Classic AI at Kai Tak

[speedbird591]

Thank you for that explanation, Peter. I wasn't aware of that problem and it may well have caused me some head scratching at a later date. Of course, the date change at midnight is a bit tedious when writing the flight plans too. I can use the 'replace' tool in notepad to advance times and days but when it gets to 2300, I can't get my head round it and do that bit manually!

Meanwhile, I've been following your advice in AFCAD. I've increased the number of dedicated cargo parking spots and the freighters have taken advantage of them. So that problem is solved. Thank you.

I've made a tentative start on the museum, using aircraft from the California Classics AI selection. I've installed nine so far just to try out my plan and they may or may not remain on display. As you can see, I've created a small display area round the corner in the cargo area by deleting one of the large parking spaces. They are designated with a code: DISP (for display) and the nine aircraft have that code in their aircraft.cfg, which obviously works. To keep other aircraft out I've designated them 'parking' spaces (as opposed to 'gates') and specified that in the aircraft.cfgs also.

Anyway, here's my first attempt at AFCAD:




Ian

[petermcleland]

Yes, that looks OK Ian...I think I would treat that project the way I did with the Gate Guards...I would give the parking spots a dedicated Parking code like MU1, MU2, MU3, etc. I would give the AI aircraft concerned the same codes. The flightplans could be WEEK flightplans with only one filght on Sunday night and then just to prevent them actually flying I would break that taxiway link onto the airport taxiway system. If your museum content got too large to display all at once then you could have more than one Traffic file for them and swap them with a batch file shortcut on your desktop. If it got really big then you could have an automatic weekly swap over four weeks like my Gate Guards do when the Staff RTW Tour is functioning :flying:

BTW there are already a duplicate parking number (81) and that is not a good idea...Make sure your parking numbers are unique...I think there may be three 71s now!

[speedbird591]

Okey dokey. More useful advice, there - thanks, Peter. I hadn't noticed the gate numbering but that's sorted out now. I remembered how you'd set up your gate guard but as I'm planning for these aircraft to do a display flight on Sunday afternoons, I've left the taxi links intact. I've had to have another look at the stand positions to ensure they have enough pushback and taxi room as it's a bit tight to manoeuvre in that corner. I had a trial run last night and they all pushed back, taxied out and took off about a minute apart. So at least I've proven my plan and I can develop it at my leisure.

I can now slow the pace and spend a bit of time tweaking the traffic and getting the right balance and timings before having a look at the airshow content. On Sunday afternoons there won't be any commercial flying and most of the traffic will spend the time elsewhere. As I expect the airshow to be very popular I expect people will want to fly in on Sunday mornings from all over the world in chartered modern aircraft (A380/B744?) and learjets as well as assorted classics - so they'll need somewhere to park up.

So if you have any tips for making AI aircraft do anything other than take off, go somewhere else and come back again, that would be useful! For instance, I've read that it's possible to persuade them to do circuits under certain circumstances. I suppose I could also position a user aircraft on the runway and force them all to do go-arounds indefinitely! Any ideas gratefully received!

I'll post some more gallery shots from time to time as I try things out.

Ian

[speedbird591]

Just an update on my project to populate Kai Tak with suitable AI traffic. Although, superficially, it may not look much different to my previous gallery shots, I've been doing a lot of downloading, installing and tweaking. I now have 72 individual aircraft/liveries flying a weekly flight plan. Each aircraft calls at Kai Tak for four two hour stopovers each day - that's four round trips each. This gives a pattern of one take off and one landing every five minutes with at least one a/c taxiing at any time. Every other flight plan has a 50% visibility parameter so that if I move the traffic slider to 49% I will reduce the number of aircraft by half. This gives me a better fps for flying. If I'm just spotting it can stay at 100%! I've still got some fine tuning to do with the flight plans as my mistakes become apparent on different days and times :roll: I've scrapped the idea of a museum at Kai Tak. Instead, the older aircraft will fly in for the Sunday airshow along with some modern transport to bring the excited punters. But more about that later ...








Ian