Default Airport Vehicles and Parking Spot Types

[jordanal]

I know the old discussion as to why all the AFCAD parking spots were inapropriately set to RAMP so the default aiport vehicles could be excluded.  But, FSUIPC and AES just came up with a way to get rid of them at a lower programming level.  Surely the FSDT python script engine can do this as well?  Then you could set all our FSDT parking spots back to the way they're suposed to be?  I still find it odd that while starting a FS Free-Flight, I have to go to other resources to determine if a spot is really a Gate, Cargo, or Ramp to decide from where I will start my flight.

FSUIPC 4.754 Version Documentation (Additional Facilities, # 22):

FSUIPC now incorporates an interface to Oliver Pabst's AES program. Unless turned off by an INI file parameter change, FSUIPC will now automatically remove default airport vehicles which duplicate the AES ones at the gate. Unfortunately, at present , this doesn't include the default pushback vehicles.

This needs an update for AES which is available from 16th December 2011. The action is automatic at the gate when the AES services commence and covers vehicles within 50 metres.
The recognition of the AES installation is logged in the FSUIPC4 log, during initialisation. When the AES services at the gate are commenced, FSUIPC4 logs the fact along with the AES version number and the airport's ICAO code.

To stop the automatic removal of the default vehicles change the INI file [General] parameter DeleteVehicelsForAES=Yes to "No".

It is hoped that future versions of AES and FSUIPC will extend this integration with facilities for application access via FSUIPC offsets.

[virtuali]

We don't obviously need neither AES or FSUIPC to achieve that, since GSX will also automatically remove all default vehicles when a parking is selected in GSX.

Since GSX will be free to use at all our sceneries, it will a feature that everybody can use without purchasing anything extra.

However, having that feature doesn't mean there wouldn't be any need to flag parkings as ramp because, both the FSUIPC (which is related to AES use) and the GSX method, can only cover the parking you selected to operate with your airplane.

It doesn't cover all the other parkings not in use by your airplane, so we still have to exclude default vehicles in order to fix conflicts with the custom ground vehicles we put in their place.

This will require both a different method of designing sceneries that takes into account the presence of GSX right from the start, which is something we already did for KLAX and of course, since we design both the sceneries and the GSX program and they don't require any other 3rd party module, the integration will be much better than having to coordinate things (the scenery, aes and fsuipc), coming from 3 different developers.

Expect a very deep integration between our sceneries and GSX in the future, we'll basically design the scenery around it.

[JamesChams]

Virtuali,
If I could *chime-in* to this topic and ask a little more about these things; specifically to be certain of compatibility in the future with multiple/similar FSX addon products; eventhough we have talked about this before in general, I would like to address this again since FSDT is nearing its release....

... we still have to exclude default vehicles in order to fix conflicts with the custom ground vehicles we put in their place.

As an example, I use Dirk Stuck's FSX Vehicles (DIRK STUCK DESIGN - WORLD GROUND TRAFFIC X) which replaces ALL FSX's default vehicles, for both in and off airport AI.  Thus, if GSX has to disable FSX default vehicles, then I lose a perfectly good, functional, and (in other non-airport AI traffic-areas) more-useful product, in place of one that ONLY address user-related aircraft and airport AI.  I can see why products like Aerosoft's AES or Zurich vs. FSDT's ones might be in complete conflict on the same setup but this one isn't entirely; in fact it really enhances the airport environment and real-world look/feel of the sim when you have both.  Would FSDT's GSX, perhaps, integrate itself within FSX without needing to completely ostracize all similar payware products? (i.e. I get to have both running *happily* at the same time). 

....  Expect a very deep integration between our sceneries and GSX in the future, we'll basically design the scenery around it.

I'm sure that this will be a great leap for your products in FSX; look forward to them, provided that they don't require that I have to completely stop using many of my existing payware addons in place of them.

As always, I look forward to what you'll come up with and wish you'll A Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year in 2012!

[virtuali]

Thus, if GSX has to disable FSX default vehicles, then I lose a perfectly good, functional, and (in other non-airport AI traffic-areas) more-useful product, in place of one that ONLY address user-related aircraft and airport AI. 

GSX doesn't disable anything OUTSIDE the parking you just selected with it.

It's our SCENERIES (this was the reason of the original question, btw) that always had to disable default FSX vehicles by flagging their parking stands in the AFCAD, since they provide their own, which looks usually better and more in tone with the scenery, but are static, and this saves a significant amount of frame rate too.

So, GSX doesn't have anything to do with this, it's the sceneries that have been designed for this, and for good reasons: people *hate* when they see something "default" in a scenery (the otherwise perfectly good KMCO was unfairly destroyed in pieces because of this), the default GSX ground vehicles are quite dumb in operation, we can't obviously count on users installing replacement models, they would keep being dumb, even if you replace them with repaints, and they also affect fps quite significantly.

This could be potentially a problem with GSX too, since even GSX (right now) might have trouble disabling our ground static vehicles, unless we made the scenery in a way that it would be easy for GSX to disable things at the selected parking, which has been done in some places at KDFW and more thoroughly at KLAX.

Future sceneries will be designed more and more around GSX, since we can be reasonably sure that every FSDT user will download it, since it's free...

To better answer your question: it's something the sceneries are doing, so I'm afraid repaints of default vehicles won't appear on our sceneries, and this doesn't have anything to do with GSX.

To better answer the original question of being hard to guess the type or parking when everything is flagged as "Ramp", we can fix this easily with GSX and it was already implemented somewhat with ParkMe: we can override the parking name used by the AFCAD and replace it with our own description in the GSX parking selection menu.

It would be enough to add a feature to *go* there, so GSX could be used as a positioning method instead of the default "Go To Airport" menu, and it would be even easier to use, since in GSX parkings can be grouped by terminal so, instead of having a long list which is difficult to scroll as the default menu, the pages are much shorter, because you first select a Terminal, then a parking. And, since it uses the in-flight ATC-style menu, you could be able to reposition without opening the main FSX menu.