more AI questions

[cleobis]

Hi, I finally learned how to create AI flightplans and I have now over portugal some military jets flying around

I'd like to get formations of planes...at least a formation of 2...How do I do this??

I once had some problme with the default AI traffic and I had double flights I mean: every AI flight was doubled, there were allways 2 737 in formation flying, or two pipers...you name it...I think this might have happened because somewhere along the way the FP's got duplicated....is this possible to redo but now using the mil jets??

Also, while I was waiting behind an alpha jet to take off it just desapeared....I think this was due to a line somewhere that limits the time a plane stays stoped without disapearing...am I right? If so, is this line in the fs9.cfg??

thks

[Jared]

Well of course you can always just add the same line twice to your traffic file to duplicate what you had before... ;-)

[BiggBaddWolf]

I have a problem with AI aircraft disappearing too...

I really dont know how to fix it or if ya even can, but I never worried about it too much, just moved me closer to take off  ;D

[Graycat8524]

Heya Cleobis,

In regards to your question about why AI Aircraft disappear when waiting to takeoff:

The MS FS 2004 (according to the SDK) takes a look at the AI aircraft's flightplan destination as it sits on the taxiway ready to depart from the airport before the AI plane taxis onto the runway.  If the destination airport has insufficient parking to accomodate the AI plane (from my understanding) the AI aircraft will sit there on the taxiway for about 15 minutes waiting for the traffic to clear some parking spaces at the destination airport.  If this does not happen in the 15 minutes allotted time the FS 2004 AI Aircraft will simply disappear.  The fix for this is to note (by registration) which AI Aircraft is causing your backup and using TTools to lookup this info in your flightplans.txt file (that's why I make sure that all of my AI Aircraft have unique registration codes).  Then check the destination airport of the AI Aircraft using AFCAD.  If it is a Stock FS 2004 Airport, then you probably need to download a new and improved AFCAD file of the destination Airport with improved parking spaces to accomodate more AI Aircraft.

Another way to keep AI Aircraft from "disappearing" is to specify an arrival time for the flight in the flightplans.txt file.  The only drawback to this is that you can "bump" up the arrival time by 5 or 10 minutes and your AI Aircraft may still "disappear" because (especially at very busy airports like KDFW, KJFK, EGLL, KLAX, &etc.) there aren't enough parking spots to accomodate all of the AI Traffic.  If this happens then you'll still have to install a new improved AFCAD.

As for the formations issue Jared is 100% correct.  Just copy the same line into your Flightplans.txt file and (depending when they takeoff) they will fly in formation!

Of course I would assign two different aircraft registrations or flight numbers for these AI "Formation Flyers" in the Flightplans.txt file for realism, however, that's just me.

[cleobis]

well thks for all the help guys  
I'm mostly applying military jets to portugal, so I'm redoing all the airbases to be able to acomodate mil jets...I'm redoing taxiways, parking...alll
So I think I'll be able to get around the disapearing planes