• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

FSXA AI DME Approaches?

Horst18519

Horst18519

Moderator
Resource contributor
Messages
2,385
Country
germany
I've come across the approach thing and tried this with the rather difficult approach at Dutch Harbour. You need to cross the airport NDB, fly away from the airport, do some turns and circle back to line up with the runway very late.
Is that sort of thing possible for AI? I tried to create an ILS approach without ILS using approach legs jut as Jim pointed out in the sticky and other threads. They do not seem to have much impact on my AI though.

Is there a possibility to make AI use that kind of procedures?
 
No, sorry. AI approaches for clear weather must be ILS approaches (no ILS frequency is required), and they will only:

1. Approach the waypoint listed in the main header (FAF) on a straight line from their departure airport.

2. Approach that FAF at the altitude listed in the header.

3. Depart the FAF at the heading listed in the header.

4. Intercept the extended centerline of the runway, turn to the runway heading, and land.

So you could have an FAF out in the harbor, have AI aircraft arrive at that FAF, depart the FAF heading up into the harbor, and then make the sharp left turn to the runway. That's about it.

For IMC conditions see the posts below.

Hope this helps,
 
Last edited:
Horst18519 said:
I've come across the approach thing and tried this with the rather difficult approach at Dutch Harbour. You need to cross the airport NDB, fly away from the airport, do some turns and circle back to line up with the runway very late.
Is that sort of thing possible for AI? I tried to create an ILS approach without ILS using approach legs jut as Jim pointed out in the sticky and other threads. They do not seem to have much impact on my AI though.

Is there a possibility to make AI use that kind of procedures?
Click to expand...

If you are speaking of PADU - Unalaska Airport - yes AI will fly that type procedure.

That was the first airport I discovered in FS2004 where AI aircraft flew complex procedures and asked Jim to investigate what was going one.

The airport in FS2004 and FSX has a GPS approach and AI aircraft will do a perfect approach and circle to land on either runway - if they have proper flight dynamics.

Any straight-in approach such as an ILS is going to result in aircraft flying through the mountains on approach - just like the default visual approach.

But the AI aircraft will only use the default approach if the visibility is below 3nm.

I have never bothered with it, but the 'solution' for AI would be to duplicate the GPS approach but name it an ILS approach.

Then the AI in VMC conditions should use that 'ILS' approach.
 
Reggie

It as been awhile since I studied the GPS weather related approaches for the AI Plane. If I remember correctly the problem was the compiler. The GPS header allows a 00 runway number so no runway end is selected and the wind determined the circle to land runway.

The ILS approach required a runway number in the header. I will have to go back and recheck PADU but I think only the GPS weather related approach with rwy 00 would force the AI plane a circle to land.

This is PADU GPS-E circle to land code for AI Planes

<Approach
type="GPS"
runway="0"
designator="NONE"
suffix="E"
gpsOverlay="FALSE"
fixType="TERMINAL_WAYPOINT"
fixRegion="PA"
fixIdent="AFPIV"
altitude="2500.0F"
heading="172.782379"
missedAltitude="3000.0F">

I will do some test on the compiler and AI behavior
 
Last edited:
That sounds very interesting indeed.
I got an AI B732 to keep away from the mountains and turn sharp left unto Runway 12, but it was always way too high and did a go around.
Another AI, a Beech Baron, also IFR, went straight over the mountains, but landed ok. What's the difference between them? They both do IFR flights.

The weather was really good btw, so I need to test this with bad visibility.

Just to make sure: Are we talking about FSX AI? Has anybody already found a good approach file for PADU? :)
 
Horst18519 said:
That sounds very interesting indeed.
I got an AI B732 to keep away from the mountains and turn sharp left unto Runway 12, but it was always way too high and did a go around.
Another AI, a Beech Baron, also IFR, went straight over the mountains, but landed ok. What's the difference between them? They both do IFR flights.

The weather was really good btw, so I need to test this with bad visibility.

Just to make sure: Are we talking about FSX AI? Has anybody already found a good approach file for PADU? :)
Click to expand...

Horst

YES we are talking about what AI planes can do.

Scott has worked on testing PADU and I have worked on it. In both cases I do not think we have a clear weather approach working correctly.

When the weather is clear at any airport that does not have a ILS approach code FS AI Planes fallback on a hard coded .dll type approach which is set at 2000 ft AGL final descent altitude. The problem with that is the approach is straight in to the runway (on a IFR FP) and mountains in the vicinity force the plane to stay high. Smaller type AI planes maybe able to get down based on slower speed and descent rates but larger planes can go missed.

When weather becomes less then 3 mile visibility with a cloud layer we force the airport into a IMC condition. If a ILS approach does not exist (PADU) ATC looks down into the approach code and finds the best precision approach available (GPS-E). AI Planes will now fly the XML approach and not a hard coded .dll approach.

There are plenty of circle to land AI approaches in the database but most never see these approaches work for AI planes. The reason is they do not study AI behavior when weather is IMC.

One way to study IMC plane behavior is to start out with poor visiblity. When AI planes start the approach change the weather back to clear. THE ATC engine continues to use poor weather but we cleared out the weather for visual testing purposes.

In the early days of FS2004 Reggie found the AI Plane poor weather approaches. The first he discovered was the PHNL LDA curved approach to rwy 26L. But, how many users watch AI Planes with poor visibility. I took what Reggie kept finding at various airports and found away to make these exotic poor weather approaches work in clear weather. Some work very well and some do not.

Tom Gibson working with his Cal Classic Fleet also found some interesting code in the .air files that now allow us to assign different size AI Planes to different runways. ATC has a weight restriction runway score card system based on size of plane (type engine in the .air file or empty weight). That is an additional plus for AI Plane behavior at some airports using multiple parallel runways or intersection takeoffs.
 
Last edited:
Ok, thanks for the info. Incidentally I already did what you write: start with bad weather and switch to clear skies as soon as the AI aircraft is in "pattern" mode. But I guess the weather wasn't bad enough at the beginning.

I think PADU ist perfect for this kind of approach because the weather is IMC almost all of the time. :D

I will do some more tests with IMC, thanks for the help! :)
 
Horst18519 said:
Ok, thanks for the info. Incidentally I already did what you write: start with bad weather and switch to clear skies as soon as the AI aircraft is in "pattern" mode. But I guess the weather wasn't bad enough at the beginning.

I think PADU ist perfect for this kind of approach because the weather is IMC almost all of the time. :D

I will do some more tests with IMC, thanks for the help! :)
Click to expand...

Use less then 3 mile visibility and set a stratus cloud layer down to 500 ft. That will force the airport to IMC. Sometimes low visibilty is not enough.
 
Is there anything else I need to keep in mind? Do AI use the IMC precedures immediately after load if I saved the flight with IMC weather before? Or do they need some 15 minutes until they learn that they need to do IMC procedures?
When can I change the weather? As soon as I loaded the flight or only when the aircraft I'm watching is in the "landing" state?

I also wonder if the fact that I don't have ATC services at PADU will interfere with those options. At the moment I only have Cold Bay Traffic and the usual "announce clear of runway" stuff. Do I need a tower for IMC operations?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top