TTools to FsX Plans

[Frankis]

In my qest to create a program to sort and compile Ttools plans into TrafficDatabaseBuilder These are some possible issues I have found with TrafficDatabaseBuilder
In gate parking it will not accept aircraft that are 10 meters less than the gate size ,so if you have 2 gates 1 at 50 meters and one at 34 meters an aircraft with the width of 39 meters will be discarded for that airport, the minimum parking for ramps appear to be 5 meters less than ramp size.
If TrafficDatabaseBuilder rejects one leg of a plan it appears to compile up to that leg then reject the rest.
If the file to be compiled is greater than 288 kbs then TrafficDatabaseBuilder will not create entries in the stats file.
Most of the stock aircraft in Fsx don't have an entry for parking_types but
TrafficDatabase builder Requires An entry in the Aircraft list it uses to compile else it will give an error “Cant find parking”

Hopefully I will be ready to upload when I sort out some Parking probs.

[ronh]

Thanks for sharing this information - I ran into the problem with aircraft size and parking. You can't put a cessna into a large parking spot.

Will your program change FS9 stype traffic flight plans to FSX style?

[lc0277]

Thanks for sharing this information - I ran into the problem with aircraft size and parking. You can't put a cessna into a large parking spot.


Interesting fact. Is it happening only when compiling with TDBB ? or is it a limitation of the AI simulation itself ?

[ronh]

I was trying to add GA aircraft to an airport that did not have any parking spaces in the airport.dat file for TDBB. I added LARGE parking spaces to the airport and building traffic files, I got the error no parking spaces available (or some sort). When I changed my paking space to small the error disappeared and aircraft appeared in parking spaces. I only wanted to add cessna AI traffic doing circuits.

So if there are no parking spaces or the parking spaces are not the correct type you don't get AI at that airport.

[Frankis]

Interesting fact. Is it happening only when compiling with TDBB ? or is it a limitation of the AI simulation itself ?

Yes the problem Appears? to be with TDBB because if I change the size in the AircraftType.Text TDBB will accept the plan and the plane will apear at the airport.
Yes my prog changes TTools format to FsX format ,Does a lot of sorting then Compiles it. (you can edit the Fsx File by hand and compile it again if nessisary)

Frank

[Burkhard]

First thanks for doing it - there are many ttools based flight plans around, and installing one of them kills FSX traffic for large areas.

I was under the impression that the new gate radii 36,23,18 are somehow hard coded into TDBB, so that a plane of 38m wing span would not be compiled for an airport with heavy and medium parkings only. The only way I found around is is, for any heavy gate I find, I add a heavy, a medium and a small to the airports file. This allows TDBBX to place them. It might overbook the airport, but since for a 1 hour ground time it blocks the ground for 3 hours, in average this factor of three is available.

By the way, you use the SDK SP TDBB, the one from the stock has many more issues.

[José]

Hi, ronh


to add cessna AI traffic doing circuits.



AI traffic changed a lot from FS9 to FSX and I don't know a specific tool to create the new options FSX offers. By now, I follow compiling FS9 AI flightplans with its limitations for FSX.

On the other hand, the FSX SDK isn't the best way to learn those new things, by lack of examples and clearness. Perhaps, for someone very smart and patient, it could be more helpful.

I think this matter is not very well discussed in this forum, where there is not a specific topic for it.

So, if you or someone else could give me a clear explanation on how to programm AI traffic circuits I should be grateful.

Regards,

José

[Frankis]

Hi, ronh




AI traffic changed a lot from FS9 to FSX and I don't know a specific tool to create the new options FSX offers. By now, I follow compiling FS9 AI flightplans with its limitations for FSX.

On the other hand, the FSX SDK isn't the best way to learn those new things, by lack of examples and clearness. Perhaps, for someone very smart and patient, it could be more helpful.

I think this matter is not very well discussed in this forum, where there is not a specific topic for it.

So, if you or someone else could give me a clear explanation on how to programm AI traffic circuits I should be grateful.

Regards,

José

I have Just uploaded A prog Called AiSort To avsim, It converts TTools plans to FsxTrafficdatabase compatable Text files Try it then read the files in the stats Dir.Also check the Sceds file against the original TTools file ,It might help.
Depending on feed back I intend to develop this prog further maby even give it the ability to make new plans.

Regards Frank

[Gypsy Baron]

I have Just uploaded A prog Called AiSort To avsim, It converts TTools plans to FsxTrafficdatabase compatable Text files Try it then read the files in the stats Dir.Also check the Sceds file against the original TTools file ,It might help.
Depending on feed back I intend to develop this prog further maby even give it the ability to make new plans.

Regards Frank


Hello Frank. Thanks for creating this tool!

I've just spent 3 days converting one of my many FS9
AI plans into FSX and I don't relish having to do THAT
again! TDBB is one finicky piece of...ah....software, to
be sure.

In any case, I just installed your program and all seems
in order up to the point of selecting "Tools/Create AircraftTypes.dat" .
At this step, aisort just sits there. After double checking
my path to FSX ( your program appears to insure that
it is correct in any case ) I think I know what may be
the problem.

I suspect aisort is looking for "aircraft.cfg" folders to use
that info to populate the list. All well and good, except that
I discovered some time ago, using FileMon, that FSX FIRST
looks for "sim.cfg" before failing and going on to search
for an "aircraft.cfg" file. It does this for each and every
folder in the SimObjects folder. You'd think it'd "learn"
after the first few attempts, ot know better to begin with.

Anyhow, in an effort to eliminate as many "not found" errors
as possible, I renamed ALL my aircraft.cfg files to sim.cfg.

Any possibility of being able to search for either/or both
those file names? ( I have several HUNDRED AI aircraft
folders that I imported from FS9 )

Failing that, I could create an AircraftTypes.dat file for
each plan I want to import into FSX. I essentially did
this already for the plan I just completed by hand. That
part of the effort wasn't too difficult, working from the
FS9 aircraft_xxx.txt file. Of course there were only 73
aircraft involved in that plan.

In any case, your program files a very big need when it
comes to FSX and AI. I suspect you spent many an hour
probing the quirks of TDDB. Do you have any hair left? :)

Paul

[Frankis]

Gday Paul
Yes AiSort is looking for the Aircraft.cfg files
I just done a search on my system and I came up with a load of sim.cfg files all associated with animals Boats & Ground Vehicles But all the Stock aircraft have aircraft.cfg.
I think what FsX is doing is loading other scenery traffic before the aircraft.

Regards Frank

[Gypsy Baron]

Gday Paul
Yes AiSort is looking for the Aircraft.cfg files
I just done a search on my system and I came up with a load of sim.cfg files all associated with animals Boats & Ground Vehicles But all the Stock aircraft have aircraft.cfg.
I think what FsX is doing is loading other scenery traffic before the aircraft.

Regards Frank

Yes, I'm aware that all those "other" objects have "sim.cfg"
files in lieu of "aircraft'cfg", but I did confirm that when it
searches each aircrafts folder, it first looks for "sim.cfg" and
after not finding it, it will then search fof the "aircraft.cfg"
file. So it's a matter of some hard-wired, misplaced logic
in FSX's coding that causes it to do these pointless searches.
It also looks for alot of other file types that should not
normally exist, such as files with .CAB extensions on
file types that have never used that extension such as
FSX.CAB, texture.CAB, Addon Scenery.CAB, model.CAB,
soundai.CAB and on and on and on. FSX is really quite
inefficient when it comes to file management, IMO.

In any case, that's the reason I renamed all my aircraft.cfg files
and I no longer have those hundreds of "File not found"
occurances.

Another question. Does aisort use the "SimObjectPaths.x"
statements in the fsx.CFG file to locate the folders to search?
The reason I ask is that all my AI aircraft are contained
in "SimObjectPaths.6=SimObjects\AI Aircraft".
To work around the "sim.cfg" issue, I could temporarily redirect that statement to:
"SimObjectPaths.6=SimObjects\I:\Microsoft Games\FS9\Aircraft"

where I have copies of most of my FS9 AI aircraft that I
have imported into FSX. Unfortunately, I have four instances
of FS9 on my system. Each tweaked for different purposes
and/or regions of the world. None the less, the above re-direct
would pick up most of them.

I know others that are pointing their fsx.CFG simobjects
statements to their FS9 installation to prevent having
to have alot duplicate entries. So it would be prudent to
use the fsx.CFG "SimObjectPaths.x=" statements to
search for the AI aircraft.

Paul

EDIT:

Frank, I am in the process of converting a VERY large file at the moment. All seems to be going well.
here's what I found I had to do to overcome the "sim.cfg" issue.

First, I changed the pointer in FSX.CFG Simobjets to include my FS9 Aircraft directory. No luck
there as aisort didn't appear to look there.

Next, I created a temp folder and put all my FS9 AI aircraft folders into that. I renamed my
FSX "AI Aircraft" folder and then renamed the temp folder to "AI Aircraft". Again, aisort did
not use this folder ( which contains aircraft folders with aircraft.cfg files ).

I then renamed my FSX "Airplanes" folder and renamed the temp folder to "Airplanes".
aisort now used this folder and created an AircraftTypes.txt file.

So, it appears that aisort is only looking for aircraft.cfg files in the FSX "Airplanes" folder.
This will cause alot of confusion with those, like myself, who prefer to keep all addon and
AI aircraft in different folders. Something the FSX structure allows through the use of
the FSX.CFG file "SimObjects.x=" entries.

Something else I noticed is that the "minimum parking radius" parameter appears to
have a 7.0 M absolute minimum. There also seems to be some additional factor, in the
range of 1-2 meters added to the 1/2 wingspan data as read from the aircraft.cfg file.
I noted that my Mig-15's and Mig-17's all have a 7.0M parking radius setting in the
AircraftTypes.txt file while the Mig-19's were set at 9.0M.
What is your experience with the TDBB requirements in this regard?

When converting a plan by hand using these aircraft I used the
actual wingspan/2, rounded up, to create the plan. That resulted in 5.0M and 6.0M
radii for those two aircraft. I increased those values by 1.0 M.

I then modified the airport parking for the airports that the Mig-15/17/19's use, to allocate
specific parking of 6.0, 7.0 and 8.0 meters for those planes.
When compiling, I noticed that TDDB kept giving me ALOT of "can't find parking"
errors. I had to do numerous itterations of chaning destinations and times until I
finally got an error-free compilation. This occured even though I had allocated far
more parking spaces than expected planes at any given field.

After starting FSX I noticed that at the fields I used, using the traffictoolbox listing, that
they were far fewer planes than available parking but more importantly, it appeared
that FSX was assigning the planes to larger spots than necessary. And in several
instances, assigned Il-18's ( normally 18.0M ) to 20.0M spots while assigning
Tu-95's ( 20.0M ) to 18.0M spots!
So, my conclusion is that TDBB and FSX are doing alot of things that certainly
are not spelled out in the SDK ( I've always found the FS SDK's to be lacking )
and even those items that are addressed are not sufficiently documented.

Your statement "I have found that “TrafficDatabaseBuilder” is VERY fussy about plans
It accepts do fly" is a understatement to be sure. it's a nightmare!

Paul

[Frankis]

Aisort looks in --\SimObjects\Airplanes for aircraft.cfg,s but I will look into changing that next build.
If you refer to the first post I made in this thread I detailed some of the things that were giving me a headache with TDBB.
With the wingspan I tried to reach a balance to arrive at the nearest size I could to the SDK examples using the formula
"winspan=Wing_Span / (4.5 + (Wing_span/130))" and if the result goes b
elow 5 It's set at 7.
I'm Looking at making the Build Aircrafttypes.dat list user editable.
I think the BIGEST problem we face is converting the old afcads.

Regards Frank

[Gypsy Baron]

Aisort looks in --\SimObjects\Airplanes for aircraft.cfg,s but I will look into changing that next build.
If you refer to the first post I made in this thread I detailed some of the things that were giving me a headache with TDBB.
With the wingspan I tried to reach a balance to arrive at the nearest size I could to the SDK examples using the formula
"winspan=Wing_Span / (4.5 + (Wing_span/130))" and if the result goes b
elow 5 It's set at 7.
I'm Looking at making the Build Aircrafttypes.dat list user editable.
I think the BIGEST problem we face is converting the old afcads.

Regards Frank


Thanks for the info, Frank.

As to the AFCAD conversion, I've been having a fair amount
of luck using "fs92fsx" by Ian Thatcher. So far I've limited
my tweaking to a group of 10 or so airfields in Poland, Slovakia,
Hungary and the Czech Republic that I had modified or
're-activated" to host my fleet of Mig15/17/19 aircraft
and Tu-95 and Il-18's that I've got flying to and fro.

Mostly it's been adding additional parking. Re-sizing the
parking and, in a few cases, creating excludes with an
FS9 exclude builder and FSX_KML for the autogen stuff.

I've had to remove/modify some of the FS9 bgl's associated
with a particular field to eliminate what appears to be flatten
statements causing problems.

It's a tedious task at best, but being a retired engineer,
tweaking is in my blood it seems :)

Paul ( back to resizing some parking radii upwards... )

[berendt]

Hello all,

this is actually no reply to any of the messages in the thread, but a cry for help on its own. However, it is exactly the problem of converting TTools AI flightplans to MS flightplans in FSX. So, here is my question:


I am about to write a small tool which in FSX converts AI Flightplans from TTools format to the corresponding flightplans in MS format without the assistance of other AddOns. In order to do this, I have to get access to the program <TrafficDatabaseBuilder.exe> in the Environment Section of the SDK for FSX.
Fortunately, this SDK is enclosed in the professional version of FSX, which I purchased (MS does not offer a free download of the FSX SDK, as it did for FS9!)
Unfortunately, however, the <TrafficDatabaseBuilder.exe> in my copy of the FSX release seems to be corrupted: Regardless which of the allowed (required and optional) parameters I enter, the program always only displays the Usage Screen and (contrary to its FS9 counterpart) does not work. This is even true for the sample parameters which are explained in detail in the Traffic Toolbox Manual and enclosed in the Kit. The attempt to repair the SDK with the help of the setup program did not yield any results.
As I found out in similar cases, it also seems to be useless to contact Microsoft in this matter.

Hence, if anyone can provide me via e-mail or otherwise with an uncorrupted copy of the program <TrafficDatabaseBuilder.exe> (which is only a few hundred kB large), I should appreciate this very much and I could dive deeper into the matter.

Thanks and regards,

Gerhard.

*********************************************
Gerhard Berendt
e-mail: berendt@zedat.fu-berlin.de
internet: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~berendt
*********************************************

[Randy Subers]

TrafficDatabaseBuilder is pretty finicky about command lines. What I found always works is put the /Output command first and always put spaces in between parameters as TDBB is not smart enough to figure out that / followed by a keyword is not part of a filename. If you are still having problems put the parameters in the same order as they are listed in the help screen and make sure you have the minimum listed parameters as shown in the help screen.

[rfields]

I've also found that TDBB seldom works if the /Countries=countries.csv is not in the command line, even though autoschedule and aircraft reg#'s is not enabled.

I've also found TDBB to hang when I had duplicate REG#'s in a schedule file.

[anipilot]

Hi everyone,

This post from this forum has an very helpful info,
http://ultimatetraffic.flight1.net/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=2892

infact I've cut and past the relevant part as below frm it


FSX parking is different than FS2004 in that model radius is apparently not used to determine the size of the AI aircraft. The wing_span= value in the airplane_geometry section of the aircraft.cfg is apparently used. This value has to be in feet - it is apparently divided in half and rounded up to the next whole meter.

Watch for overlapping wingtips - and that is the value to change to spread the planes apart a bit. (This is expecially bad with the AIA B747's)

Personally I put my AI aircraft into a different folder than the flyable aircraft in FSX - you can put the folder anwhere - but will need to edit the FSX.CFG file main section to add a new entry. I use:

SimObjectPaths.6=SimObjects\AI_Aircraft

The default Gate parking spot sizes have changed - they are:

Gate Small - 18M

Gate Medium - 23M

Gate Heavy - 36M

Ramp parking spots appear to remain the same size:

Small GA - 10M

Medium GA - 14M

Large GA - 18M

Cargo - 50M

I have not found any of the following parking types in the default airport:

Ramp (Mistakenly called Unknown by AFCAD)

Mil_Cargo

Mil_Combat

Dock

There is a new parking spot type - Fuel Box

The default aircraft sizes are:

B744 - 33M
A321 - 18M
B738 - 18M
MD80 - 17M
DH8A - 13M
CRJ700 - 12M
B350 - 9M
C208 - 8M
LJ45 - 7M
Maule - 6M
C172 - 6M
M20T - 6M
BE58 - 6M
ARCHER - 5M

Heavy Gate spots draw lines on the apron around an outline of the aircraft.

Overlapping parking spots look really bad.

Pushback tugs, luggage loaders and baggage carts appear at the edge of Gate parking spots at the highest scenery density levels.

Using FS2004 AFCAD files is not a good option. While they will work after a fashion - there are many problems created by the header which AFCAD uses to delete the default aprons, comm frequencies, helipads, runways, start locations and taxiway. This can cause updates to FSX data to be ignored, AI aircraft to fail to contact the correct frequency and problems with taxi behavior.

There will be airports where there is no traffic because the FS2004 ICAO codes/ airports.txt - does not match the approx 2700 changes in FSX.

This will be especially evident in Indonesia where the vast majority of the airports were given new ICAO codes in Oct 2004. Those changes are in FSX.

In case you are wondering, the ACES team has reported that the FSX airport and approach data date was April 2005. Because of the way the world was redesigned and things had to be redone, this data was required much earlier in the development process than in past versions of FS.

Lastly, any strange or unusual behavior you see in FSX should not be considered a "bug" but a result of using an FS2004 product in FSX.

Finding ways to resolve the issues will be a challenge - but people are working on developing replacements for TrafficTools and AFCAD with FSX compliant tools.