Daniel42

So far I have not been able to find this in FSX, once FSX starts searching for a parking spot it will scan all of them and return the best match. On a higher level though the scheduler does kick in. The agents that act as ATC Controllers are part of the 6Hz group. I haven't analyzed it in detail but I could very well be possible that if an agent has to find 7 parking spots and it will only get time to look up 4. But once it starts searching for a specific plane it will scan all of the parkings. The scoring algorithm is rather complex, the details I have deciphered so far are in a Wiki article over at fsdevelopper: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.passignment Daniel

They use it to display the correct aircraft type and livery for other people you encounter online. If someone is flying a KLM 737, it will depend on your system whether an actual KLM 737 can be displayed if the other user is in view. So there is a configuration file that defines which actually installed model to display for a certain type and livery (and variation actually). They have their own set of AI planes, but I prefer MTX :) Daniel

While I fully agree, I think the chances of a new Squawbox are slimmer than that of a new MS FlightSim, but I can always try I guess. SB's reason is they do this to prevent double names, which is not a valid one since FS already forces all titles to be unique. Daniel

Is this perhaps documented somewhere? I'd be quite interested the find out a bit more about this. Daniel

I would like to make a request. In order for Squawkbox to be able to use the MyTraffic models, the titles of aircraft must meet some criteria: - they all must start with the same three letters and - they may contain no spaces. I realize this will be somewhat involving: 1) rename all the titles in all aircraft.cfg's 2) rename all the titles in all files referencing the titles (traffic database) 3) rebuild all traffic bgl's But most of all, since all aircraft.cfg files are part of the aircraft installers, all currently deployed installers become useless, meaning that an operation like this can only be done with a full release. For step 1, I have already created the framework for a program that will do so: find all titles, remove the spaces and add MTX_ in front of the title. Also, a file is created with entries. Using this file other files could be updated as well. But it would depend on whether this works: export aircraft.dat from MTX, rename titles, import renamed aircraft.dat. Would this be possible for a next version? If so, I will take care of finishing the conversion tool and creating the Squawkbox plugin file afterwards, if not I will just focus on FollowMe 2 as many people would like me to do :) Daniel

I'm alive :) Apart from flying a bit and giving support for my own add-on, FSX was gathering dust for me. Recently I picked it up again and started browsing some forums again, we'll see what happens. On topic... I've done a lot of research on how FSX will assign runways. The two most important things to remember: 1) There is a bug in it, related to closed runways. For both the primary and secondary runway start, FSX will check the 'Closed for Take-off' flag for the primary. (There may be bugs in this line as well, since I don't recall exactly what got checked instead of what, but there is a mix up there) 2) The assigning algoritm is (totally) incompatible with the crosswinds/Star technology. The FS algorithm is based upon the fact that it only has to make a decision between true parallel runways. Tying non parallel runways together using the Star technology breaks the algorithm. Ever wondered why you had to taxi to a runway on the other side of the field while you are standing almost next to an available runway? It's a side effect of the Star technology. FSX will send you to the closest available runway. But closest as in: the shortest distance between you and the great circle through the runway (or the centerline of the runway extended all around the world). Now this works ok if all available runways are truly parallel. But if they are not, you could be 300 feet from runway 18, but still be send to runway 27, 5000 feet away, if the extended centerline of that runway passes within 300 feet from your parking position. The algorithm itself... have to look it up, but it involves the wind (which is only evaluated for the first runway in a group, again since FSX thinks all runways in a group are really parallel) and then the type of engine and the weight of the plane to determine the required length of the runway and, as said, the distance between the plane and the extended centerline of the runway. Another bug is the distance between the runway start and the plane that is needed before a plane will ask for T/O clearance. This threshold is too small for for instance 18C at Schiphol. Planes will taxi there but just hold short because the T/O request is never triggered. Daniel

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=3879&page= Daniel

MTB is a SimConnect application, so FSX only. Daniel

So both of you are simmers! :) Daniel

It shouldn't, food for the time machine since Feb 21 2000. Daniel

Well, the drivers that FSX uses do use SLI. But since FSX is mostly CPU bound, there's not much benefit from the GFX power increase SLI will give. For FSX, get the most powerful CPU available and plenty of RAM in both the PC and the GFX card. I guess that if you have a lot of 'external' add-on's (simconnect .exe add-on's for example) you might benefit from a quadcore over a dualcore. Daniel

Here's what I did today: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8001 :) In short: there's your explanation why FS might send an airplane across a whole airport for a takeoff, eventhough the aircraft is parked immediately beside an active runway. The method FS uses to compute the distance from the plane to the runway is only compatible with multiple runways if they are parallel. (As they are in default FS, but not when the crosswind runways technique is used) Daniel

I think I did a scan yesterday, but I did not look inside the files myself. Will do so tonight. Meanwhile... I have updated the version online (same link): logfiles checkbox, bgl checkbox and settings are stored. Daniel

I was looking at the header: MDL8MDLH, but so far I have not found any MDL9MDLH files other then some vague ones embedded in a BGL I found on the web. I will rephrase the output from the program a little and leave that interpretation to the user. I will add an option to skip checking inside bgl's and also and option to create logfiles containing the filenames. Daniel

I did a quick test by changing the MDL8MDLH to MDL9MDLH in a file and then it is reported as a FS9 model. Yet, while trying to find a MDL9 on avsim... I only found MDL8's though in two flavours: compiled with the 2002 SDK and compiled using the FS9 SDK. Edit: I have uploaded a new version, that for the MDL8 files, will check if it can find the SDK version that was used. The FSX Fuel truck turns out to be compiled using the FSX SDK after all. Daniel