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Animated Airport Ground Vehicles

jvile

jvile

Messages
8,893
Where are the Animated Airport ground vehicles called from.

Many Airports have ground vehicles that run from parking spot to parking spot. These vehicles are randomly called each time FSX starts because they are not always the same vehicles when loading the same airport.

They are defined in the SimObjects\GroundVehicles folder just like a Airplane or a Boat.

Some Airports have them and some don't. If a airport has them we can make additional vehicle taxiway links in the XML and FSX will send these vehicles on to those links (USE SDE to see the vehicle taxiway links).

Once the link is defined as a vehicle link airplanes will not use it for taxi purposes.

Somewhere in the coding of FSX the airport has these vehicles. Some airports are not coded with ground vehicles and no matter how many vehicle taxiway links I make, only the Fuel Truck is made to be present and uses them.

TrafficDatabase is used to create AI Flightplanes and AI Boat type bgl's for moving scenery. We also know how to add Highway traffic to 4, 6, 8 lanes of roads so, where do these airport ground vehicles come from.

I have search the SDK's. Airports that I add Parking spots and Gates/Jetways to would look better if I could add some animated ground vehicles to the vehicle taxiway links I design.

Does anyone have any ideas?
 
The list of airport vehicles models is coded in the LWCfg.spb file. But this is a global per-region settings, it doesn't contain informations about each individual airport. And it does not contain any more clues like how vehicles should move, what they should do etc

Do you know any relations between the trafficScalar field in BGL airport structures and the related vehicle traffic ? Since it's a new field in FSX, maybe it has something to do with this other new feature.
 
Do you know any relations between the trafficScalar field in BGL airport structures and the related vehicle traffic ? Since it's a new field in FSX, maybe it has something to do with this other new feature.
Click to expand...

lc0277

The Scaler is a Throttle valve for AI Planes only.

It is part of the TrafficDatabase compiler and is also a BGLComp compiler record. It tells the 2 compilers what percent to schedule AI Planes at each airport. I have confimed that it has no effect at runtime.

FS9 used a hardcoded ratio of parking spots to the amount of AI traffic at any given airport. FSX exposed the scalar to allow throttling AI traffic at certain airports. The problem at some airports is the ratio of parking spots to a minimal taxiway infrastructure or what is called choke points which causes head to head gridlock. The TrafficScalar set to a default in the Airport record and the TrafficDatabase compiler (0.70 percent) is suppose to help eliminate this problem.

Smaller Airports do not have taxiways segmented into several or in some cases many parts (C1, C1, C1) which at large airports helps to eliminate the chock points. Many AFCAD designers delete all these dupicated taxiways and then don't understand why their airport like KJFK or EHAM has head to head AI Plane gridlock.

It is easy to compare the loading of AI Planes between FS9 and FSX. The .70 scaler which is the FSX default does not load as many AI Planes when using FP's that were compiled with TTools. Ttools knows nothing about the Scaler values.

I will take a look at LWCfg.spb file. Somewhere each airport has a set amount of ground traffic assigned. The Larger the airport the more ground traffic can be seen. However, some airports don't have any ground traffic assigned by default. These are also airports in the APXnnnnn.bgl that don't have any parking spots coded.

We can add Fuel trucks by using a 5.0M parking value and coding a Vehicle in the XML but I can't see anything for ground support vehicles.

The Pushback Tug, Conveyor, and Luggage Cart are coded as part of the "GATE" used in the airport bgl. If you code "CARGO" for the parking spot you only get a Pushback Tug. These are also random in which colors FSX chooses on startup.
 
Good question Jim
i also noticed that, whenever i add a fuel truck its been a different type on odd occasions when checking its movements, and as you say they load at random, do they choose from the 7 fuel trucks, going by the list in the groundvehicles folder, i've only ever seen two different types
i would like to add a ambulance but i'm unable to figure that out yet
much searching needed i guess
Ray
 
XML code to add a vehicule

Hi Jvile

-----
We can add Fuel trucks by using a 5.0M parking value and coding a Vehicle in the XML but I can't see anything for ground support vehicles.
-------

Could you help me with the xml code to add a vehicule, as above described?

Thanks,

José
 
Jose
i open the XML with notepad and add:
(my example for NZCH)


<TaxiwayParking index="36"
type="VEHICLE"
name="PARKING"
number="10"
lat="S43 29.30512"
lon="E172 32.57249"
heading="145.74"
radius="5.0M"
pushBack="BOTH"/>

"36" being the next number in the list i then scroll down to "PARKING"
and add this:


<TaxiwayPath start="81" end="36"
type="PARKING"
name="0"
surface="ASPHALT"
width="9.14M"
weightLimit="500000"
leftEdge="NONE"
rightEdge="NONE"
/>

"81" being the nearest "PATH" where i placed my fuel truck
even if this crosses/near a "VEHICLE" "PATH" the FUEL truck will turn onto it and use it, and the taxi ways
also making sure the "SURFACE" corresponds with the airport surface

Jim may have an simple/easier way but this works for me and takes about 2min's

Ray
 
Last edited:
I use AFCAD/SDE to place a new or change an exsiting parking spot to 5.0M in size. I code it RAMP_GA_SMALL and then create all the taxiway links at

EDIT ****** at the bottom

30.0M in size and code them CLOSED.

I don't want the Fuel Truck or any Ground Support Equipment running around on airplane taxiway's. They have their own routes at Airports so I simulate the same thing. This also keeps the ATC system from getting confused and causing head to head grid lock between Airplanes and Support Euipment.

I decompile AFCAD and change the 5.0M parking spot from RAMP_GA_SMALL to VEHICLE. VEHICLE coded as a Parking spot tells FSX to place the Fuel Truck at that spot.

All TAXIWAY links that I coded CLOSED I replace with VEHICLE which tells FSX to use these paths and not the Airplane Taxiway links for all Ground Support equipment.

Ground Support/Fuel Truck works with a Radius value just like the Airplane. You see this issue if you park a Cessna 172 into a 36M parking Spot and then call for the Fuel Truck. The Fuel Truck fuels the Cessna but is no where near the actual half wing span setting in the Aircraft.cfg.

FSX uses a default parking spot radius for each type parking code so the ground support equipment positions itself correctly to the size of the plane in the parking spot.

If the parking spot radius is set to small for a plane then the fuel truck will run into your plane and cause a crash if the detection is turned on.

There is a pattern for Ground Support Equip that is programed at Airports. In my original post I am trying to determine where the code is for adding additional Gound Support. Large airports have more Ground Support eqipment then Small Airports based on Parking Spots avavilable.

KMIA has over 16 pieces of ground support traveling between parking spots. The pattern is that ground support visits the same parking spots over and over. That means there is a code somewhere that tells a piece of euipment to travel between certain parking spots using the same route over and over.

It would appear that ground support would be a TrafficDatabase type bgl written for each airport. That would be simular to the AI Plane and Boat movement but on a smaller scale. Parking spots would be compiled as the route rather then Boat Terminals (boat movement) or Airports (AI Plane movement). However, I have not found anything in the SDK's to support my theory.

Moving scenery (animated airport support) is only referenced as Living World Features. Controlling is done with a slider percent the same as AI Plane and Boat traffic. Stands to reason that a compiled type Plan is controlling the support euipment but I have not found any bgl to support my theory.


edit *************

Meant to say 30 feet (width="4.57M") not 30M for vehicle roadways around the airport
 
Last edited:
jvile said:
It would appear that ground support would be a TrafficDatabase type bgl written for each airport. That would be simular to the AI Plane and Boat movement but on a smaller scale. Parking spots would be compiled as the route rather then Boat Terminals (boat movement) or Airports (AI Plane movement). However, I have not found anything in the SDK's to support my theory.
Click to expand...

Are you sure of that ? If ambient airport traffic were compiled as traffic, then they would appear with a non-null file# and key# entry in the traffic explorer. But like all airport vehicles, they are marked with "?". AI Aircraft and boat traffic compiled with TDDB have such fields filled with the right info (the key is just the ordinal number in file, starting from -1)
That doesn't exclude the possibility of some programmed path and schedules, but it's unlikely that a standard traffic BGL is used for this. Do you have any clue where such inforrmations could be stored ? FSX is out since 5 months now and nearly every single data BGL file has been examined and decompiled. I wonder if we missed some big important file. :cool:
 
No I am not sure, just some speculation on my part.

I looked through the LWcfg for both the airport (GATE/CARGO support equip) and ambient XML. It is grouped by Regions which is understandable so the right type vehicles appear at the correct airport. It also shows which Region is Left/Right side driving for I assume Road Traffic.

But more importantly it looks to me like nothing more then a file for model's simular to a model.mdl for a AI Plane. Each Plane has a cfg which references its model.mdl where as the LWcfg is just one file that references all the model.mdl's for the Living World.

I agree that most bgl's have been decompiled in FSX except the ones that we really need to look at.

I keep thinking the Airport Support equipment is also compiled inside the trafficAircraft.bgl and the TDB SDK does not make any reference to the movement of the LW.

There are many aspects of the AI Aircraft behavior compiled in the bgl that the toolkit dll does not show us. After all these years we still have never seen what the total makeup of the compiled default FS9 AI Traffic bgl has.

Maybe MS did not foresee anyone wanting to add Ground Support Traffic to a Airport that does not have any.

If you don't have a parking spot at a airport then no FlightPlan will compile for that airport. My thought process also says if there is no parking spots then you don't have any Ground Traffic compiled for that same airport. Once I add the parking spots to a FSX airport then I can compile a Flightplan for that airport. I should also be able to add Ground Support equipment and not just Fuel Trucks.

But then again my way of thinking does not always agree with code thinking.
 
Ray

I have only found 2 different types of Fuel Trucks that are used for Fueling when you code a Vehicle Parking Spot and they are random unless you have more then one Fuel Spot.

I have 8 FUEL Trucks coded at KATL in different places to keep the wait time to a minimum but I also have over 300 parking spots. Only the following 2 types appear. Some Regions only code one type fuel truck out of the 2 but other Regions have both types available for the Airport.

<FuelTrucks>
<ContainerEntry>
<ContainerTitle>Veh_Air_Fueltruck_2_sm</ContainerTitle>
<EntryWeight>8</EntryWeight>
</ContainerEntry>
<ContainerEntry>
<ContainerTitle>Veh_Air_Fueltruck01_sm</ContainerTitle>
<EntryWeight>8</EntryWeight>
</ContainerEntry>
</FuelTrucks>

I don't see any ambulance coded for Ground Support (Airport) only for Freeway Traffic.
 
Last edited:
Thank you Jim
as there are all these models in the GroundVehicles, it occurred to me if they could be used as airport vehicles, even by switching some for others, as some are named VEH_air_ and some without the "air" like the Ambulance, which i take it to be the airport traffic, and all have a cfg?
I wonder if it will work like we do with AI aircraft
just another thought, which i know doesn't answer your orig Question
I'll re-search some more...........
Ray
 
Ray

I was thinking of swapping some of the LW ambient vehicles in a specific Region to see if I could see other type vehicles show up at the airports.

Placing the Ambulance in the desired Region of your airport (LWcfg) could make it show up randomly rather then some other type vehicle. I was going to replace one of the Fire Trucks (one is yellow one is red) with the Ambulance.
 
Be interested in your results there Jim, also how you made the changes
i removed all of the fuel trucks, (6) Veh_air_fueltruck....
leaving only VEH_air_fueltruck01_sm
and i see two different models of fuel truck now! strange! (this is at ymml)
removing VEH_air_fueltruck01_sm and replace with
VEH_FuelTruck100LL I see only one small fueltruck even tho there are
three spots, removing this one and replacing the other 6 i see nothing
the textures in these 7 fuel trucks are only cfg files pointing to
[fltsim]
fallback.1=..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\Texture
fallback.2=..\..\..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\Texture

Ray
 
No Jim,
just removing them from the simobjects\groundvehicles folder like you say
just trying to find what's using what from where
Ray
 
jvile said:
The pattern is that ground support visits the same parking spots over and over. That means there is a code somewhere that tells a piece of euipment to travel between certain parking spots using the same route over and over.
Click to expand...

Is it possible they are following waypoints? I looked at the GamePark.xml located in the Mission Creation Kit\Mission Samples\Backcountry\GamePark and saw this.

<LivingWorld.MobileSceneryObject InstanceId="{69B0B064-0577-42FD-AD7C-129B9E9EF55C}">
<Descr>Intersection_Giraffe1</Descr>
<ModelID>{F2BF5483-F043-4F6A-83B5-FE46CCD3680E}</ModelID>
<WorldPosition>S18° 45' 34.08",E26° 53' 45.34",+003530.52</WorldPosition>
<Orientation>0.000,0.000,240.000</Orientation>
<IsOnGround>True</IsOnGround>
<MSOWaypointController>
<AccelKnots>2.500</AccelKnots>
<GroundCruiseSpeed>2.500</GroundCruiseSpeed>
<GroundTurnSpeed>2.500</GroundTurnSpeed>
<GroundTurnTime>5.000</GroundTurnTime>
<WaypointList>
<WrapWaypoints>True</WrapWaypoints>
<CurrentWaypoint>0</CurrentWaypoint>
<BackupToFirst>False</BackupToFirst>
<Waypoint InstanceId="{E25B45A0-03ED-41D6-906F-6461032E0387}">
<AltitudeIsAGL>True</AltitudeIsAGL>
<WorldPosition>S18° 45' 34.50",E26° 53' 44.59",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
<Descr>Waypoint 1</Descr>
</Waypoint>
<Waypoint InstanceId="{3C552F5E-A8B4-45E9-96EB-96071B311A9A}">
<AltitudeIsAGL>True</AltitudeIsAGL>
<WorldPosition>S18° 45' 38.67",E26° 53' 37.71",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
<Descr>Waypoint 2</Descr>
</Waypoint>
<Waypoint InstanceId="{88FFE5F9-A062-446F-BAFB-BC2D2161FFCA}">
<AltitudeIsAGL>True</AltitudeIsAGL>
<WorldPosition>S18° 45' 39.71",E26° 53' 31.83",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
<Descr>Waypoint 3</Descr>
</Waypoint>
</WaypointList>
</MSOWaypointController>
</LivingWorld.MobileSceneryObject>

Has anybody looked in one of these .dll's in the main folder?

sim1.dll
simprop.dll
simpropace.dll
simpropext.dll
simscheduler.dll

Just a thought.
 
Thank you Mark

Any data that looks close to Ground support movement is better then anything I have.

That looks promising so I am going to pursue it with further studies.
 
jvile said:
Where are the Animated Airport ground vehicles called from.

Many Airports have ground vehicles that run from parking spot to parking spot. These vehicles are randomly called each time FSX starts because they are not always the same vehicles when loading the same airport.

They are defined in the SimObjects\GroundVehicles folder just like a Airplane or a Boat.

Some Airports have them and some don't. If a airport has them we can make additional vehicle taxiway links in the XML and FSX will send these vehicles on to those links (USE SDE to see the vehicle taxiway links).

Once the link is defined as a vehicle link airplanes will not use it for taxi purposes.

Somewhere in the coding of FSX the airport has these vehicles. Some airports are not coded with ground vehicles and no matter how many vehicle taxiway links I make, only the Fuel Truck is made to be present and uses them.

TrafficDatabase is used to create AI Flightplanes and AI Boat type bgl's for moving scenery. We also know how to add Highway traffic to 4, 6, 8 lanes of roads so, where do these airport ground vehicles come from.

I have search the SDK's. Airports that I add Parking spots and Gates/Jetways to would look better if I could add some animated ground vehicles to the vehicle taxiway links I design.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

The quantity of (non-fueltruck) ambient vehicles present at a given airport is purely a function of the quantity of GATE type parking spots and the Airport Vehicle Density slider.

Fuel trucks are spawned in VEHICLE parking spots.

There is NOT a per-airport TrafficDatabase type BGL.

-Doug
 
DougMatthews said:
The quantity of (non-fueltruck) ambient vehicles present at a given airport is purely a function of the quantity of GATE type parking spots and the Airport Vehicle Density slider.

Fuel trucks are spawned in VEHICLE parking spots.

There is NOT a per-airport TrafficDatabase type BGL.

-Doug
Click to expand...

Thanks Doug. That's something that I had considered on the way home from work tonight and was going to look in to it. Glad I checked here first.
 
Thank you Doug

I have added GA_nnnn type parking spots to many airports in Canada but never added a GATE_SMALL.

I went back and coded a couple of GATE_SMALL's to those airports and the ground support showed up.

From now on at GA type small airports I will place a few GATE_SMALL's to the airport I design.

I am hoping that CARGO type will also add the ground support due to a pushback tug does exsit with that code.

Thanks again
 
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