AI nosediving short of airport

[Gary1954]

At BOS & LAS it's a little disturbing to watch AI dive towards the ground away from the airport and vanish just before impact. At McCarren I identified the planes as Southwest. Most land okay but I tried another set of Fplans and still see some suicidal behavior. Is this an FS9 problem or can this be solved? AFCADS are modified for default. Southwest aircraft are Aardvark v2 w/updated air, cfg. etc. Anyone else ever seen this?

[CAFedm]

I feel compelled to share a similar experience, although running FSX...while testing out flightplans featuring an An-124 landing at a custom airport, which has very long runways, the aircraft didn't descend enough and appeared to be preparing to go-around. I then lost track of it for a moment and then adjusted the viewpoint and saw the monster coming down at maybe a 60 degree angle, moving so fast that it actually trailed condensation off it's wingtips...it then levelled out behind some hills, whereupon a wingtip could be seen poking over the horizon with the rest of the plane hidden (much like an A-10 using hills as cover while maneuvering). The aircraft then flew toward the opposite side of the airport and tucked the gear up and departed, not to be seen again. If the same conditions can be re-enacted a screenshot will be posted.  Don't know what causes this other than possibly, upon starting a flight, maybe the AI aircraft are already placed close to the airport and don't have time to properly descend or decelerate for a normal landing. Something like AI-Smooth might also help.

[Groundbound1]

Are you fellas using any add-on terrain mesh?

[Sean_TK]

I had this problem when I tried to use the Dreamwings Dash-8 Q100 as an AI plane. It has been a while, but I think I solved it by overwriting everything except the contact points, repaints, and lights section, in the aircraft cfg file with the info from the aircraft cfg from a Project AI Dash-8.
I believe that I also completely overwrote the Dreamwings .air file for the dash with a PAI one. (Just renamed the PAI file to match that of the original Dreamwings file, and copied and pasted.)

I imagine that this would work with other aircraft as well.

[todayshorse]

ive had similar. Ive had DC-9's that do a take off roll and just never get airbourne, ploughing through scenery on an endless run to oblivion, before vanishing. A 727 that made the airport (KSAN) but always always always went missed for no apparent reason, then off it went, god knows where, it never came back, ever!

However this was whilst i was experimenting getting my own aircraft into 'ultimate' traffic. Some worked, most didnt (even stuff made by the same company never showed up) , so i junked ultimate traffic and went with some freeware stuff thats excellent.

Still get 'go arounds' when theres 46 aircraft coming in seperated by 2ft all trying to land on the same runway but that my fault for running 100% traffic i guess!!

[Gary1954]

I'm not using any terrain mesh however I do have add-on scenery for Las Vegas. Maybe this will narrow it down some. Allegiant, United (Ted), Frontier and Janet (Area 51) seem to land okay. Southwest lands okay on 25R but east of 19L approach is where they are almost vertical nose down vanishing just before impact. Not all do it, but flying around the valley 'low & slow' from North Las Vegas airport at dusk I watched 3 do this one after the other rather fast. After that everthing else landed okay.

[Groundbound1]

I've never seen this problem personally, but I was thinking that add-on mesh may have raised the surrounding terrain, making it look like the AI was crashing. Not likely though.

[CAFedm]

Re: terrain mesh. I have UTX for both FS9 & FSX, but figured this adjusts landclass only. The Antonov is the only aircraft that really gives any problem here. Haven't checked it out at another airport, but got a few pics to show it's bizarre approach - thunderin' in...

[Sean_TK]

The only two things I can think of are to follow my original post and adjust the aircraft.cfg and air.cfg parameters, or make sure that the scenery that you are using did not put any wayward "crash detection boxes" in random spots. (Before a patch, a scenery for Keflavik, Iceland had a problem of random crash detection occurring.)

Good luck,
-SeanTK

[Gary1954]

Sean, I'll try the default 737 aircraft.cfg & air. Thanks
CAF Edmonton, nice shots!

[todayshorse]

Re: terrain mesh. I have UTX for both FS9 & FSX, but figured this adjusts landclass only. The Antonov is the only aircraft that really gives any problem here. Haven't checked it out at another airport, but got a few pics to show it's bizarre approach - thunderin' in...

Adds a whole new meaning to 'buzzin the tower' that does!!  Wicked!