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AI and Static Aircraft Can Now Co-Exist

G

gadgets

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As some of you know, I've been "playing on both teams" in the airport eye-candy "game". On the one side is AI Flight Planner; on the other Static Aircraft .mdl Maker (SAMM).

You guys are focused on AI. It adds realism and is fun to watch all by itself. But, if used to excess, it also adds taxiway congestion, hold-short bottle-necks, go-arounds and lots of overhead. By comparison, static aircraft are "dull", but their downsides are few. Until now, AI and static aircraft couldn't truly co-exist. You had your AI taxiway/parking network and, if you wanted, some static models scattered elsewhere. But, they were always handled separtely.

Thanks to the work I did in developing the Traffic and Parking Analyser for AIFP, AI and static aircraft can now truly co-exist. I've just made a development release for SAMM (at http://stuff4fs.com) that:
  • takes an afacd in .bgl format, one or more traffic files and the AI and flyable aircraft in your "stable";
  • creates the necessary static models automatically and places them in the same parking spots they would occupy as AI;
  • modifies the afcad by setting the radius of the assigned parking spots to 1m (to avoid AI parking in them as well; and
  • optionally, modifies the traffic file(s) to eliminate the AI at the airport that has been placed as statics.

You can limit static placements to one or more types of aircraft (airline, GA, military and cargo). In doing so, you could, for example, have a large number of (static) military aircraft with only a few AI among them to preserve the realism. Similarly, GA aircraft that generally remains in the same place most of the day could be static while, for example, flying club aircraft did their usual touch 'n gos as AI. Or, you could fill some your gates with static airliners - in the same livery you'd expect there - and let AI do the rest. The combinations are limited only by your imaginations.

In addition to the auto-populate feature, you can assign individual static models to specific parking spots and tweak the automatic placements so they aren't perfect. All the earlier capabilites of SAMM still exist.

I've announced this new capability in the fsDeveloper SAMM forum, but the response has been close to non-existant. (Maybe it's the time of year.) But, as you've probably come to appreciate, I'm not easily disuaded. I have to believe that something as revolutionary as this new capability is going to be useful.

Please give it a try. I'm open to suggestions for extensions/improvements.

Happy New year to all,
Don
 
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