AI Traffic Time Help

[Bob Familton 14]

Are the time that are called out in the flightplans text the local time or the GMT time at the location? For VFR flights are the times the time that the A/C will contact ground? For IFR flights are the times the time that the aircraft will contact clearance control? I am confused. Thanks and best regards, Bob.

[Guest MikeS]

The A/D times in a FP are GMT. There's a slight difference between VFR/IFR, but they're still GMT. Everything AI is in GMT. You can include an @ symbol to force arrival times at a gate. I'd read the TTools help files (Flightplan section, at least) to get important information on creating FP's and how they work. It explains flight plans much better than I could.I hope this helped.Mike

[Bob Familton 14]

Hi Mike. Thanks for the info. I'll read up on it. Best regards, Bob.

[RFields5421 1]

@ symbol to force arrival times at a gateNot exactly correct.Traffic Tools and Microsoft's TrafficDataBaseBuilder program will calculate an arrival time for the aircraft based upon distance and cruise speed. Both then place the grid location / time information into the database of the traffic file.In FS2002 Lee Swordy heard a lot of requests for aircraft to be able to arrive at airports on scheduled times.So he added the @ symbol to his files - it is not part of the actual flight plan in the database file.The @ symbol tells Traffic Tools to NOT calculate an arrival time - but rather to calculate the grid data based upon distance and flight leg time.To make the aircraft arrive at the gate approximately near the arrival time - Traffic Tools backdates your forced arrival time by 15 min. So if you put in the aircraft should arrive at 1323 UTC - Traffic Tools records the arrival time as 1308.Flight Simulator uses the arrival time to generate the aircraft at the appropriate point on the edge of the active AI zone and to do descent and vectoring for landing.That 15 min backtiming worked so well that MS "borrowed" the concept for FS2004.However they do is slightly differently. FS2004 reads the traffic file - sees an arrival time of 1308 - and backtimes it on the fly another 15 min - and generates the aircraft at 1253.This actually works pretty well in FS2004 because the size of the active AI zone more than doubled in distance from airports from FS2002.

[Bob Familton 14]

Thanks for the update, Reggie. Now I know more about the AI timing. Best regards, Bob.