My question is, if it can recognize which gates have jetways upon landing then why can't it recognize a jetway at the beginning of a flight.
That's not what's happening. There's no difference between starting a flight, or landing when jetway recognition is concerned. The jetway is recognized in BOTH cases. Provided, of course, the scenery HAS a jetway in that parking to begin with.
If the parking doesn't have a jetway, or you are using a 3rd party scenery that have fake/static jetways, they are not recognized in any case, regardless if you are departing or arriving.
THAT'S why the "Parking has a jetway" option is settable (of course, is already preset correctly on sceneries with proper FSX jetways), so you can tell GSX which parking spots have jetways, when you are on a 3rd party scenery that doesn't have proper FSX jetways.
Most gates, upon starting a fight, I have to go into settings and check the tickbox that say, "Parking has a jetway". If I don't then I get the stair truck mixing with the jetway.
You don't have to do that when starting a flight, you do it only ONCE, and ONLY for those 3rd party sceneries that don't have proper FSX jetways, that's how GSX works, it cannot detect a jetway that is not flagged as such, but it's just a bunch of polygons.
And, as with all other things on the scenery customization page, you can select more than a parking at once, or an entire terminal, and apply the change to multiple selected parkings with a single click so, for example, if you know that a certain terminal has jetways on all parking spots, just select the whole terminal on the list, and enable the option, so all parking spots will be fixed at once.
Again, you must do this only ONCE ( it will be saved for all your future flights on that airport ), and you must do this ONLY for those 3rd party sceneries that don't have proper FSX jetways.
Question #2. No matter how I set the marshaller he will never park the aircraft on the crosshairs. Its always to far. Is there a way to resolve this?
You are probably confusing what "setting the marshaller" means. You can only move it to prevent him to be placed inside a building or over some other scenery object. But, regardless of his position, he will always try park your airplane in the same place, which is the airplane reference point ( the red crosshair in Top View ) in the center of the parking spot, as defined by the AFCAD, which is the same position you would end up if you selected that parking using the World->Go To Airport menu.
This has no relationship with the ground markings on the scenery. Again, if you use 3rd party sceneries, GSX doesn't have any means to understand how those ground markings are placed.
GSX HAS the ability to do this, and it can also change it depending on the airplane type that has detected, but it requires custom customization by airport, we use it on several FSDT airports, because we obviously know how our textures are made, and GSX has the ability to interact with them, but not everywhere. On non-FSDT airports, it will revert to the default behavior.
