Cargo-liners at the Gates! (World of AI Problem)

[Joey5574]

Hi! I really like the World of Ai traffic on my FSX! But then, one thing that really made me sad was the fact that there were bunch of CARGO-liners at the gates. I doubt that's how things work in real life. I really don't like these cargo-liners taking up the space that should be occupied by passenger planes, and I'd rather uninstall the Cargo Packages. The problem is, I really don't know how to UNinstall a World of Ai package. What would even be BETTER would be able to still keep the Cargo-liners, but NOT have them at the gates.

[dlfrenchmd]

A number of things could be contributing to what you are seeing.
Questios to help narrow it down:
1. Have you used an airport design editor program to assign arriving aircraft to a correct parking space? If not, it takes a little to fix but it's lots of fun and you'll be assigning aircraft to gates and ramps at all your airports in no time.
2, If you have assigned parking slots, you may not have enough of them. One of the problems at my KCVG Cincinnati airport is occasionally all the DHL cargo slots are taken up and the Delta concourse starts seeing cargo planes! Adding more cargo spots can correct this.

Dan

[TheBoeing738]

Hi Joey,

I'm pretty sure you can assign certain aircraft to certain parking/gate spaces by using the program "AI Flight Planner" (AIFP). It's free and can be downloaded online. You should be able to select which gates you want your aircraft to use. It's either this program I'm thinking of or it's the one below - I can't quite remember, but I've seen this option somewhere.

You can edit airport gate sizes by using the program "Airport Design Editor" (ADE) - As the above post mentions. It's also free but you need to have an up-to-date FSX module and SP1 of ADE. You can change a gate's radius and you can even select which airlines use a certain gate! I find this quite handy for WOAI traffic because it allows you to set up terminals just like in real life!

I hope this helps

[Joey5574]

Thanks Dan and TheBoeing738! I'm going to try to use the AI Flight Planner.

[fxsttcb]

The AI plane needs designated parking in it's aircraft.cfg. AIFP will not correct that easily. A notepad edit copy/paste is quicker.
[fltsim.X]
...
atc_parking_types=CARGO, MIL_CARGO, RAMP
atc_parking_code=FDX

If "CARGO, MIL_CARGO, RAMP" is not available at the airport it will be placed at a vacant gate when it spawns.

atc_parking_code will be used first, IF the airport scenery has a parking space available with that code and correct type.

It's a pain to fix a bunch of AI aircraft, and still have them show up at gates. The only way to allevite that is edit the offending airport.

With ADE9X you can open an airport.bgl(Default or most Add-Ons) and edit or add some parking types and assign codes.
Be aware that it is not easy to avoid duplication of default buildings etc when editing.
Visit the Scenery Design forum for expert help with adding/editing your airports...Don

[ReggieF5421]

Your problem isn't the WoA packages or aircraft or how they are setup.

Your problem is that your airports are not setup for that level of AI traffic.

Default FSX airports have a lot more parking than FS2004 airports - for example

EGLL - 60 FS2004 / 188 FSX - 8 Cargo
EDDF - 60 FS2004 / 178 FSX - 7 Cargo
KJFK - 59 FS2004 / 209 FSX - 6 Cargo
KLAX - 34 FS2004 / 165 FSX - 15 Cargo
RJAA - 49 FS2004 / 108 FSX - 14 Cargo
YSSY - 38 FS2004 / 91 FSX - 2 Cargo
WSSS - 16 FS2004 / 81 FSX - 4 Cargo
OMDB - 27 FS2004 / 99 FSX - 0 Cargo

The situation is worse at smaller airports.

But also note that despite the larger number of parking spots, there are not enough stops for full realistic AI traffic.

More importantly for your problem - there are not enough Cargo spots for a decent level of cargo airlines.

You also need to understand how AI traffic loads. When you have several different traffic files - each file loads individually. FS does not 'load' all the traffic for an airport and then assign parking. If you have four traffic files

Traffic_ABW_AirBridgeCargo.BGL
Traffic_DLH_LufthansaAirlines.BGL
Traffic_GEC_LufthansaCargo.BGL
Traffic_KLM_KLMRoyalDutchAirlines.BGL

At EDDF Air Bridge Cargo will load and put 2 B747 aircraft into 2 of the 7 cargo spots. DLH will load, and put 6 heavy aircraft onto the airport - but there are only two heavy gates - so DLH will use both and put 4 heavies into Cargo spots. Note the A380 can only go into default Cargo spots - you have to create custom Gate_Heavy spots for the A380 of 40M.

That leaves only one parking spot larger than 23M available for the Lufthansa Cargo 18 MD-11F aircraft.

No KLM heavy aircraft will be parked on the airport.

Now lets look at KJFK. 12 traffic files. The airport has 24 Heavy Gates and 6 Cargo spots.

Traffic_AAL_AmericanAirlines.BGL
Traffic_AFR_AirFrance.BGL
Traffic_AFRC_AirFranceCargo.BGL
Traffic_CLX_Cargolux.BGL
Traffic_DAL_DeltaAirlines.BGL
Traffic_DLH_LufthansaAirlines.BGL
Traffic_FDX_FederalExpress.BGL
Traffic_GEC_LufthansaCargo.BGL
Traffic_KALC_KoreanAirlinesCargo.BGL
Traffic_NCA_NipponCargoAirlines.BGL
Traffic_UAL_UnitedAirlines.BGL
Traffic_USA_USAAirways.BGL

AAL loads and uses 4 heavy gates. Air France Cargo loads and uses one heavy gate and one Cargo spot for the A380. Air France Cargo loads and uses 1 Cargo spot. Cargolux loads and uses 1 cargo spot. Delta Airlines loads and uses 4 heavy gates. Lufthansa loads and uses 2 heavy gates and 1 cargo spot for the A380.

So far we have 11 heavy gates and 4 cargo spots used.

Federal Express loads and uses 2 cargo spots. All the Cargo parking spots are used.

Lufthansa Cargo, Korean Airlines Cargo and Nippon Air Cargo each load and use 3 heavy gates for their MD-11 and B747 cargo aircraft because the cargo spots are full.

Now there are 14 heavy gates and 6 cargo spots used. Of course any other cargo airline flying into KJFK with any sized jet aircraft is going to be parked at a Gate parking spot.

There are two ways to deal with this lack of parking issue. One is to modify the airports to add extra Cargo parking spots with ADE - Airport Design Editor - you must have FSX Deluxe and install the SDK to use ADE in FSX (In FS2004 the SDK is free and installed by ADE). Or you could buy a tool like AFX from Flight1 if you don't have FSX Deluxe or Acceleration.

The second way is to use a commercial payware AI traffic program like MyTrafficX or TrafficX. Those include hundreds of modified airport parking files, and most airports include enough parking for the cargo airlines in the package.

However, if you add more cargo airlines, you will have to modify those airports to add more cargo parking spots.

Also, most default FSX airports are short on Heavy Gate parking and need more added to the airport with a tool like ADE.

[Joey5574]

Thanks a lot for your help! I really thank Reggie for posting that long post about the gates. I apologize for not posting this earlier, my 'cargo-liners at the gates' problem is at Seoul / Incheon in South Korea. I can kind of understand that Incheon is Korean Airline's home airport, but than there is WAY too many Korean Air Cargos in the airport that it would just look totally unrealistic to add a bunch of new cargo parking spaces. So, does anyone know how to UNinstall a World of Ai package?

[fxsttcb]

You can delete an entire Airline using the WOAI installer in "Expert" mode.
If the aircraft the*.bgl uses are not used elsewhere in a WOAI package they will be deleted also.
You can easily disable that Airline without anything more than changing it's file extension. ie: from *.traffic_FSX.bgl to *.traffic_FSX.bak

When I see that, rather than delete the Airline, and have none of it anywhere, I use AI Flight planner by Don Grovestine to edit it.
With AIFP, the easist way is just "Open Traffic .bgl", select from "Flight Plan List" and change the "Activity Level" to above what your normal traffic % is. Do that for the overcrowded airport only and you'll still have them elsewhere.

If you so desire, you can delete entire FPs from the "Flight Plan List" by right click, "delete selected items"

When done editing, "Files/Compile Traffic File and Save"...Done

If you don't just disable one, do a back-up first, you may change your mind later...Don

[ReggieF5421]

The WoA KAL Cargo v2 package uses flight plans from the summer of 2008 (approx 4 years old) by Rick Tam of the Alpha-India Group.

It calls for 2 A300 aircraft, 18 B747-400F aircraft and 2 B747-400PW aircraft. The fleet information from Wikipedia says the A300 aircraft have been phased out - and the airline has 24 B747-400 cargo aircraft, 1 B747-800 cargo aircraft and 1 B777F aircraft - so the WoA package actually has two too few Korean Air Cargo aircraft.

The cargo ramp in the FSX default airport has 10 Cargo spots. Google Earth imagery from Sept 2009 shows that ramp has a 1,000 foot deep extension which is not in FSX and has 32 cargo spots for B747 sized aircraft - which would be 33M if you sized them to match the wingspans correctly. The Google Earth images show the spots to be quite close for a cargo ramp - just 30 ft between the B747-400 wingtips. A quick check shows that 22 33M sized cargo spots will fit on the default ramp - a bit more than double the default.

[Agent00729]

I too get this problem. Can someone explain how to make it so the cargo planes stay at the cargo parking and the passenger planes stay at the terminal?