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More realistic ground experience

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More realistic ground experience

Postby flycanarias » Mon Jun 19, 2017 2:22 pm

Hello guys,
in this topic I would like to exchange opinions and ideas about different ways of a more realistic ground and airport experience, and about better turnaround experience, especially for airliner pilots.

What we do have are the animated jetways. Actually I never got them to work, but this might be a problem of me myself.
A thing many airliners have are several ground services. In another topic, we discussed how to do aircraft independent ground services.
In my opinion, what we already have is a great platform to further development of better airport experience.

- We can work to get aircraft independent ground services. This would in the first step need an aircraft independent dialog, where to toggle the different services.
Then, we should define specified spots, where the services approach the different doors. This would require to define e.g. the passenger doors as an approach
spot for passenger stairs, and the cargo and service doors as an approach spot for baggage loader and catering trucks.
The principle should be the same as the jetway feature.

- These independent ground services should also have a certain functionality, so that you can organize the refueling process via the ground service menu, or you can't activate the external power of a plane when the external power is not connected to the aircraft. This is actually working in the 737-800, so it's definitely possible. Maybe some actions should be demanded from the pilot, e.g. "open passenger door"

- To make the experience even more realistic, the processes should take a certain amount of time, so e.g. boarding takes some minutes in a mid-sized airliner, or the catering and cargo loading takes certain minutes. To achieve as much reality as possible, several messages should be displayed, and perhaps even heard, just like "Ready for Boarding" or "Boarding completed".

- The ground vehicles should be animated, so that they approach the aircraft, and e.g. the catering vehicle moves up.

- Animated jetways should be a feature that every new designed airport have. And the functionality should be added to every airliner in FG.

- AI Scenarios: It would really bring more life to an airport, if buses, cars, and other vehicles would drive around in an AI scenario. This could be repeatable after a
certain time.

- Realistic Turnarounds of AI aircraft: The AI aircraft should also be served by several Ground services, before they taxi to the runway and depart. Maybe the Grund service feature could be added to these aircraft as well.

This would be my ideas.
If you have any further ideas how to get things done, this would be amazing.
Kind regards,
flycanarias
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby legoboyvdlp » Mon Jun 19, 2017 3:38 pm

flycanarias wrote in Mon Jun 19, 2017 2:22 pm:This would in the first step need an aircraft independent dialog, where to toggle the different services.

1. I can handle that, probably. I will need to use some Nasal, though.

flycanarias wrote in Mon Jun 19, 2017 2:22 pm: Then, we should define specified spots, where the services approach the different doors. This would require to define e.g. the passenger doors as an approach
spot for passenger stairs, and the cargo and service doors as an approach spot for baggage loader and catering trucks.
The principle should be the same as the jetway feature.


2. Problem with that is, each aircraft is different.
Of course, if you limit this to:
MD11, MD88, MD90
707, 717, 727, 737-300, 737-400, 737-800, 737NG, 747-400, 757-200, 767-300, 777, and 787
A320Family, A320neo, A330-200, A330-300, A330-200-artix A340-200, A340-300, A340-600, A350XWB, A380, A380-omega
E-jet-family

There is still a lot of work. Have you any idea how long all that would take? In my opinion about at least a month... :shock: :D

flycanarias wrote in Mon Jun 19, 2017 2:22 pm:AI Scenarios: It would really bring more life to an airport, if buses, cars, and other vehicles would drive around in an AI scenario. This could be repeatable after a
certain time.


3. This would be best done using WED 1.6 ground service feature and the existing AI traffic functionaility.

flycanarias wrote in Mon Jun 19, 2017 2:22 pm:
Animated jetways should be a feature that every new designed airport have. And the functionality should be added to every airliner in FG.

See no 2 :)


Not to discourage you, but while the dialog and 3D can be shared, and we can have trucks driving around, I just don't see a way to have a generic ground vehicle system that is completely independent. I think a soloution like Canvas is best, where we have some shared files, and it is up to the developer to implement them. Some proper documentation will help :)

Let me know if you still would like a dialog built! :
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby Thorsten » Mon Jun 19, 2017 6:22 pm

These independent ground services should also have a certain functionality, so that you can organize the refueling process via the ground service menu, or you can't activate the external power of a plane when the external power is not connected to the aircraft. This is actually working in the 737-800, so it's definitely possible.


Then why don't you take a look at how the 737-800 does it, learn how it's done, pick another aircraft of your choice, add it as feature there and make a merge request to the repository.

And then repeat it for more aircraft.

Usually it doesn't get very easier than 'there is a working case to study'.
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby flycanarias » Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:23 am

Hey, thanks for your answers !

I'm not discouraged in any way... :)

The project I am thinking of is not to be made in one day or one month, it's a question of steady development.
But you are right, the final decision whether to implement these features or not, would be at the aircraft and scenery developers.

to nr 1) Your help is HIGHLY appreciated, as I just have the idea, not the knowledge how to do it.

2) I don't think the aircraft problem is a too big problem. Many aircraft are actively developed, so that the inclusion could make place by the active aircraft developers. If we will propose a good system, they maybe will add it to their aircraft. Because they know their aircraft better than we do, it's probably easier for them.
The MD-80s /90 are in active development, the MD-10 and MD11 too. Maybe the 717 will be redone by it0uchpods according to his MD-80 series.
I also know that the 727ADV is in development, and the 737-800 as well. The guys who are doing the 737-800 will probably also do the entire NG-series.
The 757 is also maintained, and the 767 is about to be rebuilt from scratch. it0uchpods also works on the A320 and A340 series, the A330-200 ARTIX is in development, and maybe many other aircraft are as well.
So most of the Aircraft will be rebuilt soon, and the developers could apply these features themselves. But they will only do, if we propose a state-of-the-art feature that is achievable to have.
The problem is the same as with the jetway feature: Too few aircraft that make use of the system.
But: Many aircraft developers take a lot of time to build their own, aircraft specific ground services system. With the system I think of, they don't have to do that any longer, they only have to define the spots (doors!) and the rest would be done by the ground service system.
If our system would work perfectly with at least one plane to show other developers, how it could work. And then, maybe it will be applied to many other aircraft as well.
Same thing with the airports. If every newly designed airport would have an AI ground service groundnet designed with WED, someday most of the airports would have airport services.
These things should be a matter of course in the future. The more airports get airport buildings, the more groundnets will be published, the more AI services we will have.
This would be my thought to it.

@Thorsten: As I said, we need to figure out how to do all of this, and we need one working example. Porting the new system to another aircraft would not be a big deal then, but we need a well working system before. So we melt all the bits that we have together, to make one aircraft working.
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby Hooray » Sat Jun 24, 2017 3:43 pm

I just don't see a way to have a generic ground vehicle system that is completely independent. I think a soloution like Canvas is best, where we have some shared files, and it is up to the developer to implement them. Some proper documentation will help


Actually, tt would not be that far-fetched to protoype such a system in scripting space using the Nasal scripting system and helper modules like geo.nas, refer to tanker.nas and fox2.nas as examples - anybody sufficiently familiar with Nasal, the property tree, the AI system and geo.nas should be able to come up with a rough proof-of-concept withing a few days of spare time hacking - as a matter of fact, check out the following:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Scripted_AI_Objects
Image

In other words, the underlying code doesn't really care what kind of 3D object it is adding to the scene, at what speed/elevation it is updating/animating the model.

It would obviously be great to integrate such a feature with overlapping efforts (think OSM, think traffic shader) - but apart from that, a simple proof-of-concept, or even an actual prototype should not be difficult to come up with - even though it would certainly benefit from being agumented through additions at the C++/core level, not unlike the advanced weather system that Thorsten originally prototyped solely in scripting space.
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Thanks & all the best,
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby ThomasS » Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:55 pm

As I mentioned here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=30735&start=30#p311651 I built a Nasal based prototype for moving vehicles along groundnet (graph) paths. However, I'm afraid it doesn't meet your expectations.
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby Hooray » Sun Jul 09, 2017 4:03 pm

Sorry, I wasn't aware of your work - but I think it does sound promising, and you should definitely document your work using the wiki, even if just to make other contributors aware of it, so that they can use/extend your work. Depending on its license you may even want to get this committed upstream ?

Either way, my suggestion would be to get in touch with Red Leader and/or flug (bombable) who may be interested in picking up some of your ideas.

Speaking in general, it would be easier for people to look at your work by using the repository to store individual text files rather than just one ZIP file.
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby ThomasS » Tue Jul 11, 2017 4:54 pm

I'll create a wiki page and be more "promotional" (not sure whether this phrase fits) when I succeed with my next milestone, a catering vehicle attaching to an arrived AI aircraft.. Otherwise I might raise too much expectations.
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby FighterAce » Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:55 pm

Is anybody still working on this project? I think that it would be a great added feature for FlightGear.
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby flycanarias » Wed Jul 19, 2017 7:15 am

Yes, there are some contributions, e.g. by ThomasS, and work is in progress, but I think it just needs some time...
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Re: More realistic ground experience

Postby ThomasS » Tue Aug 15, 2017 4:58 am

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