GSX vehicles just popping up when requested..

[boeing737]

hi ..
   quick question.. When I request for any GSX service, they just appear next to the aircraft.. Except for the fule truck that seems to be coming from a distance towards the aircraft ..

Is there some setting in GSX I have to do to make the servies vehicles appear coming from a distance towards my aircraft instead of just popping up right next to the aircraft when selected .. So far it seems all of the pop up except for the fule truck ..

thanks.

[anappy]

If you request it when you are taxing in then it will be awaiting you. If you call it while parked at the gate they will spawn there.

[adamrob69]

Why cant it be coded that they come from a distance? It cant be that difficult to implement. The fuel truck does it. Buses disappear off somewhere.
You could pick a point in the airport where they spawn, then get them to travel to the parking spot. You must also be able to calculate the extremities of the users camera, and make them spawn just outside of the camera range?

Its one of my main gripes that they just appear there. On software that is meant to act realistic to life, its just the polar opposite in this instance.

[virtuali]

You could pick a point in the airport where they spawn, then get them to travel to the parking spot. You must also be able to calculate the extremities of the users camera, and make them spawn just outside of the camera range?

GSX makes a clear distinction between services "At parking" and services comes from far away. Follow Me, Fuel Truck and Catering are coming from far away, EXACTLY as you describe, everything else is coming from the parking.

This is obviously the most correct thing to do, for several reasons:

- Vehicles like stairs or baggage loader don't usually come from very far. Parkings are usually littered with them or, in other airports there are zones where they are grouped, but they don't usually have to travel much so, you WILL see them "popping out" just the same, even if they didn't come from YOUR parking. And if would be very wrong to have stuff like stairs starting from UNREALISTIC large distances JUST to minimize the pop-up when they appear.

- GSX only "knows" about the AFCAD. It doesn't know anything about the surrounding scenery. That's why we have a scenery customization feature to begin with, so we or you can specify exactly where those vehicles spawn, in relationship to the parking, in order not to conflict with the surrounding scenery. It would be more difficult to ensure that all vehicles would never conflict with scenery objects, if they had to do longer paths, with many of them at the same time.

- For the same above reason, since GSX vehicles are not even aware of AI traffic, having only a few vehicles traveling around the airport, can minimize the chance of traffic deadlocks.

Its one of my main gripes that they just appear there. On software that is meant to act realistic to life, its just the polar opposite in this instance.

In real life, you are assigned to a parking even before you land or as soon as you clear the landing runway, so the correct usage would be calling for services as soon as you have a parking available. If you start by "acting realistic" yourself, it will all work as supposed to do.

[adamrob69]

I agree IF you have just landed.
I use it after I have landed and it works OK. But I don't start my sim in the air!

If you are a pilot starting your shift. Your plane is already at the gate.
Every time I start a flight, I start at a gate. Then when you ask for services, they just appear by magic in front of your eyes!

From your statement, we can only use GSX after we have landed!

I can see your point about real life, they are scattered everywhere. But in real life, for instance the baggage trucks will come from a specific point at the terminal where they are loaded. Not next to the plane.

I would much rather the vehicles come from afar, and realistic drive up to the plane then appear from thin air. From the camera views available you can only see a certain distance so it doesn't really matter where they come from as long as its off camera, or indeed if it goes into scenery IF its off camera.

Please don't say how I should be using my SIM. I am offering constructive criticism that you should be acknowledging to try and improve the product, which is clearly a good product, but not polished.

[Eisbahn]

If you are a pilot starting your shift you will be sitting in the cockpit preparing for the flight.
Therefore, when you request services you won't see them just popping up, because you can't see that much from the cockpit.
You are obviously viewing everything from outside, which doesn't conform to real life anyway.

[adamrob69]

No. For instance I was in a B737 in virtual cockpit mode. looking slightly to the right. Was parked at Manchester airport. As soon as I requested services I saw the 2 baggage cars right in front of the plane on the right hand side.

Regardless. With what you are saying, what would the point in the external vehicles at all if you didn't want to see what was happening! Might as well stick to audio, and text messages!

Its all by the by. In my opinion the product could be improved by making them modifications, and it would improve MY experience in FSX and GSX.

[johndrago]

Please don't say how I should be using my SIM. I am offering constructive criticism that you should be acknowledging to try and improve the product, which is clearly a good product, but not polished.

After all, it is a simulation, and there are always concessions on reality.  Otherwise, you and I would be sitting in a cockpit in a real 737 waiting at a real airport.

John

[Eisbahn]

In my opinion the product could be improved by making them modifications, and it would improve MY experience in FSX and GSX.

So you admit it. The only thing that is important is YOUR experience in FSX and GSX.

[boeing737]

If you are a pilot starting your shift you will be sitting in the cockpit preparing for the flight.
Therefore, when you request services you won't see them just popping up, because you can't see that much from the cockpit.
You are obviously viewing everything from outside, which doesn't conform to real life anyway.

Really... I sure hope during my PPL training I don't see any popping up going on beside me cause that would scare the sh!t out of me.. LOL 

but seriously, baggage handlers, Marshalls and Follow me car just popping up in front of your plane doesn't seem very realistic.. Makes it look like a video game. AES by Aerosoft doesn't have any pop up whats so ever. everything in their addon seems nice and smooth when any option is selected.

DBS Follow me Service had this same issuse and they resolved this very quickly when users showed how unrealist it looks ..

And for Eisbahn, not sure if you have a full scale 220 degree cockpit, but I do and I can see pretty much a large area around me. And even if your head is down preparing yourself in the cockpit, you might have visitors inside the cockpit and looking outside and noticing things just popping up .. When I demo this product to friends, the 1st comment I heard was I wish in real life things would popup just like that as it would make aircraft departures much more quicker in all the airports.... LOL ...

But overall great product and something for the developer to thing of and consider if many users feel this issues needs to be fixed....

[virtuali]

but seriously, baggage handlers, Marshalls and Follow me car just popping up in front of your plane doesn't seem very realistic.. Makes it look like a video game. AES by Aerosoft doesn't have any pop up whats so ever. everything in their addon seems nice and smooth when any option is selected.

You must be joking.

ALL AES objects pop-up in front of your airplane! No AES vehicles ever come up from far away, at least in GSX there are some of them (Follow Me, Fuel and Catering).

In AES, vehicles tied to the parking (stairs, baggage loaders) pop out in front of you as soon as you get close to the parking so, you don't even have the choice to pre-select a parking after you land in order to have vehicles there by the time you arrive. And opposite to GSX, Catering, Fuel and Follow Me do NOT come from far away, but pop out in front of the airplane and makes a very short path to reach it.

This on arrival.

On departure, you are mislead thinking AES vehicles do not pop-up, because at least those related to the parking (like stairs of baggage loaders), are generated as soon as you move to another parking using the World/Go To Airport menu, so you won't be able to "see" the pop-up, because it happens while FSX is displaying a black screen with the loading bar. And of course,  Catering and Fuel will still pop-up very close to the airplane.

We could do the same similar thing in GSX, easily but, funny enough, we purposely designed GSX in a way that, unless you explicitly CALL its services, NOTHING will appear automatically. Why this ? To allow a better interoperability with AES, so users could be free to choose which product use on a given airport that is supported by both!

If we generated our vehicles automatically when you select the parking with the FSX menu, we would create a conflict (double stairs, double baggage loaders, etc) if you had AES installed there, because AES does the same thing. That's why GSX vehicles don't appear automatically, ever.

We got word from Oliver Pabst more than one year ago that, after GSX would have been released, he would look into a similar option to AES (not making vehicles appearing automatically), but it hasn't happened so far.

It's really funny you would point out to AES supposedly being "better" of GSX for THIS specific issue of vehicles popping out, when the fact they DON'T in GSX (at least not all of them) is one of the things that are widely known that GSX does better and, the only case when you SEE a pop-up (on departure), is BECAUSE we made GSX like that intentionally, to make life easier to AES USERS!!

DBS Follow me Service had this same issuse and they resolved this very quickly when users showed how unrealist it looks ..

Are you sure you are not confusing AES Follow Me with GSX Follow Me ?

The Follow Me in GSX is precisely one of the vehicles that comes from far away, it never pops up in front of the airplane, ever.

This reference to DBS Follow me that has been now fixed, which seems to imply that we should fix the GSX Follow Me too, really seems to indicate you are confusing AES with GSX, if only for the Follow Me.

[boeing737]

But just to clarify, I never mentioned anything that AES is better than GSX .. As a matter of fact, what i didn't like about AES addon is that it doesn't support default airports and you have to buy credit for airports .. If you add up all the airports I want to visit, that would cost quiet a bit..

I never had the impression you were saying that AES is "globally" better than GSX. I was only referring to THIS specific pop-up aspect.

Having a 220 degree cockpit, I can pretty much see a wide angle around me but never noticed anything popping up in front of me.. yes, that maybe because they are rendering it offline or in the background or something like that to which in the users eye, it is not noticeable..

Everything in AES pop-up in front of the airplane but, there's a difference if you are DEPARTING from a parking, or if you are ARRIVING.

If you are starting a new flight, and use the FSX "Go To Airport" menu to position, AES will create the parking-based vehicles (stairs, baggage loader, etc) when FSX is showing loading progress bar, so you won't see them in THIS case.

If you are arriving on a parking after a flight, AES will pop up all the parking-based vehicles in front of you, as soon as you get close to the parking.

Non-parking based vehicles in AES (fuel, catering and Follow Me), will pop-up from a very brief distance around your airplane in any case.

GSX, instead, works as follows:

If you are starting a new flight, and use the FSX "Go To Airport" menu to position, parking-based vehicles (stairs and baggage loaders) will pop-up when you select the GSX menu and call one of the available services

If you are arriving on a parking after a flight, parking-based vehicles will be created as soon as you "activate" a parking, either by calling the Follow Me, or even if you select it without it so, if you do this after landed, you won't see any pop-up, because the vehicles will be already there by the time you arrive.

Non-parking based vehicles in GSX (fuel, catering and Follow Me), will never pop-up and will always come from far away.

So, AES pop-up everything, but you can't see the parking-based vehicles popping out when starting a flight, because they are created while the airports loads, and GSX pops up ONLY the parking-based vehicles, and you can prevent to see them popping out at least on arrival, if you pre-select the assigned parking after you land.

With GSX I only had a concern when I had requested a follow me after landing and I didn't see it coming through the side views at all. Next thing I had noticed it was waiting behind the aircraft.. So, I presumed it just popped up behind the aircraft and yes that was only one occurance that happened as it's been only 2 days since I have been using this product and a few times.. All the other times I could see it coming from the distance...

Well, you are now saying something different: it happened ONCE that you had the Follow Me reaching your from behind (that doesn't mean it popped up there!), and all the other times it worked fine.

You are right.. GSX follow me, catering, fuel truck do come from a distance but sometimes the catering truck just pop ups in the distance and starts coming towards you or I've seen where it just goes through the wing of the aircraft or the tail.. Baggage vehicles are crossing over each other when one is wating in line or when one gets the request to proceed towards the aircraft, it turns right into the baggage vehicle waiting right next to it.

These things, and the Follow Me issue you reported, are inherent of the "global" nature of GSX, that it has to work on any arbitrary AFCAD, including those made by 3rd party developers, that are not always entirely error free, or sometimes just use unusual tricks to achieve some specific results.

We always said, many times on the forum, whenever you see something strange, ALWAYS include the following information:

- The airport used. If it's not default, clearly identify the scenery and possibly the AFCAD in use
- The airplane used.
- The Gate used
- The GSX operation requested (like boarding, catering, etc.)

Only after doing the same test, we can decide if the problem was really a problem in GSX, or if it was caused by an error in the AFCAD (and if it was, if there's something we can do in GSX to add this case, in order to defend GSX against AFCAD with issues) or if the problem can't be really fixed without modifying the AFCAD.

Note that, if we had *everything* popping out in front of the airplane (which is exactly what you don't like, and we don't too), it would be far easier not to end up in such problems.

Things like these I've seen with GSX after purchasing the full verions.. When I demo'd the product everything was fine at the 3 default airport and nothing popped up.. But again, not saying that was a mislead into purchaing the product.. But maybe these issues didn't happen at that time during the demo...

Default airports AFCAD are usually very reliable, and AFCADs from FSDT are tested...

After doing the loading catering, boarding and pushback etc, I can't get the follow me car to appear or select, to take me to the designated runway. when I select my hotkey in GSX all I see it showing me the parking place options, when I ready to taxi and departure.. ATC has already issued me the departure runway...

Nowhere we say the GSX has a Follow Me to the active runway option on departure. It's something that we might add in the future, of course. About this, I do recall a discussion a while ago on Avsim, with many users (mostly from the US) saying it's not very common procedure, so it wasn't needed. Sure, it's more used in Europe, we are perfectly aware it might be useful, this been discussed before here, and it's surely under the list of possible improvements.

Suggestion: It would be nice when we start fsx and when we select our airpot and gate in FSX, GSX should take that info into account and start to place the GSX vehiles into their positions or close approximate range instead of the user press the hotkey and selecting stairs/catering/baggage etc while FSX is loading the files...

I already explained why we did that. It was made just to make life easier for users that also have AES, which also automatically populates the parking when you select the airports.

But we might add it as an OPTION, perhaps. Automatic, or as they are now, for AES users.

So maybe that's what AES has done and that's why I don't see any popups cause when my airport and gate is loaded and my aircraft is waiting, I can see all the ground service doing their thing without any pop ups cause everything is done behind the scene or loaded before hand ..

Yes, if the parking is very busy, you might not notice the AES fuel, catering and lavatory vehicles DO pop-up, but I assure you they do. Pay attention to them...