KAMIKAZE!!???

[Guest Antoni77]

G'day,After having this struggle with getting my RC4 to work, flying became much more interesting using RC4 and thereto ATC. GREAT PROGRAM/ADD-ON!I was enroute from KLIT (Little Rock) to KDFW (Dallas/Forth Worth) and was on my final approach for runway 17 L approximately 3 miles out, just waiting for landing clearence. Great I though, lined up - nice weather and excellent flying conditions so I decided to look around to see how things look like, as my speed on my Bombardier where reducing to approximately 130 knots and I where in the middle of the glideslope, just started the descent from 2.500 ft. So, I did change my view and panned to look at my plane at front. GEEE! UAAAHHHHH- %&&/

[ronzie 21]

Make sure in RC options interact with AI is checked. If you still have problems we'll continue.

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

Been hit by a Lear jet this way once. Was nicely establihed on approach and tooling along in my Bonanza at 95kts on a long IAP final feeling very proud of myself when i heard a jet engine noise approaching. Just about the time I said to myself "gee, that sort of sounds like when there is an aircraft waiting behind you at the hold short point" Bam! Down I went. Killed my company in FsPassengers. New users have to learn to appreciate that RC doesn't have a good grasp of AI in airport vicinities. Checking AI interact doesn't solve this. AI will overtake you on landing, take the runway when you are on approach, cross your runway while on your on approach, taxi through you, take off in the opposite direction etc. They just won't see you. RC makes some crude adjustments but the watch phrase is "see and avoid". Keep the volume on the default ATC up slightly and monitor what's up. Have you been assigned the opposite end of the active? Request what AI are being assigned. Did you just hear the default ATC clear an aircraft to land on your runway? Note how far out it was. Will it be there when you are? Switch to spot view, locate it, and give it bearth, extend your downwind, etc. These inconsistencies do not show up within RC itself, so you have to have an independent means of knowing what the AI understand of the environment (hence monitoring the default ATC). In fact it is interesting to use both the default and RC simultaneously and attend to what they have in common and how they differ in regard to AI--try it some time. These things add to your workload at a busy time (and getting used to two simultaneous ATC chatters takes a while at first.) But your enjoyment of the program improves and you can better appreciate how aware the program is of your own, albiet not AI, aircraft.Cheers

[Fitz505 21]

I find that using a program like AI Smooth helps in situations like this. It's not perfect, but does help in keeping some of the AI traffic from ganging up on you on final. Of course, all it takes is just one AI to ruin your day. Fitz

[Ray Proudfoot 8,944]

Hi CowelFlaps,In all the time I have been testing and running RC4 I have only been hit once whilst on approach. It is an extremely rare event. I have Ultimate Traffic at 100%. Perhaps flying a 737 with its higher approach speed reduces the possibility of a collision.RC will speed up aircraft ahead of you on finals and will slow down those behind you but in a light aircraft doing less than 100kts and especially if you're flying into a large airport you are going to encounter this type of problem more often. In short, you need to either go faster, avoid busy airports or use AiSmooth which will space out inbounds further out that RC's control. I use it regularly and that might explain why I get fewer problems.And for the newer pilots I wouldn't recommend running the default ATC with RC. Too much info will cause confusion. You can use a Pete Dowson program - TrafficLook - to check what runway inbounds are assigned to but for most of my flights they were assigned to the same runway as me or to the parallel one which won't create a problem.

[ronzie 21]

AI Smooth displays a table showing which runways are being used by aircraft inbound (released from hold) on final.Search this forun for other comments on it.

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

Hi Ray and Ron. I've long pondered this difference in people's experience with Ai and RC. I know some users seem not to have problems. Yet, I (like others) have problems all the time, almost every flght if i'm not careful. I've tried to figure out what differences might exist. Some things I've considered are: I fly low mostly (below FL180) and in GA twins and singles, not airliners. Could the problem be I bump into VFR AI instead IFR? I frequent smaller, often untowered airports. Could RC be better when there is a tower handoff? My approach speeds can be low, 75-90kts. Can RC get impatient? I use Active Sky 6. Perhaps the default and active sky weather are affecting different aspects of the program's decision making? On and on, without anything definative. I've updated FSUIPC, RC, and set TCAS range to 0. no luck. Only thing certain is that this is real and not unique to me. My AI are "Artificial" but not "Intelligent" when I use RC. thus, I've developed workarounds.I've avoided AISmooth because I must worry about CPU load--I try to avoid having programs running in the background. As it is, I have AS6, Flightkeeper, RC, and FsPassengers all running (the first three on a separate computer via Widefs). But I will give it another look. Any fps impact with it? Thanks and cheers! Cowl

[Ray Proudfoot 8,944]

Hi Cowl,It's hard for me to answer some of these since I always fly commercial aircraft ranging from the humble 737-700 all the way up to Concorde.<Possibly but if you're being caught by other aircraft rather than catching them up it suggests you're flying slower than everyone around you. RC should still be able to control Ai but it depends on the volume. Hard to tell without a log. Switch on Debug for your next flight and try to produce the problem and send JD the log.<I doubt it but I'll leave others to comment as I haven't flown into those airfields.<Absolutely not. RC doesn't care how long you take as long as you fly the headings given and descend or climb to the altitudes ordered. What are your critiques like? Do you often hear Bill Stevens? :-)<>I also use AS6 so I don't think it's that. In any case AS6 will disable the default wather. Do you let AS6 load the weather into FS9 before you start RC? That's critical otherwise Ai might be using wrong runways. Make sure you choose the AS6 option to refresh Ai and then start RC.<>Don't. It can run via WideFS anyway which is where I run it. My main machine runs FS9 and RC4. Everything else (Project Magenta, AS6, FlightKeeper runs via WideFS on an Athlon 2000 - about 5 years old now. No noticeable overhead with AiSmooth. Give it a try - I'm sure it will help you.Cheers,

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

Thanks Ray. FSDO and I get along just fine! In fact, they keep saying I'm going to put them out of business--yet they never seem to go away! :-)Added TrafficLook today via WideFS. This will be handy. I also went from FSUIPC 3.65 to 3.70. Today I did 2 flights and was a assigned the same rwy as AI. Yesterday I departed Kfat and was assigned the opposite end from what AI were using (had to manually request after monitoring default ATC). It is Possible the 3.70 is helping but it is a little early to tell since the problem does ALWAYS occur. 2 in a row could just be coincidence. I'll check again tomorrow, and perhaps add a debug.Also going to look into AIsmooth. Thanks.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,944]

Hi Cowl,<>Had AS6 finished loading all the weather and refreshed Ai before you started RC4? I always make sure that option is set in AS6 to avoid the problem you described.The changes to FSUIPC are not related to this issue. I'm also running that version. It's all about starting programs in the correct order. RC4 should always be the last to be started.Cheers,

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

RC is alway started well after AS but Ill try refreshing AS once before starting RC. By the way, at KFAT, RC chose the rwy with the best wind orientation at the time but AI were using the opposite and winds were light. Perhaps RC gives too much priority to wind, especially when they are light, as opposed to coinciding with the AI active. Favorable winds are nice, but not when they result in runway incursions and midair collisions!

[Ray Proudfoot 8,944]

Hi Cowl,<>Sounds like the Ai traffic was not refreshed after wx was loaded. There is an option in AS6 to do this automatically to prevent just this kind of problem.<>RC AFAIK uses the same runways as Ai. If there's no Ai then wind is considered but JD may be able to fill in the fine detail.Cheers,

[ronzie 21]

One thing to check is to insure within FS9 setting the Halt on Task Switch is not enabled. You want FS9 to start updating during the received weather writes from AS6. If you switch to the FS9 cockpit view you can see the weather take effect. Listen to FS ATIS and you'll find that it has not caught up yet im most cases. Go back to AS6 and (after weather writes have completed) refresh the AI. Go back to FS and listen to FS ATIS and you will find this has changed.Even after the last AS6 weather write it takes a moment for the FS weather engine to catch up, so wait a minute after the last AS6 weather write before refreshing AI.