Wingspans and Parking types

[ryanosaurus13]

Hi guys, I'm a long-time lurker here and a big fan of MAIW. Apart from my day job flying airliners (I know; boring right?) I do scenery development as a part of a couple of devs. Though I'm not heavily integrated with them I have started doing stuff for Miltech sims mainly AFCAD and liveries whenever they tell me to.

Now I just wanted to know, if there is a list out there with all the AI Aircraft, their wingspans & type, similar to what AIG has. It'd help for integration if you guys ever plan on bringing MAIW to fs2020 or '24 when or if those sceneries eventually get converted. Plus it really makes a difference for UI aircraft too; having a well-optimized and accurate AFCAD.

Example of what I mean:


PS I wouldn't mind any tips or tricks/common errors you guys see in military AFCADs as well, cheers!

[TimC340]

Hi - Ryan, is it?

There's no list, but using Martin's AI Editor (download here) you can investigate the AI aircraft and see what radius has been used and what spot size is needed. Note the radius isn't necessarily consistent with the real-world wingspan; it will have been selected to give the best in-sim flight characteristics.

Martin's website (here) will give you a pretty comprehensive insight into what military AI is available. However, new stuff is being released fairly regularly and the Download Hangar here is probably the best reference for the latest stuff.

There's probably a load we could tell you about AFCAD construction, but I'd recommend the forums at FSDeveloper - look for anything written by the late Jim Vile or Don Grovestine.

[ryanosaurus13]

That's exactly what I was looking for, the list on Martin's website shows FSX wingspan. Thanks very much for all those references! I've been doing a bit of AFCAD stuff in the past but for civilian airports only. I was definitely just curious if there are any norms or tricks in terms of AFCADs for mil airports; Off to scour those forums for some more good tidbits of information.

Thanks again for that info, it will be put to good use!

[TimC340]

There are definitely a few tricks and techniques that make parking at mil airfields work better. Particularly at US fields, parking tends to be in a grid format and the Ai engine really struggles with that - it will make aircraft drive through other aircraft and so on. The trick is to devise routings which (mostly) avoid that but which don’t result in aircraft doing an on-the-spot 180 when they leave their parking. It’s not always possible, but it can be reduced.

Another technique is ‘anti-pushback’ nodes. Unlike most civilian airfields, military airfields rarely have nose-in parking that requires a pushback. But The FS9/FSX/P3D sims will always pushback prior to taxy. The length of pushback is proportional to the segment length to the first en-route node, so this can be reduced to next to nothing by placing a node immediately on the parking spot. There is still a pushback, but if you get it right you can’t see it!