I have a large collection of add-on airports (14000), which, in most cases, have parking spots set to "small" or "medium" ga parking, even if the airports themselves are meant for larger aircraft. Because of that AI aircraft won`t spawn or park in parking spots, because 1/2 of their wingspan exceeds the parking radius, and will dissapear or don`t spawn at all instead. I am looking for a way to fix this for 14000 airports without having to manually edit them. I have read that the aircraft`s wingspan can be reduced, but I am skeptical of that as I think it may affect the aircraft`s physics - slower climb, stalls etc. Help appreciated.
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Forcing AI planes to park at parking spots.
tgibson
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I am not aware of any automated system that will do what you want.
The way I dealt with a similar problem is before I take a flight, I open the airports I’m going to visit in ADE and modify the airports as I like. Eventually, most of your airports will get modified, at least the ones you visit.
The way I dealt with a similar problem is before I take a flight, I open the airports I’m going to visit in ADE and modify the airports as I like. Eventually, most of your airports will get modified, at least the ones you visit.
The only feasible manner I can think of to "bulk edit" a large collection of airfields would be to decompile all of them, (that would possibly need to be done individually, but may be achievable in bulk from the Command prompt), open all the resultant XML files in a tabbed editor, (I use 'EditPad'), do a global "find and replace" for the appropriate string viz. :-
<TaxiwayParking index = "1" lat = "55.xxxxxxxx" lon = "25.yyyyyyyy"
heading = "30.0" radius = "7.0" type = "RAMP_GA_SMALL"
name = "GATE" number = "2" pushBack = "NONE"/>
and replace the "radius" and "type" parameters appropriately.
The resultant XML files would then need to be recompiled, again possibly individually, but maybe in bulk from the Command prompt.
OBVIOUSLY - MAKE BACKUP COPIES OF EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU START
<TaxiwayParking index = "1" lat = "55.xxxxxxxx" lon = "25.yyyyyyyy"
heading = "30.0" radius = "7.0" type = "RAMP_GA_SMALL"
name = "GATE" number = "2" pushBack = "NONE"/>
and replace the "radius" and "type" parameters appropriately.
The resultant XML files would then need to be recompiled, again possibly individually, but maybe in bulk from the Command prompt.
OBVIOUSLY - MAKE BACKUP COPIES OF EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU START
I actually didn`t know you could batch edit them this way, thanks!
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I’m curious; how have you ended up with 14,000 airfields with inappropriate parking? Is this a backwards transition from FSX to FS9 (the maths of parking spots are different)?
Chris’s answer is a good one, but a better one might be to source a new collection of airfields!!
Chris’s answer is a good one, but a better one might be to source a new collection of airfields!!
Large airport collections (there's one on avsim.su with 7000 airports) where the afcad authors seem to forget about appropriate parking and also default FSX airports, which usually just have parking spots too small (for example all those small Canadian airports that Buffalo flies to - DC3s won't fit because most parking spots are "small GA") Normally everything works just fine, but in some cases there might be an airport hidden somewhere which has bad parking. And well, there are tons of those, which you have to pick out by hand.
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Are you creating a ‘retro’ world? The reference to DC3s is interesting!
One way of sorting it out - although this would be one airfield at a time - is up set up ADE to use default parking spot sizes to suit your particular traffic needs, and then import the offending AFCADs and swap out the parking spots. Given the numbers, we’re obviously not talking about detailed custom airports, you seem to just need enough spots of the right type to absorb your traffic.
However, if your need is for traffic in the air to populate the world, generally what’s going on on the ground is irrelevant - the traffic will spawn anyway.
One way of sorting it out - although this would be one airfield at a time - is up set up ADE to use default parking spot sizes to suit your particular traffic needs, and then import the offending AFCADs and swap out the parking spots. Given the numbers, we’re obviously not talking about detailed custom airports, you seem to just need enough spots of the right type to absorb your traffic.
However, if your need is for traffic in the air to populate the world, generally what’s going on on the ground is irrelevant - the traffic will spawn anyway.
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In Settings\Options in ADE, there is a tab 'Parking'. You can preset all of the different parking radii. This screenshot shows the default numbers, but they can be anything you want...
Yeah, I see. That just sets the parking radius though, and I still have to edit hundreds of airports manually. That can optimize the making of my future ADE creations though!
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Ah, I'm afraid I can't improve upon Chris's suggestion for bulk alterations! ADE will only deal with one airport at a time.
Although I can't help with your parking spot size changes, I do agree that were you to reduce AI wingspan values you will get resultant strange behaviour from your AI. I have had to methodically review a large amount of my imported AI due to poor behaviour attributable to wingspan inconsistencies. Once corrected the aircraft behave as expected. Good Luck!
You don't have to worry about modifying/reducing the wingspan of an aircraft in the "fligh model" cfg file. FSLTL did so for *all* its airplanes. They explain on their website that reducing the wingspans of an aircraft does not alter its performances and visual aspect. They did that because of the double radius system diktat that has been introduced since MSFS20.
for example the CRJ 700 has a true wingspan of 76feet/23 meters but FSLTL has reduced it to 65ft/20m etc...
It may be faster and less tedious for you to reduce the wingspan of a given aircraft than to manually edit all your airports...
That's great, I thought that wouldn't work
So I can decrease the wingspan by around 30% and the physics won't change, right?
If yes, that might be the best solution!
Maybe the ATC can help control that, but I'm not sure