Preview of our first MSFS package

[chasensfo]

...so, after a long period now without any news regarding developments for MSFS, I am now able to reveal news of something which might actually be a bit of a gamechanger for us going forwards.

As many of you will know, for the most part the MSFS default offline AI Traffic engine has been broken since SU11. This amongst other things had made further development of our MSFS AI Aircraft grind to a halt.

Over the last couple of months or so, I have been testing a version of Kai Kamjunke's AIG Traffic Controller which has been specially modified to read FSX type of Traffic Bgl files created by AIFP.

The Traffic Controller uses Simconnect to inject AI Aircraft independently of the default MSFS AI offline system.
Some of you will no doubt be using AIG already for your Commercial AI Aircraft and therefore will be quite familiar with it.

I have been able to test AI Aircraft injection at RAF Alconbury, RAF Bentwaters, RAF Woodbridge and RAF Lakenheath.

Just in case you were wondering, the AI injector ( TC ) follows the data of the flight plans and that includes the timings.

Seen in the Image below, once you are at your desired location with MSFS running, AIGTC is initialised.


You can see the Injected AI Aircraft ( Woodbridge and Bentwaters Shown ) on the AIGTC Map.


The Status page of AIGTC will give details of the MAIW Injected AI Aircraft.


It only takes a few seconds for the Aircraft to start appearing after injection.















Whilst all of this still requires ASOBO and MS to sort out the core AI engine within MSFS for the better handling of AI Aircraft in general, what Kai has given us is a huge step forward to what was a totally broken Ai Aircraft System, since SU11 and 12.


More information to follow.

Best Regards,

Pete.

Wow, that will really make all the difference in the world. Thank you!

[thetford569]

I hope this is a way forward and we can see military AI coming to the sim! It's the one big thing I've been missing from FSX/P3D but the new sim is too good to go back to those sims. This will make it that much greater!

[Woogey]

...so, after a long period now without any news regarding developments for MSFS, I am now able to reveal news of something which might actually be a bit of a gamechanger for us going forwards.

As many of you will know, for the most part the MSFS default offline AI Traffic engine has been broken since SU11. This amongst other things had made further development of our MSFS AI Aircraft grind to a halt.

Over the last couple of months or so, I have been testing a version of Kai Kamjunke's AIG Traffic Controller which has been specially modified to read FSX type of Traffic Bgl files created by AIFP.

The Traffic Controller uses Simconnect to inject AI Aircraft independently of the default MSFS AI offline system.
Some of you will no doubt be using AIG already for your Commercial AI Aircraft and therefore will be quite familiar with it.

I have been able to test AI Aircraft injection at RAF Alconbury, RAF Bentwaters, RAF Woodbridge and RAF Lakenheath.

Just in case you were wondering, the AI injector ( TC ) follows the data of the flight plans and that includes the timings.

Seen in the Image below, once you are at your desired location with MSFS running, AIGTC is initialised.


You can see the Injected AI Aircraft ( Woodbridge and Bentwaters Shown ) on the AIGTC Map.


The Status page of AIGTC will give details of the MAIW Injected AI Aircraft.


It only takes a few seconds for the Aircraft to start appearing after injection.















Whilst all of this still requires ASOBO and MS to sort out the core AI engine within MSFS for the better handling of AI Aircraft in general, what Kai has given us is a huge step forward to what was a totally broken Ai Aircraft System, since SU11 and 12.


More information to follow.

Best Regards,

Pete.

Wait wait, the Ai work around using the Aig controller is great, however my take away was Woodbridge and Bentwaters for MSFS. Has Ian released new versions of these sceneries? Or……..?

-Preston

[PB68]

Hi All,

I just wanted to update you on the progress that has been made using the AIG TC ( Traffic Controller Beta Version with MAIW Support ).
Testing has continued for a few months now and I must say that I am very pleased with the results.

As mentioned earlier on in the posting, the Traffic Controller has enabled us to inject MAIW Traffic files from the previous generation Sim FSX. This has greatly assisted in the continued development of JYAI Aircraft Models behind the scenes.

Combined with the assistance from lead developer Kai and lead model developer Jay over at AIG, I have been successful in implementing the same model Template and Behaviours system that they use. We are now licensed to use this system.

One of the greatest advantages of this system is that you can have a repository of "Common" model behaviours defs, that can be called upon by any of the specific AI Aircraft Models contained within an MAIW AI Aircraft model library.
Any changes or modifications necessary to the coding, can be carried out just once within "Common" model behaviour def folder and not have to be carried out to each and every model variation.

Custom coding has been used extensively now and things like Aircraft wheel rotation animation and nose wheel steering animation, is now the best I have seen on any AI Aircraft model. ( And now works all of the time LOL !! )
Unfortunately, some of the xml coding generated by MCX in the model conversion process previously, is now seen as deprecated and as such is partly to blame for some of the issues being experienced when the AI Aircraft model was placed in the Sim.

AI Aircraft no longer spin on the ground at holding points, ( this was actually fixed a while ago by Asobo ) and Aircraft "Sliding" whilst turning sharp turns on the ground pretty much eliminated by changes made within the Flight Model cfg file.

There are still some issues and of course and only Asobo and Ms can address these as it requires changes to be made to the AI Engine itself.
Whilst I am not confident that the necessary fixes will come in SU13 final release, we have to continue to look forwards.

The general public release of the AIG Traffic Controller with MAIW support, is to be released after SU13 and can be found here -

http://www.alpha-india.net/software/

Best Regards,

Pete.

[John Young]

Thanks for your update Pete.

With regard to this:

One of the greatest advantages of this system is that you can have a repository of "Common" model behaviours defs, that can be called upon by any of the specific AI Aircraft Models contained within an MAIW AI Aircraft model library.
Any changes or modifications necessary to the coding, can be carried out just once within "Common" model behaviour def folder and not have to be carried out to each and every model variation.

Is the starting point for FSX-MSFS conversion still the "Simple Aircraft"? I have never liked that step because the path name set up is so convoluted and the flight dynamics often unrealistic. Are we still stuck with that? Common model xml looks helpful, but where do we stand with diversifying flight dynamics?

John

[PB68]

Hi John,

I hope your well my friend.

Regarding your question, the "Simple Aircraft" template from the SDK samples folder was used primarily for the purpose of the Model Validation part of the MSFS compiler process only.

The Flight Dynamics is handled mainly by the flight_model.cfg file. We now have a much better understanding of what particular params within the flight_model.cfg file are used by MSFS. With this in mind, changes that have been able to be made have seen a dramatic improvement of how the Aircraft seem to perform.

Each Aircraft type will still have its own flight dynamics.

Hope this helps,

Very best regards,

Pete.

[John Young]

Not too bad thanks Pete.

The "Simple Aircraft" template was more than just for validation, it was the whole basis of the finished model, but with some custom xml for animation and visibility. I'd like to see a more realistic way of converting the model initially that better reflects the flight characteristics of what we are trying to represent, with a less complicated file path. Is that now done differently?

The flight dynamics are indeed different for each aircraft type and always have been. What makes testing variations of FDE values difficult is that there is no "Traffic Toolbox" in MSFS, as we have for FS9, FSX and P3D. With those sims, we can observe specific performance values as the aircraft goes around the test circuit. Testing by guess work and trial and error in MSFS can be very tedious, made frustrating if the tester is not firmly in control of the drone camera, when the observation can easily be lost.

John

[PB68]

Hi John,

Sorry for the late reply.

In the early days of conversion, the emphasis was very much on keeping things as simple as possible and I thought that
using the "Simple Aircraft" template gave us the quickest route to getting the model into the Sim.
As we progressed, I think by the time we reached the F-35 development, we were using the "Simple Aircraft" template for the model validation process only, because once validated we moved the model files to a new Package structure.
This new Package structure contained all of the relevant files and data better suited for use with the converted Aircraft model type.
I think we used some data from the default F-18 for example.

The msfsLegacyImporter tool, that will have been mentioned in the Conversion guide, is able to convert all of the FSX Aircraft.cfg file data into the MSFS Aircraft ( multi-file ) config format. The data generated by this tool, was used on both the F-15's and the A-10's demonstrated on this site.

You are right John, AI Aircraft model testing has been a challenge in MSFS, it is one of the reasons why I always configured one of the Test Aircraft as " Flyable " and selectable in the MSFS available Aircraft menu.
Although not perfect, it has helped to sort out the more obvious issues, before the model then goes into the AI Aircraft Traffic package.

We already know that the FDE in MSFS is a completely different beast to what we had before in the previous Sims.
The MSFS AI Aircraft engine in its current state, seems to be the limiting factor as to what can be achieved with FDE.
I am not sure if Steve was ever able to make any headway with anything, as I don't remember him saying so.
What I can say is, we now have better knowledge and understanding of what FDE parameters are being used by MSFS and have been able to manipulate those, to see what changes are then made to the Aircrafts inflight characteristics.

The new model behaviours " Template " system, which can now be incorporated into our AI Aircraft models is a real step forward too.
The " Template " system is still able to handle unique Aircraft custom animations and visual effects.

Best Regards,

Pete

[John Young]

Thanks Pete. It looks like I have more to learn, should I want to go down this route again.

John

[thetford569]

Anyone know if it's possible to use AI Traffic Controller to only inject the Military AI flights? I've been using FSLTL as my injection source because it uses FlightRadar24 for Live Traffic and now the awesome new ATC program that will be coming out "Beyond ATC" has partnered with FSLTL. I'd like to have military traffic along with the FSLTL traffic.

[Kaiii3]

Anyone know if it's possible to use AI Traffic Controller to only inject the Military AI flights? I've been using FSLTL as my injection source because it uses FlightRadar24 for Live Traffic and now the awesome new ATC program that will be coming out "Beyond ATC" has partnered with FSLTL. I'd like to have military traffic along with the FSLTL traffic.

will work with FSLTL, but I guess it will not work with Beyond ATC, since we have not been contacted by the developer to work on a "connection" between both addons.

[thetford569]

Anyone know if it's possible to use AI Traffic Controller to only inject the Military AI flights? I've been using FSLTL as my injection source because it uses FlightRadar24 for Live Traffic and now the awesome new ATC program that will be coming out "Beyond ATC" has partnered with FSLTL. I'd like to have military traffic along with the FSLTL traffic.

will work with FSLTL, but I guess it will not work with Beyond ATC, since we have not been contacted by the developer to work on a "connection" between both addons.

That's good news Kaii, at least some things will be possible. They're still figuring things out over there so it doesn't surprise me that there is no connection planned. I just want to be able to add the military AI and use FSLTL and eventually BATC at the same time. Alot of military talk on UHF radios anyway so if you see them but don't hear them it wouldn't be the end of the world. I think conflicts would be minimal but definitely still possible. Hopefully any BATC/FSLTL military injected traffic will also use MAIW/AIG models just like now. Thanks for the response.

[PB68]

Hi,

Just had word from Kai over at AIG, the latest Public release of the AIG Traffic Controller, version 0.7.3.5 includes MAIW Traffic File ( BGL. File) support, is now available from their website.


http://www.alpha-india.net/software/


I wanted to express my sincere thanks to Kai for making this possible, it really does open many doors for us.

Kind Regards,

Pete.

[Kaiii3]

just to add to this:

The current "MAIW"-Injector inside AIGTC does only load the BGL files and inject the traffic based on their information. We have not added any of the "new" AIGFP features to the loaded BGL files. Basically it makes sure that you get the Traffic in the Sim like you did in FS9/FSX/P3D - something that is not fully working in MSFS with BGL files at the moment xD

[P51POOLE]

I have been closely following this chat for a while being a total newbie to this forum and to Military Ai Traffic in general, how do I Include AI traffic in MSF2020 now that we have support by AIG. Is there a instruction video available somewhere to show how this is done please.

thanks so much Martin

[John Young]

What AI traffic do you want to add to MSFS? If it's military, we haven't released anything, for all the reasons cited in this thread.

John

[Kaiii3]

The AIG part of the integration into MSFS is done and has been released with the AIGTC update. This allows MAIW to release their packages at any point without the need to wait for us. As soon as they release their package users can simple drop it in the Community directory of MSFS, start MSFS, start AIGTC and you will see the traffic.

[Firebird]

I must make some time to have a look at this proggy.

[P51POOLE]

thanks John for your response, yes I would love to add some military Traffic to a number of airports in the UK like Lakenheath and Coningsby. Also it would be great to add some warbird traffic to somewhere like Duxford also if thats possible. I remember many years ago their was a Ai Package that created any airshow at Duxford with timings for AI Aircraft was really fun. So from my understanding its a case of waiting now until Packages are released for msf2020.

thanks Martin

[John Young]

I don't think that's going to happen any time soon Martin. The conversion process is complex and time consuming and I can't justify doing that any more. There's also the problem of converting scenery for MSFS to accommodate the conversions. That's not something I want to take on either I'm afraid. With MS2024 in the offing that creates further uncertainty.

The Duxford scenery and war bird AI packages were from me by the way. That would be a huge undertaking to convert for MSFS, even with the right incentive. My guess would be about 5 years.

John