AI Traffic Questions

[scott_295]

I recently discovered the existence of the Traffic Toolbox SDK and downloaded it. I like it because it makes things a little more interesting.

 

I also downloaded some textures for the default airliners (737, 747, 777, and MD-83) and the Learjet.

 

So, my questions are:

1. What determines the number of each type of airliner? For example, I've seen that over more populated areas, there are a bunch of 737s and less so of the MD-83s, 747s, and 777s. I understand why there are less of the big boys, but why the MD-83s? I wondered if the number of textures for each type also determines the number of actual planes but I have an equal number of textures for the 737 and MD-83 (5 each). I would think there would be close to an equal number of planes but the 737s far out number the MD-83s. When I first downloaded some textures for the MD-83s, I removed the 737 folder and there were a bunch of MD-83s flying around, using all available textures. When I added the 737 folder back into the aircraft folder, the number of MD-83s dropped significantly.

 

Actually, the same seems to be true for the 747s and 777s. There always seems to be a few more 747s than 777s. And in that case, I have 5 747 textures and 8 777 textures.

 

2. What determines which textures are used? I think one of the 737s isn't, two of the MD-83s aren't, and one of the 777s isn't. To be clear, I have not seen those textures (airlines) listed in TT Explorer. Is it the order of the textures in the aircraft.cfg file?

 

3. What determines how many of each is used? I suspect, again, it might have something to do with the order of the textures in the aircraft.cfg file, but I'm not sure of that.

 

4. Here's a really easy question, which I believe I know the answer to, but I'm going to ask anyway: is the Learjet considered "general aviation"?

 

Before anyone asks, yes, I have triple-checked the aircraft.cfg files and there are no errors.

 

Also, all of my airlines are in the airlines.cfg file and there is a sound file associated with each of them.

 

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

 

 

Lastly, I have seen reference to AI flight plans in other threads. I've searched in Windows but I don't know what I'm searching for, other than *.pln, but I don't think that's correct. What folder would these be in?

[chris_eve]

All sorts of questions :)

 

Numbers of each type of airliner will depend on their parking/operating requirements and availability of such at the airports under consideration. When using a "random generator" flight planner, like the SDK, each aircraft entry is treated similarly, assuming the previously mentioned requirements are met. So yes, if you've got more 737 liveries you'll get more 737s in the air!

 

Triple-checking is usually insufficient ;)

If a particular aircraft and/or livery doesn't appear it'll almost certainly be because of a problem somewhere. Personally, I have a "test environment" in the middle of the Sahara with a couple of runways with associated taxiways and appropriate parking and any 'plane that doesn't behave itself in the "normal FS9 world" gets an individual flight plan telling it to do circuits out there in the desert.

Does it appear at all?

Does it taxi and park correctly?

Does it take off and land correctly?

Any of these factors will affect it's performance, but can be difficult to monitor in an environment where there are other things happening. You'll need to be sure that the SDK doesn't "know" about your test environment when you run it, else it'll populate your airfield for you and possible leave no space for your testing!

 

Do you have other traffic files active which may be occupying parking slots etc. at the expense of your home generated files? The SDK does seem to assume that it'll be generating the only active flight plans and will try to populate the whole world if asked to do so. You may well wish to disable the default traffic030528.bgl file … rename it to traffic030528.bgx or similar, so you've still got it if you want to revert, but it'll be inactive under normal circumstances.

 

AI "flight plans" are actually .bgl files and "usually" (sensibly?) have "traffic" incorporated in the filename somewhere and are "usually" installed the default Flight Simulator 9\Scenery folder but can be installed in any active scenery folder.

 

The .pln files are flight plans for yourself, something you've generated to fly from point A to point B, often/usually via points C, D and E etc.

[ColR1948]

The AI flight plans say what aircraft fly to and from, some plans are fairly accurate so in one country/airline

may fly more of one airliner than another, and as said some airports can't accommodate certain aircraft even if the flight plan is set for that aircraft to go there.

Also check your sliders for the amount of airliners you have set, some flight plans are set for 100% others less so if the sliders is low then some airliners won't show, but remember if your system is a low spec having the sliders set to 100% can affect your frame rates.

What AI package are you using? Are you adding one airline at a time or a full package?

 

World of AI is a good one you can pick and choose what airline you want, some full package ones are not so good, some have poor models and bad textures.

 

Col.

[scott_295]

If a particular aircraft and/or livery doesn't appear it'll almost certainly be because of a problem somewhere.

The AI flight plans say what aircraft fly to and from...

After I posted, I ran across a couple of threads that pointed me in the right direction (previous threads I read over weren't helpful at all). I basically figured it out this morning after a few hours and headaches yesterday. (why can't MS make this sh*t easier?)

 

The solution to my problem: the traffic030528.bgl has to be edited to include the new textures (liveries/airlines, whatever). And as I read somewhere, if there's not a flight plan associated with a texture, it won't show up. So even though I added some new triple 7 and MD-83 textures, they won't be used as AI because there aren't any flight plans associated with them (I didn't know the whole process before). Which is why I could see newer textures if I was choosing that plane to fly but they wouldn't show up as AI.

 

I ended up using Traffic Tools to decompile the traffic file and added the new textures manually. All's good. I just need to create flight plans for the new liveries, now.

 

Thanks fellas.

[chris_eve]

The solution to my problem: the traffic030528.bgl has to be edited to include the new textures (liveries/airlines, whatever).

 

I ended up using Traffic Tools to decompile the traffic file and added the new textures manually. All's good. I just need to create flight plans for the new liveries, now.

 

Thanks fellas.

 

Sorry, when you wrote "discovered the existence of the Traffic Toolbox SDK and downloaded it" I assumed you were using the SDK to generate AI flights … your approach using TTools is a little more tedious but at least you can define exactly which aircraft operate from exactly which airfields and when :)

You might want to be aware that multiple traffic files are no problem in FS2004, it was FS2002 that needed all the traffic to be in one file, so you can add one airline at a time in separate files, rather than have to re-edit the whole shebang in one go!

Enjoy!

[ColR1948]

+1 what chris said above, I too thought as Chris did.

If you do decide to do separate flight plans try AIFP, it is a lot easier than TTools, plus you can de-compile existing flight plans with it as well.

 

http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?folder=AIFP&function=be-aware

 

Col.

[scott_295]

Sorry, when you wrote "discovered the existence of the Traffic Toolbox SDK and downloaded it" I assumed you were using the SDK to generate AI flights.

+1 what chris said above, I too thought as Chris did.

Sorry to mislead you, guys. lol I just meant that I like seeing all the AI traffic that's around me. But I could see how one would make that assumption.

 

As for using that SDK to create flight plans, I read over the instructions and I was totally lost. And I taught myself DOS years ago!

 

I've been trying out two different flight plan creators, because I'm not sure which I like better: AI Flight Creator and TrafficRouteCreator. Neither is perfect but it's what I found on this site. I only use TTools for the compiling/decompiling.

 

I'll have to try out AI Flight Planner. It already looks like an improvement over the other two.

 

Quick question: I know a flight plan needs at least two legs so is it possible to have a plane depart on one day but arrive back at its origin airport on a different day? Does that make sense?

 

For example, could I have a plane fly from Denver to Seattle on Tuesday but have it return to Denver on Friday?

 

From everything I've seen in the two flight planners I have, and after reading over the instructions for AIFP, it doesn't appear if that's possible. Or am I (hopefully) wrong?

[chris_eve]

As for using that SDK to create flight plans, I read over the instructions and I was totally lost. And I taught myself DOS years ago!

 

Quick question: I know a flight plan needs at least two legs so is it possible to have a plane depart on one day but arrive back at its origin airport on a different day? Does that make sense?

 

For example, could I have a plane fly from Denver to Seattle on Tuesday but have it return to Denver on Friday?

 

From everything I've seen in the two flight planners I have, and after reading over the instructions for AIFP, it doesn't appear if that's possible. Or am I (hopefully) wrong?

 

From the documentation in the SDK :-

"Q: Is it possible to assign an aircraft to only fly from airport A to airport B instead of a round trip?

 

A: No. One of the design goals of the AI traffic system was that aircraft should not appear or disappear suddenly while in view. To meet that requirement, all routes must be round-trip so that the aircraft's position in the world can be accounted for at all times."

 

The "return trip" can be effected very late in the day, so the aircraft remains visible during daylight hours, then a second flight arranged from Seattle for the Friday. In the interim period, if you really want an aircraft just sitting on the apron occupying a parking spot, schedule it do a quick circuit at 2 in the morning, or some other time when you won't be watching, else assume it's in a hangar for service ;)

Do note, that unless you are very careful with your allocation of parking spots and have plenty of "spares" it's possible that the aircraft may "move" overnight and be parked somewhere else the next time you switch on, especially at a busy airport.

The ai engine tries to be clever, but it does make certain basic assumptions and can need quite a bit of leeway between flights if aircraft aren't to simply disappear because, at the time of landing for instance, there simply isn't a parking spot yet available!

Edited February 19, 2022 by chris_eve

[leuen]

An other option might be a fake Afcad. You create it somewhere in the vincinity of one of the airports or between them. Add just a mini runway without parkings. The AI will disappear at airport A during night, "flies" to fake airport, stays there and will reappear at airport B during night again. Doing this way, the aircraft won't unnecessarly stay and wait at airport A.

 

It's a method that I use with aircraft which should be there just at certain days, f.i. air shows.

 

Bernard

[ColR1948]

If you try AIFP just do one flight till you get the hang of it.

An AI aircraft has to depart from airport A then fly to airport B, it can't just stay there it has to do a return trip. You can have it flying to other airports in the flight plan but it must always end up back at airport A even it it took a few days going to other airports.

 

Col.

[scott_295]

It seems as if it is possible to have a different departure day for the next leg. When doing a "weekly" flight plan, a number and forward slash are added to the departure time, like this: 1/15:59:25; the "1" indicates Monday (you guys probably know all this, already). (Micros$oft, in its infinite wisdom, numbered the days of the week 0-6, for Sun-Sat)

 

So, logic would dictate that if I can set the departure to one day, then I should be able to set the departure of the next leg to another.

 

I haven't checked it, yet, but I just finished creating a weekly flight plan from Oxnard to San Jose to Seattle and then back to Oxnard. It departs OXR on Monday at 0800 (1/15:59:25z), departs SJC on Thursday at 1630 (4/23:29:56z), departs OXR a couple hours later, and departs SEA at 1530 on Friday (5/23:29:35z) for the return to OXR.

 

I'm crossing my fingers that this works. Of course, I'm under no delusion that MS will recognize it as valid. Or, as someone suggested, the plane will just disappear at some point in time and then spawn at another. If that's the case, I don't really care; I'm not a micromanager. I only care that the plane departs from each airport when it's supposed to. I do think it would be kinda cool, however, if it did sit at some airport for a few days. But, whatever.

 

Something I find interesting is that I didn't create that time above (15:59:25). It should have been 16:00:00. My first assumption was that the extra 35 seconds is for taxiing, but that's not nearly enough time, even at a small airport like OXR. Besides, why would it be 35 seconds at OXR one day but 32 seconds on another? Goofy. Maybe it's generated randomly to add some semblance of realism? If that's the case, then the time should be a little later, shouldn't it? I mean, I've never been on a flight that left on time. :p

 

Regarding the flight planners: AI Flight Creator seems more user friendly than Traffic Route Creator, but it has bugs. AIFC's help file clearly states that you can edit a flight plan by clicking on it and then clicking the "Edit Flightplans" button. Guess what? There is no "Edit Flightplans" button. But, if you hover the cursor over a flight plan, a tool tip pops up that reads "Double Click to Edit the FlightPlan". Double-clicking brings up an error window. :rolleyes:

 

I'm going to download AIFP, later, and check it out. Thanks for the heads up on that, Col.

 

And thanks, guys. I'm really enjoying this conversation. (I don't get out much :p)

Edited February 19, 2022 by scott_295

[ColR1948]

Nice one Scott, yes AI can be fun once you get in to it, take your time just do one flight plan and check it all works, if not it might be a simple mistake we all make them.

Once you do get going it will be second nature to do a flight plan and you won't even have to think about it.

Also look for Traffic View Board, you can follow the AI the full journey and listen to ATC talking to it.

 

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2743/fs2004-traffic-view-board/

 

Col.

[scott_295]

Nice one Scott, yes AI can be fun once you get in to it, take your time just do one flight plan and check it all works, if not it might be a simple mistake we all make them.

Once you do get going it will be second nature to do a flight plan and you won't even have to think about it.

Also look for Traffic View Board, you can follow the AI the full journey and listen to ATC talking to it.

 

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2743/fs2004-traffic-view-board/

 

Col.

Excellent. Thanks man!

[tgibson_new]

And the answer to your question is yes, you can have a plane fly a leg on one day, and then fly the next leg (or return) the next day (or any day that week).

 

But keep in mind that means the plane will be sitting at that airport the entire day, using up a parking spot.

[defaid]

Hi Scott.

 

If you have Traffic Tools installed correctly then clicking the Help dropdown menu should open a document that describes the ins & outs of the three files required for making a flightplan. Given your comment above, I guess you've found it. The section about the structure of flightplans.txt and the section on setting times & dates are a very useful reference.

 

The compiler will handle flightplans that span several days perfectly well, and FS9 is equally happy with the resulting bgl.

 

Concerning your question about the odd 35 seconds, I've always thought it's just some strange aberration in the compiler, possibly something to do with the way the turnaround time is implemented. You can have fixed times for arrival & departure (insert an @ in the appropriate place) or have the compiler set the arrival times according to the aircraft's cruise speed defined in the aircraft.txt document.

 

Once you've got your head around the flightplans.txt structure, very small flightplan bgls up to half a dozen legs and two or three discrete plans, are easily created as three documents in notepad and then compiled. I find my brain lasts longer if I create each leg on a new line and only join things up immediately before compiling.

 

If you want to do a complete airline then doing so manually is more than a little daunting and AIFP is your very best friend.

 

D

Edited February 21, 2022 by defaid

[ColR1948]

Also IF you ever move over to FSX don't put FS9 flight plans in there coz it will kill any FSX plans.

The reason is the @ sign, once that is deleted from the plan/s they usually work in FSX, but that is moving on but bare it in mind.

 

Col.

[scott_295]

Hi Scott.

Please, call me Hal, as in Hal9000, like my avatar. While Scott is my last name, I used to get teachers who would reverse my name and think that was my first name. I don't know why but it irritated the hell out of me. I realized - after it was too late - that I should have picked a better user name for this site. So that's on me.

 

Once you've got your head around the flightplans.txt structure...

I tend to learn stuff like this very quickly. As I said in an earlier post, I taught myself DOS (or some aspects of it) years ago. Also taught myself a bit of HTML.

 

...very small flightplan bgls up to half a dozen legs and two or three discrete plans, are easily created as three documents in notepad and then compiled. I find my brain lasts longer if I create each leg on a new line and only join things up immediately before compiling.

I had the same idea! Great minds, eh? lol

 

If you want to do a complete airline then doing so manually is more than a little daunting and AIFP is your very best friend.

Yeah, I started using AIFP once I saw the serious limitations of AIFC and TRC. Eventually, I abandoned that and went to another method. There's a website I've used for years called gcmap.com. I found it helpful due to the limitations of FS's flight planner map (as well as the regular map; MS seriously dropped the ball on that). It's a "great circle" mapper that shows a route between airports and you can change units to nm and add in your ground speed in kts to show how long a flight should take. I used it with Excel to manually create an AI flight plan because AIFP changed the order of legs in one of my plans. I didn't realize at the time why, which I ended up reading about later in the TTools help file. So that's on me. (because I'm tech savvy, I tend to get impatient and just teach myself as I go, consequences be damned; but lesson learned... again. lol)

 

Anyway, I went back to using AIFP and, yeah, I like it much better and I'm mostly satisfied with it. I only use it for that now, though, after I used it to change an aircraft.cfg file and all of my Learjets started acting psychotic (I find other functions aren't entirely user friendly/intuitive). I had to go fix what AIFP broke. Fortunately, my fix was quick and relatively easy so everything's back to normal.

 

Regarding setting the arrival times, I don't. And, yes, I did read up on that. But I'd rather let a program determine all that stuff to maximize efficiency/fuel usage/etc.

 

Also IF you ever move over to FSX don't put FS9 flight plans in there coz it will kill any FSX plans.

I did read about that. But I don't plan on upgrading to FSX anytime soon since my PC's older than dirt. Someday I'll get a new one but I don't want to switch to Win10. I suppose I could wipe the HDD and put Win7 on it. Or, at least, partition the drive, which I've been meaning to do on this one since I can't run CFS on it. I should have never let the ex get my old PC.

 

Hell, I still miss the days of running DOS games/sims. Some of those were a blast. Any of you ever heard of Megafortress? (

 

Hal

[scott_295]

This is OT but there are a couple of questions I've been meaning to ask in this forum for a long time: how difficult is it to edit a gauge? And what would I need?

 

I ask because one of the things I love about the Cessna 208 is that the tool tips for that plane shows you exactly what the gauges read and I'd love for the throttle quadrant for the planes I fly to show me exactly what percentage the throttle is set to. I'm sure that's probably not how most people do it, but I have a tendency to fly a plane to its range limits (yes, I'm crazy) and knowing my throttle percentage would be icing on the cake.

 

Hal

[tgibson_new]

It depends on the gauge. If the gauge is in a CAB file or is an XML file in a folder, then it's likely you can edit it. If it is a .GAU file then probably not.

[scott_295]

It depends on the gauge. If the gauge is in a CAB file or is an XML file in a folder, then it's likely you can edit it. If it is a .GAU file then probably not.

I remembered after reading your post that I couldn't find the gauge I was looking for.

 

Oh well.

 

Thank you.

[scott_295]

After a brief flurry of creating AI flight plans, I settled down. I only created maybe a dozen, so I didn't go crazy.

 

One thing I started doing is using the @ symbol for arrival times because, for some reason, TTools makes the legs longer than they really need to be. I say that because they're not flying at their cruise speed. I have, however, noticed that planes may start out slower and then speed up over the course of their flight, finally reaching cruise speed for roughly the last third of the flight. So this leads me to some more questions:

 

1. Does FS9 actually calculate how fast an AI plane should fly based on distance, FL, ETA, etc, and adjust accordingly? It sure seems that way. (this leads me to the next question)

 

2. I expected it would average that speed over the course of the flight so that the plane is flying the same speed the whole way. But that's not the case, from what I've seen. What's up with that? (I can see different reasons for this but I haven't a clue what's correct)

 

3. One approach I've found to setting the ETA is to jump into that plane and create a flight plan to see how long it should take, adding a a couple minutes for taxiing. This has been pretty successful. And I also read somewhere that FS9 will set the optimum FL for that flight, as seen on the "Edit" tab in the flight planner. Up to now, I had been ignoring that but now I'm wondering if it's relatively accurate. Is it? (this leads me to the next question)

 

4. I've looked around on the interwebs for info on what optimum flight levels should be (given the distance, weight, weather, etc) and have had no luck finding any kind of tables or anything. One thing I read somewhere pointed to a website (airliners.net) that supposedly has that info but I couldn't find anything there. Anyone know where this info might be found? It's not like Boeing publishes this info for public use. Or do they?

 

I did have another question but I think I figured it out:

There are a couple of websites that calculate distances between points (one site between specific airports using a "great circle" arc) and they are never the same as FS9 and they usually differ between each other. For example, the distance between KBOS & KOXR is 2290.5 nmi in FS9, whereas it's 2292.2 on calcmaps.com and 2297 on gcmap.com. So how accurate is FS9? I know, ultimately, the answer is irrelevant but I'm curious.

 

Actually, I think I just discovered the answer when I checked another website (calculator.net) which has a distance of 2297.2 nmi. Which leads me to believe that FS9 and calcmaps.com base the distance on points on a sphere (or a projected plane) whereas the other two sites base it on points on Earth, which isn't a true sphere, and use "Lambert's formula".

[tgibson_new]

1. Generally the plane will fly as fast as the cruise speed listed in the aircraft.cfg file, as long as the plane's flight dynamics allow that (which is not always true). The speed listed in the flight plan is used for the sector calculations (see below).

 

FS AI is broken into "sectors". The plane's flight is broken into those sectors when the flight plan is compiled into a BGL file. That way FS only has to worry about the AI aircraft in the sector your plane is located. Unless you follow the aircraft along its path all the way, the time when it enters your sector is based on the location of that sector and the speed in the flight plan's aircraft.txt file for that aircraft.

 

2. I assume that when a flight is broken down for each sector perhaps the calculations result in varying airspeeds, etc. within each different sector? Also note that the planes airspeed will be different if climbing or descending.

 

3. I have found that the flight altitude in the flight plan will be used if the plane can climb to that level before ATC needs to bring it down, the plane's flight dynamics allow it, and the terrain is not higher than that.

 

4. I don't know if that data is available in any one place either. Generally, I use FL100 for unpressurized aircraft, FL230 for propeller airliners, and FL350 on up to FL410 for jet airliners.

 

The distances in FS is from airport to airport. Typically the distances on these web sites can be between the center of each city, the locations of city hall, or some other point. Thus they will vary.

Edited March 19, 2022 by tgibson_new

[scott_295]

Thanks for the answers, Mr Gibson.

 

One thing I neglected to mention is that I do know that the speed can vary if flying through colder air masses. I've seen this with both my own planes and an AI plane I noticed on radar. I even did an experiment once because I noticed my fuel usage was greater than expected for a particular flight.

 

In the experiment, I flew two flights at FL350 for about 25 nmi, from one region to another, where all the weather stations were within 20 feet of sea level. I set the reality setting to show TAS and I set the temp for the first region to 75° and the second to 35°.

 

For the first flight, I set my throttle at a certain percentage to fly at a specific speed and flew from the warmer region to the colder region. My speed decreased dramatically when I got into the colder region.

 

For the second flight, I set the autopilot hold speed to the same speed as the first flight and when I entered the colder region, my speed dropped at first, but as the autopilot adjusted and the speed came back up, my fuel flow went up dramatically.

 

Anyway, I've wondered if this is a contributing factor in addition to other factors. I just don't know what the other factors are, aside from the one you mentioned.

 

~ Hal