Stock data with soft aircraft

[mmcmah 149]

Hi Nico,
 

Lately I have been unfortunate enough to fly in and out of small enough airports that they barely have any parking information in PSXTraffic. I have been running MSFS here and there to try to soft learn those airports and that helps out quite a bit (ie - KASE, ZBAA) as I do get a number of flights a day.
 

Would it be possible to have the data that you include each time you update the data  include those aircraft that would have been soft learned by the program?
 

I suppose it could be a situation where if there's enough data with real aircraft, then only use that, but if there isn't, then include the soft aircraft as well/instead?
 

Thank you.

[kiek 1,136]

6 hours ago, mmcmah said:

Would it be possible to have the data that you include each time you update the data  include those aircraft that would have been soft learned by the program?

No that's not possible. If you switch to soft learning (Learn checkbox), you are on your own, using the airport file from airports\updated, not from the archive(that gets updated regularly). Just keep on Learning, and it will gradually get better ...

6 hours ago, mmcmah said:

I suppose it could be a situation where if there's enough data with real aircraft, then only use that, but if there isn't, then include the soft aircraft as well/instead?

That is already supported, see the Soft checkbox. But I don't think that is what you are looking for...  You want the archive file + the updated file, don't you?

 

[mmcmah 149]

12 minutes ago, kiek said:

No that's not possible. If you switch to soft learning (Learn checkbox), you are on your own, using the airport file from airports\updated, not from the archive(that gets updated regularly). Just keep on Learning, and it will gradually get better ...

That is already supported, see the Soft checkbox. But I don't think that is what you are looking for...  You want the archive file + the updated file, don't you?

 

Im actually wondering if the archive file could include soft aircraft by default. Barring that, then yes, I would wonder if the default + updated file would be possible.

[kiek 1,136]

11 hours ago, mmcmah said:

Im actually wondering if the archive file could include soft aircraft by default. 

The archive files have soft entries if the real quality is < 50 or the airport  has < 10 Parking positions.  You do not need soft entries in the other situations, it would generate overhead only.

11 hours ago, mmcmah said:

 I would wonder if the default + updated file would be possible.

That is -technically speaking- possible, I'll add it to my todo list.

[mmcmah 149]

5 hours ago, kiek said:

The archive files have soft entries if the real quality is < 50 or the airport  has < 10 Parking positions.  You do not need soft entries in the other situations, it would generate overhead only.

If that is supposed to be so, I'm not sure it's working as intended. The two examples I gave above (ZBAA and KASE) both had super low quality files (I don't remember the numbers). I spent some time sitting at each airport in MSFS in order to learn the soft aircraft and had a lot of flights get recorded by PSXTraffic. If your data import algorithm would add the soft airlines for those airports, then I would've thought they would already have a large amount of soft entries in the default files.

5 hours ago, kiek said:

That is -technically speaking- possible, I'll add it to my todo list.

Thank you!

Edited September 22 by mmcmah

[kiek 1,136]

23 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

If that is supposed to be so, I'm not sure it's working as intended.

The offline method gives less soft entries than the on line method with Learn, that's why.  Offline I miss the aircraft that are airborne close to the airport.

[mmcmah 149]

25 minutes ago, kiek said:

The offline method gives less soft entries than the on line method with Learn, that's why.  Offline I miss the aircraft that are airborne close to the airport.

Understood and thank you for the additional explanation. In that case, I'll continue tosoft learn and maybe those soft-learned airports will also eventually be able to be supplemented by the default files.

[mmcmah 149]

The combination of learn and default files working together would also allow everyone to always Learn the airports they are on the ground at, without having to worry that doing so will mean that can't use the default data you provide. That way Learning (origin and destination airports) can supplement the default file experience rather than replace it.

[Harrier77 17]

13 hours ago, mmcmah said:

The combination of learn and default files working together would also allow everyone to always Learn the airports they are on the ground at, without having to worry that doing so will mean that can't use the default data you provide. That way Learning (origin and destination airports) can supplement the default file experience rather than replace it.

I agree, a very good solution.

[kiek 1,136]

On 9/22/2023 at 8:38 PM, mmcmah said:

The combination of learn and default files working together would also allow everyone to always Learn the airports they are on the ground at, without having to worry that doing so will mean that can't use the default data you provide. That way Learning (origin and destination airports) can supplement the default file experience rather than replace it.

I have the following solution in place in 3.5.0 (work in progress), working well:

There is a new airport files hierarchy airports\learned next to airports\archive, with the same subfolder structure.

In learning mode new real and/or soft parking options are saved in a corresponding file in the learned structure. These airport files contain the new options only.
When PSXTraffic reads an airport file from the archive it will also -if available- read the extra options from the learned counterpart. This way you have as well the airport file info from the archive (updated weekly) and the locally accumulated learned data.

This works as well for stock, simaddon as thirdparty airports! 

The airports\updated folder is no longer used. I recommend to start new and forget these files, but you may place a file from airports\updated file in the right place in the learned structure.

 

Here an example of a learned file for MSFS SimAddon YSSY:

Spoiler

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<meta>
    <info name="author" value="PSXTraffic" />
    <info name="version" value="3.4.0" />
    <info name="date" value="Sep 25, 2023" />
    <info name="copyright" value="(c) 2023 Nico W. Kaan, Netherlands, All Rights reserved" />
</meta>
<parameters>
    <parameter name="airport_name" value="Kingsford Smith Intl" />
    <parameter name="publisher" value="simaddon" />
</parameters>
<parkpositions>
    <parkpos id="ep38">
        <opt airl="VOZ" type="B738" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-VUW" cs="VOZ520" />
    </parkpos>
    <parkpos id="ep40">
        <opt airl="VOZ" type="B738" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-VUZ" cs="VOZ1533" />
    </parkpos>
    <parkpos id="ep16">
        <opt airl="QLK" type="DH8D" soft="true" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-QOW" cs="QLK437D" />
    </parkpos>
    <parkpos id="69">
        <opt airl="QLK" type="DH8C" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-SBW" cs="QLK11" />
    </parkpos>
</parkpositions>

As you can see, only the gate id is needed, for synchronisation with the airport file from the archive.

Edited September 25 by kiek

[mmcmah 149]

1 hour ago, kiek said:

I have the following solution in place in 3.5.0 (work in progress), working well:

There is a new airport files hierarchy airports\learned next to airports\archive, with the same subfolder structure.

In learning mode new real and/or soft parking options are saved in a corresponding file in the learned structure. These airport files contain the new options only.
When PSXTraffic reads an airport file from the archive it will also -if available- read the extra options from the learned counterpart. This way you have as well the airport file info from the archive (updated weekly) and the locally accumulated learned data.

This works as well for stock, simaddon as thirdparty airports! 

The airports\updated folder is no longer used. I recommend to start new and forget these files, but you may place a file from airports\updated file in the right place in the learned structure.

 

Here an example of a learned file for MSFS SimAddon YSSY:

  Reveal hidden contents

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<meta>
    <info name="author" value="PSXTraffic" />
    <info name="version" value="3.4.0" />
    <info name="date" value="Sep 25, 2023" />
    <info name="copyright" value="(c) 2023 Nico W. Kaan, Netherlands, All Rights reserved" />
</meta>
<parameters>
    <parameter name="airport_name" value="Kingsford Smith Intl" />
    <parameter name="publisher" value="simaddon" />
</parameters>
<parkpositions>
    <parkpos id="ep38">
        <opt airl="VOZ" type="B738" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-VUW" cs="VOZ520" />
    </parkpos>
    <parkpos id="ep40">
        <opt airl="VOZ" type="B738" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-VUZ" cs="VOZ1533" />
    </parkpos>
    <parkpos id="ep16">
        <opt airl="QLK" type="DH8D" soft="true" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-QOW" cs="QLK437D" />
    </parkpos>
    <parkpos id="69">
        <opt airl="QLK" type="DH8C" day="1" hh="10" reg="VH-SBW" cs="QLK11" />
    </parkpos>
</parkpositions>

As you can see, only the gate id is needed, for synchronisation with the airport file from the archive.

FANTASTIC news Nico! Thank you!! That sounds like a great solution and personally I am fine with starting with new files.

One question - does the newly learned file need to ONLY have the new options? What if there's overlap when you update an archive file?

[kiek 1,136]

10 hours ago, mmcmah said:

One question - does the newly learned file need to ONLY have the new options? What if there's overlap when you update an archive file?

Yes they get the new options compared to the archived file. When a new archive file arrives and there is a conflict the option will be ignored.

[mmcmah 149]

19 hours ago, kiek said:

Yes they get the new options compared to the archived file. When a new archive file arrives and there is a conflict the option will be ignored.

That's great - thank you!

Another question: I just tried 3.5.0 and noticed that the Learn checkbox had been removed (same with the Soft checkbox). I assumed that the default was now to learn and to use soft airlines. However, it seems that the parameters file didn't change the options and I needed to go in and enable Learn, which I might have missed in the changelog, but didn't see mention of that being removed. So Learn and Soft are now hidden parameters?

Also, you now can't learn airports that aren't in the archive, even if just to have some statics placed?

Edited September 27 by mmcmah

[mmcmah 149]

Another strange issue is that I soft learned KASE by letting the sim run while I did other things. Despite it learning 49 soft flights, PSXTraffic wasn't loading more than 2 airplanes when I loaded in, no matter what % I put in the desired percentage field.

I looked in the parameters.xml file and noticed that FLUSH_STATICS was true, perhaps because at one point in 3.4.0 I had selected Flush. Once I changed that to false and restarted PSXTRaffic, I got the hoped for amount of statics. Note that the Flush button in the UI was always available to press (not greyed out), I just hadn't pressed it because I didn't want to flush the few aircraft I had.

[kiek 1,136]

8 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

Another strange issue is that I soft learned KASE by letting the sim run while I did other things. Despite it learning 49 soft flights, PSXTraffic wasn't loading more than 2 airplanes when I loaded in, no matter what % I put in the desired percentage field.

Did you look in te Log.txt file? Maybe a livery could not be matched?