So I've decided to try adding some moving cars/buses to a custom airport project, hope to get it working for both FS9 and FSX. The airport's visible "roads" were created in the original Afcad file, and ported over to FSX using ADE. A duplicate Afcad/ADE was created with a unique name, and keeping only the roads along with taxi links and parking spots that have unique parking codes. Flightplans would then have to be created to have the AI vehicles functioning. Now the question - there is one default vehicle I would like to use as "AI" on these roads, namely the Aviator SUV. It appears the .mdl file has to be used and employed in aircraft format, e.g., with an airfile, aircraft.cfg, model and texture folders. After having added these files/folders, the vehicle cannot be loaded in FS to test it out. Maybe I'm going about it wrong and thus thought to post here, once again ideally this will be effective for both versions of FS. Many thanks.

Thanks for the info, at least it's all going the right way (not the wrong-way road). I suppose it's not possible to use vehicles compiled originally as .bgl format, e.g., if decompiled and then using the resultant .mdl file. Might just go ahead and create some unique items, that way they will have moving wheels & such.

Regards

Back again,

Seems there is still something I am doing wrong as it doesn't work as planned. I took the original airport Afcad, which contains taxiways that represent the visual roads, deleted everything except for those taxiways, created a small runway along the longest taxi link, and added parking nodes at either end. This was saved as another airport with a unique name. Test flightplans employ an aircraft (with speed reduced to 15 kts) as the vehicle models are still being worked on. The aircraft shows up at one parking node, then disappears, only to reappear at the exact same spot later. Wondering how to get the aircraft/vehicle to follow the taxi links to the airport, then across to the other side - any ideas appreciated.

Original airport Afcad & ground vehicle Afcad pics below:

These comments are from experimenting with Afcad and traffic files for FS9. I placed them in FSX also and behavior was similar. For the test veh I used FS9 and FSX versions of the hama's Mitsubishi PAJERO available at SimV downloads.

For the ai not moving, just disappearing from the parking spot....run the Afcad Fault Finder. Check that the taxi link on the runway is set to 'Link type=Runway' or look for open links. 

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That isn't going to happen. The 'ground bound' ai will never get past trying to take off on the first leg. The ai will taxi and then start take off roll. As it never gets airborn it will normally just roll off into the distance, eventually disappearing. It's never aware of the 'other side'.

The only elements needed in your afcad:

Parking------->taxiway--------->short runway (50' is fine). Mark the far end of the runway 'closed  for takeoff'.

Start Locations not needed, and do not place a hold short node. The lack of a hold short node creates an 'error' which should cause the ai to stop somewhere on it's take off and then disappear after several minutes. Where it stops will not be known 'till you try it. In my exerience, it can be anywhere from the 1st runway taxi node to somewhere past the end of the runway. Once you see where the ai stops you can adjust the runway location to get the desired stop point.

Edit: I've since found that if you connect to the runway at the reciprocal end the ai will stop on the 1st runway node. Just swap the base/recip ends in the runway properties as needed. Make sure to close the other end for takeoff.

For a return route you'll have to create another airport and flightplan.

Dave