On Wednesday 25 February 2004 00:28, David Megginson wrote: > > In other words, while the air carrier thing is neat, it's probably not the > first priority -- it would be like concentrating on busses or tractor > trailers instead of cars when adding AI traffic to a highway simulator. > The air carriers would be beneficial for a few big hubs like KLAX or KORD, > which don't handle much GA traffic.
That's a very valid point. The idea wouldn't be to just concentrate on airline schedules though. My estimate is that from an implementation point of view, that adding scheduled airline type traffic and general aviation types of traffic (that go from A to B) would be special instances of a similar general mechanism. I.e. A scheduled airline flight has: - A predetermined departure airport - A predetermined arrival airport - A known aircraft type. - A known departure time Whereas an (unscheduled) general aviation flight has - a (semi) random departure airport - a (semi) random port of arrival - a (semi) random aircraft type - a (semi) random departure time So starting with scheduled airlines would probably be the easiest instance to implement, and -also not unimportantly- test. This mechanism could then later be extended to handle the other types of air traffic you mentioned. Also note that I don't intend this as a replacement for David (Luff)'s code, but more of a way of feeding data into David's AI manager. When I was testing some of the project AI stuff last Saturday, I was on a rather long flight from Amsterdam into eastern Europe, and there was a "Speedbird 850" (British Airways), behind me, that was coming onto "my" frequency, just a few minutes behind me and stayed right behind me until over Warsaw, Poland. Curiously, I checked the BA website for the whereabouts of their flight 850, and found that indeed in real life this was a scheduled flight from London (Heathrow, I believe) to Warsaw. It's very subtle, but it was an imcredable experience. > > Today I flew up to Mont Tremblant (CYFJ), a former military strip near a > ski resort in the Laurentians. There are a few scheduled flights every > week from Toronto (Dash-7), but today the terminal was shut down. I got > out and walked around the deserted apron for a few moments, then as I was > taxiing back to the runway, the airport suddenly came to life: a Piper Cub > on skis glided across in front of me and landed on the snow next to the > pavement (didn't make any radio calls, though). By the time I got to the > hold-short line, a Cessna 180 (tail dragger) was doing a slow backtrack to > my end of the runway, so I waited for it, and when I realized that it was > doing its runup on the threshold, I checked with the pilot if it was OK for > me to slip in ahead and take off. > > That's what most airports -- at least in Canada and the U.S. -- are like, > and that's what it would be very nice to simulate. Unfortunately, all the > general public sees is flying at its most depressing -- the giant, > congested hubs with airliners doing a long conga-line down the ILS while > people sit in the terminal waiting hours for delayed flights and having > their shoes searched repeatedly by security. > Aahh, that really sounds like a lot of fun. I agree, we should definitely have scenarios like these. Cheers, Durk _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
