SDK Custom Airport and Runway Assignment

[CAPT5LOW]

Hi All,
I’ve almost completed my behemoth 100 sq km airport with 3 runways, 3 terminals, 6 ils’s and 100’s of km of taxiways.

Everything is working fantastically apart from one issue.

-Terminals 1 & 2 use runway 1.
-Terminal 3 uses runway 3.
-Runway 2 is for freight, and parallel landings for terminals 1 & 2.

The issue is that I can’t find any way or workaround to assign a TaxiwayParking to a preferred departure runway, and often get assigned a taxi route to the opposite corner of the airfield. The taxiing often takes longer than the flight itself.

[ArcanePython931]

Lots of addins have issues with these things departure runway assignment and direction… things not matching ACS etc

There were issues in the past with SDK menus that did nothing. Have you seen this topic ? dunno if it helps, it is ancient… but there was a solution

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/linking-taxiwaypoint-to-taxiwayparking/272138

[CAPT5LOW]

Thanks mate,
Yeah that threads about linking parking to the taxi network. I have all 257 parking spots (113 with jetways) all up and running and connected.
Problem is there doesn’t appear to be any way to specify which runway ATC should assign, checked the SDK xml and it seems to have been overlooked. You can close runways and things like that but there’s no way to say parking C1 should use RW34L, F1 should use RW13 etc etc.
It becomes an issue when C1 and F1 are 10km apart.

[ArcanePython931]

I’m not an expert on these subjects, but I did find another topic that may contain information,

[GUIDE] How to set up taxiways and parking so the ATC and AI use them correctly

One of the main reasons I got into airport creation with the SDK was that my local airport didn’t have the correct taxiway structure so the ATC couldn’t give you correct taxiway clearances with directions. It’s not the clearest how to do this with the tools in the scenery editor so I hope this tutorial can be of use for others who were having issues too. After following this tutorial you should be able to set up the runway and taxiway structure so AI can properly use your handcrafted airports! …

It refers to a YT video, maybe you can check if you missed anything ?

[PhyscoKiller414]

My video just covers what it sounds like @CAPT5LOW has already done - connecting up a taxiway network with taxiway names so ATC commands work, and so their instructions correctly match IRL charts.

I’ve never attempted, nor do I think it’s currently possible with the current SDK to say “this parking should use this runway”. I’d love to be proven wrong though!

[CAPT5LOW]

Hi mate,
It seems to be the case. It’s all just one big airport with one active runway as far as I can see. I’ve shifted things around in the xml in terms of which runway is first in the definitions with a smaller airport and it seems the first definition is the one that’s usually assigned, even if you’re in a A320NX and it’s only long enough for a Cessna. The taxi weight seems to do nothing too.

[PhyscoKiller414]

Maybe it’s something that’ll be added in the future.

As for things like taxi weight I think they are leftover from old flight simulator versions because Asobo reused the XML structure. Unfortunately they are unused in MSFS. You can see the docs for the XML structure here.

[CAPT5LOW]

Thanks mate,
Remarkably similar! very useful read to be honest. I did stumble on a workaround for the runway assignment, something I hadn’t noticed before. For IFR taxi permission, you can acknowledge OR request a different runway, and get a new assignment.