Traffic Tools new feature question

[Guest GabrielR]

Hi all, it's very exciting to have a new version of ttools, and for FREE, I haven't got time to try it yet. Does anyone now if the new feature (fixed arrival times) will allow me to distribute the arrival of the AC at my favorite terminal (e.g one arriving AC every, say... 2 min) to eliminate so many Go Arounds?It would be nice to have the beautiful "string of pearls" that I see from my 7th floor apt. here just in front of RWY 30 in KMIA, sometimes when visibility is good, I can see 5 AC aligned on a very long final and some others doing traffic patterns...

[Guest CGTHX]

You could set the arrival times up in 2 minute intervals and that would probably do the trick. I havn't really had that problem yet considering my home airport isn't really that busy :-lol

[Guest]

I've already had an email requesting I add this feature to yRoute - in fact, I've just come to Avsim to locate TTools 1.3 ;-)I'm just checking the yRoute code now - I have a feeling that saving any leg will alter the ETA time (overwrite it) with a calculated time. This might not be desirable now that flight plans can have an ETA programmed in.On the recalculate front - what happens if you specify a 1-minute granularity for arrivals, and there are 68 planes due in 1 hour? Squash them all up a bit? What sort of delay would be the minimum required?CheersSimonwww.spacejock.com

[Guest GabrielR]

Very nice folks; that looks promising. Reading the manual it says that the fixed arrival time puts the AI in the vecinity of the aiport, but that woud mean that having to manouver to align with the runway, it will result in some differences in the time when the AC will do the touchdown on the rwy, wich is what would determine the Go around thing that I see in my custom AI traffic at my local airport.Lets see how the developers work with those issues...Thanks for the reply

[Guest]

Hi GabrielThe readme says that fixed arrival time would be the time it arrived AT the gate:Quoting:" The fixed arrival time ( @ ) specifies the actual arrival at a gate, although this can still vary plus or minus five minutes depending on the amount of airport approach and ground manoeuvring required"Unquote:Its the calculated arrival time that puts it in the vicinity of the airport.I've done a few tests with this and it has helped spread out the landing times at busy airports a little but all it takes is one long landing not clearing the runway in time to throw everything out of sequence...a few go arounds then get mixed in with the spread out arrival times and Im back at square one. GrrrHope Simon can perform his magic as always :)CJ PuttKTPA

[Guest GabrielR]

Same happened to me, GRRRRRRRR!In the 1st intent I had mor GA than I usually have, (spreading to 1 min) I'm going to keep on trying, now Im going to spread the arrival times to 2 and 3 min... I got the feeling taht this is going to work, also I'll spread the traffic with mohamed's overlay for KMIA...

[Guest Stamatis]

"What sort of delay would be the minimum required?"For AI Traffic airliners I have calculated this minimum to be 3 minutes, to play it safe. 2 minutes may also do the trick but is tight. I would use 3."what happens if you specify a 1-minute granularity for arrivals, and there are 68 planes due in 1 hour?"I would spread them out to overlap into the next hour, as would be the case in the real world too. But a 1 minute interval gets you nowhere :-)Stamatis

[Guest]

>"What sort of delay would be the minimum required?" >>For AI Traffic airliners I have calculated this minimum to >be 3 minutes, to play it safe. 2 minutes may also do the >trick but is tight. I would use 3. >I'll make it user-definable, I guess I was fishing to see whether it was necessary to include no. of seconds too.>"what happens if you specify a 1-minute granularity for >arrivals, and there are 68 planes due in 1 hour?" >>I would spread them out to overlap into the next hour, as >would be the case in the real world too. But a 1 minute >interval gets you nowhere :-) >>Stamatis >Sure, but if there are 60 AI planes due within 60 minutes, yroute could spread them out over 3 hours and really mess up other non-fixed plans.I've been discussing this offline with a yRoute user, and the problem I can see (so far) is that the fixed and non-fixed arrival times are going to conflict. If you fix 1 arrival a minute for 30 minutes, but you have 5 planes 'not fixed' arriving 5-10 minutes before the first of those 30 'fixed' planes, they're actually going to try and land right in the middle of the scedule due to the 'arrival in the vicinity' and 'arrival at the gate' difference. The way I see it working is that you choose an ICAO (e.g. YPPH) and tell yRoute to fix all arrivals at a minimum interval of x minutes. It will ignore repeats (can't change something which doesn't exist in the flightplans.txt file) That might be a problem, since a 3hr repeat could then conflict with a plane on a 6hr repeat. It's going to take some thinking through before I leap in and start coding..CheersSimon

[Guest Stamatis]

"Sure, but if there are 60 AI planes due within 60 minutes, yroute could spread them out over 3 hours and really mess up other non-fixed plans."Trust me, if you have flight plans with 60 AI planes scheduled to arrive at the same airport within 60 minutes, you are messed up already, really messed up!"The way I see it working is that you choose an ICAO (e.g. YPPH) and tell yRoute to fix all arrivals at a minimum interval of x minutes."I agree. If this feature is used, there should be no distinction between fixed arrival times and computed arrival times. All flights will need to have arrival times with a x minute interval."It will ignore repeats (can't change something which doesn't exist in the flightplans.txt file) That might be a problem, since a 3hr repeat could then conflict with a plane on a 6hr repeat."Why ignore repeats? This will be a problem indeed. No good fixing the interval only for the first flight of an aircraft's schedule."It's going to take some thinking through before I leap in and start coding.."Take your time :-)Stamatis

[Guest josh0571]

Hi allSpeaking of TTools1.3 it would be nice to have a function that'd enable your AI aircraft to taxi from gate to gate (without leaving the ground).Don't know whether this is possible but it'd certainly save making fictitous flight plans to free up gates at your busy airports. The more realistic, the better, eh?!I wonder whether Lee Swordy has/can look into this ...?CheersJosh

[Guest]

Hi Josh,I was wondering about this possibility also. At DFW I send some aircraft over to the AA maintenace facility if they are not scheduled to fly for over 24 hours. I made an overlay for this facility and I am trying to find a way to send them from the maintenance overlay back to the main AA gate area overlay to resume service.CJ PuttKTPA

[Forkboy2 27]

Here's what I've done to fix the problem with so many go arounds. I've set up the AFCAD layout with a whole bunch of exit points for each runway. See the screenshots below. If the aircraft stops anywhere in that range of exit points it will exit almost immediately instead of having to taxi down the runway for 15 or 20 seconds. This particular airport is KLAX so has a bunch of high speed taxiway exits from the runway, but this works pretty well at other airports as well.See the close up screenshot to see how it is layed out, except I spread them out a little so you could see better. The runway links should line up right after each other, which causes the nodes to almost overlap.Matt

[Guest Stamatis]

What I find interesting is that not all nodes on the runway are connected to the adjacent ones. Why is that?Stamatis

[Guest josh0571]

Hi CJYeah, know what you mean. You can alter the paths that your AI follow along the given taxiways with AFCAD, right, so shouldn't you be able get them back to the AA area overlay? But then they couldn't actually come to a standstill, but would continue to taxi towards a departure runway (and takeoff with respect to your flightplans). So basically any ground movements have to be flightplan based, yeah? This is the thing that'd be great if we could change - so we just got taxiing from gate to gate or gate to remote stand, etc. Still don't know much about AFCAD yet - I just basically use people's AFCAD overlays with my TTools flight plans.Slightly off the subject - even though there's some great multiple overlays out there, eg. for EGLL, one thing that most have in common is that landing AI will not taxi to their correct gate/terminal/overlay. Something to do with the positioning of the runway/taxiway turnoff nodes, is it? (The one above looks great!)CheersJosh

[Guest GabrielR]

Hi, cool. Spreading 3 minutes: Very realistic, 85% of the flights landed smoothly, then one got messed up....Imgine the rest...I'm going try every 4 min.... (I have one rwy for TO and one for landings)