MSFS - Has this simobject been placed by AI?

[jgarnold]

I have developed another water airport this time a supplement to an existing MSFS (water) airport to add scenery as well as a gate/dock departure point (the Asobo airport only contains water departure points).

When I copy the 'package' to the community folder and run MSFS, a fishing boat (I am sure it is the Simobject-FishingShip-03) appears 'parked' across one of my docks.
When in Devmode the simobject does not appear. I have added an exclusion rectangle set to Exclude All but it continues to be displayed in MSFS which makes me wonder if this is caused by AI and if so is there a method to remove it.

Here is a screen shot showing the boat parked across mt dock (placed using Google Earth positioning and so correct).

 

[KL791]

Where is it? It could be one of the default AI ships, which you can't remove through exclusion.

 

[jgarnold]

Thanks. I think that you are correct (AI ship). The location is CAC3 Nanaimo. There are only water departure points in the original default MSFS airport and the location of the boat is approximately west of the water departure point about 100 metres from the shoreline.
Here is a screen shot and I have circled in blue the area where the boat appears. The 1 Parking is part of my scenery package I have created with extra dock departure point but hesitate to release it as freeware with that darned AI boat constantly parked across my dock (which replicates the position of a real dock). I could shorten the dock but then it wouldn't replicate the real one.

 

[mamu]

Ok so I made some test there
It is very tricky
The boat stay there in sleeping ai mode, so was unable to see it's path, but then I was lucky to see them moving,.so I track down it's AI path
I then drawn an exclusionrectangle including the start and finish waypoints, and set it to excludeWorldscripts ( you can't trust exclusionrectangles when set to excludeAll)
And the fishing boat disappeared
Did a few SIM reload and no boat anymore
So it is worth a try, hope that works for you too

 

[jgarnold]

Mamu you are simply great. Thanks for that. I will now try that. Strangely I noticed the boat appears parked at the same spot regardless of the time of day,

 

[jgarnold]

I am wondering if the placement and sizing of the exclusion rectangle need to be precise as my first attempt do not remove teh AI boat so I then increased the boundaries of the exclusion rectangle to enclose a large area and the boat remains/
Here is my exclusion rectangle (selected)

 

[mamu]

the project included is working on my side,
why, I don't know

in the second screenshot the only moment the fishing ship became active

 

[jgarnold]

Thanks mamu
I modified the area of the exclusion rectangle to only cover the dock where the boat parks itself and now the boat is still parked but about 50 metres away. Not sure if it will always be like this but will check again a few times with the 'clock' set to dirrent times of the day (I usually set it to approximately 12 noon local time).
[added later]
I did a 'resume simulation' and to my surprise the boat started to travel BACKWARDS across the water area to the other side and proceeded a short way INLAND - how crazy is that. Is that the 'path' you observed?

 

[jgarnold]

Well after that (report above) I found the next time I started a flight the boat is back parked across the dock. I increased the size of the exclude rectangle to include a huge area and still no good. Maybe there is something in my scenery causing the problem.

[added later]Well no its not.
I removed my scenery package from the community folder and placed the package from the project you sent to me and the boat still appears. I used 12:00 noon as the time of flight.

 

[mamu]

Thanks mamu
I modified the area of the exclusion rectangle to only cover the dock where the boat parks itself and now the boat is still parked but about 50 metres away. Not sure if it will always be like this but will check again a few times with the 'clock' set to dirrent times of the day (I usually set it to approximately 12 noon local time).
[added later]
I did a 'resume simulation' and to my surprise the boat started to travel BACKWARDS across the water area to the other side and proceeded a short way INLAND - how crazy is that. Is that the 'path' you observed?

View attachment 88012

The real path the boar is following is the one in the second screenshot, the white line, it is visible in the game using the debug Simbojects, but only when the boat is in the waypoint following mode, otherwise when is "sleeping" the waypoints and its path are not visible

During my tries the game was always playing (no pause) , dunno if it can make a difference

 

[jgarnold]

Thanks. I ONLY pause when I go to edit mode. The only time I have seen the boat moving was after being in pause in edit model and then I unpaused and closed all the edit 'windows' (project editor, inspector etc).
When I used your package only I never paused I just started the game and saw the boat parked across my dock again.
I wonder if the script for the AI boat is to run every so often rather than at a specified time as I almost always start a game (at Nanaimo) at 1200 (UTC).
It's strange and annoying that I have only ever seen the boat NOT parked across the dock and you now seem to have removed it (and even when I use your package it doesn't remove it).
Strange too that when I saw the boat moving it was on a different course to what you show.

Asobo have a lot to answer for as also at Vancouver Harbour Airport VERY often when I 'fly' out of there is at least one huge passenger ship in the middle of the harbour very near the docks making it very difficult to taxi a floatplane out into the harbour proper for takeoff. It seems they do the 'routes' very roughly.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi John:

A quick review of some basic criteria for Exclusion Rectangles:

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/ht...usionRectangle_Objects.htm?rhhlterm=Rectangle


"NOTE: Exclusion rectangles will only apply to SimObjects placed via the Scenery Editor. They will not apply to BGL traffic or SimObjects spawned using SimConnect."


Also to be considered, is whether vertex Points for Exclusion Rectangles are placed in Clockwise or "anti-clockwise" order.

Additionally, assuming a Exclusion Rectangle Polygon BGL is in a separate scenery package with a higher priority above the default scenery:

* Polygons with matching GUID attributes assigned exclude one another; or worded in another way:

"Excludes Exclude Excludes" ...if they have the same GUID (aka "Like Excludes Like").

GaryGB

 

[jgarnold]

They will not apply to BGL traffic or SimObjects spawned using SimConnect."

Thanks Gary. Good to 'hear' from you. What a pity that that the user is not able to exclude 'stuff' from bgl's and I bet that is where my 'rogue' boat 'comes' from. It really is placed without regard to where boats in real life go. Even without my dock one can see satellite imagery of existing docks in real life. Maybe it was a case is 'ear enough is good enough' for whoever created the bgl water traffic.