AVSIM Column "Contrails" Adding AI Aircraft Demystified! By Pardave Lehry Associate Editor, AVSIM Online

When Microsoft previewed FS2002 at Fanstock in April of 2000, one of the exciting new components of the simulation was the addition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) aircraft. Finally, for those people that found the thought of flying online using Squawkbox a little intimidating or not practical because of access to the Internet, the system was now in place for them to fly just as if they were flying online. Technology was also now at a point where it could handle the extra burden put on it by AI. With the advent of faster graphics cards, faster CPUs and the "growth" of the Flight Simulator graphics engine, now was a good time to introduce AI. But as most of us who use Flight Simulator have come to know, the best part about the simulation is its open-endedness and the ability for the average simmer to be able to create add-ons for it with relative ease. And as with other aspects of Flight Simulator, Microsoft implemented the system, and still left room for improvement. And just like there have been enhancements made in other areas, the AI has also been enhanced. The first of these was Lee Swordy's Traffic Tools. The second innovative program, and one that made the task much easier to achieve was that of Simon Haynes' yRoute. There are others, like Elijahu Litvak's AI Traffic Shuffler. For most people, the thought of adding AI traffic to Flight Simulator 2002 can be a little intimidating. If you've read through the procedure of how to do it, chances are that it sounded really confusing, decompiling files here, copying and pasting stuff from this file to another file, saving that file, and then recompiling it all. And that's where Avsim Online and the guide that we are about to present to you comes in. Below, you will find links to The AI Traffic Guide. The purpose of this guide is to help you, the flight simmer, add AI traffic to Flight Simulator. The process can be a little tricky, but if you follow through the step-by-step procedures outlined in the guide, you will succeed. All it takes is a little effort, but that effort is definitely worth it, as I found out after I went through the procedure. So without wasting anymore time, click one of the two links below, either the Word format or the Adobe PDF format and see what AI traffic has to offer. Download either of these Tutorials: AI Traffic Guide (MS Word Doc format - Updated Nov 12, 2002) AI Traffic Guide (Adobe Acrobat format)