MeneMene

I'm revising the code to release from hold directly using the sorted table along the lines you mentioned, just to see if it results in better performance.  If it works out well, it will be in the next version.  Thanks for the detailed feedback.

THanks, I hope it works out. This also ties in with the holding pattern the traffic fly- I don't know how you've implemented the turning, but it would be nice if the AI could keep the current default turning rate when actually flying the star, while keeping a tighter, slower holding pattern so they are in the "right" physical space with regards to the separation calculations. Thanks for the response.

Several people have noticed this, but that is how it works by design.  The problem is I'm not dealing with AI arriving on one STAR, the AI are arriving on multiple STARs.  An AI approaching from the north could indeed be projected to conflict with an AI approaching from the south by the time they both line up for final.

If you're already sorting by track distance, then at any one given time there is always a "lead" aircraft and a "trailing" aircraft, no matter where those aircraft are in physical space, correct? So lets say we have 10 aircraft spawned, at various different places and on different stars. The lead aircraft gets priority and is sped up to the maximum acceptable speed (within reason of course) until it is out of the STAR. Similarly, the second aircraft goes at slower or normal speed until it has the desired clearance with the lead aircraft, no matter where it may be, and then is sped up to match the lead's speed, etc etc for the third and fourth. For the last aircraft in the star, slow them down to maximize the rate of separation. You can figure out the distance needed for separation given the rate of separation in knots and the speed of the aircraft in front, and only then if you don't have enough space put aircraft into holds. Lets say 5 aircraft or so are in various holding patterns at star entry points. You know at any given time the track distance of the "last" aircraft on a star; pick the aircraft next in line to be released from a hold (either random or a queue of some sort), and just wait until the track distance of the last aircraft is the desired separation less than the track distance from the hold, and then release the aircraft from the hold (or maybe a bit earlier to account for the time required for the aircraft to leave the hold and line up with the star again). Then repeat for the next aircraft due to be released from a hold, using the recently released aircraft as the new "last aircraft". And lastly, after all this, you still have the star exit hold available to wait for space to land in the case that something gets messed up along the way.

Anyways, I'm sure you've already put a great deal of thought into this, those are just my two cents, I'm tremendously grateful for the work so far. This is just an issue for me because when an aircraft gets put into a hold, you in see in the console the traffic that it has a conflict with, and sometimes it seems that this aircraft is one that's on the same star and many miles ahead. Sorry that I don't have a log available, i'll try to find the time to sit and let it run for a bit.

The increased sampling rate in rev M has helped a lot. Here are some of my observations; I will try to get a "verbose" log tomorrow, it's kind of hard to see what's going on in the console with it on.

1. Arriving traffic seems to be put into holds too readily. For example, when AI aircraft arrive close to eachother at the edge of the "bubble", one seems to be put into a hold immediately, at the start of a very long star (plenty of time for speed differentiation). Instead of speeding the lead up and slowing the other down, the program seems to put one of them into a hold immediately, and this is compounded when there's lots of traffic. Sometimes you see freshly spawned traffic that gets put into a hold due to another aircraft that is on the same STAR while 15+ miles away, so something doesn't seem right. That said, I can imagine the complexity in trying to "predict" the need for holding, so this might well be by design. This is with AIholding=3 and a separation distance of 4.5 by the way.

2. The holding patterns flown by the AI seem really really large and spread out. Is this intentional? Is putting them into neat, compact racetracks over the waypoint too system-demanding? As it stands, the patterns seem to cover miles, and often the traffic is out of position or at the wrong altitude when released from the hold, leading to dive-bombing to get to the correct altitude and other issues. Some traffic gets put into a hold at the entry, and then actually seems to follow the STAR (hard to tell exactly in the traffic toolbox map), before I get the "released from hold" message near the STAR's exit point.

3. Is there a way to increase the "Hold release" frequency. Ideally, lets say if 10 aircraft suddenly spawn at close to the same track distance on their respective STARs, the first few would continue at varying speeds to increase separation, while the remainder tightly orbit the entry waypoint at various stacked altitudes. Then, at intervals of 45 seconds (enough for lead aircraft at ~355 knots to go 4.5 nm for separation), you would release the aircraft in the race track from their holds, leading to a nice "string of pearls". This might be beyond the limitations of FS or your program (I probably would be stuck in getting it to work), I apologize if that's the case.

ANyways, thanks for the great program. I'll try to get a log for you so you can have more concrete data.

1. The readme says that traffic will be sped up as well as slowed down to maintain separation. I've only seen console messages for 60% speed reductions, not for speeding up. Is this as intended? If the "lead" aircraft sped up while ones behind it slowed down that would help a lot for separation.

2. I'm currently testing for a flight I'm planning to do from LPPT to LPPR. I converted the PMDG data for these two airports and made them the only two being monitored. Departing traffic from LPPT are vectored around on SIDs perfectly, EXCEPT for those that are going to LPPR (the other monitored airport). For example, "Arriving Portugalia flight no 1978 (CS-TPH) spawned more than 10 nm from monitored dep arirpot LPPT, and more than 200 nm from monitored dest airport LPPR" after takeoff rather than a SID assignment, and it just flies direct. Don't know if it's a problem with the message wording or the code logic, but the flight did not spawn more than 10 nm from LPPT AND more than 200 nm from LPPR, but rather it spawned more than 10 nm from LPPT OR more than 200 nm from LPPR. Is it impossible to vector traffic that's flying between two monitored airports? I get the same unable to vector message from traffic arriving at LPPT from LPPR.

thanks

I recently finished making the transition from FS9 to FSX, and things are going well. My AI in FS9 was pretty much custom built and very extensive, and this is the only thing that's struggling during the transition. As an experiment, I've started using the traffic toolbox dll within FSX to "filter" the AI aircraft in heavy areas; for example, if doing a flight from or to KPHL, a few minutes before the FPS-sensitive approach I will go through the list and delete any AI aircraft that isn't going to or leaving KPHL. This can drastically cut down the number of AI planes being processed by the sim (from 500+ to 150 or so in the worst case at really busy airports), letting us keep 100% AI at the target airport and still keep decent frame rates. This is in contrast to the FSX slider, which is a global setting.

Doing this manually works but time consuming, and after a few minutes more AI aircraft respawn and the performance starts dropping, meaning that if you want to keep the effect you need to keep cleaning out the AI traffic every 10 minutes or so, worse in busy areas.

How difficult would it be to make an external program, such as AIsmooth or AIseparation, that does this filtering automatically? For example, just type in the code of the airport that you're arriving at or departing, hit run, and this program would connect (presumably via FSUIPC) and the delete AI aircraft that don't meet the destination/arrival criteria. I think this would be very worth doing; for example, if I do the filtering just before turning on final at JFK I can arrive in a complex aircraft at 100% traffic in bad weather, while keeping the sim smooth, before it quickly deteriorates as I'm unable to constantly keep deleting new offending aircraft.

Any ideas?

thanks

Hello,

 

Welcome to FSX!. As for your first question: You're perfectly OK with FSX+SP1 and SP2. The second question requires a more elaborate answer; there will no doubt be lots of advises following mine, but let me kick off. FSX requires some tweaking, whatever the quality of your rig, in order to get a fluidly running sim. Before concerning yourself with AI traffic, I would advise you to do some reading on this forum. A search for 'fsx.cfg' will give you lots info. I was going to give you a link to Word Not Allowed's guide for FSX and Prepar3D, which is the best tweaking guide there is in my opinion, but I wasn't allowed to do so by the admin (don't know why). However searching on 'Word Not Allowed' will work as well. 

Regarding AI: When I made the switch to FSX about a year ago, I transferred my entire 'library' of FS9 AI aircraft (mainly WOAI) over to FSX. No problems whatoever. BUT: keep your traffic level low.

 

Good luck!

René

Thanks, I'll look at the guide. I have plenty of FS9 addons which come bundled with their FSX versions, so I shouldn't have a shortage of things to test with, and I'm not planning on buying anything just for FSX until I'm satisfied I can make the switch. The reason I focused on the AI is that when I last tried to switch a year or so ago, that proved to be one of the big stumbling blocks. The bit about keeping my traffic level low is a bit worrying, as the whole "airport environment" is one of the neatest things in FS for me, and my FS9 setup is with pretty much every currently operating airline at 100% traffic. However, like I said, I think the only thing I can really do is try it out and see how it runs. I was mainly wondering if there is anything else I can do besides using FSX-native models and textures where I can to make things run better. So anyways, I plan to install FSX, put in FSDreamteam's JFK or LAX, and then move over all my AI and see how it runs from there.

I'm going to try to take the plunge and move from FS9 to FSX. I have a newer rig now and think I should be able to run it. There are some really nice new planes that have or will come out, like the q400 and 777, and I figured it was time to try. The program that routes AI on SID/STARs seems pretty cool as well.

1) I have an old copy of FSX from way back, but not the acceleration expansion or gold edition. Do any add-ons require this, or am I ok with just standard FSX + SP2

2) Of course, the biggest stumbling blocks are frame rates and performance. I pretty much only fly IFR/airliner stuff and don't really do GA at all, and as such keeping a playable game at very busy airports with a complex add-on is important. The thing I'm most concerned about is AI- I'm kind of an AI junky and have spent quite a bit of time putting together a custom setup of AI with FS9, and my skies are pretty busy. What's the status of the FSX ai scene? I know some groups provide FSX native AI models as well as FS9 ones, but last I checked they were a minority. I'm worried if I just convert all my flighplans and AI textures to FSX format and just copy over them and the aircraft, there will be lots of non-FSX native AI and thus poor performance. I tried Ultimate Traffic last time I switched and was a bit disappointed (only one engine model for some plane types, etc), and paying that much money for just the handful of FSX-native models that I need seems too expensive. What's the best way to keep my FSX skies as rich as I currently have them in fs9?

thanks for the help.

All shots from FS9

1. Southwest 737-300; KOAK-KLAX

2. Royal Air Maroc 737-800; GMMN-DAAG

3. Turkish Airlines A320; LTAI-LTBA

4. British Airways A320; EGLL-LIPT

5. Southwest 737-700; KFLL-KPHL

6. KLM 737-900; LEBL-EHAM

Flights done from real schedules (FS9):

1. LOT E175, EPWA-LFPG

2. Alaska AL B734, PANC-PAFA

3. Hawaiian AL B763ER, KLAS-PHNL

4. Vueling A320, LEIB-LEBL

5. Insel Air MD82, TJSJ-TNCM

What aircraft were utilized for both the A320/21s as well as the A332s shown?

PSS Panel and FDE merged with the Overland model for the heavies, and the Project Airbus model merged with PSS for the A320 series. The FBW is a little bit suspect(though still very flyable), but I like the systems/FMC better than the wilco version, and it flies very good "by the numbers".

Here is the A330 merge:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/380444-a330-family-mega-merge/

The flaps needed some tweaking to get the leading edges to deploy visually, and I think I made a few other minor changes, but I like the end result. A similar A340 merge is floating around somewhere, and I got the Project AIrbus merges from the file library.

You have a great eye for shots!

Thanks, FS9 does all the work, I just hit Print Screen

Nice sunsets!

Sunrises, rather, if I remember correctly. But thanks.

I've bought it and quite like it- the wind/turbulence modelling and the forecast/flightplan tools are very well done. I have both this and ASE and this will probably be the Wx engine I predominantly use. The visibility graduation/smoothing is lacking, but it can mostly be fixed via FSUIPC until the next update comes out.

All flights are from real schedules

1. Via Airways ????-LBBG

2. KLM Cityhopper E190 EGPH-EHAM

3. United Express ERJ-145XR KDEN-KGJT

4. United Express ERJ-145 KHSV-KIAH

5. Malmo Aviation RJ100 ESGG-ESSB

6. Cityjet for Air France RJ85 LSZH-LFPG

7. LOT E175 LKPR-EPWA

All flights are from real schedules

1. Lufthansa Cargo MD-11F EDDK(?) to VIDP

2. EVA Cargo Md-11F PANC-KLAX

3. Delta A332 WSSS-RJAA

4. Vietnam AL ATR72-500 from VVTS-VVPQ

5. Niki A320 from LOWW-LFPG

6. Lufthansa A321 from LKPR-EDDF

7. Emirates A332 from OMDB - VIDP

1) Does this offer historical/past weather, as in activesky, or is it limited to real-time?

2) Does this offer wind/temp forecasts given a flight plan?

Looks really tempting if these two are true...

thanks

love the 340! is that wilco?

No, the 340's are PSS merged with the overland models

1. Emirates A340-300, OMDB-LIMC

2. Cathay Pacific A340-300, WMKP-VHHH

3. South African A340-600, EGLL-FAJS

4. UPS 757-200F, KOAK-KDSM

5. Utair 757-200, UNNT-LTAI

6. American MD-83, KDFW-KPHX

I hope the night shots aren't too dark. They look OK on my monitor.

1. Emirates 777-200ER; OMDB-LTBA

2. Thai Airways Intl 777-200; VTBS-VVTS

3. TAAG Angola 777-200ER; FAJS-FNLU

4. Utair Tu-154M; UERR-UNNT

5. American AL MD-83; KOKC-KDFW

Thanks! So that means great exterior model, but no VC, right? And by the way, I thought that it's a little bit too small to be a 300, but I didn't think of the "baby" 100.

Correct, no vc in this case, but a good exterior model and full systems. It's usually not a dealbreaker for me- if there is a vc, great, if not, oh well. I just checked my aircraft folder- it is a 100.

I love those Alitalia pics, and the last one!

Btw, what Dash 8 were you using?

My mistake- I it's actually a Dash 8-100. I merged the dreamwings q-100 with the majestic software q-300 FDE and panel.

Last batch. I'll put up more when I get enough for a full post.

1. American AL 757-200; PANC-KDFW

2. Delta 747-400; RJAA-KJFK

3. Hokkaido International Airlines 767-300ER; RJCC-RJAA

4. Air Canada 767-300ER; LEBL-CYYZ

5. Cathay Pacific 747-400; VHHH-VVTS

*EDIT: Whoops, this is supposed to be part 7. My apologies

1. TRIP Linhas Aereas ATR 72-500; SBBE-???

2. Lufthansa 747-400; VVTS-VTBS

3. Gulf Air A320; OBBI-OMDB

4. Fedex MD-11F; PANC-RJBB

5. Lion Air 737-900ER; WSSS-VVTS

I hope I'm not posting too many of these at once. I've put up about half of them so far.

1. Rossiya 737-500; ULLI-???

2. KLM 737-300; ENGM-EHAM

3. Another Air Canada A330-300 EGLL-CYYZ

4. Bulgaria Air E190; ????-LBSF

5. KLM MD-11; CYVR-EHAM

1. Airone A320 for Alitalia; LFPO-LIML

2. TAP A321; LIMC-LPPT

3. Easyjet A319; EGKK-LPFR

4. Iberia A340-300; MROC-LEMD

5. Armavia 737-500; UDYZ-UUDD