MSFS Living World & Services at Airport

[Colinusmaximus]

Hey everyone,
I created my first custom airport and now want to adjust the life on the airfield a little bit. That includes services, airplane spawning (so far there is no aircrafts spawning at my gates) etc.
I did some research and found this interesting discussion with the hint of @flyingscool.20091 showed me in an other question of mine.
There one user mentioned

Spoiler: This

I found what my problem was, so listen carefully and everything will work for you

:

When you build your package by pressing the “Build package” button in the SDK, it creates the “Packages” folder inside your projects folder (we know this already, I am just writing it to make sure we are on the same page).

The “Packages” contains your airport package folder that you copy to your sim install > “Community” folder.

So far so good…

Now we want to change our Living World, so we have desired result for ground vehicles, equipment, workers for our airport.

In order to do this (In the “your package” folder, that is located in the “Packages” folder in your project folder):

• Create “AirportServices” folder.
• Inside the “AirportServices”, create folder with your Aiport ICAO as the folder name.
• Inside “Aiport ICAO” folder, create “Services.xml” file.

If you also want to use LivingWorld Config (In the “your package” folder, that is located in the “Packages” folder in your project folder):

• Create “LivingWorld_Config” folder.
• Create yourICAO_LWcfg.xml file (the file can be copied from SDK (folder) > Samples > LivingWorld_Config. The file name in the folder is “Asobo_LWcfg.XML. Just copy. I will explain what I changed in the file to get result that I was looking for)

Now, with the folders and files in place, we need to rebuild your package in order to regenerate the “layout.json” file by pressing the “Build package” button in the SDK.

Remember!?, per SDK documentation: “layout.json, which contains a list of all the files present in the package”.

Since we added the two folder and xml files in the folders after the package was already generated, the current layout.json will not have information about the new folders/files.

But here is the trick, and this is the reason why I was killing myself

trying to figure out why my AirportServices and LivingWorld Config were not doing what they supposed to.

THE layout.json file, will NOT be regenerated when you press the “Build package” button in the SDK, if you did not make any changes to your airport layout in the “Scenery editor”!!!

Any change in “Scenery editor” (change something and change it back) and saving will do the trick.

NOW press the “Build package” button! The layout.json will regenerate and will have record of the AirportServices and/or LivingWorld Config.

You can confirm, by opening layout.json (it is just text).

You can now copy your airport package to your sim install > “Community” folder.

Start the SIM.

You should see everything as it is described in the Services.xml and yourICAO_LWcfg.xml.

If something is not as you like at this point, all you need to do is change parameters in the Services.xml and yourICAO_LWcfg.xml files to your needs. You will need to restart the sim

(Should be faster with the upcoming patch).

In my previous post, when I mentioned that I was able to make it work, but needed some time to figure out how exactly I was able to do it:

When @klasbj advised to change RAMP_GA_SMALL to RAMP_GA, I did it. This change forced layout to change and regenerate the “layout.json” file!

So, you can use RAMP_GA_SMALL if you like.

One more thing, if you don’t see autogenerated airplanes in your parking spots, make sure you have ramp “Radius” set to (in my case for RAMP_GA_SMALL) 6. The radius should be more that wingspan of autogenerated airplanes. With radius 5, I did not have any planes generating on the parking spots (I did not try 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, etc.).

Eventually the SDK will be developed (I hope) to the point where you don’t have to mess with XML files, but it is good to know what is happening in the background (behind the GUI).

In the SDK documentation I found information under
.../Documentation/03-Content_Configuration/Environment/Living_World/AirportServices/index.html
and an example under
.../Documentation/03-Content_Configuration/Environment/Living_World/AirportServices/examples.html

My question now: Does anyone have experience with that so far and maybe has a guide on how exactly to do that? I am looking into it right now but I do not know for example, what to pick at "ParkingEntry". I already reached out to Flying Theston on Youtube and asked him, if he could cover that in a future video. But until then it will probably take some time...

I am thankful about every kind of input at the moment!

 

[tgibson]

As far as AI aircraft, you can now make MS2020 flight plans using AI Flight Planner's latest development release.

 

[Colinusmaximus]

I managed to have AI Aircrafts spawning at my gates and also the ground services are now fully operable. All I needed to do was changing the gate type to ramp_gate.
The problem is, there is still no AI aircrafts starting or landing on my airport. Does anyone know, how to make the AI land and start? I saw tons of planes circling over my airport way up in the sky, so it seems like they want to land but can't find the way down...

 

[tgibson]

How did you create the custom airport? You will need some kind of valid runway before they will land. You will also need a valid taxiway path between the parking spot and the runway for them to take off.

 

[Colinusmaximus]

I created the designated runway (one straight long taxiway and chose "runway" in the options). I connected that runway over the taxiways. In ATC this all works. I can chose whether I want to depart northern or southern and it all works with the blue arrows on the taxiway. Just the AI does not use it. Is it possible that my airort is just so "small" (at least that's what the game thinks) that there is just never somebody landing there? How can I change that? I tried setting the airtraffic to 100 in the main menu. The sky is now packed with planes but still nobody is landing...

 

[bar_rodoy]

Has anyone managed to remove the ground crews from airfields?

 

[tgibson]

Is this a new airport, not present as a default airport in the sim? All flight plans fly to specific airports - if you create a new airport, nothing will fly to it. You would not get any AI planes using this airport until you create flight plans that use that ICAO code.

 

[Colinusmaximus]

Is this a new airport, not present as a default airport in the sim? All flight plans fly to specific airports - if you create a new airport, nothing will fly to it. You would not get any AI planes using this airport until you create flight plans that use that ICAO code.

That makes sense! It is an airport that already existed, but a super small one. How can I create a flight plan?

 

[tgibson]

The only tool I know of that will create MSFS flight plans is the latest Development Release of AI Flight Planner. See the AIFP forum here for details about this program and MSFS.

 

[fred1690]

I tried to modify the ground services at my airport. But it doesn’t work.
Before I added the Services.xml I had all the ground services. Now there is nothing. No push back, no marshals. Even no fuel service.


I created the following Services.xml.

SimBase.Document Type="ServiceFile">
    
    
          <Service.ParkingSpaceServices>
              <ParkingSpace  name ="RAMP GA MEDIUM" MinParkingSpaces="0">
                  <ParkingTypes>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="VEHICLE"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="RAMP_GA"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="RAMP_GA_SMALL"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="RAMP_GA_MEDIUM"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="RAMP_GA_LARGE"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="RAMP_CARGO"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="GATE_SMALL"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="GATE_MEDIUM"/>
                        <ParkingEntry ParkingType="GATE_HEAVY"/>


                  </ParkingTypes>
                  <IdleWorkers>
                      <Spot Frequency="1" SpawnDistanceParkingRadiusFactor="1.0" SpawnDistanceAdditionalOffset="2.0" SpawnAngleFromParking="-100" HeadingFromParkingHeading="90" >
                      <IdleWorker Filename="Shared\IdleWorkers\Large\V1" EntryWeight="1"/>
                      </Spot>
                      <Spot Frequency="1" SpawnDistanceParkingRadiusFactor="1.0" SpawnDistanceAdditionalOffset="12.0" SpawnAngleFromParking="110" HeadingFromParkingHeading="-80" >
                          <IdleWorker Filename="Shared\IdleWorkers\Large\V1" EntryWeight="1"/>
                          <IdleWorker Filename="Shared\IdleWorkers\Large\V2" EntryWeight="1"/>
                      </Spot>
                  </IdleWorkers>
                  <Services>
                      <Service name ="GroundPowerUnit" Filename="Shared\GroundPowerUnit\GroundPowerUnit" AIType="GROUNDPOWERUNIT" Frequency="1"
                          SpawnDistanceParkingRadiusFactor="1.0" SpawnDistanceAdditionalOffset="4.0" SpawnAngleFromParking="20" HeadingFromParkingHeading="50"/>
                      <Service name ="SmallPushBack" Filename="Shared\PushBack\SmallPushBack" AIType="SmallPushback" Frequency="1"
                          SpawnDistanceParkingRadiusFactor="1.0" SpawnDistanceAdditionalOffset="2.0" SpawnAngleFromParking="-10" HeadingFromParkingHeading="150"/>
                  </Services>
                  <SleepingActivities>
                      <SleepingAirlinerServices Probability="0.1" Timer="600"/>
                      <SleepingSmallPlaneRefueling Probability="0.1" Timer="600"/>
                  </SleepingActivities>
              </ParkingSpace>
          </Service.ParkingSpaceServices>
    
          <Service.AirportServices>
              <Services>
                  <Service name ="Fuel" Filename="Shared\Fuel\Fuel" ParkingType="VEHICLE" Frequency="1"/>
              </Services>
          </Service.AirportServices>
    
      </SimBase.Document>

The services.xml is in the folder "Packages\fredsairports-edja-allgaeuairport\AirportServices\EDJA"

The Services.xml is mentioned in the layout.json Thats only the beginning of the layout.json:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "path": "AirportServices/EDJA/Services.xml",
      "size": 5434,
      "date": 132480818784109663
    },
    {
      "path": "Business.json",
      "size": 147,
      "date": 132485110481187216
    },
    {
      "path": "CGL/120/sai221.cgl",
      "size": 880473050,
      "date": 132485371643534026
    },
    {
      "path": "ContentInfo/fredsairports-edja-allgaeuairport/Thumbnail.jpg",
      "size": 60010,
      "date": 132425980490531504
    },

Perhaps somebody knows what I´m doing wrong.

Fred

 

[clements]

@fred1690, I'm not sure if you found an answer to your problem but, off hand, your Filenames look wrong. The paths in the example files in the SDK are wrong. The folder in between the "Shared" and the file name should start with "Asobo_". For example, you have the filename for fuel as "Shared\Fuel\Fuel". It should be "Shared\Asobo_Fuel\Fuel".