AI Traffic as "Scenery"

[cpurick]

Using MyTraffic, is it possible to manipulate flight plans such that there are many airplanes at the gate, but only a few moving? What if the schedule had a bunch of flights slated to start in several hours -- wouldn't those planes just sit at the gate till departure time?

I'd like to fill the airports with planes without filling the skies, runways and taxiways. Could this be done? I imagine it would be easier on framerates, too.

[CPSBruce]

What if the schedule had a bunch of flights slated to start in several hours -- wouldn't those planes just sit at the gate till departure time?

I'm not sure how the simulator handles the layover time of flights, but at the airport I work at, most commercial flights leave within an hour of arrival at the gate. I suspect simulated flights arrive much closer to departure time, but I haven't actually timed a layover.

[ReggieF5421]

AI traffic is scenery - just movable scenery.

Many, many of us have 'static' aircraft at some airports. Usually special aircraft for some purposes.

The way we make that work is writing a flightplan which includes only one movement per week - out and back about 2 am to a nearby airport.

Yes, AI traffic will be generated at the gate and sit there until the next flight for that AI aircraft starts - even if it is two or three days away.

FS does not present a moving world.

It presents the world at a specific time, with all the traffic databases read, and any aircraft which are scheduled to be within about 120nm of your aircraft at the time the FS session starts - they are created. Those in the air, and if there is available parking on the ground. The FS world starts moving at that point.

As far as FPS, aircraft in the air take resources - even aircraft you cannot see.

But they take far less resources than the aircraft you can see. It really does not matter is the aircraft you can see is on the ground or in the air - basically the same impact on FPS occurs. Each time the aircraft is presented in the frame, the polygons are drawn and textured.

That's why good AI aircraft use LOD - Levels of Detail - basically progressively less detailed models the farther your eyepoint is from the aircraft. That gives you a visual, but taking less resources.

If you are talking about converting your flightplans to static plans for airports - it's a huge task if you are concerned with more than a couple airports. Good luck.

[dasspr]

thats what I usually do... I create a flight plan with only one flight every sunday for example... departing at 1am and arriving at 5am. Since most of my flight are at day, ill be sure the aircraft will be sitting somewhere in the airport at any time... muliply that by 10-20 flight plans and you got yourself a pretty busy but static airport

[robystar]

AI traffic is based on real time traffic. Therefore you will notice that every airport has a rush hour or rather several rush hours. By starting your flight on one of those non-rush-hour times you will notice a considerable decrease in the number of AI that block your taxi- and runways.

Roby

[H_Kev55]

thats what I usually do... I create a flight plan with only one flight every sunday for example... departing at 1am and arriving at 5am. Since most of my flight are at day, ill be sure the aircraft will be sitting somewhere in the airport at any time... muliply that by 10-20 flight plans and you got yourself a pretty busy but static airport

You can do that OR...change departure and arrival times to 00:00:00.
The aircraft will just sit there forever.

KJ

[dasspr]

You can do that OR...change departure and arrival times to 00:00:00.
The aircraft will just sit there forever.

KJ

hmm I didnt know that! thanks

[jvile]

You can do that OR...change departure and arrival times to 00:00:00.
The aircraft will just sit there forever.

Using which compiler, TDBB or TTools?

[robystar]

I don't know what TDBB is but I use TTools.

[jvile]

TDBB = TrafficDatabaseBuilder.exe and is the FS9 default Flightplan utility that MS used to make all of the stock flightplans. Because it has many limitations it was decided after FS9 was released to update TTools from FS2002 to FS9 so it could be used in place of TDBB.

Someone in this thread said to set the departure and arrival times to 00:00:00 and the aircraft will just sit there forever.

That is not true. Any departure/arrival time including 00:00 will calculate an arrival time based on the arrival airport distance and speed in the airport/aircraft.txt file. If the arrival airport is the same as the departure airport and 00:00 is used in both time slots the AI Plane will do one circuit then land/park at the slotted pushback time. If the @ precedes the arrival time and locks it to a fixed time the same will occur. The @ fixed arrival time is only useful if the AI Plane flys to another AI Visual Zone.