Killing Ai that line up on my landing runway

[Ray Proudfoot]

Hi John, hope you're keeping well in these difficult times.

I wonder if you could help with an Ai problem in P3D which impacts on Radar Contact instructions. When I'm around 3-4 miles out it's too far to see if Ai are lining up to depart on my landing runway. Even if I could see them I suspect Traffic Zapper would not work that far out.

What then happens is the Ai lines up and with 2 miles to run Radar Contact detects the Ai and issues me with a Go-Around. Very frustrating when the rest of the flight has gone well.

Would it be possible for FSUIPC to monitor Ai assigned to my landing runway and as soon as the status changes to TakeOff1 to kill them? That status is activated when the Ai start to move onto the runway from the hold-short point.

Is that doable? Radar Contact used to freeze Ai when the user's aircraft was on finals but it doesn't appear to work any more.

[John Dowson]

Hi Ray,

9 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Would it be possible for FSUIPC to monitor Ai assigned to my landing runway and as soon as the status changes to TakeOff1 to kill them? That status is activated when the Ai start to move onto the runway from the hold-short point.

FSUIPC only holds the details of the nearest 96 AI aircraft. For ground traffic, you could monitor the additional AI ground aircraft data at offset D040, matching on the departure ICAO to your landing ICAO, and then check/match the runway (and/or maybe the runway designator?). For the state, you would need to read from E080. Any matches, you could then kill (via offset 2900). You could do this in lua. Interesting project....
There is also the 'Detecting runways in use' facility, at offset D000, but I don't think that provides AI details for you to kill.

Pete may have other suggestions...

Cheers,

John

[Ray Proudfoot]

Hi John. I would imagine the guilty aircraft would be one of the 96.

My LUA skills are fairly rudimentary sadly. I do use Ai Companion and that offers the facility to delete Ai aircraft but you’ll appreciate switching attention to another screen whilst manually flying the final approach is not ideal.

As a former RC user Pete might have some thoughts about how best to manage this. If I’m really lucky he might even knock together a script for me. 😀 Something that every RC user would appreciate.

[John Dowson]

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

As a former RC user Pete might have some thoughts about how best to manage this.

Yes, maybe he has a better way of doing this...

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If I’m really lucky he might even knock together a script for me. 😀 Something that every RC user would appreciate.

I'm not sure about that...he wants to reduce support and spend more time on his cockpit and actually flying. It would be interesting to look into, but there's no chance I'll have time for this in the next 6 months or so at least - to much to do on FSUIPC7 (and FSUIPC6) for the time being, sorry...

Maybe @spokes2112will take a look - he likes a lua challenge and has helped out many users before with useful lua scripts...

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Radar Contact used to freeze Ai when the user's aircraft was on finals but it doesn't appear to work any more.

You could try to look into why this doesn't work any more....

 

[Ray Proudfoot]

48 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

I'm not sure about that...he wants to reduce support and spend more time on his cockpit and actually flying. It would be interesting to look into, but there's no chance I'll have time for this in the next 6 months or so at least - to much to do on FSUIPC7 (and FSUIPC6) for the time being, sorry...

He’s too busy walking the dog and watching the snooker! 🤣 It’s okay John, it was more a request to see if it was doable and it sounds like someone with LUA skills could help out.

With the RC author haven given up many years ago working out why it no longer works is a non-starter.

[Pete Dowson]

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Is that doable? Radar Contact used to freeze Ai when the user's aircraft was on finals but it doesn't appear to work any more.

What's changed in RC? I thought it was unsupported and no longer developed? Certainly nothing's changed in the information it gets through FSUIPC to do that trick.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

As a former RC user Pete might have some thoughts about how best to manage this.

I was always lazy in those days.  I just used the FSUIPC Zapper and event land in spite of being told to go around. No doubt I would have lost my licence with RC, but I use P2A these days. AI control or even ATC interaction hasn't arrived for P2A yet, but, nevertheless, for the sort of short flights I indulge in it keeps me busy enough.

In any case takeoff status for AI just isn't enough to prevent runway encroachment. That's why the Traffic Freeze controls were added to FSUIPC -- they freeze all AI ground traffic in "taxi out " mode, so you can catch them before they get to the runway. This is used by the supplied "AI Freezer.Lua" plug-in (look in your Example Lua Plugins).  That freezes AI automatically when you do things on final approach, and releases them after you land. Read the details in the file.

Pete

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot]

Hi Pete. I dunno why RC4 doesn’t handle Ai very well. Maybe it’s the increased number of them with AIG injecting far more than back then.

But the lua file you mention looks like it will do the job. I’ll investigate, thanks.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Just an update to this. I added the AIFreezer.lua to the P3Dv5 Add-ons\FSUIPC6 folder and edited FSUIPC6.ini to call the file.

A flight from LEBB over to LEBL was used to test things. Landing traffic was assigned to 07L with departures using 07R. I requested 07R in RC4 and when around 8 miles out I noticed one Ai with a status of TakeOff2 indicating he was on his take-off roll. Others were taxiing out to 07R.

I lowered the gear around 4 miles and was cleared to land. Landing was fine with no go-around instruction. SUCCESS! The FSUIPC6.log indicates the lua was called and froze and then released Ai at the relevant points.

Thanks for your help Pete. 😀

[Pete Dowson]

5 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks for your help Pete. 😀

Glad it worked fine for you.

Pete