WildCard

I think it is an interesting idea. However, I think it could be made more enticing to include some General Aviation liveries for all the, currently, white GA planes, seeing as these packs would be general updates instead of airport specific. A lot of GA planes have "stock" factory paint jobs available.

For those that come in late and want some context instead of just deleted posts. 🙂

Ok, I'm done with this conversation. @MJKERR The first 3 examples you provided for OMDB are working as I described. The 4th example is a fake. Don't fake log files. A real example: COMMAND: FDB683 RUNWAY 30L CLEARED TO LAND 05:05:40 * FDB683 => ADD HISTORY: FDB683: RUNWAY 30L CLEARED TO LAND FDB683 COMMAND: FDB683 VACATE RUNWAY RIGHT ONTO TAXIWAY M8 05:05:51 * FDB683 => ADD HISTORY: FDB683: VACATE RUNWAY RIGHT ONTO TAXIWAY M8 FDB683 05:08:29 alt: 0 takeoff: False/False/-2 OWNER_TOWER r: 30L * FDB683 => escape cross: M8 Your examples at EGLL are also working as I described

Most likely you won't, as I based the command on Eli's post and my own memory. i.e. I didn't check it for accuracy. The actual commands are #airplane1; VACATE RUNWAY LEFT ONTO TAXIWAY ;#taxiway1 #airplane1; VACATE RUNWAY RIGHT ONTO TAXIWAY ;#taxiway1 and should already be in your tower3d.rec file

@EliGrim I'm assuming that he has them exiting at S7 to head to Cargo/T4, due to him complaining about the taxi routes around T4 in an earlier post. The reason why left/right doesn't make sense here is that the direction is determined by where the centre of all of the terminals in the whole airport is, not the centre of the terminals the plane could go to. So in this case the game would pick exiting to the "right" of Runway 27L and look for a S7 taxiway that exits in that direction. Personally, I think it's failing to find the S7 taxiway to the right, then looks for the first taxiway in either direction and, even if S7 & N7 exit at exactly the same point, it just happens that it checks S7 before N7 and determines it can use S7. I'll never know for certain, I have no desire to delve into this any deeper in order to find out as it provides no benefit to me to debug code that I'm not using. 🙂

Actually @MJKERR does have a valid point, as you would think that S7 is pointing away from the centre of all of the terminals. However, I was trying to keep the explanation as simple as possible. In reality the game does not use the concept of "left" or "right" of the runway, it uses the dot product of the non-normalised taxiway exit vector and the normalised normal, on the side closest to the centre of all of the terminals, of the runway vector to determine if the taxiway is pointing in the correct direction. Using non-normalised and normalised vectors in a dot product to determine angle is mathematically incorrect, and could be what is causing this anomaly. Or it could simply be that S7 does exit the runway before N7. They are 2 separate Taxiways and therefore can join the taxiway at separate points, even if this is not visually noticeable. So when the program gets to the "just take the next available exit" part, then S7 is selected first.

@MJKERR All of those exits are on the side of the runway that is opposite from the centre of all of the terminals at OMDB. So you need to use the command that includes which side to leave the runway from i.e. "VACATE RUNWAY XX RIGHT ONTO TAXIWAY XX" An example using the info I provided above: If you use the command "EXIT AT TAXIWAY Mike-5-Bravo"; when the plane's state changes to "ESCAPE_RUNWAY" it determines that the left side of the runway is closest to the centre of all of the terminals as it has not been told to exit left/right it will use this direction (i.e. left). It then tries to find a taxiway named 'M5B' exiting on the left side of the runway that is less than 98 degrees from its direction of travel. As there is no M5B on the left side of the runway, this fails. It then tries to find the first exit in any direction that is less than 98 degrees from its direction of travel. This can be on the right if the first taxiway only exits to the right, if it exits to the left and right from the same point, it will use the left exit.

@Ripskin As @crbascott said, a plane will not exit before its rollout is complete. The rollout is complete when you are awarded the 10 points and the plane changes its state to "ESCAPE_RUNWAY". When its state has changed to "ESCAPE_RUNWAY" it will then determine which side of the runway the centre of all of the terminals is on and set its runway exit direction towards that point. If it has been told to exit left/right it will use this direction instead. It then tries to find the first exit on that side of the runway that is less than 98 degrees from its direction of travel. If this fails, it will then tries to find the first exit in any direction that is less than 98 degrees from its direction of travel. If this fails, you get a "Map Error" penalty. @MJKERR What runway is it landing on, what taxiway are you trying to get it to exit at, what taxiway is it exiting at, and what terminal/stand is the plane going to? With that information I could tell you why its not working.

You can use "Exit at Taxiway XX" any time after you have cleared the plane to land until it finishes its landing rollout (i.e. when you get the 10 pts). The plane will not exit the runway before it finishes its rollout, even if you told it to exit at an earlier taxiway and it said "Yes, I'll exit there". There is a bug in the game where the plane does not take into account the length of the displaced threshold. So it checks from the start of the runway, using its rollout distance, to determine if it can exit at the given taxiway before telling you that it can. The problem with Dubai is that it has displaced thresholds between 4000 and 5100 feet, so it will say that it can exit at a taxiway up to 5100 feet before it really can. However, It still will not exit until it has finished its landing rollout. Addendum - Yes I know that the real Dubai Airport does not have displaced thresholds between 4000 and 5100 feet. However, the game uses 'fake' displaced thresholds of these sizes to make the plane land further down the runway.

Now that you've updated the card again, I thought I'd let you know that "callsign TAXI TO RUNWAY runway" will work with all ATs and VIAs that "callsign RUNWAY runway#" does as they both call the same function with everything after the word RUNWAY as their parameters. Of course an entry for each variation needs to be added to the REC file for them to work. note: This is only for "AT", "VIA" and "TAXI VIA", other commands starting with "callsign RUNWAY runway#" call different functions.

You need to add the commands to your tower3d.rec file or use EliGrim's modified tower3d.rec file for the voice commands to work. Just to be sure: I installed a clean version of the game Added EGLL Tested the commands Sure enough, the new commands did not work. So then: I downloaded EliGrim's modified tower3d.rec file Replaced the original tower3d.rec file with the modified tower3d.rec file Tested the commands And, just like that the new commands did work.

Yep, my mistake. I forgot which one had the higher version number. The 'ns' is added if the steam library doesn't load, so I'm used to ignoring that. 🙂

@powmia1972 It looks like you are trying to run the steam version of the game with some files missing. Run the steam file verifier for the game to restore the missing files.

Looks like they can line up aircraft on the deferred threshold at the start of Runways 09L & 09R as well at the intersection N10 on 09R in that sim. I wonder if we will ever be able to do that in this new Heathrow (EGLL) airport.

I know, I made the post based on the "squeaky wheel" theory 🙂

The most important thing about the file format is the spacing. The game breaks up each line by column. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 AAA ANAA_FRENCH_POLYNESIA 17.25 S 145.30 W NTGA 3-5 IATA 7-45 NAME (not used) 48-EOL DATA The data section is then split up by whitespace into geolat, geolat_dir, geolon, geolon_dir & icao. The name is never used and can contain spaces. The data the game provides for latitude and longitude is a mixture of decimal degrees and degree.minutes (sexagesimal degrees), however the game uses all of the values as if they were decimal degrees and uses great circle math to determine what heading a plane should fly after takeoff.

??? YMML: a.exe

Reading back over this thread, I thought I'd emphasise one point that I believe @FeelThere needs to fix in a Service Pack as it makes the airport completely unusable for realistic operations and would be considered a release stopping bug in any professional software product. The runways need to be extended to include the displaced thresholds so that planes can take-off from those intersections. This has been done for every previous airport, including TIST where almost half of runway 28 is displaced threshold. The runways include where the dotted lines are, this is the displaced threshold and is always part of the runway. In theory and reality they have not started the runways in the correct place, they have instead only included the LDA (Landing Distance Available) portion of the runway. The runway must include the full TORA (Take off Run Available).

The speech recognition engine runs as a separate program to the game and, after the airport has loaded, it can take a few minutes before it is ready. The faster your computer and graphics card, the quicker it will be ready. In this video, from about 4 years ago, you can see that it takes nearly 4 and a half minutes before the speech recognition is useable. The clicking sounds when you press the left-shift button are made by the game, so they can't be used to work out if the SR engine is ready or not.

The distance is static. After a aircraft lands and goes into "escape runway" mode, the next exit is calculated and a route is created. This route includes the first 500 feet of the exiting taxiway (or to the end of the taxiway if it is shorter than 500 feet). When the plane exits the runway it will travel to the end of this 500 feet and stop. This 500 feet is measured from the centreline of the runway, not from the edge of the runway, and the smaller the exit angle of the taxiway, the closer the end of the route will be to the runway centreline. ie. a taxiway at 90 degrees will end 500 feet from the runway centreline, a taxiway at a constant 30 degree angle will end 250 feet from the runway centreline. "Approaching the runway" is any plane with a taxi route, whether it is to a terminal or to a runway, and the plane is approaching an intersection between the taxiway it is on and a runway. ie. not landing or escaping the runway. The holding 'gate' on the taxiways that the game uses may not be in the same place as the holding line you can see on the taxiway in the game.

Yes, I should also add that the game will stop the plane at the holding point when the centre of the plane reaches 100 feet from it, not when the nose of the plane approaches it. This is the same when exiting the runway, when it should actually be after the tail has passed the holding point.

@Pedantic G correct @crbascott the game only uses the holding line when approaching the runway. It ignores the holding line when leaving the runway and just travels a set distance down the exiting taxiway. The only time it would stop at a holding point when exiting would be if the holding point was inside that set distance, but I can't think of any examples where it is. This could be the reason why they couldn't fix them 🙂

Normally planes will hold at the Pattern A runway holding point when entering a runway or exiting a runway after landing https://mediawiki.ivao.aero/index.php?title=Aerodrome_Marking_Signs#Runway_holding_point_pattern_A unless the airport is experiencing CAT II or CAT III ILS weather conditions (this is not the same as CAT II/III aircraft type) then they stop at the Pattern B holding points for increased safety https://mediawiki.ivao.aero/index.php?title=Aerodrome_Marking_Signs#Runway_holding_point_pattern_B All of the airports addons that I've tested so far have the holding gate at the Pattern A marker, even tho the game basically ignores these for planes exiting the runway after landing.

Basically, yes. I was trying to think of an easy example in a released airport when I saw this post... perfect. 🙂

I agree with @crbascott, the displaced threshold is part of the runway and all previous airports have included it as part of the runway. As a matter of fact, the internal format for the airport file has the ability to include the length of the displaced threshold as part of the runway information so that planes don't land on it. Without having this done correctly, then it will be impossible to get planes to start their takeoff from the displaced threshold like they can do in real life. One of the reasons that displaced thresholds exist is to give planes taking off more runway length (TORA) for them to takeoff from.