Automated ATC (Like X-Plane)

[FighterAce]

FlightGear Community,

So I was playing around with the X-Plane 10 and 11 demos, and I noticed how realistic the AI ATC system was. It would be amazing if the developers of FlightGear could begin to develop something like this, perhaps for offline use, or maybe for the airports without a human ATC. Does anybody else want to see this feature in FlightGear? Please post your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below. Thanks,

-FighterAce

[Parnikkapore]

There was a prototype that got abandoned whatsoever. And I saw a Nasal script for it on the Devel list...

[FighterAce]

Really? I never knew about that.

[Parnikkapore]

Okay, the "abandoned prototype" is what you're using wgen you hit the ' key.
Look for the "Spoken ATC" thread here on the Forum, that's the Nasal script. It needs to be installed separately, however.

[Hooray]

The C++ system is too inflexible actually - but it would be fairly straightforward to prototype a really flexible system in scripting space using the plethora of high level wrappers available (think all the navcache/navdb APIs)

I guess that a single motivated individual willing to tinker with Nasal could easily emulate (and probably exceed) much/most of the functionality of the existing built-in system, and over time even sur-pass other hard-coded systems available in FSX/X-Plane.

The combination of Nasal/XML are very powerful - if in doubt, I suggest to check out the tutorial system and come up with an AI/ATC scenario that way (which may in fact instantiate actual scripted AI aircraft), and then take it from there - i.e. just to get your feet wet.

Note that an adapted version of the built-in Map/Canvas dialog could even show a radar scope or other ATC charts (think airspace) - it would in fact even be possible to put all of this functionality into an AWACS aircraft...

[FighterAce]

Interesting. I will have to look into this more.