I think this could be done using some sort of self steering method. Say, call in a tug/cart, or it simply just appears when a specific key is pressed, then manually maneuver yourself into the parking spot maybe?
Most of us just use a hand towbar and some elbow grease, no tug needed (or even available)! That’s one reason I always laugh at the person on the big tug in front of my Archer in the sim. I’m like “go away!” They don’t even respond when I yell “clear prop!” Haha.
But in all seriousness, I’ve worked on a lot of World Hub airports and created a lot of parking spots that follow the conventions illustrated above. Parking it myself is one thing, but it remained to be seen whether the AI can account for that and use the same conventions. Will it be nose in or out? Even if the spot is nose out, how does the AI turn the plane around in place?
We’ve all experienced the default pushback and we know that its not that good, especially for the xbox users as they are limited to addons and file editing, as for the pc users they have a lot of pushback addon like GSX etc…
the default pushback that xbox users use is tied to the ground ATC which is realistic but so slow, in order for me (xbox user) to change the direction of my pushback i have to request from ground 5 seconds prior to the needed action due to the ATC communication between the pilot and the pushback tug and you can easily overshoot the taxiway and end up pushback into another plane if you are not careful, matter fact its almost impossible to have a perfect pushback on the xbox due to the procedures you have to do while pushing back like starting the engine, turn fuel pumps on etc…
and i would like also to talk about the aggressiveness of the pushback tug when the pushback stops it almost seems like the tug is throwing the plane away.
What I’m asking from the kind and hard working msfs developers is to make pushback more realistic and easy to control. my suggestion is to make an option for the pushback in the game menu (the top menu that includes the ATC, replay etc…) and make it display an overview of the plane and the taxi way behind, and we can control where do we want our pushback to end.
thank you,
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