Gaiiden

Thanks Luis! Jerz rulez! :)Tackling an aircraft next, I will be flip-flopping back and forth when I can.

Yea, we're more Mid-Atlantic this is true.

My favorite thing to do, up or down

Here's the word from Holger over on the FTX boards.Bill - if you're looking as far south as Jersey that's me. I'd be happy to lend support if needed.

yea the main forums have been giving me the same error since around 3am this morning

Click here to read my review of Rotterdam X. There are a number of issues with Rotterdam X that can be solved through the use of your AI traffic program and the freely-available Airport Design Editor (ADE). The commercial product Airport Studio (AS) is recommended also as you can edit the airport while the simulator is running and see where you are putting things in relation to the airport ground textures. Fixing these issues has lent a much more realistic feel to the airport as the scenery looks amazing but does not function all that well when you actually use it. Let me just say right up front that modifying commercial scenery is okay so long as you do not distribute any of the files you edit, which is why I'm simply describing here the things I did for other people to consider implementing themselves. Perhaps Aerosoft would be willing to work some of these into a future update to the scenery. Issue #1: Unclassified parking <a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumParkingCodes.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumParkingCodes.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumParkingCodes.jpg" align="right" width="202" hspace="5px"></a>None of the parking spots in the airport are coded to accept certain aircraft, which will lead to GA craft parking in airliner gate spots. This isn't completely the fault of the scenery designers as assigning airline codes could cause issues for customers who are using AI traffic that doesn't use the codes they used, and also because there's no rule saying some commercial GA traffic can't be routed to a gate parking spot. But for the purpose of my scenery usage I want airlines parking at gates and all GA aircraft using ramps. If you are only using FSX default traffic, then you can use ADE or AS' parking properties airline code drop down list to select the airline codes to assign to a parking location. If you use a 3rd-party traffic program like Ultimate Traffic 2 make sure you use the airline codes from that program as they can be different. If you are using extra traffic from packages like World of AI, they also may use codes different than what FSX has listed by default and your traffic program uses. To find out what code any aircraft is using, open up its aircraft.cfg file and look for the section(s) [fltsim.x] where x is a number. In these sections you will find the property atc_parking_codes. These codes are what you should put in the parking spot code list in ADE or AS. Issue #2: Lack of GA parking The default scenery does not include a lot of parking options for General Aviation aircraft and if you run your sim with a lot of AI traffic you can reach capacity easily as this is a high-volume GA airport. This means arriving aircraft will disappear from the runway when they can't locate an open parking space. The default airport has 13 ramp parking locations and now that I've made it so GA traffic can't use a gate spot this makes the parking situation even worse. To increase capacity I added 40 more parking locations. The tie down area west of the main tarmac can hold as many as 17 20' (radius) parking locations. I also added 2 20' and 2 33' parking to the end of Taxiway A. 4 33' and 4 46' parking spaces were placed over in the Jet Center parking area and 12 20' along with 12 33' parking spaces were squeezed into the rear tie down area at the end of Taxiway F. I also made added a "JET" code to the parking spaces in the Jet Center, then went into my AI traffic aircraft.cfg files and added the code to the atc_parking_codes line in all the business jet aircraft so that only jets park in the Jet Center. Makes sense right? <center><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking.jpg" width="250" hspace="2px"></a><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking2.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking2.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking2.jpg" width="250" hspace="2px"></a> Parking layout for West Tiedown and Taxiway A (left) and Jet Center and Taxiway F (right)</center> Issue #3: Lack of names for GA parking <a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumATCParking.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumATCParking.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumATCParking.jpg" align="right" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>None of the GA parking spots have names, which gives you limited options when you taxi off the runway and ask for a parking location - ATC will simply assign you an open spot somewhere in the airport that matches your aircraft's specifications. I went and named all 4 GA parking locations based on their position to the airport's center. So you end up with a West (Taxiway L), Southeast (Taxiway J) and South (Taxiway F) parking as well as Gate A (Taxiway A). Now when you pull past the hold short on arrival you can request to be sent to a specific parking area of the airport. If you still don't care you can do a generic parking request. Asking to be sent to a gate will always put you at Gate A if you are a GA aircraft small enough to park there. Another benefit is that when you go to start a flight at Rotterdam you can see from the list of parking options in the FSX Location window where in the airport the parking is located. Issue #4: Runway extends onto threshold AI aircraft only use runway properties to determine landing distance in addition to their own configuration settings - they do not follow PAPI or ILS glideslopes. Since Rotterdam X's default runway extends onto the threshold but does not have any threshold value of its own set in the runway properties, AI aircraft will see the beginning of the threshold as the beginning of the runway, which isn't correct as you are not supposed to land on runway thresholds. Larger aircraft will still overshoot the threshold on approach, but smaller aircraft like the Piper Cub will indeed land short of the actual runway markings. In some cases this will create a longer roll-out period for some of the larger aircraft to find their exit taxiway. To get aircraft landing as they should you need to shorten the runway length to 5,907 feet. The runway will shrink from both ends so you don't need to reposition it and this new length will expose the threshold and place the runway only under the runway markings. Issue #5: AI aircraft taxi off the taxi lines This is a relatively simple fix, although if you don't have Airport Studio you'll need to import an image of the ground textures into ADE so you can drag the taxi links over the taxi lines drawn onto the ground textures. Basically it's just a process of making the two lines lay on top of each other. There is a downside to making the aircraft follow the lines in that to do so you need to lay significantly more nodes to get the aircraft turning properly along the taxi line curves. AI aircraft taxi speed is determined by the distance between two nodes - longer the distance the faster the speed. Since you are adding more nodes and closer together you are effectively making aircraft take several seconds longer to taxi around the airport. The impact isn't huge, but it is noticeable if you happen to get stuck behind one of them. But if you can't bear to watch your AI aircraft taxi with apparent blatant disregard to taxi lines, this slightly reduced taxi speed is just something you'll have to deal with. <center><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumTaxi.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumTaxi.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumTaxi.jpg" width="250"></a> Airport Studio with transparency enabled to see under the aprons and taxiways so you can align to the taxi lines. Some links have been deleted to expose the taxi line for this image</center> Issue #6: AI aircraft don't hold short properly <a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShortAS.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShortAS.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShortAS.jpg" align="right" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>AI aircraft look for a special hold short node when taxiing to tell them when to stop and ask for takeoff clearance on departure and stop and ask for parking on arrival. This node can be placed anywhere, although generally it's in close proximity to the runway so that ATC does in fact grant departing aircraft takeoff clearance - arriving aircraft don't care if the node isn't close to the runway. In the default Rotterdam X airport file the hold short nodes are too close to the runway, causing aircraft to taxi over the hold short lines drawn on the ground textures. To fix this we simply move these nodes back to just after the hold short markings (see image from Airport Studio on the right). This will have aircraft stopping just short of the yellow line and ensure that aircraft arriving taxi fully over the hold short marking before requesting parking. Some of the taxiway hold shorts are very far away from the runway, but those taxiways are only used for arriving aircraft and we don't care if the hold short is far from the runway. <center><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShort.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShort.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShort.jpg" width="250"></a> ADE says our hold short nodes aren't close enough to the runway to work, but the top one does. If you modified the runway to not use the threshold, then that will indeed be too far away for the hold short on the bottom to work, otherwise it will too</center> Issue #7: AI aircraft don't follow proper ground movements I've saved the most complex issue for last. Rotterdam is laid out so that it can use two parallel taxiways to bring aircraft in and send them out at the same time without any serious interruptions in traffic flow regardless of which runway end is in use. Recreating this in FSX is, I have found, not entirely possible thanks to limitations with the AI in the simulator. I may be wrong, but hours of research and testing have yet to show me otherwise. You can come very close though - I'd say my current implementation is about 95% effective and only every now and then do you see a plane behaving improperly. It has created issues with ATC giving the user proper taxi-in directions however. Where it may tell an AI craft to taxi in via the proper "arrival" taxiway, it could send a user aircraft down a "departure" taxiway depending on where they stop after the hold short line and call in for parking. While I never witnessed an AI aircraft vanish off the taxiway after arriving due to not receiving complete taxi-in directions, I have had ATC merely say to me "taxi to general aviation parking ." and leave out any taxiway directions. So because it's not possible to guarantee proper AI movement or proper user communications with ATC, it's obvious why this wasn't included in the commercial product release. But if you don't mind a few glitches here and there in the fight for a more realistic FSX environment then it can be worth the effort to get this system up and running. In my review I showed Runway 06 ground movements. Here is a video showing proper ground movement for Runway 24. <a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumR24.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumR24.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumR24.jpg" align="right" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>If you're interested in trying to get this ground movement system working, the most important thing you need to understand is how to control AI aircraft's departure from the runway. Taxi for departure is a trivial matter to set up and get functioning, arrival is the tricky part. Airplanes of different classes will land in different spots on the runway (smaller the aircraft, closer the landing to the runway threshold) and also slow to taxi speed over different distances (smaller the aircraft, shorter the roll out). Once an AI aircraft has slowed to taxi speed it will immediately look to exit the runway to a parking location via the shortest route possible. In some cases, this exit point may be behind them. Back-taxiing to a taxiway isn't an unheard of technique for smaller planes in the real world, but you have to account for this possibility and try to prevent this from happening in some instances. For example, when Runway 24 is active, you can't let small aircraft use Taxiway V2 to exit the runway, or else they will taxi back along Taxiway V and either cause an arriving and departing aircraft to end up head-to-head and stop taxiing and time out or the two aircraft will simply taxi through each other. The image on the right shows how you can "intercept" aircraft before a runway exit and lead them down the runway to a further exit (as long as that exit happens to be in the direction of parking - remember, shortest route is the main determining factor). Red is for R24 arrivals and green is for R06 arrivals. <a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumDoubePipe.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumDoubePipe.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumDoubePipe.jpg" align="left" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>What if you have no choice but to deal with aircraft exiting off the same taxiway for both arrivals? In this case you will have to look into a double-plumbing system that will guide the arrivals down the proper taxiway depending on where they exit the runway onto the taxiway. In the image on the left, red is once again for R24 arrivals (you see it extend off the image to the right, where it connects to the runway in the previous image) and green is for R06 arrivals. Once on the taxiway these lines overlap - they are exposed side-by-side here to make it easier to see them. Blue lines represent the base taxiway network where no double-piping needs to exist as these taxi lines do not connect in any way that would lead an AI aircraft astray. For R06 arrivals, the first exit point is meant to capture the smaller aircraft like Piper Cubs before they try and back-taxi and the second is for small aircraft that need to back-taxi. The red exit you see is for aircraft that don't need to be pulled away from the Taxiway V2 exit as their roll outs take them far enough down the runway when arriving on R24. I won't lie - getting this working was not easy. It was educational, I'll tell you that, but it took hours of testing and I must have come close to giving up at least 5 times. And again, it's not perfect. But it's close enough for me and maybe for anyone else out there willing to give it a go. For further reading on AI behavior I would recommend this wiki article from FSDeveloper. You might also consider tweaking aircraft dynamics to effect things like roll out distances to further control where airplanes exit the runway, however be warned that you would be tuning aircraft for one airport in particular - which may cause unforeseen effects when dealing with the plumbing system of other airports. Good luck!

yup, it's back now

I get a server reset error too

Let's go over what I'll be talking about here on this blog. Brief intro: I'm a flight sim enthusiast who has dabbled in sims from Flight Simulator II back in the 80's to Jane's in the 90's and Microsoft Flight Simulator moving into the 21st century. Civilian sims, combat sims, I've played the whole lot of them - although some more than others and others hardly more than once. After a few years hiatus to focus on getting into the game development industry (The Sims also played a significant role in sucking up any idle time I had) I got back into Flight Simulator around 2009 and now I write reviews for AVSIM and design freeware scenery (see the info box to the left for more on that). There are four main topics I'll be discussing: Random Ramblings To be categorized as "uncategorized", these posts will cover some aspect of flight simulation and will sometimes be an opinion piece about something that's buzzing in the flight simulator community not just here on AVSIM but around the web. I'm not a very opinionated person nor am I usually one to bother sharing opinions whenever I find I have one, so don't expect these type of postings often. Generally I'll stick to commentary - I'm not looking to start a lot of arguments around here. Review Addendums If you've read my reviews (see info box on the left) you'll know that I tend to do a lot of tweaking to the product over the course of my review to make it even more realistic or effective. In my Texan review I made changes to the aircraft config file, created a voice pack mod for the aircraft model, and a few more things. For my Aerolites Falcon review, although I did not include them, I extensively revised the checklists for the aircraft and its various variations. For my first scenery review I did a lot of editing the airport file to fix parking issues, taxi accuracy, and more. I'll now be including these extra things here after the review has been posted. Flight Logs I still hop in the cockpit every now and then to go for a fly, and I record what occurs on these flights for two reasons: One is that I try to use as many real-world procedures and rules as possible wherever and whenever I fly, so for my own future reference I like to make notes of how I handled, for example, a DME arc so I can look back later on when I want to fly a DME arc again and make sure I don't repeat any mistakes. The second reason is that in describing the methods and procedures I'm using and the mistakes I'm making when doing so I hope others can also learn. Each flight log has a picture gallery as well. I have several already published I'll be adding here once a week until I'm all caught up, interspersing them with more recent flights as I undertake them. Scenery Design Every now and then I may have some thoughts or tutorials to share on scenery design as I continue to gain experience - I've only been doing it for just over a year now and am still learning as I go on. I don't model or texture yet (maybe won't at all - I was never good at that I found when I was doing game development) so I'll mainly be focusing in airport design and functionality. And that's all! I hope everyone enjoys reading

I've also seen airports that don't use a displaced threshold value for their runway and then extend the runway onto the (custom textured) threshold. Without the displaced threshold value set the AI craft will land on the threshold or short of the touchdown markings.

Was catching up on my Leverage episodes these past few days and got a good laugh out of Season 4 Episode 9 :)The team's tech wunderkid Alec Hardison is using FSX to vector an airplane he can't divert as they call a low fuel emergency down to a safe landing after the team clears out the ATC room of real controllers so they can run a con. Totally unrealistic but a hoot nonetheless :)

I can't stand the autogen, I think it's poorly annotated in all the areas I've seen even on max settings. Not surprising - to be fair accurately annotating satellite scenery in even a small way is a monumental task. Night textures are great all around. Another thing MSE has over SimSavvy is masked water textures so you get the FSX water coming through the scenery for all the larger water features, which I like. Although here too MSE has been found to be extremely lacking in some areas. For instance part of the Delaware River running along NJ is masked but part of it isn't. UTX layered atop MSE helps expose more water features though. Maybe it works the same way when layered atop SimSavvy as well?

Ah, people who are having trouble seeing this setting are probably on Advanced View. This is one of several predefined ATI settings for the card and is only visible on Standard View of the interface (can be changed up in the Settings menu). For me & other Advanced View users I follow Tom Tsui's recommended settings, they work great on my machine.

Been experimenting with time-lapse photography of FSX so that I can leave the sim running while I sleep and capture hours of footage at a small file size compared to video and then play it all back when I wake up to see how my airport's AI network is behaving. (I use an even slower version than the video above) This video was a 16-hour real-time test for stability and also to get an idea on file sizes, rendering methods, etc. So unfortunately besides some clouds to start and a sunset at the end there's nothing really artistic about this footage, heh. Now I'm running the sim at 4x speed for even more in-game time captured for later study.This video mainly shows (and stress tests) my improved ground movement patterns for Aerosoft's Rotterdam X scenery, modeled after the actual airport ground movement charts. Here you see movement for runway 06.Enjoy! (this board doesn't enable fullscreen videos so visit YouTube to get the full 1080 HD effect!)More information on the time-lapse making can be found on my blog. We're also discussing the technique over at FSDeveloper.

awesome, thanks!

I have some AI aircraft from Ultimate GA showing black polys for propellers when they are running. Most likely because they are FS9 models and the alpha textures for the props aren't made properly to work in FSX. That's my guess anyways. Any fix?

yup that's NIko 0_0 ##### dude, hahaha. Funny stuff. Let us know if you ever figure out what the hell happened

You can increase the detail radius in your fsx.cfg, which will make objects "pop" in farther away and perhaps be less noticeable but that will impact performance.

I have the optional patch downloaded already but haven't had a chance to check it out.Also, since I've been doing scenery design for over a year now expect me to be ripping up scenery products with a fine-tooth comb as well where I'm able to apply my own experience...

Can't say at this time what I'll be reviewing next but it will be a scenery product.Don't have Ant's Drifter, but then again I don't have much in the way of additional aircraft in my hangar. I tend to spend a LOT of time with a single craft to really get the hang of operating properly rather than jump from aircraft to aircraft. Right now I'm still settling into the Carenado V35B

Yea so it's been a while since I've gone on a planned flight - and even this flight I'm blogging now actually took place back on October 22nd! Besides my airport scenery development I've also been busy getting started as an AVSIM staff reviewer - I've already written two reviews and will be working on a third this month. Also at the time I was rather frustrated after not completing the entire flight I had planned out and that put me off blogging it right away. Then the rest of life caught me up in a whirlwind that still hasn't quite set me back down. I guess this flight was doomed from the start when I began planning it at like 2 in the morning. It was so long since I had planned a flight that I was forgetting things that needed to be done - my memory retention has never been all that great. So that slowed the process and to make things worse SkyVector decided to stop loading charts on me before I could complete my planning. Then I added to the problem by deciding not to sleep since it was by now after 4am and just get set to takeoff with the dawn and fly all morning/afternoon and then crash the rest of the day. Here's the full flight plan. Leg 1: KBLM - KFWN I started out in the Bonanza V35B out of Monmouth Executive, where it was parked last. Once airborne I had a simple VOR route plotted that would take me within spitting distance of Sussex. Weather was calm and clear and the VOR beacons came through strong and steady. I realize now that I completely forgot to tune into their Morse frequencies and identify that I was setting course towards the proper beacon - luckily that wasn't an issue this time around (I have caught myself in earlier occasions of being tuned to the wrong VOR!). I did let my attention drift every now and then (sleepiness probably didn't help) so I was banking left and right to get the course needle back to center, and of course thanks to the tip tanks keeping the wings level wasn't made any easier. I probably should have topped them off before departing KBLM but didn't bother. I pulled int KFWN airspace right on target and flew the pattern around the airfield, lining up perfectly with the runway as I rolled out of my base turn to final. Sussex doesn't have much useable runway left for landings these days - my theory is that to save money on repairs they've simply moved the displaced thresholds further and further towards the runway center. Anyways it's best to land a bit fast in the V35B, so I touched down around 60kts and immediately had to stand on the brakes to come to a stop with just enough room to taxi off at the end of the runway. Leg 2: KFWN - 1N7 Once I parked, shut down and saved the new location of the V35B I loaded up the American Aerolites Falcon, which was an aircraft I had recently reviewed. It's a nifty little ultralight and I was going to make a short hop with it down the Delaware River to Blairstown - since the Falcon can only go around 55kts for a normal cruising speed. The falcon is a stick and throttle aircraft so I had to reconfigure my hardware setup a bit to get ready to fly, including some axis and button assignment changes as well. By the time I got off the ground the sun was fully up over the horizon. The flight down the Delaware and to 1N7 was largely uneventful. I found the river okay and followed it down to the Water Gap, at which point I turned off the engine and glided down through the gap, enjoying the wind rushing past me before kicking the engine back on again near the ground and continuing to power towards 1N7. This I found through dead reckoning and flew the pattern down to land and taxi to a parking location. In doing so I ended up "below ground" and realized I would need to add a flatten polygon to this airport scenery when I revisit it sometime in the future. Leg 3 Fail Next it was time to load up a freeware aircraft in my library I hadn't tried yet, a Cirrus SR20. It looked good at first glance, enough for me to want to try it, but ultimately proved to be less than adequate for my demanding sim realism needs. The controls, especially the radios, were hard to read and see, and every time you so much as tapped the brakes the whole nose would dip down like 2 feet as if you slammed on them instead. It was so bad that when I used the pushback function to move the aircraft backwards out of a parking space, when I stopped the craft tipped back onto its tail and stood there! I had to power up, start moving and tap the brakes to drop the nose back down. To add to my frustration I had forgot I had set my yoke/throttle null zones extremely wide to prevent dual inputs from being sent to the sim when I was using my joystick to control the AA Falcon while the yoke was still plugged in. So I didn't have enough power, yoke control to take off when I rolled down the runway the first time. Finally, after making it into the air clouds had moved in to prevent me from climbing to 8000' like I had planned. Rather than go around I decided to go over - but at around 12,000' I started losing climb performance and only then discovered that apparently this aircraft has an adjustable propeller pitch but couldn't see a control in the cockpit for it. Regardless, I was beginning to get seriously tired and annoyed in general so I just shut down the sim right then and there, and went to bed. Hopefully my next outing will be a bit more enjoyable overall Hopefully it will be sometime soon as well... heh Originally posted to my personal blog

Thanks guys. I'm a pretty hardcore simmer and specialize in GA and UL aircraft so the Falcon was the perfect option for me to do my first full aircraft review. I'm glad it turned out as well as it did and I didn't have to completely trash a product for my first review :) I think I set a good tone for my future reviews, which will follow the same format and go to the same length to ensure that a product is as accurate as it claims to be.

Oh hey thanks, and no problem. I personally looove the way N51 came out :)

You need to make your RSS feed link way more prominent and up top, I had to search a while to find it and almost didn't bother. Please have a look at my site, I believe it is quality freeware you are looking for - http://www.mseairports.com/index.php There is a catch - it sits atop payware scenery. Dunno how that works for you.

No idea what was happening here, a restart of FSX fixed it - some kind of occlusion issue, but it was pretty damn cool! :) I felt like Superman, lol