I will not open a new topic about this, because I think it fits here. And maybe has already been talked about countless times.
Sure it has.
Some time ago I read here in the forum (and I can not find the post, forgive me) about the possibility of choosing the company for the ground services.
I wonder if there's something new in this regard or whether the idea was discontinued.
Nothing new to say, but it hasn't been discontinued for sure. It's just that we are working on a more important feature now ( de-icers ) and bug fixes are always given a top priority.
In this flight, when a I did the setup at SBGL, the ground crew was GOL. When I did the flight, the ground crew was TAM. I tried to restart the parking services several times to see if it changed, but not always stood in TAM.
You were just unlucky in the random selection. I've tried it 3 times, and got a different operator each time, UVAir, TAM and GOL. This using the default airport, that doesn't use atc_parking_codes for parkings so, all operators had equal chance to be selected, because they had the same score.
If you use a 3rd party scenery that has atc_parking_codes for that airport, if a parking has the TAM code but not GOL code, you'll see TAM 100% of the time, if a parking has the GOL code but not the TAM code, you'll see GOL 100% of the time, and if a parking has BOTH, each one will have 50% chance to be selected.
So I wonder if there is something you can do about it (other than I become a programmer and stir in AFCAD airports).
There's no problem at all, what you are reporting is normal behavior, check your parking codes, and understand how the scoring works. Random numbers are not "fair", you might well be unlucky and get the same operator 10 times in a row, even with a 50% chance. Not likely, but possible.
But it would not, perhaps, have something in the setup of the parking area?
This has been explained countless of times on the forum, and is explained in detail in the PaintKit documentation, that will explain how to change airport assignments for all GSX vehicles, by editing their SIM.CFG files.
If you knew how often comment on my videos: "why company "X" is unloading the plane of Company "Y"?
Now you are mixing up two things:
1) The fact you didn't get the operator you expected, which might have been a problem of the parking you chose ( how the atc_airline_codes were programmed in the scenery ) or just bad luck of not getting the one you wanted, even with the equal chance it might have.
2) The concept of linking the livery of YOUR airplane, to the choice of operators.
The two are entirely separate issues and, the 2nd one has been ALSO explained many times on the forum. Regardless of what the commenters on YouTube might think, linking your own airplane livery to the operator choice is wrong, for the following reason:
The ground operators are something offered by THE AIRPORT, and they don't change if you arrive with a different airline. They are a function of the parking and they change depending on the parking, and this is how GSX correctly assign them.
It's you that, depending on the airline you use, are supposed to select a parking depending on your airline. And, if the scenery AFCAD has been done correctly, if you go in the area dedicated to your airline, those parking should have its atc_airline_codes set, so GSX will boost its score and everything will work as expected.
If your own airline had any effect in the choice of the operator, it would cause the livery you are flying to unrealistic affect the availability of operators regardless of your selected parking, when they are instead related to the airport terminals. User will then start to complain what the TAM ground crew is doing at the GOL parking stand: just because you arrived in a TAM parking using a GOL airline, doesn't mean your crew has took over the competitor's terminal...
As explained many times already, this would look even more wrong when flying internationally: an AFCAD for JFK, for example, will surely have many parkings assigned to european operators like Lufthansa, Alitalia, etc, because they would use their code-sharing partners like United, Continental, and park in those spaces. But if GSX considered your own livery to select the operator, you would start seeing a Lufthansa ground crew at JFK if you arrived with a Lufthansa livery, and that would look very wrong.
As I've said, ground crew are a function of the AIRPORT and the PARKING, the airline YOU are flying shouldn't have any effect on their choice. The parking does, because you are SUPPOSED to park in a place that has your own airline code so, to continue the previous example, if you landed at JFK with your Lufthansa airplane, you should probably go to the United area, the code-sharing partner for Lufthansa, so you'll likely be served by United, which looks logical.
This means, the scenery designer, or you, CAN affect how GSX assign operators at gates, by acting on the scenery AFCAD parking codes. Want to create an area reserved to GOL at SBGL ? Select one or more parkings in an AFCAD editor, like ADE, and be sure you don't have any of the TAM codes there.
But, there IS one thing (which is ALSO explained BOTH in the Manual AND was discussed on the forum, many times already) in GSX which IS affected by your own livery, and it's the texture of the cargo ULD containers. It's made this way, so you will be sure that the SAME containers you loaded on departure will be unloaded at arrival. Of course, in order for this to work, your own airplane must have the atc_parking_code correctly set in its Aircraft.CFG, otherwise the choice will be again between the operators allowed at the airport.
We might still add the feature to select the operator from a menu of candidates, but they will still be the same as they are now: linked to the AIRPORT, and NOT to your own livery.
