except for when you park right on the line and it says Bad Parking.
It doesn't. But without a GSX customization of the Stop position, the line doesn't mean anything. Have a read of the manual, the "Understanding the Stop position" chapter.
not sure why you can't use the mouse for this but I am sure there is a valid reason.
You said you had the P3D version, so I'm sure you'll remember it had the mouse working on the editor, which required P3D 4.4, which added a specific API to handle mouse clicks on the scenery. FSX and all previous versions of P3D didn't supported it, I'm sure you now understood the "valid reason" why we don't have it MSFS.
My keyboard seems to do things other than what it should according to the GSX Key definitions.
Some keys works only with the NumLock key disabled. And some keys in the Showcase Camera view must be disabled to not conflict with GSX, the manual of course explains that, on Page 43.
And a few keys are less intuitive they might be on some international keyboards, like German or Swiss, where the Z and Y key are inverted, so the "intuitive" Q and Z to raise/lower things, becomes less intuitive on those keyboards, because their position is not as intuitive as it was on the English keyboard. We can't really fix this, because the Y key is used to enter the Slew camera.
1 - "The COATL Engine has not started". So, why not just start it from within the app, can't be too hard. I shouldn't have to manually start this.
Of course it starts from the app, and uses the standard EXE.XML metho to add itself to the automatic startup.
However, sometimes the EXE.XML doesn't work very well, for a variety of reasons, from being corrupted, because there are other apps in there that made changes to it, possibly their ordering, and also it's possible if you launch MSFS from another application ( like the Addon Linker ), it might not be able to start the programs in the EXE.XML, because of complex permission issues, due to the fact those apps wouldn't be "child" applications, but "grand-childs", because MSFS itself was started as a "child" from another app.
Of course, we have a Sticky thread in the forum, aptly named "Couatl starts manually, but not automatically with the simulator", which offers many possible solutions to this.
https://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,26924.0.htmlSometimes after a flight it is not running anymore when I get to the gate, for some reason it has decided to stop (No longer even in Task Manager) and I have to manually start it again. Also the menu option to Restart Coatl option rarely works and I have to manually stop/start this. [EDIT - I see there is a post on this now]
This is a completely different issue that doesn't have anything to do with the automatic startup.
Since GSX doesn't do anything in flight, other than checking the current position and asking periodically about what airports are around the airplane, which is like 1% of the workload that it normally does when doing actual servicing, and GSX surely doesn't crash while servicing, the only possible reasons I can think of, is some kind of problem/bug in the Navdata API, which is not used by many apps ( GSX was the first using the SU10 version, and it's again the first one using the SU12 version ), which sometimes makes it crash.
Some user reported that enabling Windows 8 Compatibility mode improves this ( I'd say, most users who had this problem reported this ), but a few users said it made it worse. Of course, I was never able to produce a crash in flight, but I don't use many add-ons, because it's hard enough to troubleshoot your stuff, it becomes impossible if you add the issues caused by others.
2 - After landing and at the gate and there is a working jetway, there is no use of the back stairs ever for pax in GSX. I am not sure if this is because I have not set up the walking points (see point further below) or whether it just boards/deboards only from the front if a jetway exists. Not real life, you should be able to select this for your Plane/Company in GSX config.
Everybody has his own idea on what real life is. Initially, GSX always displayed the rear jetway to be used only by an hypothetical cleaning crew. While this is very common in Europe, many in the US complained cleaning crew use other vehicles to board, so we added the ability to remove it, on a parking by parking basis. The users complained they didn't want to customize every airport, so we added the ability to disable it globally ( if the parking has a jetway ).
So back to the last thing, yes, of course we ARE obviously planning to allow boarding passengers from the rear stairs, even if the gate has a jetway, either exclusively, or even at the same time as the jetway, as a choice.
GSX takes control of your front pax door
First, GSX doesn't control the Main Passenger exit when there's a jetway. More precisely, it doesn't anymore, because after a certain update ( can't say exactly which one ) in the simulator, it's the sim *itself* that automatically opens the Main exit when the Jetway is connecting, so we removed the automatic door opening from GSX for the Main exit, if the gate has a Jetway. Only the other doors are controlled by GSX.
and you cannot control it anymore either in the FMC or using the IOS, ok I can live with that, only thing is the door is still closed while the pax board (for me at least), not open, even though it shows open in the FMC.
That's another issue entirely, and seems to be caused by trying to use an unsupported airplane, with the door variables not set correctly.
3 - The straight P/B after the turn is always too far. Often this causes the sim to push/crash into the terminal.
If you mean the final part of the automatic Left/Right Pushback that hasn't been customized, the direction will be towards the first available node, so it changes depending on the scenery, but the *distance* covered is just enough to have the airplane and the tow truck ending up straight.
GSX often gets this wrong even with paid airports and pushes me anywhere except where it should be.
While it's universally acknowledged by the vast majority of users GSX does a very good job even WITHOUT any customization, if you think it doesn't, that's precisely the reason why you can CUSTOMIZE a pushback route.
And before you say "should I do that for every gate on every airport ?". Of course not, that's why we have the QuickEdit pushback, which enters in editing mode just to create the route, which will then automatically saved for the next time you'll use that spot, so you can simply customize as you go.
Or, of course, you can just download a pre-made profile: the good ones usually have custom pushbacks, sometimes even multiple procedures for each gate.
4 - Nose Left/Right prompt. Often I miss this because I am doing other stuff (final flight planning, Alt/CRS/Hdg etc.), there is no audible prompt for this
This suggestion might work, if only you don't take into account that those two Left/Right slots are just "slots". Then can be possibly customized to perform something completely different than what you expect. And of course, it's not just Left or Right, that parking spot might have multiple custom pushback Slots and even a saved QuickEdit slot. And ALL of them can be even renamed to tell something completely different than Left or Right, so an hypothetical audio message would only work with zero customization, which is under-utilizing GSX.
We'll revisit this, in case Microsoft would improve the SDK, to let us access the Text to Speech engine in the simulator, to let us play anything, that would made that feature more feasible, since we could hear even a possibly customized pushback routing being called by its custom name.
5 - The time it takes to remove the pin and hold it up is way just too long, I am burning up precious fuel here. And holding up the pin, really has no benefit apart from actually doing the real world thing which is nice.
Happy to see you are recognizing we are in fact trying to represent the real work.
Engine Start - if I turn off the option for the Good Engine Start prompt this actually happens automatically as soon as I set the park brake after the push, even though normally by this time I normally only have one engine started if that. Not sure what the fix for this is without leaving it unticked and having to bring up the menu and acknowledge it. Maybe when the logo light is turned on, or the engines are actually running?
The disable option is only used to skip the menu, that's what users asked. The check over the engines running is made if at least one engine is running, under the assumption that, if something's wrong, you have a least one engine to taxi back to the gate, so the Tow truck can go away. Of course, this is in preparation when we'll have Pull capatilities, so you would be able to ask to be towed back, if all engines died.
6 - And this is probably the worst for me, what I would consider the proper defaults, are just not there. To have Pax walk to the plane I have to set a series of waypoints otherwise there is nothing.
This is the one I most strongly disagree with, instead. What you are suggesting can't be applied to the real world of sceneries that might be full of obstacles and unpredictable paths, not to mention even the placement of the starting positions of the GSX vehicles themselves, which interact with the passenger waypoints, they must all be set together, properly, there's no way to do it automatically.
7 - Door positions - Maybe there could be a selection in GSX config for the more common planes e.g. an A320, 737, 747 which automatically default the door/cargo positions? I know every model is different
There, you said it. Every model is different. Same planes from different developers are usually different enough that you would still have to go through each door individually. You said it takes lots of time to do it but, it's not as if you are constantly adding new airplanes ( *especially* on a full flight sim ), it's something you only do once.
The default parking position for the rear stairs is just comical. I have yet to see a real airport where the rear stairs are stored 60m out from the terminal in the middle of the apron (yes I know I can change this but again defaults..).
The default are not obviously "comical", they are in a reasonable position that would reduce the chance they'll run into each other, CONSIDERING we don't know nothing about the scenery buildings. And no, they are not "60 m" away. That's only if you are on an extremely large parking spot, since their position is a factor of the parking radius.
All stairs and conveyors should be in their pre defined equipment bays next to the terminal.
The only thing GSX knows about an airport, is parking spots, taxiway and runways. There's zero information we have about anything else so, those pre defined areas can only be simulated by making a custom profile and hoping the scenery hasn't already filled them up with too much static things.
But more annoying is the fact you have to do this for EVERY GATE at EVERY AIRPORT, that is thousands of gates
No, only the airport you are flying to, only the gates you are going to use. That is if you want to do it yourself.
. So when you land at a new airport nothing is configured and you are back to busses. Is it not possible to have these things attached to the plane model rather than the airport?
If with "these things" you mean passengers waypoints, than no, they cannot obviously attached to the plane, since their destination and path is tied to the airport, and it's different for every gate. If, instead, you mean other vehicles, that's goes in the opposite direction of your other suggestion that vehicles should be in their designed areas. It's either one or another.
8 - GSX traffic. This is often hilarious to watch the catering and baggage trucks smash through each other even though GSX put them there. It seem weird to me that this happens, surely GSX knows the positions of it's own vehicles.
That's precisely what you are missing: GSX doesn't ALWAYS know the position of its own vehicles. Fact they are "its own", doesn't automatically make the task of checking the positions of multiple vehicles, at every frame, thus saturating the (already saturated by others apps, like AI traffic) Simconnect communication channel any less heavy, and of course, even if we could "monitor" the position without mich performance impact, we should then ACT on it.
You don't seem to have the faintest idea how complex this can be. After YEARS or research, with an almost "infinite" budget, the automotive industry still hasn't cracked the full autonomous driving problem. They can barely drive on highways, and are taking years of testing and dedicated hardware with an *army* of engineers, trying to solve driving in cities.
An airport apron, sometimes can be even more cramped than a regular street and, if that's not enough, moving *articulated* vehicles, like baggage carts, it's WAY more complex than a simple car. But yet, for some reason, you are expecting vehicles from a 29$ add-on for a video game to have "clever" self-driving vehicles that can maneuver in a space where in real life you need trained drivers.
As explained so many times already here, most of the issues of the vehicle supposedly clashing into each other, can be solved by:
- Adapting their starting positions
- NOT using the automatic servicing option. This option has been requested by many users, but I was always opposed to it, because I know how much easier is see vehicle clashing into each other, when instead of your own brain, we have a sequence of services starting one after each other. Just calling the services individually, goes a great deal to fix vehicles clashing into each other.
I just don't want to spend hours configuring every airport gate I land at.
Look, it's not 2018 anymore, when we came out with GSX Level 2, that added lots of customization option, and it was INITIALLY criticised by the "I just don't want to spend hours configuring every airport gate I land at" people, assuming THEY must do it. This of course turned out to be a feeble argument, and the reality is that, in a very short time, users realized is not required to create profiles themselves: it's enough ONE person creates a profile and share it.
With MSFS being so much popular than P3D ever was, the creators Community has become way larger so, when we previously had a dozen of well known individuals who were good at doing profiles, now we have hundreds, with hundreds of custom profile that can be freely downloaded, for any conceivable airport.
So no, the "I just don't want to spend hours configuring every airport gate I land at" argument is really obsolete by now.
