Problem with Baggage cart routes

[PhilA]

Hello,

Thank you for the changes for the new refuelling procedures, these appear to be a huge improvement.

Since updating to this release, I have have a few problems that appear to be related to some changes to the routes vehicles use to leave the aircraft being serviced. For example, the passenger bus now reverses out from the aircraft to pick up its vehicle route, rather than try to turn around.  This is a big improvement over the previous versions where it tried to turn around, however, it appears to reverse too far.

I have a particular problem where the baggage carts go under the aircraft rather than around it.  I use a modified AFCAD file for UK2000 Exeter airport (EGTE).  The standard AFCAD does not include any vehicle routes.  Exeter has vehicle access in front of the aircraft and I have added the vehicle path for this.  As GSX vehicles work best when arriving from the rear, I produced a fairly complex routing system that worked well, whereby the vehicles would come along the road at the front, and then out to the apron by a path alongside the adjacent gate and behind any aircraft parked alongside me.  This produced a number of parallel vehicle routes.  In order to rule out any issues with such a complex path structure, I have produced a revised AFCAD with only the paths for the road, and the gate I am testing with, Gate 5. The attached image shows the AFCAD, and I have added a red line showing the approximate route the baggage carts took after deboarding or boarding prior to the recent update.  The blue line shows the route they now take.  In order for the rear baggage train to take this route it performs an initial reverse causing all the carts to concertina.

I have tried different vehicle start positions, and adjusted the vehicle paths, but I cannot get the baggage carts to go behind the aircraft.  Are you able to suggest a way to stop these carts going under the aircraft (and through the rear conveyor of container lift).

I mentioned that the passenger bus reverses too far.  after boarding or deboarding, it reverses right to the edge of the apron from Gate 5 using this AFCAD, although I have had a version where it reversed on to the grass.  It then moves forward and picks up the vehicle path as expected.

Another minor issue is that on aircraft pushback, the aircraft is pushed back until it is lined up on the taxiway, but the push back vehicle is not in line with the taxiway but is at a slight angle. This results in the vehicle pivoting unnaturally around the front of the towbar when it is released from the aircraft, until the vehicle is aligned with the taxi way.  I can overcome this with using a custom pushback procedure.

As my main system has many addons and customisations, I tested this on my test platform as well.  My test system was a Fresh install of FSX Boxed edition with Acceleration, GSX 1.92 with the UK2000 free edition of EGTE added.  On this the vehicles followed the red routes on the attached image.  After upgrading to GSX 1.95, the vehicles followed the blue routes.  On this test, all testing was on the free edition of UK2000 Exeter at Gate 5 with the default Airbus A321.

Any suggestions on how to get the baggage carts to leave following the vehicle routes would be appreciated.  They leave correctly from their parking positions if catering is requested without deboarding.  Also arriving vehicles follow the correct routes.

Thank you.

[virtuali]

This is a big improvement over the previous versions where it tried to turn around, however, it appears to reverse too far.

The issue is, what might be too far on an airport, it's just good enough on another one so, universally reducing that distance would cause problems elsewhere.

As GSX vehicles work best when arriving from the rear, I produced a fairly complex routing system that worked well, whereby the vehicles would come along the road at the front, and then out to the apron by a path alongside the adjacent gate and behind any aircraft parked alongside me. 

The main issue is, you cannot control *every* point of the path used by GSX vehicles. They don't just follow the AFCAD routes (and, this is *only* valid for vehicles coming from far away, not those that starts at the parking), but they follow a combination of the AFCAD routes AND some preset points, which are different for each vehicle class, which are used when the vehicle is closing to the airplane.

The difficult part is precisely the transition between following the AFCAD route, and moving over the final approach points. And, add to this that, the vehicles don't "just" follow the points. If they were, their movements would appear very wrong and robotic. Instead, they take a set of points, and will try to FIT A BEZIER CURVE between them, removing duplicate points, and taking into account the front/rear wheel distance, which is not the same for each vehicle.

So, you can control them through the AFCAD only up to a point. It would be nice having a graphical editor allowing to customize even the approach points, but we don't even have such thing ourselves: the point are written in actual code, but even if we did such an editor (which would be quite useful to us too...), it would be very cumbersome and complex to use for users, and I don't think many will go to such great lengths to customize the scenery.

I can only say we'll try to keep this in mind for a future GSX.

[PhilA]

Hello Umberto,

Thank you for your explanation.  I realise the difficulties in producing a generic but realistic action for all the vehicles.  I had hoped they may be some ways to "trick" the vehicles into using specific paths or nodes.  I will just have to live with the compromises necessary, at least for the time being.

Thank you for your work on this marvellous product and I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.

Regards.