FSX far to Impatient with AI Aircraft - Deletions!

[Guest hypersonic]

Hi All,Having migrated straight from FS2002 to FSX, I've noticed a change in the AI, that is for the worse.As i was approaching Gatwick 26L, I was less than 60 secs from touchdown, when i heard an aircraft announce it was ready for take off, whereby the tower told it to 'hold short'.All normal there. An AI aircraft had received a fresh tower instruction & was obeying... 'The clock starts ticking'..... As i whizzed by the threshold, there was a DC10 holding. I exited the runway fairly quickly, roughly 40 secs after touchdown.A 747 was behind me nicely spaced, in fact only about 20 secs after i pulled off, the 747 was over the treshold itself, & within 5 secs on the runway itself ... there was NOTHING behind the 747, so the DC10 would have been given clearence after the 747 had exited...So from me hearing the 'hold short' instruction for the DC10, to seeing the 747 slowing down on the runway, perhaps only 135 secs or so had passed in total, = ONLY 2 mins & 15 secs.However even before the 747 had time to exit itself, FSX decided it had gotten BORED of the waiting DC10 & just DELETED IT!!! - Vanished! - POOF!Now this is not the 1st time i've seen the AI system make the decision that an AI plane is 'taking to long' to get to its next stage & thus simply delete it. But compared to FS2002, (which used to do this as well), FS2002 was FAR MORE patient & would allow a plane waiting to 'taxi' or waiting to take off, a lot more time than FSX, before it decided to blow it away... perhaps 5 mins or more. In the case of FSX though - less than 2.5 minutes!!!Thats a bit 'crap' and makes for watching the AI movements (with your favourite AI addon prog) a bit of a joke sometimes.... Seeing several aircraft lined up for take off & when having to inter-mesh with landing aircraft, they simply vanish one after the other, after only a couple of minutes. - Maybe one or two get the clearance to go before the dreaded vapourising.I've also noticed that this sometimes happens when a plane lands also... it's about to exit when it just vanishes from the runway! - Whats all that about - The Airport FULL? - Yet i see EPMTY parking slots, that a little earlier DID have an aircraft at, thus 'are' active!?Whilst i understand that the AI routines had to be better written in FSX (& FS2004) to stop aircraft blocking each other - where you used to get the 'head to head' log jams & so on...But the 'time out' before deleting an aircraft that is NOT causing an obstruction, rather simply being 'patient & waiting its turn' is FAR to SHORT now!..Is their a parameter that can be added or edited in FSX.cfg, to 'LENGTHEN' the AI 'timeout delete' timeframe?Or is this hard coded into FSX, & thus the only way to make it better is to log it with Microsoft & hope they take notice??Anyone else noticed this? - & Have a fix?Your thoughts..CheersHyper

[Guest jshyluk]

The fix is easy enough: lower your traffic slider. It shouldn't be above 60% for basic FSX, and possibly as low as 30% depending if you have any AI add-ons.Also go and get AISmooth from the AVSIM Library for free. AISmooth shuffles out the AI aircraft you don't see, freeing up more system for the ones that you do see. It will also prevent aircraft from getting clustered in front of you in the air while on approach. It's brilliant!Jeff ShylukAssistant Managing EditorSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Is there even a DC10 in FSX? Reason I ask is that if there's DC10 AI traffic, that suggests an add-on of some sort?

[jordanal 70]

That was probably a result of so many complaints in FS9 about AI traffic geting stuck for 5 to 15 minutes, holding short and waiting. There were even tricks to get the aircraft un-stuck/deleted in a shorter amount of time. I was not uncommon at major US airports on a Friday night to see 10 or 20 aircraft lined up for the active and then one decides to hang around for what seemed like an eternity.Also, in FS9 there were hacks to get the landing aircraft to taxi and depart the active faster, but I don't recall if this has migrated to FSX yet. I run 100% WoAI and and a truck-load of MRAI custom packages and it doesn't seem as bad these days as it was early-on in FS9.Regards,

[Guest hypersonic]

Many thanks for the early responses..What about the aircraft vanishing immediately after landing.. When there clearly ARE vacant Gates etc.?Cheers

[jordanal 70]

That has to be an issue of available, properly sized gates. They changed the parking spots from radius to wing-span so it has to still be an AFCAD issue, with regard to properly sized (wing-span) gates. Regie Fields has a great spread-sheet for properly sizing th wing-span values of all your AI as well, simply chaning the wing-span values in the relative aircraft.cfg file for each model. If you can't find it, PM me and I'll e-mail it to you.Regards,

[RFields5421 1]

The timer startes when the AI aircraft stops moving.In FS2002 it was 15 minutes - and as noted above - there were many, many complaints about how that was too long for aircraft to be deleted.Now true most complaints were about aircraft which get stuck trying to exit a runway and blocked all landings and takeoffs for 15 minutes.There was not much complaining about the AI aircraft in the takeoff lineup.In FS2004, the time was changed from 15 min to 5 min. That is where we began to notice the aircraft in the takeoff line disappear before they could takeoff.I have not measured FSX as much as I did when FS2004 came out trying to determine the exact parameters.But so far my experience is FSX AI runs by the same timer rule as FS2004 - 5 minutes.But that's five minutes with no movement - there can be activity such as the ATC clearance, or multiple cleared to taxi, hold short messages in that period - as long as the aircraft does not actually move - the 5 min timer does not reset.Several people have sent e-mails to MS on this issue - because IMHO you are correct - there needs to be more logic in the time-out timer and deletion.We've been told unofficially that there is currently only one threshold in the code, which means all aircraft get the same timeout rule.Yes, I strongly recommend you send an e-mail to Microsoft. More e-mails help set priorities.BTW - most of the time in FSX and quite often in FS2004, head to head would have one aircraft just taxi through the other - but not always.