Why not make it so that players can chose what vehicles they want for each plane, for example: customize airplane page: select vehicles: (select stair type, baggage loader...)
It won't be a very large choice, because the vehicles are already filtered out by not taking the ones that won't fit the airplane or won't reach a door so, in most of the cases, you'll have to choose between a couple of vehicles, or sometimes just one.
When we'll add more vehicles, their constraints based on airplane weight would be more than enough to result in the better vehicle selected automatically, simply because there will be more of them to choose from, so we can tune the constraints windows to target different airplane classes with more precision but if we tied the choice of vehicles to the airplane configuration, users forgetting to re-edit the airplane, would miss out on every new vehicle we'll add in the future.
It always annoys me when I get the stairs with engines, big pushback truck (the correct pushback would be the towbar one in my case, i have never used gsx with a small plane as ive only had issues (vehicles running inside of it...)
You keep repeating the towbarless truck is not correct for an A320, but I assure it can and it is used sometimes. And I already confirmed we'll supply additional mid-size vehicles that might be more *commonly* used for smaller or mid-sized airliners, so the variation will be more in the future.
The FSX/P3D version has more pushback trucks available but, we didn't want to recycle old models from it, so they are not all there yet, but they will be, with the proper modeling/graphic MSFS deserves.
Regarding the baggage carts, I dont know how it was back in the day on the old sims, however now we are in 2023, the technology is so advanced you can make a nice looking menu...
Having 3 carts always is worse, Im not sure regarding the loading time if its always the same or if it depends on load weight
The actual loading time depends only on the number of carts, which in previous GSX was variable depending on the load, and it causes lots of support troubles because nobody understood how it worked ( especially when airplanes change the payload progressively in realtime while the boarding was happening ), and even if it wasn't progressive, it could have started by the user at any time.
However, the *overall* time when BOARDING, is also affected by the time the vehicle full of bags take to reach the airplane, since they come from another spot, and this is affected by how well ( or how *badly* ) the airport is designed.
GSX vehicles, exactly like the ones in real life, starts on vehicle parking spots and try to use vehicle paths by preference, even if the path might be longer, for the obvious reason of minimizing conflicts with airplanes on taxiways, that's why dedicated vehicle path exists in real life and why in real life there are multiple staging areas for ground vehicles that are fairly close to the airport main terminals.
But lots of 3rd party airports, are badly designed without any care for ground services, so they place too few ( or none at all ) vehicle parking spots, too few ( or none at all ) vehicle paths and even when they do, they might forget to connect them properly to the rest of the taxiway layout so they can reach all places easily.
And because of the correct GSX strategy of preferring vehicle paths, even if they are longer ( if they didn't, they might arrive earlier, but then people would complain to have them always clashing with AI airplanes ), a badly designed airport will result in GSX vehicles coming from afar taking longer than they should so, this time would always be added to the time required to do the actual loading.
Regarding the moving logic, its not just before pushing back, its also when the pushback is connected (especially the tow bar one) at the turn its steering the other way some times and its drifting in a way, il record a vid and show you next time too.
You are now saying a different thing, which is the steering ( drifting IS affected by the start position, which I already explained )
Yes, we are aware steering is not exactly right sometimes, because in the previous version we controlled the steering completely with our code, but in the MSFS version, since GSX vehicles can also act as a replacement for default ground vehicles, we use the default steering method, so the same model can be controlled by the sim as well, but the two methods are not using the same concept, so it's a not entirely satisfyingly adaptation, and we are surely planning to revisit it in the future, after we released the most important updates which are:
- Support for the SU12 SDK, which should fix all the remaining issues with jetways.
- The Fuel updates, with new vehicles for airplanes with lower wings ( 737, MD80, CRJ, etc. ), which will add lots of new completely new animations.
Regarding the American trucks, its happened quite a few times, I remember once ive had this happen at EGKK, the catering and fuel trucks were American, next time it will happen il be sure to capture it and show you.
This would be useful to know, because it's not supposed to be happening, since the american models are explicitly prevented from appearing in Europe.
Regarding the moving logic, its not just before pushing back, its also when the pushback is connected (especially the tow bar one) at the turn its steering the other way some times and its drifting in a way, il record a vid and show you next time too.
GSX is a great mod however its not there yet, it still has to have some changed, some bug fixes, some additions... Id say its almost worth the money, I wont judge it much now but next year I will be expecting some changes...
Both these sentences, the "not there yet", and "almost" worth the money, really show you are a new user not very accustomed to the previous GSX history.
GSX came out in 2012, and those smart user that bought it back then, have enjoyed more than 10 years of continuous free updates, to the point GSX now looks and works completely different than it used to be in 2012, and this happened all with free updates. When the smart users who bought GSX in 2012 moved from FSX to P3D, which eventually become a 64 bit and eventually got PBR rendering, we never asked a penny to upgrade their GSX to the new simulator and, in some case, we made MASSIVE updates, like a complete revamp of most of the models and textures to support PBR, which took almost a year of work, and ALL of this was made for free. It was only when MSFS came out, that we made a new product, but we are continuing to support the old version, since their share most of its code so, any general bugfix and improvement we are adding to the MSFS version (the recently added Remote Deicing, for example), has been added to the FSX/P3D version as well, the one somebody might have bought in 2012.
That's what it really means "worth the money". We are of course planning to support the MSFS version for years to come, with continuous free updates, and of course everybody accustomed to GSX knows that very well.
