10 hours ago, MassiveSim32_Jase said:

This is brilliant mate.  Love your enthusiasm for the GSX project.

Absolutely, there are not many add-ons that have received such amount of substantial updates as GSX, all with one purchase. I like GSX very much. Thanks Umberto for your continued support! 

1 hour ago, Rocky_53 said:

if I was asked for one single change to GSX, then it would be to see improved passenger animations! IMO there is scope for improvement

I'm not exactly sure what we could do more, considering how passengers must work. We already have each passengers animated separately, no two passengers have the same animation (already a huge effort) and that can't be said about any other similar system, both in the default (MSFS 2024) passengers system, but also in other system we've seen in other simulators, where it's clear the same animation has been used for all passengers, resulting in a very unnatural "army of clones" effect when they walk together.

The main problem is: passengers needs to be versatile, go everywhere, climb steps, turn over waypoints. This means their animation is PART manually animated and PART procedural, namely the translation/rotation part is made procedurally, since a passenger can possibly walk around the whole airport.

While is reasonably easy to make a convincing animation that works "in place" (like the dancing marshaller or the various poses "at rest" of the recent manual stairs operator), when you combine the mandatory procedural part with the manually animated part, there always be some kind of disconnection, since (for example) real people don't make turns in the same way (it changes depending on the turning radius), there's the missing "gait" effect (the translation speed is not uniform across the whole step cycle) because doing this would increase traffic over simconnect quite a bit (having to adjust the speed of each passenger at each frame).

As always in GSX, there's always reasons why things are done in a certain way and not as they might be, if it ran under a character-oriented game engine (Unreal, Unity), instead of a flight simulator.

Unfortunately, the new procedural character system added in MSFS 2024, is completely not documented, and there are no tools provided to create these new kind of passengers (and if you fill up the default 737 with 180 pax, you'll see how your fps will go down compared to GSX), we think because the character system has been supplied by a 3rd party that hasn't licensed their tools to be included in the SDK.

14 hours ago, BWBriscoe said:

... wrong ZFW entered into the FMC (even though it's correct in SimBrief and appears throughout the rest of the simulator correctly).

Forget it, Briscoe. I tried to tell him already, that it's wrong all the time with the PMDG 777 (in my case the -300 in 2020). But obviously he doesn't want to believe us.

Edited March 5Mar 5 by Watsi

2 hours ago, virtuali said:

I'm not exactly sure what we could do more, considering how passengers must work. We already have each passengers animated separately, no two passengers have the same animation (already a huge effort) and that can't be said about any other similar system, both in the default (MSFS 2024) passengers system, but also in other system we've seen in other simulators, where it's clear the same animation has been used for all passengers, resulting in a very unnatural "army of clones" effect when they walk together.

The main problem is: passengers needs to be versatile, go everywhere, climb steps, turn over waypoints. This means their animation is PART manually animated and PART procedural, namely the translation/rotation part is made procedurally, since a passenger can possibly walk around the whole airport.

While is reasonably easy to make a convincing animation that works "in place" (like the dancing marshaller or the various poses "at rest" of the recent manual stairs operator), when you combine the mandatory procedural part with the manually animated part, there always be some kind of disconnection, since (for example) real people don't make turns in the same way (it changes depending on the turning radius), there's the missing "gait" effect (the translation speed is not uniform across the whole step cycle) because doing this would increase traffic over simconnect quite a bit (having to adjust the speed of each passenger at each frame).

As always in GSX, there's always reasons why things are done in a certain way and not as they might be, if it ran under a character-oriented game engine (Unreal, Unity), instead of a flight simulator.

Unfortunately, the new procedural character system added in MSFS 2024, is completely not documented, and there are no tools provided to create these new kind of passengers (and if you fill up the default 737 with 180 pax, you'll see how your fps will go down compared to GSX), we think because the character system has been supplied by a 3rd party that hasn't licensed their tools to be included in the SDK.

OK, thanks for the explanation Umberto.

The addition of editable handler behaviors might be of interest to those dedicated to 'tinkering' and writing python code but that's not me at all.  Will everything work as it did previously in GSX w/ the addition of these new routines?  I hope so.  I've been very happy with GSX and for me the only areas I would hope to see improvements in are the following:

1. Would love to have a bigger variety of voices of the ground crew when communicating engines are up and running so time to disconnect.  It's been the same voicing since GSX started near as I can tell, so some variety would be appreciated.
2. My comment on FSDT forum re the need to tell GSX to 'Complete Pushback' is not only controlled by as you mentioned not using the toolbar to close the GSX menu--I never use the toolbar to close the menu and yet just this morning at LIPZ it hung again necessitating the need to tell GSX to proceed with pushback.  
3. The alert system you use to let users know there is an update ready to install:  I would love to see something other than the yellow/black banner it's just garish (by design I'm sure to get people to update) and this happens after I've already launched to a gate meaning I have to shut down MSFS and start over.  I could live with it if the alert was much more subtle as right now it messes with how the GSX menu displays even though I know you don't really have to stop and relauch after updating.  I know this is a little thing but I'll guess a few others might appreciate something a little more subtle.  I would even love an alert that pops up at Windows initialization stating an update was ready.
4. Like Howard I would love to see continued work on animations, but I appreciate fully your reply and really, they're quite fair already.  I really have enjoyed the new stairs crew--I'm one who actually walks up the stairs and opens the rear door and walks into the flight deck on the Fenix.
5. I really find the option to have GSX trace the route to the arrival gate just over the top with big arrows and that bright blue spire.  Take a tip from this simple option available to MSFS for years which with nicely discreet green dots just a few ahead to guide you to the gate--much nicer, much leaner and 100% effective, called SubtleTaxiRibbon.  
   
   

Anyway, very remarkable work you're doing and your dedication to improving GSX is amazing.

Edited March 5Mar 5 by Noel

3 hours ago, Watsi said:

Forget it, Briscoe. I tried to tell him already, that it's wrong all the time with the PMDG 777 (in my case the -300 in 2020). But obviously he doesn't want to believe us.

It's not that I don't "believe" anybody, is that before saying it insert the payload wrong, and being sure it's GSX that is doing that, one should provide so kind of proper report.

In this case, just a log might not be enough because a log would only indicate if GSX read the data wrong from Simbrief or possibly sent the wrong data to the FMC. But it won't tell if the issue was instead caused by too much lag so the delay that normally works might not be enough in some situation, of you just had already characters on the scratchpad, which is not something we can really fix automatically, since there's no way with the PMDG SDK to automatically clear the scratchpad. To find if you fell into those TWO last issues, I would probably need a video, or at least a description of what you saw. 

That is, of course, assuming there isn't a problem in reading the data to begin with, like getting the wrong flightplan, getting the wrong values or sending the wrong values, which is the 1st part of my answer that could be diagnosed with a GSX log.

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Would love to have a bigger variety of voices of the ground crew when communicating engines are up and running so time to disconnect.  It's been the same voicing since GSX started near as I can tell, so some variety would be appreciated.

I'm not exactly sure what sounds you are referring to, exactly. It seems you are referring *just* to the pilot good engine start confirmation, that seems like a very little and nitpicky thing to put in 1st position,  those are the only voices for which a variation exist (accents and variations within  the same accent) and the reason why is not there, it's because we want to do it properly, since that's *your* pilot voice, so it shouldn't be simply a part of the regional voice system driven by the ICAO, but it should have some kind of global setting where you can set your own preferred voice and accent, unrelated to the airport you are flying it.

Quote

My comment on FSDT forum re the need to tell GSX to 'Complete Pushback' is not only controlled by as you mentioned not using the toolbar to close the GSX menu--I never use the toolbar to close the menu and yet just this morning at LIPZ it hung again necessitating the need to tell GSX to proceed with pushback.

The "Continue Pushback" is there precisely for those that keep close the menu with the toolbar, so they won't lose the pushback in the middle. If you are sure you didn't do that, it must happen for some kind of accident (maybe it restarted automatically), but it's NOT how GSX normally works. If you have the menu active and just hidden, the pushback direction WILL pop-up automatically.

Well, unless you let the 30 seconds timeout expire: if you see didn't notice the pop-up, it would have disappeared after 30 seconds, requiring reopening the menu to "Continue". 
 

Quote

The alert system you use to let users know there is an update ready to install:  I would love to see something other than the yellow/black banner it's just garish (by design I'm sure to get people to update) and this happens after I've already launched to a gate meaning I have to shut down MSFS and start over. 

I can't believe I need to explain this. The message ("garish" or not, it's obviously subjective), it's NOT preventing GSX from working!!! It's just a text, you can ignore it or not, but your current session will continue *exactly* as before, just with the older version. No need to shut down MSFS, at all.

 

Quote

 I really have enjoyed the new stairs crew

And I'm sure you noticed the different level of quality, because most of its animations are "in place", so they are not combining manual animation + procedural movement, at least not while the guy is idling.

 

Quote

I really find the option to have GSX trace the route to the arrival gate just over the top with big arrows and that bright blue spire.

Add-on don't have the same options available to the SubtleTaxiRibbon: we can only create Simobjects through Simconnect, with great attention to their number, in order to be sure we not only create too many of them, but also because of the extra latency due to having to individually set their position, heading *and* altitude over a possibly sloped terrain. So, less objects, which must be larger in order to be seen. The simulator internal functions, not accessible to us, don't have to call Simconnect, don't generate extra traffic on it, so they can do things we can't.

54 minutes ago, virtuali said:

so they won't lose the pushback in the middle. If you are sure you didn't do that, it must happen for some kind of accident (maybe it restarted automatically), but it's NOT how GSX normally works.

Okay, it's just not perfect as it were and as I said on your forum about 20% of the time I need to use the Continue Pushback option, fair enough.

54 minutes ago, virtuali said:

The simulator internal functions, not accessible to us, don't have to call Simconnect, don't generate extra traffic on it, so they can do things we can't.

Fair enough, and sadly what you use is far more demanding than the internals apparently SubtleTaxiRibbon uses.

55 minutes ago, virtuali said:

I'm not exactly sure what sounds you are referring to, exactly. It seems you are referring *just* to the pilot good engine start confirmation

Sorry I wasn't more clear--it's the response of the ground crew, not the pilot.

54 minutes ago, virtuali said:

can't believe I need to explain this.

And I can't believe you think you need to explain any of it.  I fully understood all of it all along--I just can't stand the look of the brash alert and what it does to menu formatting, and I'll bet a few others don't like it either.  Obviously you don't care to consider what some of your customers don't like about something you've created, that's really the crux of it so I fully expect you'll once again ignore this just you did when I pointed out to you the ground pushback walker never stops when I stop the 100' pushback at 40' which is an option you thankfully include, it continues marching all the way to the end of the 100' which just slows down progress unnecessarily and you just ignored this issue since I brought it up years ago.  YOU'RE always right, anyone who offers another POV is just flat out wrong--this is ALWAYS how you respond.   But, I'm sure you're doing the best you can, and once again I appreciate GSX Pro and use it always.

 

Edited March 5Mar 5 by Noel

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

It's not that I don't "believe" anybody, is that before saying it insert the payload wrong, and being sure it's GSX that is doing that, one should provide so kind of proper report.

In this case, just a log might not be enough because a log would only indicate if GSX read the data wrong from Simbrief or possibly sent the wrong data to the FMC. But it won't tell if the issue was instead caused by too much lag so the delay that normally works might not be enough in some situation, of you just had already characters on the scratchpad, which is not something we can really fix automatically, since there's no way with the PMDG SDK to automatically clear the scratchpad. To find if you fell into those TWO last issues, I would probably need a video, or at least a description of what you saw. 

That is, of course, assuming there isn't a problem in reading the data to begin with, like getting the wrong flightplan, getting the wrong values or sending the wrong values, which is the 1st part of my answer that could be diagnosed with a GSX log.

I know it's a GSX issue because when I import the flightplan into the FMC all the weights are correct. Then when I call for boarding, GSX uses the scratchpad but all the time enters the wrong weights (even though it is correct in Simbrief). This morning I watched the pedestal CDU as the weights were entered, it didn't miss a digit, it was just the wrong weight, about 10 tons lighter than it should have been.

Great that you're on here Umberto interacting with users, I've rarely had a problem with GSX beyond my own limited understanding of how the program works, only thing I've ever wanted to ask is; how difficult would it be to have ground crew ethnicity correct to location? Strikes me as an authenticity issue like the correct flora and fauna for the region  that MSFS2024 has made great strides in getting right. Ta.

3 hours ago, virtuali said:

It's not that I don't "believe" anybody, is that before saying it insert the payload wrong, and being sure it's GSX that is doing that, one should provide so kind of proper report....

As far as I see it:
 - the PMDG 777 has three classes - first, business and economy
 - the third FMC (never touched by me, before GSX gets his hands on, btw) has two separate pages for loading - a pax page and a cargo page
 - I guess SimBrief spits out a single number for overall pax and GSX should split it up in the three classes
 - as it correctly does in the PMDG 737 (with two classes) for example
 - GSX switches the FMC correctly to the pax page. But doesn't split the numbers. It just puts all passengers possible into the economy class and leaves the business and first empty (no attempt to do more by GSX)
 - it seems GSX doesn't know about the 'first- and business-line' in the FMC to enter pax there
 - no lag/delay problem as GSX is pretty slow with inserting numbers and switching pages already (which is good)
 - I never entered anything in the third FMC (just left untouched until GSX uses it)
 - then it switches to the second page > the cargo page, it fills the bulk-line of the FMC and leaves the rest also totally empty (aft and fwd cargo)

I only use progressive loading on the Fenix. I don’t bother with other aircraft. Though I haven’t tested the A340’s integration 

Every aircraft dev should just copy how Fenix does it. 

Edited March 5Mar 5 by Tuskin38

1 hour ago, Watsi said:

As far as I see it:
 - the PMDG 777 has three classes - first, business and economy
 - the third FMC (never touched by me, before GSX gets his hands on, btw) has two separate pages for loading - a pax page and a cargo page
 - I guess SimBrief spits out a single number for overall pax and GSX should split it up in the three classes
 - as it correctly does in the PMDG 737 (with two classes) for example
 - GSX switches the FMC correctly to the pax page. But doesn't split the numbers. It just puts all passengers possible into the economy class and leaves the business and first empty (no attempt to do more by GSX)
 - it seems GSX doesn't know about the 'first- and business-line' in the FMC to enter pax there
 - no lag/delay problem as GSX is pretty slow with inserting numbers and switching pages already (which is good)
 - I never entered anything in the third FMC (just left untouched until GSX uses it)
 - then it switches to the second page > the cargo page, it fills the bulk-line of the FMC and leaves the rest also totally empty (aft and fwd cargo)

maybe this is due to pmdg removing  the intergration from gsx?

Wonder if there'll be any aircraft and airports taking advantage of customized Aircraft and Airport Handlers scripts soon?

1 minute ago, amsfsx02501 said:

Wonder if there'll be any aircraft and airports taking advantage of customized Aircraft and Airport Handlers scripts soon?

Give it time, but you'll see lots of incredible stuff being added. This is really next level compared to what was possible with a simple .INI profile or with the extremely limited .PY addition which were just naming decoration.