Simviation Forum - Aircraft Freezing

Feb 13^th, 2003 at 1:03am

texspark Offline
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San Diego, California

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I have been having a lot of problems with my AI traffic freezing at some airports. They will usually freeze or vanish coming off the taxiway after landing. There are plenty of gates for the aircraft to go too but they are having a hard time finding them. Any ideas on what might be causing that. My computer is plenty fast enough and almost all of my AI traffic is from Project AI.

Dell Pentium4 3.0Ghz w/ 800MB FSB 512MB DDR memory @400mhz, ATI Radeon 9800 128mb video card.

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Reply #1 - Feb 14^th, 2003 at 4:18pm

texspark Offline
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San Diego, California

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Okay I think I figured out part of this problem on my own but I dont know how to change it. On my KLAX afcad I made 7 overlays KLAX,1LAX...all the way to 7LAX so all the airlines would go to their respective terminal. I also renumbered the gates so they are correct like KLAX in real life (example 1LAX is terminal1 and the gates are A1-A13, 2 LAX is terminal 2 and the gates are labeled B14-B23 etc). The problem is every airline that is taxiing off the runway and contacting LAX ground is being told to taxi to gate A3, A9 or one of the gates in my 1LAX terminal 1. If I go to the select airport screen and pull up all of my KLAX overlays they are correct and I can choose the correct gate and only the ones that are supposed to be there for that terminal. Is there something else I am supposed to change to fix this. This scenery was a KLAX file and I exported it and made 7 copies and renamed them and modified the gates to accomidate each overlay. All of the airlines are scheduled to go to their correct overlay in traffic tools so I know that is not the problem. Thanks and any help would be appreciated.

Steve

Dell Pentium4 3.0Ghz w/ 800MB FSB 512MB DDR memory @400mhz, ATI Radeon 9800 128mb video card.

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Reply #2 - Feb 14^th, 2003 at 6:58pm

RollerBall Ex Member

Steve,

Forget what you've called the gates in your overlays, but just look at this example.

Say you've got 3 terminals in 3 overlays, gates 1-5 in terminal 1 overlay 1, 6-10 in terminal 2 overlay 2 and 11- 15 in terminal 3 overlay 3.

Now gates 6-15 don't EXIST in overlay 1, 1-5 and 11-15 don't exist in overlay 2 and 1-10 don't exist in overlay 3. You've actually got 3 separate airports with 3 separate Grnd controllers that just happen to occupy the same area. OK?

Now you have to set up your AI flightplans so all the airline 1 planes ONLY fly to overlay 1, all the airline 2 planes ONLY fly to overlay 2 and so on. Obviously one of your overlays (the original LAX) will have spaces for all the other sundry aircraft that fly in there and have AI plans for them accordingly.

Planes CAN'T be directed to gates that don't exist at an airport - if they are being, your overlay setup can't be right.

BTW, I haven't started messing about with overlays yet (I've been too busy with other things) but the principles are pretty straightforward. Hope the above makes sense.

Roger

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Reply #3 - Feb 15^th, 2003 at 2:17am

texspark Offline
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San Diego, California

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It makes total sense but I believe I set it up that way. For example: American Airlines - 5LAX, Delta-6LAX, United -7LAX and the International terminal -KLAX are all on the south side of LAX but when they land they are being told to taxi to a gate A9 or A11 which is in 1LAX. I know this because I labeled the gates that way just to add realism. All of the other terminals start with a different letter and the numbers keep going up from the previous terminal. When the controller tells the A/C to taxi to a gate at 1LAX it cant really get there because the gate is technically not there when that A/C is set up to go to 5LAX only. There have been one or two instances where the A/C has been able to get by without talking to the ground controller and when it gets to a gate it just keeps doing circles. Very annoying.

      -------6L/24R-------
      -------6R/24L-------

      4LAX 3LAX    2LAX    1LAX
   D40-44 C30-38 B20-28 A1-A13

      KLAX 5LAX    6LAX    7LAX
   D45-49 E50-59 F60-68 G70-J99

      -------7L/25R--------
      -------7R/25L--------

I hope this helps, everything that is supposed to go to KLAX, 5LAX, 6 LAX and 7LAX lands on 25L and is trying to taxi to 1LAX. The north side and southside of this layout are not even connected to each other and that is why they are all vanishing after they land. If they were connected they would all taxi to 1LAX and fill that up and eventually fill up 2LAX and so on. I have watched them do it but that is what I am trying to avoid. Is this an ATC problem by any chance?? Someone also said to try RAFCAD but I do not know anything about that. Any ideas! Thanks

Steve

Dell Pentium4 3.0Ghz w/ 800MB FSB 512MB DDR memory @400mhz, ATI Radeon 9800 128mb video card.

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Reply #4 - Feb 18^th, 2003 at 12:12am

texspark Offline
Colonel
No Air Support without
Ground Support!!
San Diego, California

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Posts: 51

Roger,
I found out a lot this weekend about how the AI traffic is controlled by Flightsim2002. It turns out that I was having the same problem with aircraft not taxiing to the correct overlay regardless of how many overlays you have. Turns out that if you are trying to have aircraft to taxi to the correct gate or even the correct terminal you are not going to accomplish it with just simple overlays. The reference point (pink cross) located in the center of the airport on the afcad file is what the ground controller references for telling a/c to taxi to the gate. I went as far as even having more than one reference point (one for each overlay) and it does not matter as when the A/C turns off the runway and contacts ground which ever reference point it is closest too it is going to taxi to the closest terminal. I have found the only way to control the proper way to get your a/c to taxi to the correct gate is by using RAFCAD files. We can control where the A/C start up by AFCAD but not by where they go after they land. RAFCAD is AFCAD that uses radius sizing for sending an aircarft to a gate only with that radius setting. For example my American Domestic planes use a radius steeing of 28 meters or 92 feet. I can modify all of my American domestic gates for a radius setting of 92 and moidfy my American domestic model file to read a radius of 28m and that American domestic (737,727,757) will always load at the correct gate and upon landing it will only taxi to the gate with a radius setting of 92ft. There is a great FAQ at project AI and they even have an upcoming section for RAFCAD files. It also has a standardized chart that tells the radius setting for most airlines Regional, Domestic and International Aircraft. It sounded really complicated but it is very smple when it is done once or twice. The great part about it is that you dont need overlays anymore unless you plan on using multiple runways. I am not sure if you are really into this type of realism but if you are it is definately worth looking into, if not it si good info to pass on to others. Thanks for all of the help.

Steve

Dell Pentium4 3.0Ghz w/ 800MB FSB 512MB DDR memory @400mhz, ATI Radeon 9800 128mb video card.

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Reply #5 - Feb 18^th, 2003 at 4:06am

RollerBall Ex Member

Thanks Steve, very interesting all that.

I've played around with radius a bit but only to separate cargo from passenger. I thought it could be used to do what you wanted but what you've found out really does answer the questions.

So what you're saying is radius for sorting airlines and terminals, overlays for simultaneous runways. And presumably a combination of the two of you want to do both!!

Also from what you've found, the overlays really only affect which runways are used for takeoffs and landings - once the planes are on the ground, the overlays seem to 'merge' - right? If so, that is interesting.

Roger

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Reply #6 - Feb 18^th, 2003 at 8:12pm

texspark Offline
Colonel
No Air Support without
Ground Support!!
San Diego, California

Gender:
Posts: 51

Roger,
You hit the nail right on the head. Radius is for the terminal assigment and you can even go as far as making them go to a specific gate. For example at terminal 1 gates 1-5 American, gates 6-10 Delta and so on and so forth.. Here is a link for the RAFCAD and it has a good FAQ inside and some links for setting up your FS2002 using RAFCAD. You can also download an airline listing for all the standardized radius sizes so when ProjectAI goes full speed with it and others upload RAFCAD files everyone is using the same radius settings for the same airlines. Overlays just for the multiple runways in use. Enjoy

http://forums.projectai.com/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID2/1855.html

regards
Steve

Dell Pentium4 3.0Ghz w/ 800MB FSB 512MB DDR memory @400mhz, ATI Radeon 9800 128mb video card.

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Reply #7 - Feb 19^th, 2003 at 10:43am

RollerBall Ex Member

Thanks matey

Roger

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