Any workaround for daylight savings time and flight pla

[Guest]

I am trying to create as real as possible United Airlines flight plans at all their US hubs (SFO/LAX/DEN/ORD/IAD) and I'm running into a problem. For example, most of the IAD departures to Europe are around 5-6pm Eastern Time. In the summer time, Eastern Time is GMT(UTC)-4 hours. In the wintertime, Eastern Time is GMT(UTC)-5 hours. Since all AI Traffic is programmed in GMT time, I am encountering a problem where departure time during from IAD to LHR/AMS/BRU/MXP/FRA/MUC/DUS for all the late afternoon United flights, are all delayed by one hour. In the winter time, since there is a time change, the flights are "on time."Any fixes for this other than actually having two sets of "summer" and "winter" schedules?

[01pewterz28 117]

With my UAL TT I created last winter I used UAL's winter schedule. I am in the process of updating my UAL TT again for UAL's summer schedule. Right now we do not have an easy method to change for Winter/Summer times. Now that UAL has increased summer flying my new updates schedule will have many more UAL flights.Just to make sure you are using the correct GMT (SEA is 8hrs behind UTC so you have to add 8hrs to the SEA departure time. Likewise, IAD is5 hrs behind UTC so you'd have to add 5 hrs to the scheduled IAD times.)John

[Guest]

Thanks, John.However, if you notice.. if you do summer schedules, and you set SEA as UTC-8 and IAD as UTC-5, you will get all flights late to depart by one our out of all US airports. Currently, due to daylight savings, SEA is UTC-7 and IAD is UTC-4. That's where the confusion is.

[01pewterz28 117]

Yep my summer schedules will have the summer UTC time. It's a PITA to have to adjust the UTC times but it's only a matter of time that someone comes out with a utility for us to use that will convert them for us :)John

[Guest]

Hey folks, "As Real As It Gets" can only go so far. :)The airlines are CONSTANTLY adjusting their schedules year round. The only way you can possibly get to that point of realism is going to be by getting into making changes to the FS Flight Plans daily.And as soon as you release such a schedule it will be as out of date as the day you brought home your newest PC. It was already out of date before you could get it unpacked! :)If you can get schedules out that are pretty fairly respresentative of real world schedules you are already doing a tremendous job! I see little reason to worry about whether it might be an hour off because of daylight savings time.I know that is frustrating when you are a perfectionist and really want to do the best you can with it. But there are limits. Recognize them and accept them.Personally I would MUCH rather see fairly representative schedules that covered FAR more airlines than are already being attacked. That would be much more appreciated than having one airline's schedule perfect.Happy Flying!Bill MolonyAtlanta GA USAUnder the 27L Approach to KATL--the busiest airport in the world :)

[wsieffert 0]

Bill,Why is it I keep agreeing with your answers, is it a "Bill" thing. It is just nice to hear the real airlines names when aviating. I now have to pay more attention, since they are calling Delta this, United that, and I just happen to be flying the same airline!:-lol

[XWRed5 0]

How many airlines do you want Bill?There's about 180 different airlines in here.http://ftp.avsim.com/library/sendfile.php?DownloadID=14283There will be some more added in version 2 as well.Take care,Ian

[Guest]

Hi Ian,Thanks for the link, but I already have World AI and it is defintely GREAT!!! Certainly when it cam out, it was definitely the best thing we had so far and is still doing a surperb job in many ways!But unfortunately it also still depends on downloading a HUGE number of aircraft from a HUGE variety of sources. For a while I was doing exactly that so that I could get a wide variety.But the more I downloaded, the more I ran into that were of "questionable" quality at best and sometimes downright "dogs". And many of those that were indeed very high quality were also frame rate killers.I really can't complain much about that though because I found a LOT of real gems that I really enjoy flying myself. And no doubt some of those I probably would not have even downloaded except that I was seeking more AI Aircraft. So that process was definitely NOT a bad thing to say the least.But I am really excited about the possibility of getting a LOT of "good quality" aircraft that are designed specifically with the needs of AI Aircraft in mind. And PAI sounds like it is going to be THE WAY!!! :)Of course, that certainly won't replace getting the better quality ones for personal flying. It should just make the experience of flying those aircraft even more fun and realistic!Happy Flying!Bill MolonyAtlanta GA USAUnder the 27L Approach to KATL--the busiest airport in the world :)

[Guest RONVKING]

Hi,Here in the UK generally the arrival times get adjusted to the summer time anyway so we do get the hours difference anyway so I would say its accurate as it is.Rgds Ron

[Guest]

Yeah, I agree with everything said above. I'd rather have more airlines than perfect schedules. I am mainly interested in the several international routes and airlines I'm most accustomed to - esp. those routes I fly most. So I manually edit those - it's not too much work to do several dozen routes manually.However, I, too, used WorldAI for a while and loved it, until I ran out of planes that were good as AI - they had no wheels, they crashed on takeoff, etc. And the frame rates were horrible.So for now, I'll stick with Project AI. For what it's worth, it's brought alot of my main airports - UA hubs - to life... I can't wait till they have all airlines, but I find it hard to believe them to have nearly as much coverage as WorldAI had... I enjoyed seeing lots of JAL and ANA at Narita, along with US giants based at NRT, UA and NW. Now I only have NW and BA, AF and KL there.. it's still pretty desolate the rest of the day, except for the 5 hours of push time in the afternoon.

[XWRed5 0]

You don't have to download ALL the aircraft. You can just download the ones you want. I changed a lot of the variant types to one type (i.e. all the 735, 732, 734 etc. to 737) and downloaded a single model for it. I concentrated on heavies from around the world and then on the US and European airlines. I soon found that around my usual flying area there was quite a bit of traffic.I agree it looks a bit daunting when you first see all those aircraft but you don't have to download many to start getting the benefit.I agree, when we get some more PAI repaints things are really going to get fun, probably just as FS2004 gets released and none of this stuff will work anymore :-)Take care,Ian

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

I think the easiest thing to do is just run Winter and Summer schedules. This isn't as daunting as it might seem. (Note that I have NOT done this myself, but it should work...)Import your flightplan.txt file from TTools into Excel. If you are a cheap bum like me with an old version of Excel, you'll have to break the file up into 2 pieces, but any of the 32-bit Excels should take more than the old 16K-line limit. (I think it's now 64K-lines.)Next, find the columns with the Departure Hours in it. Insert another column after it, and fill that column with a formula which takes the Departure Hours and adds or subtracts 1, modulo 24. Then you probably need to export this to another text file and read it back in so you can delete the original column. Export it again and you should have a parallel schedule with the Winter/Summer change being the only difference. If you're handy with Excel this should take you all of maybe 5 minutes. If you're like me and you can't remember the formulas for modular arithmetic, then maybe 10 minutes.Good flying.