KMCO Heavy Aircraft Issues

[pete_agreatguy]

Hi,

Been having some issues with KMCO and heavies not appearing when are scheduled to (both arrivals and departures).

As identified mainly by @ATControl -- Joe (here) using his schedule, the airport has issues spawning heavy aircraft.

For example, using the default schedule the following departure worked fine for me:

However when testing the arrivals as quoted below; they did not appear at all!

Quote

Line 175: FRA, MCO, 74E, LH,  464, 17:41, 12:00, 1, LH
Line 182: LGW, MCO, 74E, VS,   15, 17:29, 12:00, 1, VS

The departure "Line 577: MCO, MAN, 74E, VS,   76, 12:00, 18:58, 1, VS" was sitting at the gate fine though:

Log file is attached below.

output_log.txt

[FeelThere Ariel]

Pete, 

Please confirm if this is happening with the default schedules or with custom only. Thank you.

[pete_agreatguy]

3 hours ago, pete_agreatguy said:

Hi,

Been having some issues with KMCO and heavies not appearing when are scheduled to (both arrivals and departures).

As identified mainly by @ATControl -- Joe (here) using his schedule, the airport has issues spawning heavy aircraft.

For example, using the default schedule the following departure worked fine for me:

Both :)

I tested using the default schedule to rule out Joe's schedule and the same issue still occurred :)

[crbascott]

This is not a "heavy" issue. This is a gate availability issue indicated by the "no free terminal" messages in the log file. Planes with this message are in a virtual holding pattern until a gate at their terminal becomes available. All this is related to the sim loading 8 hours worth of flights¹ making gates a precious commodity. 

To further prove that this issue is not just related to heavies, at the end of your session you had the following arrivals with the "no free terminal" message:
JBU1914 - A320
UAL730 - B752
VIR15 - B744
DAL1061 - B752
SIL97 - SF34
TAM8086 - B773
DAL956 - B752
JBU1527 - A320
DLH464 - B744.

Departures are also affected by the loading of 8 hours of traffic. If the gates fill up, some departures are dropped altogether from the schedule. The flights show up in the log with a "Airplane dropped, no declared terminal" message. In your log the following departure flights were dropped  : DAL32,  VIR16, DL465, TAM8087, EIN120, TAM8055, UPS3327.

This issue has been around since Tower!2011 and the workaround for it and now Tower!3D and Tower!3D Pro has been to create schedule files that contain just a few hours of flights. In my custom schedules this is why I provide snippets. 

Craig

¹ Apparently there is a customer base that likes to play marathon sessions and that is why FeelThere loads so many hours of flights. Personally, I don't understand this type of play but to each their own. But, again, there is a negative impact to the "sane" player to appease the binge players.

[pete_agreatguy]

1 hour ago, crbascott said:

...

Departures are also affected by the loading of 8 hours of traffic. 

This issue has been around since Tower!2011 and the workaround for it and now Tower!3D and Tower!3D Pro has been to create schedule files that contain just a few hours of flights. In my custom schedules this is why I provide snippets. 

Craig

¹ Apparently there is a customer base that likes to play marathon sessions and that is why FeelThere loads so many hours of flights. Personally, I don't understand this type of play but to each their own. But, again, there is a negative impact to the "sane" player to appease the binge players.

That needs to change then. I only ever play as much as 2 hours if not 3 at the most!

I cannot see any player, playing an 8 hour session.

Maybe arrival aircraft should disappear after a certain amount of time when parked up at the gate to free such space. And departures appear at a gate 30 minutes prior to departure? Not sure how the current system is implemented and just spitting out ideas here to get around this issue.

[crbascott]

Vic seemed to imply the next version will be a major rewrite - so I'm sure this will all be taken into consideration. Until then ... snippets. 🙂 

[pete_agreatguy]

Well the graphics certainly look a lot less shiny on the aircraft. Maybe a alpha channel was added :D

I wonder if us consumers who bought the original game will get any special discounts ;) ?

[Pdubya]

Pete:

Well, Craig and I have chatted about the next release recently. Unfortunately, other than some info Vic gave in response to my "Brotherly Love KPHL" thread, there is very little real info on the next version. Check out that thread if you are interested. We remain hopeful an announcement is forthcoming; the first item will likely be Vic opening up a Suggestions thread when he is ready.

[winsaudi]

17 hours ago, crbascott said:

 

¹ Apparently there is a customer base that likes to play marathon sessions and that is why FeelThere loads so many hours of flights. Personally, I don't understand this type of play but to each their own. But, again, there is a negative impact to the "sane" player to appease the binge players.

I agree with Craig. I think the 8 hour session “requested by users” has never been requested via this forum and I think it spoils the game for everyone else.

Wayne

[Pdubya]

5 hours ago, winsaudi said:

I agree with Craig. I think the 8 hour session “requested by users” has never been requested via this forum and I think it spoils the game for everyone else.

Wayne

Wayne:

Can't help but agree. Personally, I am lucky to get through a couple hours before stress relief or cramping sets in. Wouldn't a reduction in loaded hours help with load times and "solve" some related issues as well? I would think so. Seems there should definitely be a happy medium to be found somewhere between 3 and 8. Looking at the logs, I wonder how many cycles are chewed up by the game regularly dealing with no available gates. CPU time better spent doing other more important stuff.

I imagine this is on Vic's laundry list for Tower3D Next.

[Scar]

On 8/17/2018 at 1:41 PM, pete_agreatguy said:

That needs to change then. I only ever play as much as 2 hours if not 3 at the most!

I cannot see any player, playing an 8 hour session.

I'm raising my hand. While it will seem I "have no life", I've played that long before. The game has a "pause" function, and I use it often in order to take advantage of an entire day's worth of traffic. With the discussed KMCO airport, I've played midnight to midnight real traffic only placing the game on pause, or keeping track of when I stop and start the game. If I stopped at 11am, the next time I play, I'll start it up at that time. However, using the pause function, I have no doubt I've played a single session well over 8 hours.

I do, however, find myself resetting the game due to traffic lagging, PTT becoming non-responsive, or some other issue that tends to pop up when you play the game for long periods of time.

[pete_agreatguy]

1 hour ago, Scar said:

... or keeping track of when I stop and start the game. If I stopped at 11am, the next time I play, I'll start it up at that time. 

I do, however, find myself resetting the game due to traffic lagging, PTT becoming non-responsive, or some other issue that tends to pop up when you play the game for long periods of time.

This is the way to do it :)

[jonas243]

Okay, @Scar, that is quite unusual and an interesting thing to do. But I don´t fully understand why you do it like that. I do understand that you want to play longer sessions, but playing for like 6 hours continuous brings so many problems with it. Like you mentioned: the game becomes laggy, PTT does not work as good as in the beginning and so on. The other problem is, that there is not as much traffic as there normally would be when you load 8 hours of flight, because of the often discussed ´´no free terminal´´ issue!

I don't want to attack your personal preference on how you play the game, but why don't you play for two hours, then stop the game, and start from the time you stopped, so you don't run into the issues you and me mentioned above?

[Pdubya]

I can understand wanting the 8 hour continuity in the game flow. I am that way when it comes to immersion. But unless Vic can come up with a solution on the next version with the whole available gate issue, I really don't see the point. It is dragging down the rest of the game and the overall experience.

I am pretty confident he can come up with a better way. I think it was just a result of choices made last time around... unintended consequences if you will. I will be interested to see what Vic has in mind for this next version- actually pretty excited when thinking of the possibilities, regardless of how far away release is likely going to be.

[jonas243]

They once said, that they try to release a new tower version every 2 years. Since tower 3d was in Q1 of last year, the next version should be coming next year ^^

[Scar]

19 hours ago, jonas243 said:

Okay, @Scar, that is quite unusual and an interesting thing to do. But I don´t fully understand why you do it like that. I do understand that you want to play longer sessions, but playing for like 6 hours continuous brings so many problems with it. Like you mentioned: the game becomes laggy, PTT does not work as good as in the beginning and so on. The other problem is, that there is not as much traffic as there normally would be when you load 8 hours of flight, because of the often discussed ´´no free terminal´´ issue!

I don't want to attack your personal preference on how you play the game, but why don't you play for two hours, then stop the game, and start from the time you stopped, so you don't run into the issues you and me mentioned above?

@jonas243,

No worries about "attacking my personal preference". Nothing taken personally, for perhaps my play style is unusual.🙂

All due respect to everyone here, I believe that a game of this caliper should be able to be played for more than several hours before needing a hard reset. Its a day/night time dependent ATC "simulator" with supposedly unending incoming and outgoing aircraft traffic. Why wouldn't people play longer than a few hours in a single day? In the mean time, I still enjoy playing even with the spinning midair aircraft, aircraft that won't push back, aircraft that travel through the center of the terminal buildings, the PTT lags, and other funky bugs that rear their heads during play. 🙂 I just keep telling myself "Its just a video game".

[jonas243]

Understood 😉 It just sounds unusual to me, since I rarely play longer sessions then 1,5 hours... so sessions that are well above 4 hours seem absolutely insane to me 😄 It already is hard to keep up the concentration level in a busy evening rush at LAX and after one or one and a half hours I normally have played enough 😄

[Scar]

4 minutes ago, jonas243 said:

Understood 😉 It just sounds unusual to me, since I rarely play longer sessions then 1,5 hours... so sessions that are well above 4 hours seem absolutely insane to me 😄 It already is hard to keep up the concentration level in a busy evening rush at LAX and after one or one and a half hours I normally have played enough 😄

Hi @jonas243

Well, its pretty easy with an airport like KMCO. As long as you don't have any distractions, its a real easy airport to manage at any time day or night. Don't forget you have the pause button, so you can play an hour or so, hit pause, go do other things, and return later. A 4 or 6 hour session doesn't mean with no break. Just pause and walk away for a while. Sometimes its nice to sit down and you take over at an already active session. Its probably a bad habit, for you are leaving your pc on doing that, but its doable.

[pete_agreatguy]

With UK ATC I believe you work only 2 hour intervals prior to having a break.

[jonas243]

Okay, i unterstand 🙂 Might gonna try that out one day when i have a lot of time.

Thanks for your view of the things ^^ And since the game is not completely broken with loading 8 hours and I can still work against that with using snippets, who am I to complain if everyone can enjoy the game as he wants to 🙂