Please make gates work correctly for all common aircraft types

[Delta2k5]

Hello fellow simmers!
I think we got a problem on the long run as there is FBWs A380 on the horizon and passive air traffic be a thing already when it comes down to gate handling on airports.

Current Situation:
For now gates have a reserved 6m area for service vehicles which lead to gates overlapping or are in the wrong size to accommodate large aircraft like the A380 with a wing radius of 39.88m. This leads to the issue that ATC cannot route these aircraft to any gate, even if IRL the airport can handle it.

After a 8h+ long flight players will end up driving off the runway and getting no parking option on such wide aircraft.

Not only active player are affected by this but also passive aircraft on traffic. That already is an issue for players like me using AIGs solution. Aircraft like the A380 for which DXB (included in Premium versions) is famous are just sitting at the remote parking area of the airport as the models cannot spawn at the terminals.

Causes:
The cause of this situation is:

1. The incorrect size of the gates when the sceneries developers tried to stick to the correct size by adding the 6m service parking area on top the actual correct size (this leads to overlapping gates from which then only one can be assigned - the one it overlaps stays empty and cannot be used anymore!) or
2. If scenery developers decide to stick to the correct size the fact service vehicles are in the way. Example: a gate which irl can accommodate an A380 with 40m radius could only handle a 34m radius aircraft as the sim does not allow aircraft to overlap the vehicle area. The largest aircraft assigned to this gate would be a 777 with ~32.4m.

Solution/Wish/Design Idea:

• Move the Catering Service to the vehicle spot like the fuel trucks. The other services are placed in front of the airplane and will have no conflict with the wingspan at all.
• Update all airports to the real-world sizes for the gates.
• Remove the 6m extra Radius block for the neighbor spots.
• Move the services to a dedicated area and share them for all spots (which can also help improving airport performance as not every gate needs to have the full set of service vehicles).

[Kaiii3]

As AIG we support this idea. The current Situation has a direct impact on the AI product we provide and any up comming AI solution (incl. Default AI) within the Sim.
There are workarounds at the moment, but IMO it can not be the solution to stick with Worksrounds for a long time.

[tamalien]

Thanks for posting this wish list topic.

I do think the parking gates need a design re-think to improve the functionality of airports and ensure that aviation realism is not adversly affected by developer design choices.

[Delta2k5]

A complete rethinking would not necessary first be needed but improvement and some proper guideline for devs, even within projects directed by Asobo (WU airports).

An idea would be to get rid of the vehicle exclusive zone and rearrange the vehicles - the implemented logic would work as the only real issue is the aircrafts width. Currently the sim would not allow the bounding box to overlap with other SimObject vehicles (aircraft or ground service vehicles) when ist comes to assign a parking spot.

Thing is that anyway not all of the vehicle parked on each gate are there irl - the catering truck for example could drive from some remote area to each aircraft, just like the fuel truck already does so the same logic could be adapted for this one (likely it would be anyway better to see more catering and less forklifts ). Same goes to the baggage tug which - imho - would also not stand next to the aircraft with cars full of baggage.

Only pushback tugs, stairs and baggage handler really belong to the area close to the parking aircraft like you can see on aerial photos of gates irl. So, if the baggage handler would be configured to stay in front of the aircraft (right of the aircraft and next to the pushback tug) it would already work as a first step - baggage tugs with cars, catering and fuel trucks can come from elsewhere using the already used functionalities (other side effects will be more realism and some increased performance too which could be used for additional services )

[SimbolFSReborn]

Very much needed, specially now that big airliners are coming into the space… also AIGM-OCI for MSFS is very good and when it feels the simulator with an incredible amount of AI traffic, it will need the base sim to start supporting such things.

Best,
Simbol

[Parorng]

Unfortunately even IRL some gates are only available to larger aircraft if other gates are empty. For example you could fit 1 A320 each on stands 24 and 25, but 24a (in the middle) would be used if a heavy was there. And I have no idea how you’d program that into the sim.