FSX-MS AI Controller 1.4 (SID, Jet Route, STAR and Final Approach) (New) Beta

[nthabti79 17]

I tried AI Controller at the new FT Sydney - normally the smaller planes (E190, B737) of Virgin Australia and Qantas should go to the smaller gates at the national terminal marked for them an the big irons (A330, B777, A380) should go to the 33m + spots at the international. I found that all VOZ and QFA planes arriving on 34L are going to the intl. - blocking the big gates with Embraers and 737. some of these small's are eventually assigned to a amll gate but are redirected later to a big one (there are sufficient empty gates > 33m and marked for QFA or VOZ.

 

Loooks to me as if the "easiest / shortest" way to parking is preferred over the minimum radius requiered for the plane.

 

I have the same problem and realised that at several airports like EGLL, EDDL etc.

It seems that AI aircraft will not use their assigned parking, but any other parking that does not have their code in the ADE file. Could you explain the logic of how AIController assigns parking? Because it seems that they are either assigned to the nearest parking spot or to a gate that is higher in the ADE parking list (which happens quite often), or another assumption is that it is the parking spot with less parking codes.

 

To give you an idea, in EGLL all British Airways aircraft that landed taxied to the maintenance area where the parking spots only had BAW codes, in EDDL the Air Berlin Dash 8 park at Terminal A gates that do definitely not have gates with BER codes.

 

And as a little reminder, please do something about the animations (landing and front gear steering). Otherwise I love this little tool, especially watching the aircraft turn onto final one after the other in an orderly manner is a joy!

 

Cheers

Nizar

[data63 3]

If you want the string of pearls effect, decrease minimum separation and use the force landing runway option to limit landings to one or two runways.  Another very good thing to do is go into ADEX and code the typical departure (long) runways as takeoff only.  You will get very good flows.  I think at an extremely busy airport about 1 nm would be good, that way if an AI gets bounced from the pattern you only have a 2 nm "hole" left.  There will certainly be occurrences of AI landing too closely, but for me that is worth it.  The AI-User minimum distance and anti-incursion options are separate and I would keep those higher to prevent closely spaced AI from interfering with me if I'm arriving/departing.  Another good thing to do is reduce the number of active STARs to those commonly used at the airport (if possible), which makes the traffic patterns more coherent and the spacing more consistent.

 

For moderately busy airports (or moderate AI traffic percentage) the defaults should be good.

 

Thanks, if it seems like a compatibility issue with FT I'll buy one to check it out (been meaning to check out their latest work anyway - hopefully TOR).  

 

I couldn't resist to test in TOR - not as obvious as in SYD but gate choosing there is also "not quite right" (no offence meant) - it seems as if the "weighting" in choosing the gate is "ParkingCode" -> "Index" -> "Distance" (maybe count of nodes to reach?) and "Size"

 

maybe it affects TOR and SYD more than others because FT has done a really nicde work with smoothing the taxiways therefore using quite a lot of nodes for taxi-routes.

 

also on both AP there are very long ways with many bends and curves to go from runway exit to parking due to their layout - KIAH (FSDT) is also very lasrge but with long straight taxy-routes

 

As Nizar stated above it could be helpful in analyzing this if you could give us a clue to the logic you use behind finding a parking spot

[Clipper Ocean Spray 189]

 

 

I tried the no space syntax but still did not work. Got the same error....file not found.

 

That's just a batch file syntax error.  DOS thinks the switch is part of the file name because the switch is within the same quote as the file name. Try this: START "AIC" "E:\Program Files\AI Controller\AIController"  -sMARKFS

[Clipper Ocean Spray 189]

Could you explain the logic of how AIController assigns parking?

 

Sure, the logic is designed to maintain a high degree of compatibility with existing ADE design techniques (for obvious reasons).

 

1: First condition:  gate radius set in the aircraft.cfg.  AIC immediately discounts any parking space of a smaller radius. It keeps looking for larger spots until it finds a free space. If there are no free parking spots big enough to accommodate the AI will be deleted.

 

2: The second condition looks to match the airline parking code from the aircraft.cfg to the airport parking codes (not limited to first 5 codes unlike FSX).  It goes down in order of the gates as listed in the parking order list which is set in the ADE.  When it finds a match it then assigns the parking. If it does not find a matching code AIC will allocate any parking that does not have any codes assigned to it (if it matches radius of course) and park the aircraft there. If there are no blank coded spaces AIC then ignores the coded gates and parks the aircraft anyway at the first available matching radius gate in the parking order list.

[data63 3]

2: The second condition looks to match the airline parking code from the aircraft.cfg to the airport parking codes (not limited to first 5 codes unlike FSX). It goes down in order of the gates as listed in the parking order list which is set in the ADE. When it finds a match it then assigns the parking. If it does not find a matching code AIC will allocate any parking that does not have any codes assigned to it (if it matches radius of course) and park the aircraft there. If there are no blank coded spaces AIC then ignores the coded gates and parks the aircraft anyway at the first available matching radius gate in the parking order list.

 

Condition 1) is clear and makes sense ;-)

 

maybe the parking selection concerning AC size would be better if the List of parking spots left over was sorted by size (low to high) an then scanned for parking codes fitting the AC.

I'm not a programmer but maybe you could put the fitting spots in an array sorted by size (low to high and index asc) with the parking-codes in the columnes an than scan the array line by line and then column by column until a free spot is found - this way one could even priorize a spot.

I often modify AFCADs in a way that remote or overflow spots are marked (e.g.) "XXX,XXX,BAW" for British Airways overflow parking.

 

unfortunatly I can't say how hard to program or how hard on cpu/ressources such an algorythm would be so consider this only a "thought out of the blue ;-)"

[MarkW 1,491]

That's just a batch file syntax error.  DOS thinks the switch is part of the file name because the switch is within the same quote as the file name. Try this: START "AIC" "E:\Program Files\AI Controller\AIController"  -sMARKFS

 

Sorry still not working.  It finds the program but now I get the following message:

 

Problem reading the AICONTROLLER.ini file (this file must EXIST in the same directory as AICONTROLLER.exe

[Clipper Ocean Spray 189]

Problem reading the AICONTROLLER.ini file (this file must EXIST in the same directory as AICONTROLLER.exe

 

 

Mark, this is what I wrote to you when I first informed you of this unsupported feature:

 

    AIC will need its a local copy of the files it typically reads including AIController.ini. 

 

Anyway, this feature is unsupported for a reason, it has not been packaged-up into a user-friendly option (e.g., .exe switches and batch files are difficult to use) and it has not been extensively tested.  I think probably the best course of action is to not use it, hopefully one day I can improve it and add official support.

[MarkW 1,491]

Mark, this is what I wrote to you when I first informed you of this unsupported feature:

 

    AIC will need its a local copy of the files it typically reads including AIController.ini. 

 

Anyway, this feature is unsupported for a reason, it has not been packaged-up into a user-friendly option (e.g., .exe switches and batch files are difficult to use) and it has not been extensively tested.  I think probably the best course of action is to not use it, hopefully one day I can improve it and add official support.

 

I think I do have the local files in place.  I have installed a full version of AIC and AIM on the FSX machine so all the files should be local and in the correct directory.   Are you indicating that I actually need to copy over the AIController.ini from the FSX machine to the client machine?

[Clipper Ocean Spray 189]

 

 

I think I do have the local files in place. 

 

Good, then it must be something in the batch file.  The use of batch files to get the most out of this feature is another good reason to keep the feature unofficial.  AIC looks in the current directory for its support files, so you probably need to use a change directory command (e.g.,  CD E:\Program Files\AI Controller and then START "AIC" "AIController"  -sMARKFS).  

[MarkW 1,491]

OK thanks for your ongoing support of something unofficial.  I will give it a try and advise.

Yeah, got it to work.  Syntax is the cause of so many issues in programming....I have mad respect for you guys that code all of this great stuff we get to use and enjoy.

 

Here is the code that worked for the batch file.

 

---------------------------------

 

chdir /D E:\Program Files\AI Controller\

 

START "AIC" "E:\Program Files\AI Controller\AIController" -sMARKFS

 

 

EXIT

 

-----------------------------

[nthabti79 17]

 

Sure, the logic is designed to maintain a high degree of compatibility with existing ADE design techniques (for obvious reasons).

 

1: First condition:  ...

2: The second condition ...

 

 

Thanks for the explanation, Roland. 

 

So the order of parkings in the ADE list affects what parking spot AIController will choose first? I f that is the case, I will have to look at reordering those lists accordingly.

 

Cheers

Nizar

[Clipper Ocean Spray 189]

So to me it seemed, the "left" Runway was prefered despite the setting for balancing.

Also the same for the Enhances Autogen Approaches, for a long time the left hand patterns were dominating the AI Monitor, only few AI have been assigned to the "R" Runways.

 

Sorry to get back with you on this so late, but I just remembered the load balancing parameter is "Max Number of AI Landing or Departing Per Runway BEFORE Load Balancing Attempted", so you might be seeing more AI prefer a landing runway because they had to reach that load-balancing threshold.  Perhaps reducing this number will result in better balancing.

 

 

maybe the parking selection concerning AC size would be better if the List of parking spots left over was sorted by size (low to high) an then scanned for parking codes fitting the AC.

 

Interesting ideas.  I initially experimented with a "look ahead 3 gates" feature to better match AI to gate-size, but even with that I was getting negative feedback about unexpected gate selection.  Unfortunately any method needs to maintain compatibility with how FSX selects parking because there are so many sceneries out there designed to that procedure.  I'm trying to push AIController into new areas, but parking selection is one area I'm highly constrained.

 

I bought Fly Tampa Toronto (very nice scenery BTW, I especially appreciate the extra waypoints in the curved taxiway sections) and I can see the designer purposely left many gates uncoded.  Uncoded gates are much more likely to get AI size mismatches as the standard selection algorithm works down the parking list in order and will match an AI to the first uncoded gate meeting the minimum size requirement (if other coded gates are unavailable or occupied).  The scenery designer obviously knows what he is doing and I'm sure the presence of the uncoded gates is for a reason.

 

 

So the order of parkings in the ADE list affects what parking spot AIController will choose first? I f that is the case, I will have to look at reordering those lists accordingly.

 

Yes, definitely.  Scenery designers carefully consider the order of parking in ADEX when they design scenery.

[FlyTweety 2]

Sorry to get back with you on this so late, but I just remembered the load balancing parameter is "Max Number of AI Landing or Departing Per Runway BEFORE Load Balancing Attempted", so you might be seeing more AI prefer a landing runway because they had to reach that load-balancing threshold.  Perhaps reducing this number will result in better balancing.

 

No cause, in Germany we have 38°C / 100°F , as you can imagine, sitting in the room for flightsimming is not the first priority :smile:

 

Before i wrote my post, i reduced the setting to "2", nonetheless i noticed still 5 AI for the left runway and 2 for the right.

But i must admit, until today i didn´t try the HF12, for the reason above.

Maybe it is a good idea to realize a kind of 50:50 balancing by default without switch.

 

But this requires a reliable approach/STAR from any position. AI from north to the northern runway, AI from the south to the southern runway, unless there´s a reason not to proceed so (runway lenght/surface ect.)

 

 

 

The scenery designer obviously knows what he is doing and I'm sure the presence of the uncoded gates is for a reason.

I guess, the main reason is the high frequency changing in real life. You can´t even go to toilette for 5 minutes without a airline goes bankrupcy or move to another gate/airport.

We could code gates day by day and will never match the real live world...

[Clipper Ocean Spray 189]

This is a minor hotfix (unless perhaps you have a FlyTampa scenery).  I'm still chasing down some other issues.  Normally I would wait to release the hotfix until more known bugs were fixed, but I'm unavailable for the next few days, so I'm making HF13 available now (within this discussion thread only):

 

http://www.mediafire.com/download/xpf2oocc22v6cev/AIController14BOnlyHF13.zip

 

Fixes:  

 

1.  FlyTampa scenery used extra slash at end of path statement in scenery.cfg that caused an AIM read error when AIM was running in a network configuration.

2.  Absolute Path-to-Network Path translation slots 4-6 broken in Advanced Path Options.

3.  Clarified the example "text" for Absolute Path-to-Network Path translation in Advanced Path Options.

[XCLTM3 112]

Will vectoring be available for airports other than the USA?