• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

AITBC issues (Sea Traffic in FSX)

Horst18519

Horst18519

Moderator
Resource contributor
Messages
2,385
Country
germany
Hello everybody,

I just started working with AITBC 2 days ago and I was very successful creating traffic with default ships. I still have some issues though:

- I cannot get selfmade ships to work. They work perfectly well as scenery objects and AI within missions, but do not appear as sea traffic. :confused:

- Some default ships also do not appear though their plans and routes are fine.

- One ship shows the wrong model. It's supposed to be a big cruiseliner, but it appears as a small ferry. :confused:

And another important thing I came across:

- Never use the same ID for more than one route. AITBC seems to confuse them and deletes or disables the duplicates!

Are there more limitations I don't know of? Maximum lenght of a route? Max numbers of ships at one time?...

Would be nice to read from others who tried that before. :)
 
More questions:

- Why do cargo ships not connect to the docks even if their path end close to them? I guess there should be a lot of empty docking points in Rotterdam harbour, shouldn't there? :D

- Why do some of the ships most of them actually) park at a 45° angle even if the path has 2 or 3 points parallel to the dock?


Some of my own ship do appear now, but only some of them. Disturbing: it seems it's not always the same that appears. :confused:
 
AI Ships

The reason some ships don't show is either a texture is missing or the mdl is not FSX or FS8 (FS9 models are only used in scenery). FS9 aircraft all have FS8 structures. I have had this problem and FSX picks ups another model.

Ships routed as Cargo anchor around the end point of a route within a 300 yards radius, so you need to make all routes Ferry if you want precise control.

Boats pointing at 45 degs to the shore need some planning with the nodes. There is another thread in this forum where the author reckoned that the second last node has some relationship to the length of the boat and dictates the angle of parking as all boats have to push back and need turning space.

I don't think there is a length problem with a route but I have had a problem where I have typed in the wrong value for the return leg and a message appears than the length is too great when compiling.

I am no means an expert and my findings maybe off the mark. Keep up your research and report back any of your findings

Les
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your reply. Don't know what I changed now, but some of the ships do appear now. Some still don't. All same format, all same exported. Definitely no error in syntax or mdl, it's just that they do not show up.

Anyway, Baltic Sea is pretty crowded now... :D

One other thing that is on my mind:
No matter what time I set in FSX, my AI ships seem to like the idea of building convois. :eek: When I slew across the sea I find almost no lone ships but a lot of convois with sometimes up to 5 or 6 ships in close proximity.
No, they don't have identical plans, just the same route. Does FSX kind of group AI ships like it does with AI aircraft? If I remember right AI aircraft are piled together into 15-minutes-groups.

I found the other thread, maybe I'll try that approach.

And for the cargo ships: I misunderstood the SDK in that point. Looks kinda funny when a dozen ships anchor in a precise circle at a harbour... :D
 
Hi Thorsten,

I've having similar problems, which I describe in a seperate thread:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10625

I've created a very basic ship in Gmax (FSX materials only) and exported it as MDL with no errors. I've placed it in the appropriate SimObjects folder with a sim.cfg, model.cfg and the texture converted to DDS in the correct sub-directories. However, my ship never shows up where and when it should with AITBC (using an existing plan which worked with a default ship).

In your last post you said "Don't know what I changed now, but some of the ships do appear now". Did you figure out what you changed, because it might work for me too?

You also said "They work perfectly well as scenery objects". Did you mean using the FSX Object Placement Tool? When I use the OPT I can't find my simple ship at all. Did you compile your ships as MDL in a different way?

Many thanks for your help

Andy
 
In order to use it as a scenery object you have to assign a GUID, which is not neccessary as a simobject. Then you have to compile it into a BGL (use Arno's LibraryCreator for this) and you can select it in the OPT via its GUID.

I actually have no idea what I had done wrong last time, maybe I got confused with the schedules or whatever. Everyone of my ships does appear now and is on schedule.
Best thing is to duplicate your schedule for that ship several times, best of all 24 times (every hour). This way you shouldn't have problems to at least see the ship at his starting/departing position, or at least 10 of them piled into each other. :D
 
Doh! Of course, I completely forgot the BGL part! I'll try this next.

Regarding AITBC, I'm using a plan and route which has worked with no problems with the default and other 3rd party ships. All I'm doing it substituting the SimObject name in the Boats text file. It compiles with no problems. When I go to the place and time where the ship has always been before my own ship never appears. I've gone back and put the original ship in the Boats text file, compiled again and the original ship appears at the correct place and time again! This sounds similar to your original problem.

Unless there is something I'm doing wrong with the SimObject name in the Boats text file I can only assume I'm doing something wrong with compiling the MDL file or converting the textures. Compiling the MDL into a BGL static object should allow me to check the latter two.
 
That maybe a good idea. Also try to place the Boat as an AI object in OPT to see if it maybe has corrupt contact points which make it a submarine. :D

You don't have to compile it into a scenery object this way. Simply click "Add - AI - Boat..." and select your AI Ship there. Due to a bug in the OPT you have to actually place the AI object thought to be able to see it.
If it looks ok there should be no reason why it shouldn't appear as AI traffic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top