Military AI Works

Hi all,

Just a quick query. Is is possible within FS to alter the settings where if a AI aircraft is forced due to traffic to overshoot twice, on the third approach it blinks out as reachs the threshold, even if it had a clear runway and would have landed on the third approach?

Some of the airfields are quite busy now and this happens fairly often. I used to use a programme from Just Flight called AI smooth which put aircraft in holding patterns until there was a clear approach, but found all it did was force many of them out of control and most crashed!

Any help greatly appreciated

Gary

"Blink outs" on the runway after landing, as far as I know, are a result of insufficient parking. To test this, add 5-10 large, RAMP/CARGO parking spots somewhere on that afcad and see if the blink outs still occur.

OTOH, AISmooth might help out with some of the missed approach aspects of high traffic loads.

Hi Ford,

Thanks for the post but it's not that. It's a a 100% constant pattern that occurs even if there is many parking spots available for correct type, size...etc. If a AI aircraft is forced to make a unplanned overshoot twice due to traffic not clearing on the runway in time, then the third approach will end with the aircraft 'blinking' out - this is quite different from the 'blink outs' that occur after roll out on the runway due to lack of parking, these occur while the aircraft is still just in the air prior to touchdown and are 100% consistent with the above pattern - three strikes and it's gone!

Gary

The only occurrence that I am aware of that causes this, but not necessarily at the threshold but anywhere in pattern, is when the aircraft is overdue by some time.
It goes past a certain parameter, don't know what it is, and the system effectively cleans it up and removes it.

One thing that can exaggerate the problem is if the flight time is too tight, or just plain not realistic. This means that you are going to arrive late even on a good day.
An example of this might be an aircraft with a cruising speed of 420kts, makes a flight between two places in controlled airspace, i.e. below FL080, it will actually flys at 250kts not 420. If the tool used to calculate the tool only takes into account the cruising speed, that flight will be late. Add circuit traffic and you have the potential for what you describe.

I am not aware of a switch to make it happen. In all honesty it would probably be better to alter the traffic flow. Is this a military or civilian airfield?

I agree with Firebird that there apparently is an "aircraft overdue" timer or somesuch thing. I think I read somewhere that that's set to 15 minutes and is not modifiable. I have no idea where or when I read that. The reasoning for the blink out was to limit the amount of traffic because, without it, a plane could theoretically continually miss approaches and not ever land - meaning it would not be on the ground when it was next scheduled for departure.

AISmooth seems to help with the missed approach problem in general though occasional blink outs do occur at extremely high traffic load times at certain airports - ex., KBOS, KJFK, KLAX. But I haven't ever had that problem myself at any military airport when using AISmooth. Maybe I'm just lucky.

No AI aircraft is permitted to carry out more than three consecutive go-arounds. On the third it is removed by FS - nothing you can do about it..

The 5 minute time out relates to AI aircraft on the ground, usually in taxi mode, and this can be modified.

Thanks again for the input guys. Just to add some more background info. It happens at any airport/airfield where the aircraft is on it's third approach. I'm running a mixture of civil WOAI packs, MAIW packs (many with modified or rewritten flightplans) and AI put together from downloads at AVSIM and this seems consistent throughout the whole range. I'd always assumed it was a commonly known feature (like the 'blink out' if stopped at the same taxi position feature after so many minutes), although I'd never seen any mention of it anywhere.

I'm curious about the flight time of the flight plan though, as I always assumed that if I write a FP with speed set at, say 450 or similar then the aircraft will stick to that when not visible on the viewer and appear within roughly the time expected on the FP (certainly experience so far seems to indicate that does happen). If I read Firebirds post correctly the speed off screen in the FP may not actually be followed in some cases then? Can you just clarify if you mean in controlled airspace above a certain height, or out of it and under a certain height as I'm a little confused there.

Something else I do is when using FPs from elsewhere I always remove the '@' from them, as I've heard that that causes problems as well, although I'm not sure exactly what. If I use a WOAI pack and remove the '@' then I find that the speeds set in the flightplans (usually around 200 for jet airliners) is to slow and some of the tightly planned legs overlap (arrival time is after next departure time) so I always increase the speeds up to around 400/450 for jets and as fast as I can get away with being realistic with props. That may be a factor in what I've noticed but the issue is not just restricted to those packs, and is consistent throughout everything flying.

Ah, just spotted Graham's post while writing this. That fits in with what I've seen and if it can't be altered or edited then I'll just have to accept it then. Thanks anyway guys.

Gary

It's exactly like Graham said. No more than two missed approaches (with the intention to land) are allowed by FS9. No way to change that.

The thing with airspeed in flightplans is that it's not used in FS at all. FS always uses the airspeed from the aircraft.cfg. The airspeed set in the flightplan is only to enable ttools to make a correct estimation. At least that's what I found..

If you really want to get into explanations and verified/verifiable things concerning AI traffic details/ATC operations, try http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/archiv ... -9588.html

Issues like TAS vs IAS and their relation to flightplanning/ai aircraft speeds and flight dynamics in the sim, the effect of varying AI Traffic Visual Zone Sector size, the impact of the @ sign in compiling traffic files, and more are brought up. Other FSDeveloper archived threads also contain a wealth of info.

Warning, some of it could make your head spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.