Having been simming on PC for a year now, I’ve noticed a few instances of AI traffic doing strange things — the most common being one runway in use in one direction, while a parallel runway is in use in the opposite direction — e.g. 23L for departures but 05R for arrivals. Sometimes, even the same runway has both ends in use!
I contacted the developer of one such scenery where this was happening routinely. They claimed it was an Asobo issue, but as I begin to understand the sim a little more, this doesn’t seem likely. So who, ultimately, is responsibe for AI traffic misbehaving? And is it typically fixable?
I’m no expert on this but I did witness the development of AI aircraft from the start of MS2020. The issue relates to the behaviour of the AI aircraft and the way they interact with the Asobo program. I used AIG aircraft in FSX and they worked well. With the arrival of FS2020 AI aircraft became a total shambles: Spinning aircaft, constant go arounds, aircraft doing little height changes as they bounced down the runway. AIG required co-operation from Asobo to fix these anomolies caused by the program which even today are not fully resolved (though it is much better than it was).
Enter FS2024 and effectively we are back at square one as the program has changed somewhat from FS2020 . The AI aircraft program developers again need co-operation from Asobo to resolve issues and, as we have seen with FS2020, these issues take time to resolve.
As part of the pre-release promises for FS2024 Asobo were to give us a fleet of fully liveried AI aircraft (watch the FS2024 lead-in to see them) but a this stage little or nothing has happened. Were we to have this AIG and FSLTL would be redundant.
Who is to blame? Certainly not the AI program developers. They can only work on what Asobo gives them.
IA traffic in MSFS2020 was one of those things they kept messing around with every update. A few years ago I configured some GA ia traffic that worked well but after some sim updates, aircraft started to skip taxiways, not braking at turns, increasing taxi speed a lot, taxiing randomly out of the airport and beyond… The hours I spent aligning and connecting points! I hope they fix this some day (sigh).
Thanks for the explanations. So the dev I’m referring to whose airports have AI traffic landing/taking off from opposite directions is off the hook? Just seems odd that theirs are the worst offenders but they do tackle larger hubs so it could be (and would make sense) that these are more prone to it. And since I won’t visit default airports, I guess I’ve never seen the base AI behaviour.
Does FSLTL somehow still use the default AI algorithms? BATC too?
Thanks.
Agusagaz’s explanation is very valid re the constant Asobo updates messing with the third party AI traffic. It is hard for the AI developers to give us a fully functioning product when the base program is being constantly altered.
As I remember in the early days of FS2020 all the various AI aircraft third party programs suffered from this lack of a stable base upon which to build their product. Some handled it better than others but problems still exist in FS2020 even after four years. And, as I said previously, FS2024 has taken us back to square one especially with AIG.
Now theres the hitch.
Aig and fsltl just inject traffic then Microsoft controls everything after that.
Batc completely controls the traffic
Thanks for that. So FSLTL cannot be at fault — but I notice some devs manage to get certain airlines to park at certain gates to better reflect reality — so presumably they have at least some control of traffic algorithms on the ground?
This is interesting. So can an airport developer have any control over BATC?
I use FSLTL with AI Flow and AI ground for now. It’s far from perfect but at least all the liveries are working. If using FSLTL without AI Flow no AI will land, they approach and either go around or land somewhere beyond the runway.
Many things regarding 2024 AI traffic are posted in the Dev Forum as they were in 2020. The FSLTL developer has started a thread there and it has been bug logged but there has been no posts from the Asobo Dev in that thread. Kali from AIG has been posting there as well.
The AI developers do have control over AI. Personally, I think FSLTL and AIG work well in 2020 but it could be better.
Asobo is ultimately responsible with fixing the code so AI works properly with all third party developer’s programs.
I don’t use BATC but I know when aircraft park the jetways don’t attach to the aircraft and have read that’s an Asobo issue. But many people are happy with BATC and I understand why they are.
I will be content when FSLTL, AIG and GAIST are working as well as they do in 2020 and then there can be more improvements after.
Beyond atc will allow for creation of individual sop’s per airport. Like for instance. Runway 09 closed midday for noise abatement.