Difference between GA and Commerial aircraft?

[Guest]

Hi All,although in general GA and commercial traffic are routed by ATC to their respective parking spots (as indicated using AFCAD), sometimes I get sent to a GA spot flying in a 737. I haven't seen a cessna at a terminal gate though (but I have seen it in someone's screenshot).Is there ANY difference that ATC makes between the two types of air traffic, and if so - how? The selection between registration or flight number ID in the traffic file? Or is it just the order of parking space sizes and a good portion of luck that it usually goes okay?Please advice :-)Vince

[KevinAu 441]

It is your 737's mdl radius that is causing the problem. Use AITM to enlarge the radius so that you will be assigned to the larger sized terminal gate parking. The reason you would see a GA plane at a terminal gate is because all the GA parking is filled and it had to park somewhere, somewhere being the next available gate which was a terminal gate.ATC distinguishes aircraft by their mdl radius. It will park the aircraft at the smallest gate size which will accommodate. This logic can be used to direct various AI airliners to park at the same gate positions as they do at the real world airport. You can check over at the PAI forums for more info on using this method to control your AI aircraft.

[Guest]

Thanks - I was afraid it was as simple as that. This method unfortunately does prohibit large business jets (737-BJ) or small line aircraft (saab-340).... O well, AI overall is still very nice.I will certainly have a look at those PAI forums. Do you know by any chance if these PAI forums have of a list of their (PAI) aircraft sizes? I'm currently tuning parking spot sizes and it would save me a lot of trouble.....Vince

[KevinAu 441]

Yes, in the General Forums, there is a topic titled to the effect of Aircraft Radius Matrix Completed. Download the package which has the documents the method, tips, provides a list of size assignments for the airlines of the world, and provides several AFCADs to start with. There may also be one or two AFCADs in their AFCAD download section that have the gates sized accordingly also.The method does not prohibit BBJs or Saabs being parked correctly. The short answer to how is that models are treated the same way as textures. Look the package over and you will understand.

[Guest]

Thanks Kevin!I see that you were involved in creating this matrix - and it's a pretty recent thread. I have to take a look but it sounds like a very useful job done!Vince

[Guest]

Hi Kevin,I now see that what you're proposing is to use the aircraft radius as an identifier for airlines - and to some extent, the size category of the aircraft within the airline.This is not really what I've been looking for - I was searching for the actual sizes of ProjectAI aircraft, and although your suggestion is posted at the ProjectAI website forums I do not think that they have taken on your ideas.For your project to work every airport that you're interested in needs to be converted, *and* all the aircraft you use should either be pre-modified or you have a lot of work to do yourselves (while the majority of users just want a hassle-free download). The final reason to be very sceptical is that as you yourself posted that the scheme does not allow for enough airlines - and is US focused. Hey - my pet project EHAM (Amsterdam) does not even have gates assigned to airlines (or only very loosely)! All I need is SIZE identification, which fortunately the radius attribute is meant to do.Sorry to say - your proposed scheme only adds to my workload while helping little, and I will yet have to see it accepted. In the meantime I'll be using aircraft sizes and track your project's development with interest.Best regards,Vince

[KevinAu 441]

That's too bad it's not what you're looking for, I'm sure I misunderstood whatever it was you were looking for. I also do not understand what you mean by EHAM not having gates assigned, since that is not even the principle under which it works, but whatever you are trying to accomplish with EHAM, good luck.