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eddl

Feature request for busy airports

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On 2/1/2023 at 6:30 PM, eddl said:

As a VR user everything would be better than a button in the GUI. 😉

VR: Well I have chosen for one of the light switches, see version 34.3.0. Try if your aircraft supports one of these five. If you toggle a light switch like this: Change position, wait a full second, change position again (and that sequence within 3-4 seconds) you should see a message in the Log.txt. Hence, you can toggle a Follow me car in and out, or let an aircraft disappear and re-appear, without leaving your cockpit.

I've also introduced  a collision avoidance feature for the user aircraft in the air. PSXT removes an aircraft if it is within 4 nm, and with a altitude difference of less then 1'000 feet and a "width" difference of less than 700 feet. I've chosen 700 feet because of parallel landings (as in KLAX).

The aircraft is removed, and of course PSXT wants to spawn it again but that is not happening as long as the distance with your aircraft is less then 5 nm, the alttude difference is less than 2'000 ft and the width is less then 3'000 ft. These thresholds are set higher to prevent an aircraft juming in and out. I've tried it several times when flying to EGLL and it works pretty good.

I think this works much more smooth (and automatic) then manually blocking an airborne aircraft in front of you, or behind you.

The Follow me car will appear on the ground only.

See chapter 11 of the Manual.

Edited by kiek

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Just tested the new release. Absolutely incredible! Being guided all across Schiphol to the Polderbaan, without bumping into anyone else and approaching Heathrow without getting squeezed in the approach sequence. That flight was an absolute joy.

Thank you so much for all your work! Also thank you for being so open to user input despite all complexity introduced and time required.

Too bad that my current favourite aircraft (Fenix A320) does not support the blocking with light switches, therefore I did not yet test it. But for sure I will do in a different aircraft.

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1 hour ago, kiek said:

PSXT removes an aircraft is it is within 4 nm, and with a altitude difference of less then 1'000 feet and a "width" difference of less than 700 feet. I've chosen 700 feet because of parallel landings (as in KLAX).

Just being curious:

(1) I guess you are not clearing any aircraft that wait on the holding position next to the runway which I am approaching, despite matching the proximity criteria - is that correct?

(2) The aircraft which was blocked in the air due to close proximity (in front of me on the ILS) will not reappear on the ground as it never gets out of the predefined box around me again - is that also correct?

Thanks a lot for clarifying. 🙂

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1 hour ago, eddl said:

(1) I guess you are not clearing any aircraft that wait on the holding position next to the runway which I am approaching, despite matching the proximity criteria - is that correct?

(2) The aircraft which was blocked in the air due to close proximity (in front of me on the ILS) will not reappear on the ground as it never gets out of the predefined box around me again - is that also correct?

 

(1)  That's correct. It only clears aircraft that are airborne.

(2)  That's not correct. On the ground other rules apply.     

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1 hour ago, kiek said:

(2)  That's not correct. On the ground other rules apply.     

I think I have to come up with some extra rules, because it could happen that the (user air colisioned) aircraft in front of you suddenly pops up at the runway when you are about to land ...

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1 hour ago, kiek said:

I think I have to come up with some extra rules, because it could happen that the (user air colisioned) aircraft in front of you suddenly pops up at the runway when you are about to land ...

That's why I asked. I guess there is no good moment for that aircraft to reappear on the ground out of nowhere - still likely being too close to the users aircraft even after landing. At bigger airports you won't notice that this single aircraft is missing. It might require very complex extra rules to have this aircraft show up again at a good place, so not showing it seems the simplest solution.

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The last conflicting scenario seems an aircraft lining up on the runway with the users aircraft being on short final. But that detection is going to be very complex. Are you up for a little challenge? 😉

 

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11 hours ago, eddl said:

That's why I asked. I guess there is no good moment for that aircraft to reappear on the ground out of nowhere - still likely being too close to the users aircraft even after landing. At bigger airports you won't notice that this single aircraft is missing. It might require very complex extra rules to have this aircraft show up again at a good place, so not showing it seems the simplest solution.

I will make it like this:

A blocked aircraft (or two, there may be two if you are inbetween two landing live aircraft) by Air collision, will try to be re-spawned by PSXT, but that will happen after the user has landed and its speed is less then say 8 kts. So as long as you do not stop on the runway, you are safe. Well, stopping on a landing runway of a busy airport is not something the ATC controllers like to see you do anyway. 😉 

This may still go wrong if you land on an airport with a single runway that needs back tracking, like Madeira....

 

Edited by kiek

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11 hours ago, eddl said:

The last conflicting scenario seems an aircraft lining up on the runway with the users aircraft being on short final. But that detection is going to be very complex. Are you up for a little challenge? 😉

PSXT has no notion of where aircraft are other then at gates. It can detect a departing aircraft only (by its speed).

Hence, I can remove such an aircraft if is within the 700 feet width (it has to be lined up and not entering the runway, it may even be lined up at the other end...) and I can see in the traffic data ahead it will eventually be speeding more then 45 kts, so taking off. An aircraft that has no take-off clearance yet cannot be removed, or I must wipe out a bigger area around the landing runway....?

 

BTW: Are you from Düsseldorf (-area) or is it just a fake name?

Edited by kiek

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16 hours ago, kiek said:

I will make it like this:

A blocked aircraft (or two, there may be two if you are inbetween two landing live aircraft) by Air collision, will try to be re-spawned by PSXT, but that will happen after the user has landed and its speed is less then say 8 kts. So as long as you do not stop on the runway, you are safe. Well, stopping on a landing runway of a busy airport is not something the ATC controllers like to see you do anyway. 😉 

This may still go wrong if you land on an airport with a single runway that needs back tracking, like Madeira....

It is quite difficult to find good conditions for the air collisions to re-appear. I see several issues with the logic above, backtracking is just one of them. Just imagine doing a 180 degree turn at the runway end to see another aircraft re-appear and quickly coming closer and closer and all you can do is just wait for the impact... In VR you would have to close eyes. 🙂

Some thoughts - possible conditions to unblock the air collisions:

(1) User aircraft is on ground & speed max 8 knots
(2) AND injected aircraft is on ground & speed max 8 knots
(3) AND minimum distance 1500ft between user aircraft & injected aircraft

That should in most cases make sure that at least one aircraft left the runway already, so no surprises on the runway. And the minimum distance avoids re-appearing in a directly conflicting situation.

 

In my humble opinion, the unblock conditions should be more on the conservative side. Early unblock is more problematic than a late or no unblock at all. Personally I would still prefer to not show the air collisions on the ground to avoid any negative surprises, as we won't find perfect parameters to guarantee an unproblematic re-appearance. And nobody would miss this aircraft.

 

Another thought:

Any air collision can be shown as follow-me once on ground and <20 knots (if the follow-me option has been checked). That is a very simple check algorithm and is quite transparent to the user. You would have the choice to follow the car to a parking position or ignore it at all. And even if the car suddenly appears on the runway in front of me during backtrack, it is so small so I would not have any fear running into it and just ignore it.

That also means that there might be two follow-me cars after landing (if two aircraft have been too close on approach), but you could just follow the one in front of you and you won't notice the one behind you anyways.

Once arrived at the gate, the follow-me should disappear again.

Still not perfect. Looking forward to check out whatever you implement. 🙂

Many thanks!

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17 hours ago, kiek said:

PSXT has no notion of where aircraft are other then at gates. It can detect a departing aircraft only (by its speed).

In the RT GUI, I can see a line representing the runways. But I guess that is just RT using the Navigraph DB and not accessible to PSXT.

I will think about it. Is there a website that shows all variables that you have access to?

 

17 hours ago, kiek said:

BTW: Are you from Düsseldorf (-area) or is it just a fake name?

Not a fake name, I am from Düsseldorf area. 🙂

 

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19 hours ago, eddl said:

Some thoughts - possible conditions to unblock the air collisions:

(1) User aircraft is on ground & speed max 8 knots
(2) AND injected aircraft is on ground & speed max 8 knots
(3) AND minimum distance 1500ft between user aircraft & injected aircraft

(1) OK

(2) yes, or it is still in the air.

(3) OK

I prefer to get these aircraft back in the Sim, the more the better, and it is also - from an bookkeeping point of view-  not easy to block an aircraft for ever.

19 hours ago, eddl said:

Another thought:

Any air collision can be shown as follow-me once on ground and <20 knots (if the follow-me option has been checked). That is a very simple check algorithm and is quite transparent to the user. You would have the choice to follow the car to a parking position or ignore it at all. And even if the car suddenly appears on the runway in front of me during backtrack, it is so small so I would not have any fear running into it and just ignore it.

That also means that there might be two follow-me cars after landing (if two aircraft have been too close on approach), but you could just follow the one in front of you and you won't notice the one behind you anyways.

Once arrived at the gate, the follow-me should disappear again.

That sound too complicated to implement. And it does not work for P3D users. Let's keep the follow me cars for departure, or after landing you could perhaps " block" the  re-appearing  air-collisioned aircraft near you, and use it as a follow me car to the gate. I think it is good to experience first more with what we got now. And hopefully more users are going to comment.

Note that I have also implemented an air/gnd collision function as an extension to the user air collision: if a landing aircraft is at 500 ft above the ground and withn 1 nm, it "sees" a live aircraft within 50 feet "width" it will remove that aircraft . The "width" is the difference of the heading of the user aircraft and the bearing from user to the live aircraft, mathematically speaking: sinus( abs(heading - bearing) ) * distance.

Edited by kiek

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13 hours ago, eddl said:

Not a fake name, I am from Düsseldorf area. 🙂

Aha, PSXT has -relatively speaking- lots of users in Germany. However, we need more to keep RealTraffic alive.  Please tell your sim-friends about PSXT.  

.

 

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4 hours ago, kiek said:

Aha, PSXT has -relatively speaking- lots of users in Germany. However, we need more to keep RealTraffic alive.  Please tell your sim-friends about PSXT.  

.

 

I can only give very positive feedback regarding PSXT & RT.

It is a wonderful experience, but might not have the traction of FS Traffic or FSLTL in the flight sim market. The latter products are far more talked about in flight sim forums than PSXT+RT, at least my impression. But PSXT+RT is way better than those products on airports with ADS-B coverage, not having the AI flow issues everyone is complaining about.

What seems missing from a product standpoint versus the competitors is the perfect "out-of-box-experience", which means having to learn airports first. But I am working on this currently and will happily share all the airport files later for everyone to benefit from it.

Imagine having good base files for 300+ addons. Yes, spending too much money on addons....

Will check your reply regarding the collision unblocking later.

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15 hours ago, eddl said:

What seems missing from a product standpoint versus the competitors is the perfect "out-of-box-experience", which means having to learn airports first.

PSXT comes out of the box with about 30 fully learned airports already But if the users does not choose one of them...

Edited by kiek
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