Doing more Free Flight and have noticed a variety of new AI / static models at airports, which is delightful.
However, in addition to corporate jets, a Cessna 310, the 185, I’ve also encountered full squadrons of military T-38s and T-6 Texan IIs on general aviation ramps (like Orcas Island). Also helicopters (Bell 429?) parked among rows of GA planes.
Would be great if the parking spot categories (and AI aircraft tags) could be expanded to include something like MIL SMALL, MIL MEDIUM, MIL LARGE, HELO, and SEAPLANE.
Updating the airports themselves would probably still have to wait for 3rd party, WU/CU, or World Hub release, but restricting fighter jets, GA, airliners, and helicopters to their natural habits–plus allowing creation of water parking spots–would go a lot toward improving immersion!
FYI, for those that have not seen this section of the 2024 SDK, one can see the current list of aircraft parking categories here:
TaxiwayParking Objects
I’ve seen gliders parked at London City airport in a parking spot that is clearly for airliners (PARKING MEDIUM or LARGE, I think). You can’t even fly a single-engined aircraft of any kind into that airport, let alone gliders.
I’ve just turned generated statics off because they are immersion-ruining. Short of airport-specific data that says what aircraft types can appear at the airport generally and then per-parking, I’m not sure how they would fix this. Your suggestion makes sense - the more parking spot types we have, the better - but I’d rather there were a mechanism for airport designers (and for us, via the dev tools) to specifically limit the aircraft types that can be used as statics generally for the airport and specifically for each parking spot.
Voted because the more options we have, the better, but I’m not turning statics back on until I’m sure they will be appropriate; BATC does a good job populating the world for me now.
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So, here’s the issue with your request.
Many, many developers mark their aircraft to “Any”, in that they can be parked anywhere. Hence, why you’ll find Piper Cubs parked at gates.
One of the things I used to do with all my planes is change their parking type to something appropriate in the aircraft.cfg (another reason I don’t purchase from the Marketplace), and those planes I don’t want to see parked I mark as Mil_Combat, since I don’t frequent many US Airbases.
But I can only do this when I have access to the aircraft.cfg. I have ZERO idea why Asobo considers the aircraft.cfg to be proprietary data, there is not a single iota of proprietary data in the file. This process is further bugged by the fact that aircraft are streamed now. It’s not easy to access their aircraft.cfg even if it is available to be edited.
Point being, having more parking spot categories, while a noble request, doesn’t fix the problem you’re seeing. Developers would need to care enough to mark their aircraft in the correct category, and not just punt and make it “Any”. And fixing the problem you’re seeing is well nigh impossible these days.
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Yeah, was hoping Asobo can at least do proper tagging on the base sim model library. I have no idea where the T-38 and T-6s come from…definitely haven’t purchased any of them. In FS2020, Simwork Studios’ Vans RVs, which I did buy, would show up quite frequently but I think they were always in GA spots.
Pretty much any viable means of avoiding base sim gliders puttering around an international airport, A330 “generics” parked on the ramp at podunk regional, or a squadron of fast jets on Orcas Island would be super welcome!
Yes, that’s right. It’s exactly the same the other way around. I only fly gliders and often have the reverse situation where there are airplanes on small grass fields or airfields with bitumen runways that are only allowed to make emergency landings, if at all.
It always seems to me that the planes are selected at random from my library.
So, that’s a different request than the one you made. More parking spot categories will give more options to park planes at, but it won’t in any way fix the problem you’re mentioning, other than there should be a “glider” parking spot would help (but only if the gliders are restricted to parking at those spots only).
Perhaps the wish could be re-titled to something like:
“Match all aircraft types to their correct In-Real-Life parking spot locations”
which would require two changes to be made by Microsoft:
- Add additional parking spot categories to the SDK to allow for more aircraft types to be placed in their appropriate In-Real-Life locations.
- Add an additional Microsoft test case / check to the marketplace ingestion process to ensure that all aircraft have the appropriate parking type specified in their aircraft.cfg file.
Have edited the title to clarify the original ask.
In addition, based on how the tagging system was previously explained, perhaps the “any” option could be removed to encourage developers to categorize their models more accurately.
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