies of it have gone out.