How does GSX know how many people need to board/deboard; where does it pull this information? Does it do a calculation (such as 155lb/person based on data entered in the cabin fields only) based on the payload weights in the standard FSX Fuel and Payload menu? Is there an option to adjust/override this on a per-plane basis?
This is explained on the GSX manual, the *estimated* number of passengers is obtained by dividing the total number of ALL loading stations by 220 lbs. which is the industry standard to indicate the average weight of a passenger + luggage.
This cannot obviously be entirely accurate because, the sim doesn't provide with a unique and foolproof way to indicate what a station load represents. The description you see is purely a text string, but there's no "type", as to differentiate between purely cargo stations and area for luggage and/or it's in the cabin. They are just names, so we cannot rely on them, since every airplane developer might use different naming standards and change them between releases and different plane variants.
So, the only option we can have, is the one we have right now, which is just an estimate.
The calculation is made when you call GSX so, as long as whatever method the airplane use to update its data (FMC or the Loading menu), as long the actual station load IS updated by the plane (if the plane fails to do this, we cannot obviously do anything on our side), GSX will be able to calculate it, since it uses the official Simconnect / SDK calls to ask for the total stations load.
OF COURSE, if you are only worried about the *time* it takes to load passengers, you can adjust it in the GSX - Timings settings, which will indicate an estimate of time depending on the slider setting.
