Today's Dev Q&A - Cold and Dark Starts in the Water....?

I recently came across the seaplane base in downtown Seattle (forgot the name) and it had mooring spots where you can start your seaplane cold and dark - and that was the pure vanilla MSFS without any add ons.

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Just having an option to start the plane in a cold and dark state on an active runway (or waterway I guess) would be nice. There’s a fair few water runways (mostly in the USA) and thousands of dirt strips around the world that don’t have any parking spots in the sim so you always load in with everything turned on. If they gave us a little tickbox or something that said ‘start cold and dark’ which loads up the apron.flt state instead of runway.flt that would be awesome. (just like in X-plane :wink: )

Which one’s that? I see a couple with parking but they’re from the Drzewiecki Design Seattle Landmarks pack.

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Plug is needed, as so many don’t seem to yet know of of its existence, or of Aircraft Manager,

These two product both provide what was being asked for in the Q&A, and most likely provide a far more extensive solution, than anything Asobo could realistically develop,

Maybe Asobo/MS could negotiate with the Developer to include these both in the core MSFS, and save Asobo a lot of duplicate development work ? (wishfull thinking)

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The comments in the Q&A about “Shared Cockpit” were interesting.

Yes, a very complex feature to implemented correctly, if it is to work well, especially with complex planes.

What surprised me was that this discussion did not include any references to Multiplayer, as it would seem that to support Shared Cockpit with 2 pilots, (or hopefully more than 2 pilots, as already done by P3D), would probably also require quite a large overhaul of the Multiplayer System - The current Multiplayer system already having numerous stability issues as it is .

Once I load into a parking spot at a bigger airport, I use Flow Pro to relocate to the small airport without parking I want to start at. If flow allows you to spawn anywhere you click on the map, I don’t understand why Asobo can’t do the same thing from the world map.

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Heres my 2 cents
Maybe instead of focusing just on water starts, the whole custom starting position system could be upgraded to allow you more freedom in your desired starting position. Perhaps you could select an initial altitude(ground surface included), maybe an initial airspeed, and initial heading. Would need some programming to ensure the aircraft is in an acceptable configuration for the starting conditions selected. IE, starting at the water surface doesn’t spawn you with the gear extended.

Also, if you choose a ground start, a dropdown menu showing the available aircraft configurations to start in would be cool as well. So you can select Apron, Cold and Dark, Taxi, etc. And that dropdown could be shown to let people choose for all ground starts, not just custom ones. With the recommended configuration for the chosen parking spot preselected by default. IE, choosing to start at a gate would select “Apron” by default but still allow you to change it, starting at the runway would choose “Runway” by default, etc. That way you don’t impede the flow of people who just wanna click through quickly, or require too much fine tuning for new users who might not know what all the starting states mean.

EDIT:
ALSO! This might be getting too advanced, but since the starting configurations are just .FLT files stored in the aircraft folder, you could also allow users to save an aircraft configuration and then start with that configuration from the menu.

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There’s 4 good ways I know of to start anywhere in MSFS in the sky or on the ground/water, and even though I wrote one of them (Location Manager) I also use all of them as well as my own.

In addition to teleporting they all have some unique useful features that solve other problems too. So they’re all good in their own way, and I recommend having all of them in your toolbox of addons/apps.

MSAsobo may well at some point implement this feature, but I’m pretty sure they won’t replicate the other grab bag of useful things we all bring to the table to make your UX better.

If you’re wondering why it’s not done currently by Asobo I explain here a couple of the reasons why:

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Kenmore… Sea… something ? I am sorry, I do not recall. I will check when I get the chance.

I think the reason may be that most waterway starts don’t actually have a parking spot, just either end of the “runway”. I certainly don’t have any third party ones, and every sim default one I have tried has not had a “ramp” start. It makes sense that if they exist it would count as a ramp start for C&D, but I have never seen a sim default one, hence their answer I suspect.

If that’s the case, then, the answer isn’t “You can’t”, it’s “You can, you need a dock parking spot to start from. We’ll need to work at adding some.” He said, I suppose you could say implied, you flat out can’t. That’s wrong. Hence, I’m confused how he doesn’t know that, or said what he said.

Mostly I posted here to hopefully eventually get a response from them on this subject, as water based aviation is near and dear to my heart. As somebody else noted, I’d like to hear some discussion on their plans for water physics as well (and effects, that cavitation behind the floats seems a bit overdone?).

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That was certainly how I interpreted it, in exactly the way as you can’t do a C&D start at a land based airstrip with no parking spots. The water has nothing to do with it, but everything to do with the airport data.

I just quickly checked these three in LNM, and none of them support anything other than a “runway” start:

If they exist, they are few, and far between, so modders would need to include these in their sceneries to allow for it.

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I’ve been adding docks since the product was released (NH62 at FS.to, 52B most recently). So the answer isn’t “Can’t” it’s “We need to add docks”. That’s what confused me.

And, I believe there are some default seaplane bases that have docks. Check out the Kenmore docks in Seattle.

They have been adding parking spots now to backwoods airports. For instance ME22, a very small private strip in Maine, has spots interestingly, with no plane outlines to support their existence. Too many spots for a strip that size, in fact, lol (I’m about to release a redo of it. I kept the extra spots, cause, well, who cares :slight_smile: ). So, nothing stopping them from adding dock spots with AI as they did here on land.

I like that they are reacting to our inputs :slight_smile:

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LNM doesn’t see that as a seabase. Or rather no actual water starts:

LUDD seems to be the only one that does have a water start. W55 and 0W0 don’t:

image

LUDD also appears in italics, which makes me believe its custom in some way.

All the non-italicised seabases don’t, which makes me think this is an issue with Blackshark AI, and its creation of these airports as it has no way of identifying a ramp start. If you have an image of a land based airport you can see where the parking spots are, typically, and the AI can pick these out. It can’t see those on water as they don’t really exist, so it makes sense to me that they would have to be hand tweaked by someone.

Just firing up the sim to see where LUDD comes from.

Here is Port Orchard (4WA9):

image

And in LNM:

image

And in the sim:

image

No hand tweaking, just AI, and it was able to see 4 spots plus the top one which has been designated fuel.

By comparison, here is Lake Union Dock (LUDD):

The AI has literally no clue where to place a ramp start.

So this was tweaked to add ramp start 0A, highlighted:

I agree with you that his wording was…inaccurate. It can be done, but the airport data has to be tweaked to support it.

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My only point was, they have started adding parking spots to backwoods strips, so they could just as easily add dock spots. I didn’t mean ME22 was an example of dock spots.

The example of a default seaplane base with docks I understand is the Kenmore docks in Seattle. Might be a bespoke airport, but, still default…

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Quick floatplane water start at LUDD, C&D:

To answer my earlier question, the tweaked LUDD gets its data from:

D:\Flight Simulator\Official\OneStore\microsoft-bushtrip-sanjuan\Scenery\bushtrip-sanjuan\Scenery\San Juan.bgl

If you look at the nearby W55, and 0W0, in the same dock, they both use this:

D:\Flight Simulator\Official\OneStore\fs-base-genericairports\scenery\0101\APX15150.bgl

LUDD was definitely tweaked as its part of the above bushstrip, which is first party content. Further evidence of it being an answer that is not very accurate.

It’s the first one I have ever seen, and for all I know its the only one. I wish there was a way to get LNM to only show custom airports, as that would make it so much easier to pick them out.

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Jorg explained the world update process here, which also includes ground/water airstrips:

It’s quite an involved process, easy to be critical from the outside but I’m sure from the inside there’s a certain amount of hair pulling that goes on as they tune their processes.

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I just found another one, to the South West, except its not strictly a seaplane base, despite its runway being clearly over water.

Lake Cushman Dock (LCMD)

It’s in italics, so is considered an “addon” airport in LNM, and has a single water start.

image

Change the view to only show Seaplane Bases:
image

The ones with yellow circles then stand out.

Even stranger, when you select LCMD from within the sim you can’t actually start there. The Fly button is greyed out, no matter which float or non-float plane I try.

But if I spawn nearby then teleport to LCMD:

Must be broken, possibly even the wrong designation, and it should be a seabase and not a soft surface strip as LNM classifies it, which might explain why I can’t spawn there.

And surprise, surprise its from the same bushtrip I listed above:

D:\Flight Simulator\Official\OneStore\microsoft-bushtrip-sanjuan\Scenery\bushtrip-sanjuan\Scenery\San Juan.bgl

I know you get some red text warning you if you try to spawn at a seabase in a non-float plane. I’m guessing that it won’t let you spawn at LCMD in a pure float plane because its a seabase, but thinks its soft surface, and the internal logic doesn’t allow for generating an error on screen for that configuration?

In any case, C&D water starts are definitely a thing, though you may need to go out of your way to find them. :slight_smile:

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Good point, I tend to use amphibians, so I don’t have to worry about the pure floatplane issues that might arise.

I’ll check out those airports to see what I can learn when I get a chance too. I’ve been working on releasing ME22, a semi-ficitional seaplane base nearby it (you can see airplanes at docks across the way, I’m adding a seaplane base there), 70B Milinocket, and KIWI - Wiscasset, a landbase on the shore of Maine between Brunwick and Rockland.

So it sounds like they created some dock parking spots for bush trips. It would be interesting to check out the definition of the airports. Docks have to have taxiways to the strip, and runway taxiways, and best if you create a taxiway to both ends, but you don’t have to, and have to have hold shorts (for a water runway? whatever, but, fine) when they connect to the runway taxiways or you get warnings, and all have to be marked as water with water material (it usually defaults to taxi concrete). But, otherwise it’s straightforward to get a seaplane base working with dock parking spots. It takes about 15 minutes to create one. Problem is I always have to add more stuff, so it takes me a couple of weeks, lol.

I’ve never done any bush trips, so I don’t know if there’s any SDK weirdness around that. Seems like they’ve never gotten bush trips totally unbroken from all I’ve seen in forums.

The water material is a relatively new thing, the SDK team finally fixed water strips a few sim updates ago. I created NH62 a long time ago, and at that time there were some screwups in the definition, but I figured out how to get it working (common sense stuff). Anyway, I reported bugs, and I’m sure others did and they fixed stuff and it all works now. Enough blah, blah from me.

So, all that said, have you ever tried Airport Design Editor (I’m at work and they don’t let me go to FSDeveloper.com to get the link)? It’s pretty easy to export a project from an existing airport and check it out in the scenery design editor to see how these were all defined.

Might be able to use it to search for airports with dock spots, I don’t know. @ScruffyDuckJon has always been very good at putting very helpful tools in the software like that.

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Thank you for the comparison and the mentioning of Sky Dolly. Full disclaimer: I am the author of it. :slight_smile:

Sky Dolly’s Location module indeed just came out as a “side quest”: recording/replay being the main functional area “teleportation” just felt like a natural extension, one that I personally always wanted to have from the get-go.

I wrote a how-to about starting anywhere on ground, including the option to start “cold and dark” which essentially just does what “CTRL + SHIFT + E” would do, that is “shutdown engine”:

Read about it here:

While this talks about helipads the same steps apply to sea locations as well. In fact, Sky Dolly comes with over 100 hand-selected default locations “out of the box”, one of them being the starting location of the famous Spruce Goose, in the harbour of L.A. - and yes, “cold and dark” :slight_smile:

Sky Dolly is indeed a “stand-alone desktop application” and I have no intentions of any “in-game integration” (except for a toolbar extension perhaps later down the road that would allow quick access to “record, replay, stop/pause” etc.). So if you are looking for an integrated location management, conventiently accessible via the MSFS world map then Location Manager is what you want:

Happy flying!

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