Simviation Forum - Can you have "too" many AI planes?

Aug 19^th, 2009 at 5:38pm

Stewy44 Offline
Colonel
Giggety Giggety!
(Sim)Flying in Europe and Asia

Posts: 141

G'day guys,

A quick question that's been bothering me a little - I recently added AI aircraft number 101 - I've got planes for Australia, South-East Asia and half of Europe at the moment.

I just wanted to know, with the more differerent types of AI aircraft, am I slowly affecting performance or asking for FS9 to crash one day?

Or is it more to do with the 'number' of aircraft actually 'in game' and visible that affects performance?

So far, performane is fine, but just wanted to check. Wink

Cheers
Stew

FS9 - the only way you can fly a 747 while drinking beer

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Reply #1 - Aug 19^th, 2009 at 7:44pm

MIKE JG Offline
Colonel
Gravity Always Wins...
Ohio

Posts: 845

The simple answer is that it affects both.

The more AI aircraft you have in your folder, the more memory FS9 is taking up on your HD. Whether or not that has a direct affect on your CPU's performance depends on many things so it's hard to say if it will slow your machine down.

FS9 will boot up slower the more AI aircraft you have in your Aircraft folder, that I have seen first hand. But again, your individual machine may vary. If you do not "hide" the AI aircraft from the Aircraft selection menu, it takes longer to select a new aircraft. If you are interested in how to hide the AI aircraft, do a search in this forum as it has been answered many times over.

As an example I recently deleted ALL of my airline and most of my general aviation AI aircraft to help FS9 load faster. My machine is almost entirely consumed with military AI aircraft and military payware models and military addon scenery. Since it's an older machine, it has started to slow down, even with good defragging and cleaning. So anything I can do to help FS9 load faster is a bonus for me.

As for your general question, to my knowledge, there is no practical limit for the amount of AI aircraft you can have. I thought I read somewhere that there IS a theoretical limit to the number of AI aicraft that FS9 can display, but IIRC it was such a huge number that you would be hard pressed to ever exceed the limit.

Not 100% sure about that though.

Biggest things you can do yourself is to hide all of your AI aircraft from your selection menu, combine identical AI aircraft types into a single folder, remove all lightmap texture files from their individual texture folders and place them into the main FS9/Texture folder and defrag your machine weekly using a good defragger, not the one that came with your computer.

Hope that helps.

-Mike G.

Military AI traffic packages and scenery for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series.

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Reply #2 - Aug 20^th, 2009 at 2:22am

Stewy44 Offline
Colonel
Giggety Giggety!
(Sim)Flying in Europe and Asia

Posts: 141

Thanks BLN for your detailed and helpful answer - I really appreciate your help!

Cheers heaps
Stew

FS9 - the only way you can fly a 747 while drinking beer

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Reply #3 - Aug 20^th, 2009 at 9:37pm

MIKE JG Offline
Colonel
Gravity Always Wins...
Ohio

Posts: 845

"BLN"...."BNL"....Just call me Mike. Grin

Reminds me I really need to register under a new more appropriate name.

-Mike G.

Military AI traffic packages and scenery for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series.

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Reply #4 - Aug 21^st, 2009 at 1:37am

Stewy44 Offline
Colonel
Giggety Giggety!
(Sim)Flying in Europe and Asia

Posts: 141

lol, sorry Mike about that

Must be my "slysdexia"

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Reply #5 - Aug 21^st, 2009 at 2:18pm

MIKE JG Offline
Colonel
Gravity Always Wins...
Ohio

Posts: 845

No worries, I finally changed my displayed user name, didn't know I could do that without re-registering.

BTW, what's that old saying......"Ten out of nine pilots are lysdexic"

-Mike G.

Military AI traffic packages and scenery for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series.

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Reply #6 - Aug 25^th, 2009 at 6:34am

JBaymore Offline
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Under the curse of the
hombuilt cockpit!

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As you add AI planes, you also havet o take into account the parking places at airports. If there is not enough parking, then you get some weird behaviors out of some AI planes.

Most people who add a lot of AI also modify the AFCADS of many airports to add parking and active taxiways so that they can actually handle all of that added traffic.

Search this forum section for LOTS of info about how to do that.

best,

...............john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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Reply #7 - Aug 25^th, 2009 at 7:21am

Stewy44 Offline
Colonel
Giggety Giggety!
(Sim)Flying in Europe and Asia

Posts: 141

Cheers John, I've just noticed that with Riga (Latvia) airport at the moment (where I fly most from/to in Europe) I've got roughly the same number of flights coming in/out a day (I checked flightstats.com) but FS9 AI can't handle the slow landing / taxi speeds and runway turnoffs.

At the moment, Riga is "go-around" central - but Berlin Tegel, Moscow and Paris CDG are dead easy to get into Wink

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Reply #8 - Aug 25^th, 2009 at 10:21pm

BrandonF Offline
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The Future of Flight
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MIKE JG wrote on Aug 21^st, 2009 at 2:18pm:

"Ten out of nine pilots are lysdexic"

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Reply #9 - Aug 28^th, 2009 at 10:35am

-Crossfire- Offline
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Northern Canada

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Stewy44 wrote on Aug 25^th, 2009 at 7:21am:

At the moment, Riga is "go-around" central - but Berlin Tegel, Moscow and Paris CDG are dead easy to get into Wink

CDG is impossible to get in to on my game... i guess thats to be expected with 450 WOAI packages installed! I just dont listen to ATC anymore when they tell me to go around. Grin

Just land, taxi off, and contact ground. Cool

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Reply #10 - Aug 28^th, 2009 at 11:21am

JBaymore Offline
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hombuilt cockpit!

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Stewy44 wrote on Aug 25^th, 2009 at 7:21am:

At the moment, Riga is "go-around" central - but Berlin Tegel, Moscow and Paris CDG are dead easy to get into Wink

Add "AISmooth" to your list of "must haves". It acts like ATC stacking AI planes into holding patterns when you are on approach.

best,

...................john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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Reply #11 - Aug 28^th, 2009 at 11:31am

dave3cu Offline
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Another item that can help with congested airports is Ken Salter's FS9 Configurator-http://kensalter.com/forum/index.php?board=3.0

One of it's tools allows you to increase the ai taxi speed.

Dave

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. Igor Sikorsky

I intend to live forever....so far, so good. Steven Wright

You know....you can just rip up a to-do list.

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