This morning developers at PMDG have shared some important information regarding setting up the aircraft.cfg of 3rd party liveries of the DC6. I’ll quote:
All,
It was brought to our attention that there are 3rd party liveries for the MSFS DC6 that have the “isAirTraffic” option set to 1 at the aircraft.cfg
From the SDK document “If this is set to TRUE (1) then this variation is considered to be optimized for use as a parked plane, or as part of air traffic. If set to FALSE (0) then it won’t be used for these things.”
This setting must be set to 0 in the DC6 repaints otherwise it can cause CTD’s or massive FPS loss when such a model is spawn at the airport or in the air.
If you have any 3rd party liveries that has this setting to 1 on the aircraft.cfg then we recommend to change it to 0 and inform the painter to fix this.
please have a look at your liveries and if possible and necessary change the entries so people who don’t frequent the forums have an enjoyable experience =)
It”s a pity there’s no shell version of the PMDG DC-6 using the existing paint schemes so airports can be populated with other 6s, it’s so much better parking up with other prop liners than with modern jets.
One of the guys I fly with told us about this yesterday. It affected him pretty severely and seemed to only involve liveries that had been put in the Community folder instead of incorporated using .ptp files. When he cleaned the DC-6 liveries from his Community folder the CTDs stopped. Don’t know .ptp files can do this or not and just relaying his experience.
I don’t get the CTDs and do have a number of liveries in my Community folder though I doubt my Community collection is the same as the other guy (since this sounds like a livery by livery issue). I do get DC-6 aircraft occasionally parked on the ramp and really enjoy seeing them in nice liveries.
@Ephedrin87 - What happens if all the liveries are marked as not usable for static aircraft? I assume we won’t see ramp aircraft with any liveries marked as not usable but will we still see DC-6s sitting on the ramp?
I notified strange behavior of ground traffic not only using a downloaded livery but using systems synchroniously. So when I cut off my engines the ai next to my began to turn its propellers and then shut it down as I was. Edited the aircraft.cfg of that livery as mentioned above. Since then there was no other DC-6 anywhere around spawning as ai.
Yep - seen that behavior. Kind of cool to be able to see the startup like that. Haven’t had a chance to test the last two updates though. Since no liveries for ramp DC-6 aircraft may mean no DC-6 ramp aircraft, it makes me still wonder if it’s just having another complex aircraft with that funky coupling and might have nothing at all to do with liveries other than them exposing this behavior by allowing ramp DC-6s. In some ways it almost sounds a little like the big zero day where any other DC-6 within some 15-20 miles would cause one of them to CTD.
" Setting the isAirTraffic flag to TRUE (1) allows the game to use that variation as a parked (grounded) passive aircraft, and potentially as a part of the “Real Online” air traffic. If a plane variation is marked as isAirTraffic, it should be an optimized variationwith a lower level of detail, and therefore it should also be marked as “isUserSelectable=0”."
Ie from the moment the plane is UserSelectable can not have this variable enabled.
You are still going to see DC6 in the ramp or if anyone flies them. I parked at PANC and had 2 AI DC6 at the ramp
So, I get planes/liveries showing up even with those variables set to 0, so there’s something else at play. It’s not unlikely that even with that variable set to 0, you may still get the planes showing up in parking spots that are large enough to take it (or if you have a LivingWorld.cfg that is incorrectly written).
I’m wondering if that variable only works if you have “UseGeneric” set to 1. It seems like with it off, even planes I’ve cleaned completely to be “UseGeneric=0” and isAirTraffic=0 still show up, like the Bleriot XI. I finally had to move a bunch of planes out of my Community folder and only move them in if I want to fly them.
Don’t hold me to this, but, I think you could set up an AI capable aircraft model by having a modelai.xml that points to LOD1 and turns off the interior. But don’t hold me too that. (there’s a lot more steps than that, but many livery creators would know what I mean).
@Olympic260 … as I noted above, I think those variables are broken. For instance, I’ll see 5 or more Bleriot XI at KACK when I start there, and I know those are not people flown planes. And I’ve definitely set all AI variables = 0 in that plane. It’s a real pain in the butt you can’t control what planes are used. And that when they do, they use the same livery for multiple instances. And if you’re flying the same plane and say, open the door, the door opens on those planes, too.
I went through a period where I tried really hard to get some control on the planes and liveries that show up as static aircraft, but I finally gave up.
the sim knows to use the DC6 as AI if you have set the generic AI option to off. Then the sim will populate the world with whatever planes you’ve got installed including the6. This option is 100% to be used with pure AI traffic.
There is no reason for a painter to have this =1 for DC6 repaints. It will cause issues and is not recommended.
Absolutely not. Definitely don’t want to set isAirTraffic=1. My point was if UseGeneric=0, why does it ignore isAirTraffic? If I set isAirTraffic=0, I do not want it to be used for any kind of AI traffic no matter what. I just don’t understand why the variables are ignored if UseGeneric=0.
I don‘t know the technical details and I‘m still far from understanding the various traffic versions that are there. You would have to ask that directly in the PMDG forum.
However I have experienced several non-explainable CTDs, mostly at „hand crafted“ airports. I suppose -as I usually fly with „live players“- that someone has been there with another complex airplane, maybe the CRJ? It‘s possible that many crash problems are down to this issue.
But I need the aircraft.cfg for making liveries, not because of the problems mentioned above.
I bought the PMDG DC-6 over in-game Marketplace, it did install, but now I find out I don’t have PMDG Operations Center, because I ordered in-game, not from their site. So I can’t figure out how to edit DC-6 liveries with what I have now.
Thank you for help!
