I'm fed up with landing my airliners at airports that don't have Jetways, and concluding my flights with passengers having to jump 20 feet down to the ground, out of the doors 😒😊

I'm talking about addons like the TFDi MD-11, Ini A340 and even the new AS/Toliss A346, that don't come with any stairs, as part of their ground services.

In X-Plane, there was an excellent free addon called "Simple Ground Vehicles" that provided selectable, basic ground vehicles, such as stairs, luggage loaders, etc.

Is anyone aware of any ground services addon that is not GSX, that could provide a similar result?   I literally just want stairs for my pax to use to board and depart the aircraft!

8 minutes ago, JYW said:

I'm fed up with landing my airliners at airports that don't have Jetways, and concluding my flights with passengers having to jump 20 feet down to the ground, out of the doors 😒😊

I'm talking about addons like the TFDi MD-11, Ini A340 and even the new AS/Toliss A346, that don't come with any stairs, as part of their ground services.

In X-Plane, there was an excellent free addon called "Simple Ground Vehicles" that provided selectable, basic ground vehicles, such as stairs, luggage loaders, etc.

Is anyone aware of any ground services addon that is not GSX, that could provide a similar result?   I literally just want stairs for my pax to use to board and depart the aircraft!

I would like this too, as GSX just causes too many issues for my liking. Last time i used GSX it was complaining that i needed to set the parking brake and the plane wasn’t even loaded yet. Saw lots of strange behavior in MSFS 2024, and while i get that the developer said it could not possibly be GSX, all those problems disappeared once i uninstalled GSX. 

17 minutes ago, RobJC said:

that the developer said it could not possibly be GSX

That tends to be his standard line.

7 minutes ago, JYW said:

That tends to be his standard line.

I was watching a320 sim pilot doing a video and GSX screwed up the flight, and he almost rage quit over it. I am not blaming the developer for all the problems, but it just never seemed to work reliably enough for my liking. 

You can add my vote for something that's not GSX.

When I moved to 2024 I left GSX behind and don't regret it. GSX is bloated, only works sometimes and I found it cost too many resources (FPS/Memory). So yeah, there's a niche there for the taking by some intrepid developers. 

GSX is buggy as hell, but there's literally no other reliable pushback tool anywhere. And I won't be pushing back with the MSFS pushback on Vatsim...

I had lots of complaints with GSX and quit using it about 10 months ago, then decided to give it a try again about 3 months ago and it's improved nicely in terms of reliability so I will continue using it now.  The new stair operators are very well done animations in large part.   Performance is decent provided I lock frames at a multiple of 30 or 60FPG-fg.  I still have issues with some elements but it's become a clear net plus now.  I have several GSX airport profiles but fly out of many w/o profiles and it's improved from what it used to be in that regard.  One thing I don't like at all if the arrival marshal, so I am patiently waiting for Asobo to reenable the default ones that used to be in 2020 for me but disappeared except in a few 3rd party airports I'm using.  Sadly, he's just not open to suggestions that I'm sure others would appreciate.  

GSX plays well with most airports and aircraft. For aircraft that have their own animation for stairs and jetways, (PMDG, INI ,Fenix) it doesn't play well with. Its not GXS fault. Just choose one or the other. I use GSX 99% of the time if I can locate the profile for it on Flightsimto. It will supply stairs and load the plane and fuel the plane, but I don't use those features because I use instant loading and fueling. I never had a performance issue with GSX, I'm surprised to hear some folks had performance issues. I have to believe there's something else causing your performance issues.

Edited March 16Mar 16 by Bigmack

Sorry, can’t think of an alternative to GSX … you might want to try the freeware tool GSX Profile Manager where you can download GSX Profiles for many airports (not all) … just make sure you select a profile for MSFS 2024 (assuming that’s you platform) and not 2020.

4 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

GSX is buggy as hell, but there's literally no other reliable pushback tool anywhere. And I won't be pushing back with the MSFS pushback on Vatsim...

If you're looking for a no frills pushback tool that does not add risk to the stability and reliability of your simulator environment, I recommend the Toolbar Pushback from flightsim.to.  It works in MSFS 2024 just like MSFS 2020 but with a couple of limitations.  No automated pushback/manual only and no voice support.  Both of these limitations are non-issues for me. 

3 hours ago, zachlog said:

I recommend the Toolbar Pushback from flightsim.to.

My experience is this does not play well with Fenix.  Has this changed?  Blue skies,

-B

17 hours ago, RobJC said:

I would like this too, as GSX just causes too many issues for my liking. Last time i used GSX it was complaining that i needed to set the parking brake and the plane wasn’t even loaded yet.

That's a specific thing that happens only with the PMDG, which has a custom parking brake variable that is not set until *after* the airplane has completely loaded. The issue is, the airplane is *not* completely loaded when MSFS is read to fly (so that GSX could detect that), I think as a PMDG user, you surely have noticed the PMDG has a few seconds of pause *after* the sim is ready, and during this pause, it's initializing all its custom variables, including the parking brakes.

That's why, during this period where the sim is ready but the airplane is not, GSX can't tell if the parking brake is on, because it's not On until all the custom variables complete their initialization, taking a variable amount of time, which is the "pause" were you can see the yoke turned and the sim almost stopping for a few seconds.

 

14 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

And I won't be pushing back with the MSFS pushback on Vatsim...

about Vatsim, I would like to clarify the problem with GSX been fixed a long while ago by Ross Carlson, author of vPilot, with a vPilot update.

The real cause of the problem was:

- GSX must freeze the airplane when using a towbarless tug that raises the front gear. It wouldn't work otherwise.

- When the airplane is frozen, the simulator doesn't freeze the airplane body velocity variables. One might say this could be a design flaw in the sim, since I don't see what's the point to keep updating the acceleration variables after the airplane is frozen, but that's how the sim works.

- vPilot used a common network optimization method used by online games: instead of sending only the airplane positions, it uses the body acceleration variables to locally interpolate and predict the position for all connected planes, including pitch/bank/heading and since those variables didn't stop and kept their values, the last pitch acceleration caused by GSX raising the gear kept its previous value long after GSX stopped raising the gear, so vPilot was fooled thinking the airplane continued to being pitched up, but it wasn't, since it was now frozen.

- After a long troubleshooting process and having tried a fix from GSX side, by constantly rewriting all the acceleration variables to 0 at each frame, which improved a bit but was still constantly fighting against MSFS that also wanted to rewrite the variables, we found the best solution was a fix from vPilot, which was easy enough: if the airplane is frozen, it would stop to use the acceleration variables to predict the plane attitude, and that fixed of planes pitched up on Vatsim when pushed back by GSX using a Towbarless tug.

Edited March 16Mar 16 by virtuali

16 hours ago, RichieFly said:

GSX is bloated, only works sometimes and I found it cost too many resources (FPS/Memory). So yeah, there's a niche there for the taking by some intrepid developers. 

"Bloated" ? Let's see:

- Models ? Almost every GSX model is full optimized using up to the maximum number of 8-9 LOD levels allowed in the sim. Lots of well regarded airplanes out there don't even use *one* extra LOD: they are full loaded at the max detail no matter the distance. Most of the AI traffic packages out there (similar in modeling to GSX vehicles) use 3-4 LOD at most. This because adding extra LOD requires lots of extra work, and you must do it again every time you update the model, that's why they are not used as much as they should. But we don't mind the extra work, because performance is extremely important for us, even if 90% of the available memory is already taken by something else.

- The thing that might affects fps more in GSX are Seated Passengers. That's precisely why they are not enabled by default, it's your choice to use them. Something like Pushback, for example, doesn't have any impact compared to the default Pushback.

- Startup time ? Yes, GSX affect Startup time, exactly like any other large collection of AI models with many liveries and what affects startup time is the huge number of operators, almost 700, which multiplied for all vehicles results in ten of thousands of new objects added to the sim, which affect the startup time. However, you are not forced to install ALL 700 operators: there's an extra Livery Manager utility that comes with GSX that can be used to create customized sub-sets of operators for the areas you fly the most, and reducing operators has a big effect in reducing the startup time.

- Code performance ? GSX runs completely outside the simulator, so its code cannot possibly slow down the sim in any way, because it runs as a separate process in a different thread so, any calculation in GSX regardless how heavy it is, cannot affect the sim own fps, this is enforced at the OS level, which will automatically assign GSX own separate threads to spare cores of the CPU.

- Code safety ? Fact GSX runs completely outside the sim, makes it very safe compared to how it would have been if it was running in-process using WASM.  

And you don't have to take my word for it, making add-ons using external .exe is the suggested method in the MSFS 2024 SDK:

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/msfs2024/html/6_Programming_APIs/SimConnect/SimConnect_SDK.htm

As Microsoft/Asobo wrote:

Quote

The recommended method of writing an add-on is to build it out-of-process as an application (an .exe file) rather than in-process (a WASM module). This is because out-of-process applications provide more stability, if they crash they typically will not crash Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and they are easier to build, test and debug.

So no, GSX is not bloated, its modeling it's extremely optimized, its impact on fps is very low and can be easily controlled, its impact on startup time can be controlled, and it's coded using the best practices suggested in the latest MSFS 2024 SDK for both performance and safety.

 

Quote

When I moved to 2024 I left GSX behind and don't regret it

I can fully understand you might have a bad experience at start, because MSFS 2024 *itself* had lots of issues that affects GSX.

At a certain point, it was found even the most basic Simconnect "Open" command (which every app must do to start connecting) was leaking memory at each call starting from a certain update of the SDK (this was discovered by the author of Air Manager), with SU4 a bug was introduced in the programmable Tooltips GSX use to write messages on screen resulting in truncated text (fixed in SU5 Beta), during the SU5 Beta, a couple of version had ALL wheels animations INOP (affecting GSX and things like FSLTL), but both the sim quite different compared to how it was a year ago, as @Noel witnessed so, while I understand you might have found issues, GSX itself today is also very different than it was a year ago.

 

Edited March 16Mar 16 by virtuali

6 hours ago, btacon said:

My experience is this does not play well with Fenix.  Has this changed?  Blue skies,

-B

I do approximately 7-10 flights weekly evenly split between PMDG and Fenix aircraft.  I migrated to MSFS 2024 gradually starting mid-2025 and got frustrated immediately with pushback because Pushback Toolbar (PT) was no longer working for PMDG and Fenix aircraft.  What was frustrating me was that the simplest but absolutely necessary phase of a flight was not working and there was no way to fix it without installing a complex product.  What ticked me off even more was that when PMDG released the B77W, it did not include the pushback functionality that was already in the B738 MSFS 2020 version since the beginning of time.  This delayed my migration to MSFS 2024.

About 2-3 months ago, 787flyer from this forum (God bless him !) finally pointed me in the right direction.  When using PT, Assistance | Realism |  ATC Enforce Flight Plan must be OFF.  Leaving it ON creates a conflict with PT and the A/C begins to move all over the place.  In my case both PMDG and Fenix aircraft were impacted in the same way.  It is also possible that several other settings related to native ATC functionality must be OFF as well.  I had set these to OFF day #1 so I cannot say with certainty how they impact the PT since they were already OFF even when I was having PT problems.

As I indicated in my previous post, prior to starting tug movement, you must remove the chocks and you must release the A/C's parking brake.  If you don't, the A/C will start rising as if it it being levitated 😀 and it will come down slowly to the tarmac when pushback is terminated.  The PT's automated pushback and voices do not work in MSFS 2024.  For me this is a non-issue.