1 hour ago, AnkH said:

Ehm, what? 😉 Should be not a big hassle for a dev to simply revert the wheel turning logic then... I mean, you can simply change the windsock parameter by 180 degrees and it always points in the opposite direction, so manipulating your pushback truck model in a way that the wheels turn in the right direction should not be thing, no? 

That would depend on how many parameters the sim has for certain animations and features. As noted, the sim by default uses a lifter tug, which only requires one pivot point to be animated since these lift up the nose gear in a cradle and use the nose gear rotation for the pushback turns, as opposed to a conventional tug and bar, which turns the nosewheel but also pivots at the tug conection. So if there is only one or two animation parameters the sim has available for animating a pushback, i.e. the turning of the nosewheel amd the turning of the tug (I don't know if this is the case but I suspect it probably is), then you are basically stuffed when trying to create an animation of a conventional tug which has two pivot points for the connection and turning mechanics of the towbar, so you might then be forced into using the vehicle wheel turning animation for a pivot point animation as a workaround and then end up with the wheels not necessarily turning the right way, and accepting that this looks better than not having the tug's towbar connection turn at all. This kind of limitation is similar to how developers would be forced into using animation parameters in FSX etc to do new things they wanted to animate which were not built-in default parameters, for example using the 'lower water rudder' or the 'raise and lower Concorde's nose visor' animation paramters of the sim to allocate an animation of other things, such as perhaps a parachutist jumping out of a plane or releasing drop tanks or firing missiles or whatever. 

I don't know for sure if this is the case, but this kind of workaround stuff is the sort of thing you frequently have indulge in when forced into using limited parameter availabilities. We can see this with the de-icing for example, in that it is possible to animate a de-icing procedure, but there is no available parameter to have this actually reduce the simulation of ice accretion, so it ends up purely being a bit of eye candy.

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by Chock

52 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

Jeez, I thought this program was mostly plug and play apart from the odd customization. Frankly, it so far sounds very convoluted to get it working correctly and requires considerable time to customize. And then there's the marketplace airport addon issues which is rather frustrating as I have quite a few. I owned the original GSX for FSX years ago and don't remember it being this tricky. I had been really looking forward to this but might hold off if it's so messy.

To be fair, it used to be. You could tinker around with it you wanted to, but it wasn't essential. Now, not so much. 

@Chock GSX leaves all the loaders and stairs scattered around the gate area after the loading is complete, even when the pushback is in progress. Doesn't this stuff usually get sent away to other gates after use? I'm just looping back to my suggestion to @virtuali that apart from the tug, the GSX stuff spawns and drives off as required like the fuel truck and bus do, to cut down on object conflicts out of the window. 

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by bennyboy75

3 hours ago, NovemberUniform said:

I actually think he is spot on.

From my experience with the software (in P3D), there is customization needed if you want things to match the scenery nicely. Inibuilds roots go back to doing exactly that, building configs for GSX. 

That doesn't mean it's great software. I love it. But the out of the box results are often not good enough (for me at least).

Absolutely correct, and not only that. What I always disliked is, if you spawn in on a gate that is properly configured with GSX (stopping position), you still end up in the default sim position of this gate. This lead me to always spawn on a different gate (not the one I really wanted), to then use the GSX menu and select the correct gate. I would love to just spawn in the correct GSX position without using this immersion breaking hack. 

Can anyone confirm, how is this working in MSFS? 

I will. I just customized gate C17 at Flightbeam's KIAD. The (Flightbeam default - not GSX) start position was too far back, as was the entire parking, which was also rotated a few degrees out of line with the CL. I gave the marshaller, luggage carts, and tug sensible positions and also disabled the stairs. I restarted the flight and the 737 spawned at C17 again. It was of course at the default (wrong) location as before, which makes sense because GSX isn't active at this point. 

I activated GSX, selected reposition aircraft, and selected gate C17 (current gate). GSX said it was already occupied (by me) and asked if I wanted to use it anyway. I selected the yes option and then "warp me there" at which time I was properly placed on the 737 hash and aligned with the CL.

So... Same as in P3D but you can reposition yourself to your current gate.  

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by MDFlier

https://flightsim.to/c/third-party/gsx-pro/

 

Some GSX profile. 

9 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

Same as in P3D but you can reposition yourself to your current gate.

Thanks for testing! 

That's an improvement at least. In P3D you could not position yourself at the gate you were close to. That's what I remember... 

47 minutes ago, bennyboy75 said:

To be fair, it used to be. You could tinker around with it you wanted to, but it wasn't essential. Now, not so much. 

@Chock GSX leaves all the loaders and stairs scattered around the gate area after the loading is complete, even when the pushback is in progress. Doesn't this stuff usually get sent away to other gates after use? I'm just looping back to my suggestion to @virtuali that apart from the tug, the GSX stuff spawns and drives off as required like the fuel truck and bus do, to cut down on object conflicts out of the window. 

Normally you park everything in the inter-stand clearways when you will be using it, or have just finished using it but are still working on the aeroplane (these are the marked areas which are clear of the wingtips either side of a stand), and preferably, you park things forward of the wingtips so there is no possibility for a wingtip to clip something such as a set of stairs as it pushes off the stand, because sometimes you want to swan-neck a pushback the moment you start rolling, to give you more room to turn onto the taxiway and be lined up by the time you get to the tug release point, which is very often located at the centreline of the adjacent stand.

As part of the walkaround check procedure, when that's completed, you get on the headset to the crew and say something along the lines of; 'walkaround check complete, all GSE clear of the aircraft, towbar connected, bypass pin inserted, standing by'. So yes, getting everything away from the plane is something you should do because you are on the CVR saying it was all clear, which means you are to blame if it isn't and something untoward happens.

After a flight is done, we typically clear away the stuff off the stand, sometimes parking it up in our designated parking bays, but more often than not taking it to another clearway on another stand ready for another incoming flight, but doing this too early is not approved of by the air ops people and you can get fined for doing that, so we'd avoid leaving stuff sat there for hours before or after a flight. If we did, air ops would be phoning us and asking us to shift it, so you are correct, leaving stuff just lying about on stands is a big no-no.

Keeping the GSE tidy is good, and is what we aim for, but in reality it's not always possible, stuff gets left all over the place on occasion and it's not unknown for us to not know where it is located on the airport when we need it (this happens all the time with the engineering steps, we end up driving about looking for them in a few of the most likely places). It can be a bit of a squeeze in the clearways because quite often there will be another team getting their stuff ready in the clearways for their incoming flight. Theoretically, every service agent has a few storage bays located around an airport allocated to them, where they can park their stuff, but they are rarely big enough for all the equipment and sometimes other companies don't have much choice but to stick stuff in those bays too, which makes matters worse.

Ironically, a lot of the time we are so short of some kinds of equipment that this isn't always a problem for us, for example, we are supposed to have three Boeing 737 towbars, but just recently we had only one available (their shear pins sometimes break on them, taking them out of service temporarily until new pins are put in, or they will be in for servicing on a regular schedule, since all GSE has to be checked and approved for use and often wears a sticker to confirm this with its expiry date showing). This means that if we have two 737s due out at more or less the same time, we'd have to wait until one had pushed out before we could do the next one because there was no towbar for it, so sometimes it's the case that some types of equipment are quite sparse.

For those who like some realism where the logos on the GSE is concerned, this means that sometimes one service agent will borrow equipment off another agent, so even if you do see some Swissport or Stobart or DHL equipment on a plane which in reality would be serviced by DNATA or Menzies or whatever, this isn't necessarily unrealistic. We're always borrowing Stobart and DNATA's Air Start units at Manchester, because ours is currently busted, and everyone uses each others LDs and baggage trailers from time to time. Even where our own equipment is concerned, we frequently have to use Air Lingus, British Airways and Iberia AKH ULDs interchangeably on all three of these different airlines, depending on what we have to hand. Technically, these three airlines are part of the same I.A.G. group, so this isn't the massive issue you might suppose although for corporate identity reason the airlines don't like it being done too often (especially BA), but sometimes we have no choice in the matter because they'll be the only ULDs we have on station.

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by Chock

Purchased of to test 😇

Im using Latin VFR KSAN scenery and notice that the gate numbers are all wrong. Do I have to go to the editor and edit the gates that way?

I haven't customized anything here.

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by Tuskin38

1 hour ago, Bill A said:

Anyone get the GSX fuel truck to connect visually to the PMDG 737-700? Or does it just fuel the plane with the driver inside and no hoses attached? I enter the fuel in the flight computer the and the counter starts on the truck, but visually the truck is just sitting there with the driver behind the wheel

It's not possible due to the low wing height of the 737-700, according to the manual. Probably a MSFS limitation (because it worked on P3D), but anyway it's not you doing something wrong. It works with other planes.

5 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

It's not possible due to the low wing height of the 737-700, according to the manual. Probably a MSFS limitation (because it worked on P3D), but anyway it's not you doing something wrong. It works with other planes.

Ok was hoping at least with a ladder put a hose up to the wing, guess its better to use the built in PMDG truck for fuel

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by Bill A

2 hours ago, Nyxx said:

Market place airports are encrypted and cannot work.

Two questions.

1. What does cannot work mean exactly? It literally doesn't turn on or it behaves in a buggy way but some features still work (I saw only about double jetways but does it work for example if you spawn at a parking spot instead of a gate)?

2. What about Asobo hand crafted airports that are included in the world updates and also with the original sim? Do they also not work properly with GSX?

 

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by steve310002

Just now, steve310002 said:

Two questions.

1. What does cannot work mean exactly? It literally doesn't turn on or it behaves in a buggy way but some features still work?

2. What about Asobo hand crafted airports that are included in the world updates and also with the original sim? Do they also not work properly with GSX?

 

1. They are encrypted and cannot be read by GSX. But GSX needs to read them to know where the jetways are, the stands etc. So GSX will not work at all at those airports, just the GSX models but with MSFS default services.
2. They do work all, but those from the deluxe and premium edition are encrypted too. However that's not such a big problem in this case. GSX works on them but only by using the default (non-premium) files, which means e.g. at EDDF the jetways are not placed correctly. So in the manual it is suggested to exclude those airports from GSX jetways. You will have the default jetways but with the full GSX functions on those airports, so that's no problem.

So GSX works almost perfectly for me (even got my first files from a marketplace airport by a nice dev, so this works too now!), but I understand it's overwhelming if you have no experience on P3D with it. I suggest taking your time to read the manual. Anyway I can help you out and try my best to answer questions, just @ me with a post.
For serious problems please go to the FSDREAMTEAM forum, virtuali doesn't sleep and answers support requests 24/7, at least that's what it looks like 🙂

 

Yeah I recommend posting bug reports on the official FSDT forums so they can have them all in one place