Tower!3D, EDDF - Arrival without free gate

[DeltaVII]

This is probably not so much an issue of EDDF, but a game issue.

I'm using @battlehawk77's schedule. I've had a Lufthansa 747 landing on 07R. When I gave the taxi instruction, the reply was: "Negative! A departing airplane is blocking the gate. Handle that plane first."

There was an open gate at that part of the apron (between N11 and N15 - you can see it in the second screenshot), but obviously not for a heavy. And there was no departing plane to handle in that area. So the 747 was stuck there, and I ultimately got a penalty for the wait, because there was no departure from there opening a gate suitable for a heavy (only for a medium jet) in the next five minutes.

Does T!3D check just for open gates or for open gates in that aircraft category, before spawning the arrival?

EDDF_LH441_output_log.txt

[crbascott]

58 minutes ago, DeltaVII said:

Does T!3D check just for open gates or for open gates in that aircraft category, before spawning the arrival?

I thought it was the latter. I've seen this issue on very rare occasions at other airports, but EDDF is the first airport where I've seen this issue reported by multiple people on multiple occasions (I believe it has been mentioned on both Steam and Discord). Hopefully it is an airport issue, otherwise it won't get fixed.

Since the controller has no control over gate assignments (not sure we even know the gate that this plane is/was supposed to go to), there's nothing we can do to rectify the situation (other than deleting the plane) despite what the error message says. It's obviously a bug or scenario that is not being handled correctly. So, what's it gonna be FeelThere? Potentially fixed in an SP or possibly a next version item? Either way, it would be nice to hear what scenario causes this issue. 

I did notice a "new" error message I've never seen before associated with "term_B11" in the log file (knot offset error). Not sure if it is significant because a plane appeared to use that gate during the session.

I'm curious @DeltaVII, are you using a full schedule versus a snippet? The large number of airplane dropped and no free terminal messages would indicate a full schedule which just magnifies the gate availability issues prevalent with this version. Not saying a snippet is the solution to the above at all, but it could help the overall experience of @battlehawk77's labor of love. By the time the session ended there were 20+ flights circling the Frankfurt area waiting for a gate to open up. 🙁

[WildCard]

It does check that there is will be a free gate before it starts the incoming flight. In this case it looks like DLH441 intended to go to the gate that DLH6 freed up by asking for a pushback. The game however doesn't lock the plane to that gate, it just unlocks that gate.

After a plane lands, and is told to taxi to terminal, it creates a list of ALL free gates that it's allowed to go to and picks one randomly, with gates for it's own CAT being twice as likely to be selected than the others. However, this means that CATI or CATII planes could end up in CATIII gates, thus using up all available CATIII gates while leaving lower CAT gates open that incoming CATIII planes can't go to. Or a CATIII plane, that could have gone into a gate that only they are allowed at, could end up at a mixed CATIII gate making any incoming CATIII plane to no longer have a gate available that they are allowed to go to.

In, short, yes it's a software problem.

[andredragt]

tbh, to bad for the penalty, but it makes it interesting... and more real-life. 

Nope, your gate is occupied ho left Lima, hold short of T10 and wait a while  😛  

(yes, I know you can't move it)

[crbascott]

7 hours ago, andredragt said:

tbh, to bad for the penalty, but it makes it interesting... and more real-life. 

Nope, your gate is occupied ho left Lima, hold short of T10 and wait a while  😛  

(yes, I know you can't move it)

How is this more real life? 

(1) Until you issue a taxi command you don't know the plane's actual gate or if it is occupied. This is far from realistic and a must fix in the next version.

(2) Where does this "blocking the gate" feedback come from? Have we now introduced a virtual supervisor/assistant because it is definitely not coming from the pilot? 

(C) Sure you can move the plane and hold it somewhere but you won't "wait a while" - you'll never be able to get it to the gate and end up getting penalty points every 15 minutes. Because if it's all about being realistic - deleting the plane is not an option. Sadly sitting on the "tarmac" for hours makes the news and is not necessarily uncommon, but I'm sure this is not a feature the developers wish to introduce. 

[DeltaVII]

To answer your question, @crbascott: I'm lazy, using the full schedule. Because somehow I like long sessions. Yesterday, I was just 28 minutes short of a full 8-hour session... (who says that a corona virus no-contact enactment is necessarily a bad thing, huh?)

[andredragt]

16 hours ago, crbascott said:

How is this more real life? 

(1) Until you issue a taxi command you don't know the plane's actual gate or if it is occupied. This is far from realistic and a must fix in the next version.

(2) Where does this "blocking the gate" feedback come from? Have we now introduced a virtual supervisor/assistant because it is definitely not coming from the pilot? 

(C) Sure you can move the plane and hold it somewhere but you won't "wait a while" - you'll never be able to get it to the gate and end up getting penalty points every 15 minutes. Because if it's all about being realistic - deleting the plane is not an option. Sadly sitting on the "tarmac" for hours makes the news and is not necessarily uncommon, but I'm sure this is not a feature the developers wish to introduce. 

I think I should have added more smileys... that was not a serious remark form me

[crbascott]

1 hour ago, andredragt said:

I think I should have added more smileys... that was not a serious remark form me

😀 My 😀 bad. 😀 I 😀 totally 😀 misinterpreted 😀 the 😀 seriousness 😀 of 😀 your 😀 post. 😀

 

 

[james143611]

I haven't played a long session with 100% traffic yet though it would be nice for a future sim to incorporate planes being towed, it would probably be complicated though and add a lot of workload for one player, but in real life (IIRC from what I remember being there before) aircraft sitting there all day like South African Airways, Air Namibia, Lufthansa heavies etc get towed to the south to free up gates (or possibly for cargo handling?). Though what I've seen so far without these being towed away in the sim it still manages to arrange gates for arriving aircraft most of the time with no issues, I've not had the problem yet though I've only played Sunday morning on the full day schedule so far.