[Feedback] Dear Asobo, let's talk about AI ground traffic

Abriael · September 3, 2020, 7:00am

Dear developers,

As you may have noticed, the community is already doing a great job at creating many real-world liveries for your aircraft (something you had mentioned you’d do, but we haven’t heard about it anymore, so please update us on this at some point? ).

The creators of the livery megapack have done a great job making the liveries available to the AI as well, going through the painstaking process of compiling hundreds of entries in the cfg file so that they would be used correctly.

Unfortunately, this exposed a rather relevant shortcomings in how ground traffic in airports is implemented.

At the moment, Microsoft Flight Simulator decides (arbitrarily? I really don’t know) how many static aircraft spawn on the ground, and then picks skins for each completely at random among all of those I have installed available to the AI.

This means that whenever I am at an airport, I will see aircraft from airlines that are completely out of place, as you can see in the images at the bottom of the post. Easyjet in Tokyo? I really don’t think so.

This is problematic, because what’s the point of having ultra-detailed scenery if the airports are full of parked aircraft that are completely irrealistic?

So here’s my feedback. This should IMHO be changed so that instead of picking aircraft at random, the AI would pick the correct aircraft that should be parked at that airport at any given time. I don’t think it’s necessary (or even possible) to have them at the right apron, but as long as it’s the right aircraft for the airport, it’s more than enough.

Since you partner with FlightAware, that provides you not only with data about aircraft that are en route, but also arrivals and departures, including the tail number of each aircraft (this is a premium feature, but I’m confident FlightAware can provide you with this data, right?).

You know when an aircraft with a given tail number is arriving and departing, so you can easily determine at any given time which specific aircraft are parked at an airport waiting for turnaround, which model they are, and which airline they belong to.

So when someone spawns at an airport or gets close enough to render the parked aircraft, you should IMHO do the following.

Poll all the specific aircraft currently at the airport via FlightAware by comparing arrivals and departures.
Determine for each aircraft which is the appropriate AI 3D model and spawn that (also laying the groundwork for third-party developers to expand the library of 3D models beyond the generic ones we have now)
Determine whether the client has a livery appropriate for that model and that specific airline installed. If it does, apply that livery, if it doesn’t, apply a generic one.

Implementing this kind of system is IMHO absolutely indispensable if we want to reach a point in which airports will look realistic. What’s the point of having live AI traffic if that doesn’t apply properly to the ground, where AI traffic is the most visible (especially since we don’t have a traffic camera right now)?

I feel that if you folks at Asobo don’t do the groundwork to make this happen (basically implementing the system with variables third-parties can build upon), third-parties by themselves won’t be able to achieve this.

Incidentally, IMHO it’s sufficient to do this with airliners. Other may disagree, but personally I’m fine with having random GA aircraft, to keep the data flow more compact. It’s the random easyjet in Tokyo that breaks immersion, not some unrecognizable GA.

Pretty please?

CalUKGR · September 3, 2020, 7:11am

In an ideal world Asobo would have the time and resources to do the kind of work you have requested. In the real world I think we’re going to see them struggle just to pull together even basic fixes across the entire sim in the next six months. One would question how high on their list of priorities such things as correct ground traffic in their correct geographic locations might be. I could list a dozen (five dozen!) other things (things I call ‘quality of life improvements’) I’d like to see them sort out. I doubt any of them will figure very highly in their ‘to do’ list.

To sort out the entire unhappy situation with A.I. Traffic in particular I can only hope an IP such as Traffic Global steps in to offer a tailored, specialised solution to MSFS 2020’s somewhat regrettable offering at launch. But I’m guessing that, too, would be a massive job even for a 3rd-party developer (with experience) focused solely on that one task (and, of course, it would come at cost to us players).

Just my observations on your perfectly valid requests.

Abriael · September 3, 2020, 7:17am

We can only request what we feel would make this into a better game.

It’s up to Asobo to prioritize them, but IMHO I think this should be pretty high in the list considering that they have access to live traffic data, and at the moment it’s an underutilized resource. Basically the only time it’s visible is the occasional take off and landing, some very far red and green lights in the sky, and the ATC ■■■■■■■■ at them because they’re 20,000 feet above their assigned altitude.

That being said, what we really need from Asobo is simply the groundwork of the system. Once that’s in place, third-parties and freeware creators can create additional 3D models and all the liveries that are needed, as they have in previous sims of the series.

Back in FS2004 we had to painstakingly compile flight plans for every aircraft in the world. Now we have real life data fed directly in the system, and it’s a pity not to use it to its full potential, IMHO.

Ultimately, if something like this was possible all the way back in 2005, I hope we can have it here as well at some point.

ChrisMorgan825 · September 3, 2020, 7:21am

Agree with what you both say, but i would think this is a low priority atm. They have far bigger issues to work out, looking at the posts in this forum, and thats going to take a lot of time.

As far as AI traffic goes, I think what is needed is a set of LOD models of all aircraft types and liveries, like those supplied with Live Traffic in P3D. A library of them on your hard drive

I can see a third party developer taking this on. Currently I use the megapak V8 as AI aircraft, but thats limited of course to All A320’s or 748’s, but i guess all the A320’s and 748’s (I’m not counting GA here) are highly detailed models, so too many will kill FPS

ChrisMorgan825 · September 3, 2020, 7:33am

Just as an added question, and discarding “Live traffic” for the moment, is the AI traffic in a traffic file, like in FSX/P3D (Scenery/World/Scenery) ? Can it be de-compiled to look at the construction of the traffic files?

Black5305460 · September 3, 2020, 11:04am

I’d be happier if the ground staff stopped walking straight through parts of my aircraft…

HuwieBlue · September 3, 2020, 11:09am

Indeed. Compared to the massive list of important stuff that needs to be fixed, this is an extremely minor issue. Furthermore, it depends on livery makers setting a flag in their config files so that the game knows which livery belongs to which airline - which they wouldn’t necessarily bother to do - but also players would, if they cared about this at all, need to make sure they have the appropriate liveries installed.

Abriael · September 3, 2020, 1:12pm

This is not really an issue. With the ways liveries are set up, even if a livery maker did not bother to set up the correct flags, an end user could do it in a few seconds.

That being said, creators are already doing it. The flags in the megapack are already correct. They’re just not used well by the sim.

Considering how important AI traffic management has been for many users in previous flight simulators. I wouldn’t be so quick as describing this “extremely minor.”

If it was so minor, they wouldn’t have implemented live AI at all. The feature is there, but improvement is required for it to truly shine.

ErikNL80 · September 4, 2020, 11:41am

As AI enthousiast and beta member of AIG I fully agree with your post. Just out of curiousity, what will happen if you put the ‘Ground Aircraft Density’ slider to 0? Will also live AI disappear after landing?

Steeler2340 · September 4, 2020, 1:04pm

It is all relative: personally I would like to see completely implemented and working autopilots first, proper weather/wind data, stability and performance improvements etc. etc.

Btw does the „livery format“ have a formal „airline name“ flag at all (which could be evaluated in a reliable way by FS 2020)?

Abriael · September 4, 2020, 2:05pm

Yep, it does. It’s actually pretty well implemented. Not only each livery entry in the cfg has a flag for the airline’s ICAO code which the sim can read, but also one for the kind of parking it can occupy at aprons, so basically it’s half-implemented at the moment.

Abriael · September 4, 2020, 2:06pm

I never tested this. Will this evening

AtcDude1992 · September 4, 2020, 2:30pm

FLAI is already testing their product to make it work in the new sim. I really enjoyed to manually add the AIG flightplans with their matching models with the AIFP program in P3D. Hours and hours of work but really enjoyable to see the sim is filling up with all the airliners worldwide even airliners I had never heard of somewhere deep in Africa for example.
So let’s hope this will happen soon:)