Pdubya

ML: Thanks, I will give it a try today. I was trying to click on the symbol rather than the plane itself before.

Hey all: Returning to the game recently and came across a player video on youtube that raised a question for me. Perhaps someone can answer. In this letsplay, the author was able to grab the individual aircraft ID/Spd/Alt text block (the one with the line pointing to the plane) and rotate it 360 degrees as desired. I tried this with my full-screen setup and it doesn't work. Anyone know what setup is required to manipulate the aircraft ID? Thanks, Paul

Just to confirm VenturaGuy101 is not alone in having these issues. It is something that happens at Philadelphia to me as well, I mentioned it in another thread. Hope you guys can figure out what is going on. Thanks for working on it! Paul

Hmm. Well, I definitely remember while playing PHL that it seemed trying to give the vacate command while on approach was rejected; so I was doing it right at or immediately after touchdown. It usually worked OK, but I still had a few times where it confirmed then ignored. Oh well, I really need to try the latest version out anyway. Thanks VG, much appreciated. OH... what are your thoughts on taxi speed in the latest release?

DeltaVII: I am wondering if this isn't more attributable to the severe speed reduction of arrivals after their initial landing touchdown (i.e., they're too slow)? Has anyone noticed a change recently in runway taxi speed? Prior to the latest releases it was taking much too long for planes that must travel a sizable distance from touchdown point to get to that taxiway.

Thanks for the replies guys. I think our old "friend" the delayed arrival gate mechanism is in play here as well (obviously on arrivals only). I have had more than a few collisions at JFK due to being busy and missing the fact that a recent arrival has taxied into a ramp area when I have just given another departure from the same ramp area seconds ago- having missed the delayed arrival gate assignment on the first plane. Doh! Having said that, I have no idea of how difficult a programming/logic change it would cause to "move up" the arrival gate assignments in Tower 3D Pro. I imagine it isn't trivial. Another situation I have had problems with is giving arrivals commands to vacate runways with consistent follow through. I'll give an example: I like playing Philadelphia Intl and tend to run a 27R/26 arrival and 27L/35 departure configuration. It's fun! My problem always seems to be having the right timing on a 27R arrival that is usually going to touch down around E taxiway and getting it to go PAST the always busy C & M taxiway areas (departures for 27L) and take N or K4 onto K taxiway. I have had numerous collisions where the arrival a) acknowledges my vacate runway at N command and then... b) promptly ignores it and the blue highlight for exit location pops up on, you guessed it- Mike, for a well-timed nose-to-nose collision. *sigh* Unfortunately I need to get a game played and have a proper log file for Vic and Co. the next time around so they have something to work from. Wondering if you all have come across the same issues? P.

I am curious guys- I have never tried to give specific taxi orders when giving pushback approval. I just tell them which runway to expect, then I let it calculate the route it wants to and modify from that point with another command if I need to do it; sometimes they are good enough w/o me changing them. I have to mention that I have yet to play with the newest version and the updated taxi routines, alas work and life. But I have been following the forums regularly. Thanks for all the troubleshooting and feedback to the devs guys, you're a big reason the game is as good as it is at this point.

Hartleecub: Note in the other thread on SP3 that people are seeing that their latest updated install is SP2 after SP3 is completed, Vic is saying to ignore until they can ferret out the little bug(ger).

I end up rarely using it- partly due to the spastic behavior it has. I do like the end results, but the abrupt camera zoom-aways are rather immersion and concentration breaking in my opinion. Perhaps a slightly different implementation Vic?

Hey, now that's the best news I've heard in quite some time. You might have just earned another purchase SSD! Keep up the great work, looking forward to more from your studio. Thanks again.

Oh, cool. I will give it a try myself. Thanks for the input!

Hartleecub: You might try changing your antialiasing setting to FXAA, it is the least "expensive" AA option resource-wise from the group available to us. I don't usually bother with chromatic or vignette, they give a certain look to the game- it's all a bit too subjective (not to mention expensive) to me. Hope this helps. P.

WOOT! Oh... and uh, thanks Vic! ;p

Vic: Have to agree with JC and VG101 here on collisions and taxi issues. Thinking about the AI decision logic for choosing exit points got me wondering; if planes can stop short automatically when following, why can't they "know" that there is a conflicting flight sitting on taxiway X they are about to exit into from the runway? Doesn't the sim track flight ground location in order to work? - or is it much more complicated than that? I have noticed that certain taxi approach "vectors" (for lack of a better term) between two planes induce collisions more often than others (not including behind of course). As an exit issue example, at KPHL one night I had a flight on taxiway M stopped short of 27R (ARR) runway, waiting to head to 27L for departure. The landing flight was given the command "exit at taxiway N". The command was confirmed, but a few seconds later it decided to ignore my tower orders, the blue exit highlight appeared on taxiway M and the plane proceeded to practically collide with the plane on M sitting there. I will try to remember to create a log when I play KPHL so I have some more useful data for you, but these issues are not our imagination at work (unfortunately). Thanks for listening.

Craig: I tend to get arrival/runway mismatches regularly at KPHL when assigning 27R and 26 for Arrivals (35 and 27L for DEP). I would venture to say that every fourth or so Arrival flight is assigned 26 and must be changed to 27R. It does do a fairly decent job of routing the prop planes to 26 instead of 27R though... I wonder if it is just the sim's way of dividing up the Arrivals, i.e., every 'X'th arrival flight gets shunted over to 26 instead of 27R. It's a bit annoying due to having to make 2 separate commands to correct it at this time. Perhaps down the road we will get the means to assign classes as VG101 mentions above. Paul

Joe: A minor question for you regarding your mod. Have you seen any evidence of cargo flights exiting the runway to the wrong side? This has been a problem with the airport using latest regular FT files and RC/RT with additions of UPS, etc. to make use of the cargo ramp. I have yet to try your mods as I've been busy. It will happen soon enough, so I wanted to ask. Thanks for your hard work! Paul

In my experience, asking a laptop to push its own screen plus another can get taxing on the poor GPU. They are usually cutdown versions of the desktop graphics chips to begin with, so the larger the resolution you are asking it to push, the worse the results are likely to be for you. Unfortunately there is really no way around this other than a better pc or laptop with a better GPU and possibly CPU.

Fizziii: I had the exact same problem at JFK. My solution was to go into the kjfk_airlines.txt file and... modify the line 11 entry for AVA or Avianca. The third entry is the key one for pronunciation in-game. I changed it (again just now) after the recent service pack updates to the airports, which resets it back to spelling with a "c" rather than a "k". So, open it in a text editor ( I swear by Notepad++, it's free) and change the "c" to a "k". Save and start JFK. Got it? It might not be foolproof, but for me the voice recognition correctly interprets "AVIANKA" as Avianca. Previously it would never work for me, no matter how I parsed my speech, etc. So give it a go and let me know if it works for you too. Note: You can also experiment with spaces in airline names. I tried AVI ANCA and AVI ANKA before settling on AVIANKA that sounded more like the actual airline name and still worked with VR. Try different things and see which work for you in the game. Since everyone's voice is different, you may have to attempt a few different formats before (hopefully) a solution is forthcoming. Enjoy! Paul

Sure Alex: Here it is. Note that I own all the airports for Pro except San Diego, which I believe is #5, but not certain. Someone else could confirm this. P.

Alexk127: Here is a pic of the Tower!3DPro file structure on my PC setup: Hope this helps, P.

Vic: You get points for at least listening to customer input, so that's a start. At 53, I have learned to take a longer view and give the majority of people the benefit of the doubt more than once. We can talk all day about appropriate sayings and "isms", etc., but I for one try hard to keep my cool on the board here because I know you guys are small and cannot possibly juggle all the "balls" thrown your way by everyone. I will say that I rank bringing older existing airports in T3DPro up to current day standards rather high on my want list. Granted, some of this relies on Gabor as well, but I get the feeling that if you at FeelThere lead, he will follow suit with upgrades (as today's promised release already shows [hurrah Gabor!]) on his end. Perhaps in the midst of all the upcoming stuff you guys are working on, a way to squeeze in an older airport update every few months could be possible? Anyway, thanks for your support Vic. I know we can be a PITA at times, so your patience is appreciated! Paul

astrit88: Dana is right. You REALLY need to carefully watch the directory structure the program gives you when installing any of the base, extension or color/traffic products. Not all of them act the same way or default install to the correct directory if you have the Pro version. To be honest Vic and Co. needs to standardize the whole install procedure and make it a bit more user friendly in my opinion, but that is on one of many back burners at FeelThere. Not being harsh here, they are a small group, so needs must and all that, eh? ;p

I play JFK regularly too, so I will start a .bat game next time to have the appropriate log for Vic. I would also like to "catch" the Terminal 1 "tin pan alley" (as I like to call it) antics again and have evidence on that little wonkiness as well. Oh, and the strange departure taxi behavior at our friendly JetBlue ramp- south side, east end mind you. These guys like to call up one taxi plan based on an expected 31L pushback, then change their mind after you give them the 31L taxi instructions (one towards taxiway F, the other around their ramp to the south). This obviously makes them do a 180 degree turn to get moving to the runway assigned. I suppose I could give them very specific taxi instructions to avoid this, but it still seems sub-optimal for the game code. Anyhoo, I will be on the lookout for these when I play JFK next time.

Just remember that when you're in Germany you get the bottom bunk. ;p

Cool AC. I had tried using the "A" taxiways to the right with no success. I will give it a try today.