I used the AIFlow and AIGround apps and found that at KLAX and KLAS, the number of go-arounds was sharply reduced - not totally eliminated, but definitely reduced. I’d noticed watching LNM on my first run that the planes enroute to KLAX tended to circle and then fly east away from the airport, but the author suggested that I change these lines in the ini file to resolve that, and it worked wonders.
His explanations included below:
AITERMINALAREAMINSPEED=180 //slower spacing speed
AITERMINALAREAMAXSPEED=250 //higher spacing speed
AITERMINALAREAMINDIST=5.0 //can bump this down a little bit usually
You can also usually reduce the short final distance to give the AI more distance to separate with speed changes:
AITERMINALAREAMINDIST=5.0 //usually can bump this down to 5, but be careful going lower
As for the holds, they can be made tighter (quicker):
AITURNSCALAR=3.0 //tighter quicker holds
You can also bump down arrival spacing, but there will be more incursions that slip through during heavy traffic (but could be a good compromise):
AIARRIVALSPACING=2.0
Finally, you can put a hard clamp on the max number of holders per airport (e.g., to 5) for those busy periods.
AIMAXHOLDING=5
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Thanks for sharing this. I made the changes except AIMAXHOLDING. Doing some testing at YSSY.
What is AIGround +AIFlow?
I have extensive usage of virtually all the AI programs that have come out such as AISmooth, AISeparation, AISIDSTAR, and the others AIfFlow/Ground also developed by Rowland Foster. It does take a bit of time to fine tune all of the necessary settings. What worked well for me and of course the biggest issue was the spacing on approach and reducing the go arounds. Ground traffic was less of a concern to me as the AI engine dealt with the ground flow well enough. I’ll test it out here sooner or later but if AI Separation can be used within MSFS since it used FSUIPC and not simconnect, then I’ll be a happy user. My biggest gripe about the other programs is how they handled AI not spaced enough or any vectoring where AI would get stuck into continual holds.
AI Ground reads airport files within the sim and uses them to compile a telemetry file of the best taxi paths and also takes into consideration any directional path that the taxiways have which are coded/edited via AFCAD. It also uses detection to halt any incursions of AI as they taxi so that spacing is maintained on the ground, i.e an holding position until the other crosses over where it will be going, etc.
AIFlow seek to order the traffic in the air by manipulating the speed to create a realistic flow, often too slow under 10K, and lets you adjust the speed for the various stages of the approach and arrival 8 miles, 5,3, final, etc. It also creates holding patterns if AI become too close to another or gives vectoring.
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I don’t have any AI setup right now and the last time I used AIFlow or Ground was ages ago. I don’t remember what the program does if there are too many AI holding but if you change it to 0 I do believe that holds won’t be used and will just default to extensive vectoring. I’d have to go back and play around and re familiarize myself with it again. Best policy however is to just keep default settings and to only tweak the ones that really matter such as the approach speeds and bumping up the prop speeds on approach because as well all remember, the default logic from the IAF slows the AI down to landing speed. Whereas in most real world cases and a rule of thumb you can have everyone doing 180/170 until around 5 miles or whatever that translates to in altitude which would be around 135-145 by 1,000 and 180-170 from 2,000-1,500.
Since changing over to MSFS and realizing the ATC/AI engine still needed a ton of work and did not have a lot of the basic features that previous sims had I just stuck with installing AIG for my models and paints and then using PSX and RealTraffic for AI representation which, 15 seconds behind their real world counterpart, isn’t bad. Only downside is no ATC.
Just had a Singapore airlines A380 landing after me at YSSY.
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What was the general separation between you and the A380? From touchdown to exiting the runway, how long did that take? As a habit, I always like to verify the “accuracy” and would have checked on FA SIA231 and just see how close they were.
I would think around 2 minutes, perhaps less. I tried to follow it with the drone cam after it landed, but I had some issues increasing the drone speed. By the time I got it working the A380 had vanished completely.
Are you using AIG for the A380 model?
Yes I put the AIG folder back in community.
Why did it vanish or did you have the parking set to 0?
I would guess there weren’t any suitable parking. Even though I had parked AI at 0, most gates and stands were occupied.
Other difficulty for me as well is that since FSLTL uses FA for data that in conjunction with my studying/flying it’ll be hard to do some decent testing during the time where everything isn’t dead. Currently on my way to Honolulu so hopefully depending on how much reading I get through I can take some time to do some initial testing there. Will update with my findings. Just to verify, you all got AIground/flow from Avsim, right?
Yup, that’s the ring with having real-time AI. I live in Europe so in the evenings I tend to fly in North America. Today I spent some time in the Hawaiian islands, then down under.
I think I read about AIground/flow first in this thread and later saw it on Avsim.
Yeah, they have been around for the better part of close to 5 years now I think? It’s been a long time. Sadly Roland abandoned what could of been quite the revolutionary set of tools for AI users. They still are and they still do wonders, but that all involves getting everything configured correct. But when you do, it’s pure magic.
I saw the same at LAX today. Along with two merging on a taxiway.
Traffic seemed a bit on the light side. But most airplanes seemed to be coming in too high and not able to land (SU11).
I am using AIFlow and AIGround with FSLTL also and I have not seen an exe.xml specific to AIFlow and AIGround posted on this forum
In the box below is the exe.xml I wrote that works for me. What I like best about using the exe.xml is that it not only automatically launches these exes during FS2020 startup, but these exes also terminate automatically on FS2020 quit to desktop. Here is how you can get exe.xml working with these 2 exes:
Open the folder where exe.xml is stored
In the MS Store version that path is: USER/AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache
In the Steam version that path is:
USER /AppData/Roaming/Microsoft Flight Simulator
If there is already an exe.xml in that folder
- With a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++, open the existing exe.xml file
- Note that the code lines to execute other exes in that file are bracketed with <Launch.Addon> tags
- To add AIFlow and AIGround to the file, set the cursor at the start of any line with <Launch.Addon> IMPORTANT: not the start of any lime with </Launch.Addon>
- Copy and paste only lines 6 through 17 of the XML code in the box below into the text editor
If there is no exe.xml in that folder
- Create a new text file in that folder named exe.xml and open it with a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++
- Copy and paste all of the XML code in the box below into the text editor
Finally
- IMPORTANT: Change the Path string to match the drive and folder path where you have AIFlow and AIGround on your system
- Save the text file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="SimConnect" version="1,0">
<Descr>SimConnect</Descr>
<Filename>SimConnect.xml</Filename>
<Disabled>False</Disabled>
<Launch.Addon>
<Name>AI Flow</Name>
<Disabled>False</Disabled>
<Path>D:\Software\FS2020\Processes\AIFlow\AIFlow.exe</Path>
<CommandLine></CommandLine>
</Launch.Addon>
<Launch.Addon>
<Name>AI Ground</Name>
<Disabled>False</Disabled>
<Path>D:\Software\FS2020\Processes\AIGround\AIGround.exe</Path>
<CommandLine></CommandLine>
</Launch.Addon>
</SimBase.Document>
That’s it, hope it helps.
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