by JBaymore » Sun Jun 29, 2003 8:58 am
William,
Yeah there is.... sort of.
You'll need AFCAD and the combination of AIMover and TTools (which work together).
I won't attempt to do a real tutorial on any of the programs... you'll have to get them and play with them. The docs are good.
AIMover has the very handy ability to edit the "radius" of the configuration of the aircraft.
This radius is what is used for the artificaial intelligence to decide which gate the particular size aircraft needs for parking, arrival, or departure. The radius doesn't necessarily have anything to really do with the physical size of the virtual model that you "see" in the sim. Of course it is typically set to make it so that aircraft fit in the space defined by the radius.
After you have loaded your aircraft file into AIMover..... you go into AIMover and set the radius of the AI cargo planes that you use....... FedEx, UPS, Emery, and so on........ to a pretty specific and unique radius (for each company) that will not be confused with the "normal" general passenger carrying aircraft's ones.
THEN.... you go into AFCAD and alter the radius of the gates and parking spaces for the location on the airport that you want the cargo airline in question to park so that only the planes from that airline will TEND to park there.
So for example you set a FedEX 727 to a radius of 32.45 meters in AIMover's aircraft file editing function. You then set a FedEX gate to 32.45 meters in the AFCAD program. The sim's artificial intelligence will look for the closest match between the two when assigning a plane to a gate. Bingo.... the FedEX plane will end up at the 32.45 gate....... instead of at the open 40 meter gate or the open 50 meter gate...and so on.
Remember that the size of the aircraft radius can be anything.... a 747 can have a 1 meter radius..... but that will be all the space that AFCAD allows "around" the aircraft in the setup of gates and parking. So the green radius circles in AFCAD that you use for gate spacing in that case will NOT allow adequate room for the physical aircraft in the sim. You'd have to manually remember to allow extra if you set the gate radius smaller than the aricraft really needs.
I say "tend" because if the cargo company space is vacant and a plane needs parkinganc there isn't an appropriate open space and the radius of the "assigned" cargo plane space is BIGGER than the space needed for the aircraft looking for a space....... it will end up getting parked there. I am sure if you have been using the sim much that you have already experienced getting a Cessna parked in a gate designed for a "heavy" before ;).
Doing this "radius altering" to an airport I think is referred to as setting up a RAFCAD format...... the "R" for "radius determined". In fact, there is a sort of "standard" format for radius setting for the various commercial airlines that is in use in the general "sim world". That allows you to use AI and get it all parking at the "real" gate locations in an airport. If you go to maybe the Project AI website there might be a lot of information on this concept.
Hope this basic explanation is of some help.
best,
...............john
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