Custom AFCAD's

[hermit53]

Ciao Umberto,
Neve anche da voi? Da noi a Mozzate è un disastro tipicamente all'italiano.

I'm trying to get a clear view on some aspects of GSX.
It just so happens that I started working on a custom AFCAD (with ADE9X) for PHNL just before GSX came out, involving a lot of plumbing. There are quite a few drive-through parking spots at the domestic terminal and just about all the parking spots on the military aprons are drive-through. Moreover, runway usage is such that only plumbing will assure correct use for take-off and landing. Alas there are also a few flaws in your standard PHNL AFCAD, but that criticism can be extended to just about all the freeware and pay-ware airports out there.  I've a bit of experience, refer to the avsim library, I did an AFCAD for ISD FS9 LIMC with a few thousand downloads I think, look for Hans Wilms.
Down to the point, somewhere in a post in the GSX Backdoor forum you mentioned that there may be issues with custom AFCAD's, especially when they contain plumbing. Could you be more specific on that? What can be expected?
Which feature in an (any) AFCAD determines the push-back distance in GSX? Is it the node connecting the taxi-lane to the parking spot? For your info, I use taxiway (blue) for traffic inbound to parking spots and apron paths (green) for traffic outbound from parking spots, not that it really matters to FSX.
Meanwhile I'll keep plugging away on this AFCAD, it's quite a challenge! I'll need a few more days, once finished I could send you the file so your people can play around with it and maybe come up with a few suggestions to fine-tune it for GSX use.

As far as GSX goes, you guys really perked up a few browny points there! I'll be pretty darn busy with repaints and custom cfg files I guess......

[virtuali]

Hello, yes, it's snowing here too...and yesterday I also had my internet connection down for a few hours, so I had to connect with the iPhone to read the forum.

I only guess that plumbing would create problems with GSX, but never really tested it.

It might be an issues for service vehicles that comes from far away (Catering, Passenger Bus and Refuel Truck), because they will take strange routes to arrive BUT, if you use proper vehicle paths starting from proper vehicles or fuel parkings, without any plumbing, their will prefer to use that ones.

In any case, please send the PHNL AFCAD when it's done, so we might have a look at it. Don't know how your method to create approaches to a parking would affect the Pushback, it's difficult to visualize these things without seeing it graphically...

[hermit53]

I forgot to mention that I intend to extend the existing vehicle paths to the whole airport, so there shouldn't be a problem there. I can make those vehicles even make a stop at the sanitary facilities if need be  I think I spotted one on Google Earth!
Once finished (including testing) I'll send you the AFCAD together with comments and questions on possible issues I may have. My problem in life is, I'm a perfectionist; if it isn't 100% it isn't going anywhere....., sometimes that's a handicap.

[scott967]

I also have a custom PHNL and see that installing GSX also installs a new AFX file that moves the xwind runways and also changes some parking positions and taxipaths.  Can you give any idea just what are the intents of the changes?

scott s.
.

[virtuali]

Usually we change nodes to help pushback finding the correct stand, but we also took the chance to fix smaller problems and things like reversed parkings (parking spot with the opposite orientation compared to their approach link), which cause problems with GSX. But it's really a case by case thing.

GSX should still work reasonably well with your custom AFCAD, but it's important you name it like the one we supply, otherwise you'll lose the GSX customization for PHNL, so it will work entirely automatically, like a default airport.

[jordanal]

Umberto,
Can you please clarify - does the GSX live update system routinely overwrite FSDT AFCADs with newer versions?  I had slightly customized several of my FSDT AFCADs and now I'm concerned that I might have to repeat the customization (or least check to see if the AFCAD changed) after every live update.  Thanks for elaborating on this subject just a bit.

[virtuali]

The minor Live Update that doesn't require an FSX restart doesn't update AFCADs, since it's usually not possible to modify a .BGL while FSX is running.

The major update that requires to run the Stand-Alone Addon Manager updates the AFCAD, but every time it does that, it also creates a backup named as name+current date+time+.bak, so it's likely you have some of these files in the scenery folder, that become inactive since they now have a .BAK extension.

[jordanal]

Ah, I see.  Thanks for the clarification.