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Static aircrafts at airports

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Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Lars » Thu Apr 04, 2019 12:29 pm

Hi all,
I'm currently writing the FG extension to connect to swift (VATSIM, FSD servers see here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=35530) . In my tests I noticed that some airports have static aircrafts standing on the apron. As it is possible to get this stands it is laborious.

I haven't found anything about this topic within the forum: Is there any discussion or statement if there should be static aircrafts at airports?
My idea would be to completly remove them to have the airport free for multiplayer or add an option to enable/disable static aircrafts, if this is somehow feasible.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Isaak » Thu Apr 04, 2019 1:23 pm

I would like to get rid of them too, or make them optional somehow so they only appear if the user wants it. (they do add to the immersion when flying offline). I 've had to ask for another parking position on VATSIM earlier, and it 's not fun to do when you're participating in a big event where gates are carefully planned by the controllers.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Alex H » Thu Apr 04, 2019 2:06 pm

That is the nature of an open source product - anyone can change it.

I have recently removed pylons in the middle of motorways, aircraft hangars from the middle of the Irish Sea and I'm about to remove an entire 12 tank fuel farm from the apron at Heathrow.

I'm not saying this is deliberate, but probably comes out of the ease with which it can be done, coupled with the lack of instruction into how to do it.

I agree that static aircraft should not be placed at points where it is likely other aircraft will want to use - but YOU can change it.

Go to this map https://scenery.flightgear.org/map/

Zoom in to the problem area

The aircraft are shared objects and will be marked with a red symbol

Click on the symbol

Click on the object number at the top of the pop-up

Click on delete this object

Give a valid reason in the Comments field

Fill in your email address

Send it and the Scenery Admins will do the rest

If you have LOTS to delete, then I suggest you talk to Torsten Dreyer - he has overall control of the scenery database.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Isaak » Thu Apr 04, 2019 3:41 pm

Well, I did in fact remove some static aircraft in the past, but I think it's better to discuss if we as a community want them or not before undertaking action and destroying someone else's work, don't we?
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Alex H » Thu Apr 04, 2019 3:52 pm

Well, I would say if the static aircraft is in a position likely to be used by a 'live' aircraft, at a gate for example then it should not be there.

I don't know if you are aware, but there is no way to know who placed which object where, as that information is not stored.

The person that did it could be long gone.

There is a valid reason in some cases for these aircraft, so, I would not like to see them all go, but a few rules would be good.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Lars » Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:39 pm

Alex, thanks for your instructions of how to remove those objects but I'm aware of this.
As already written byIsaak I'm more interested in a general discussion how this should be done. And I'm only talking about static aircrafts standing somewhere on the apron where "live" aircrafts can stand and not for example some historic planes like the Fokker at Schiphol: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Amster ... d4.9035614

So:
-For some use-cases like Multiplayer or usage of AI-Traffic (*) removal of the static aircrafts would be the best.
-On the other hand for normal flying without something mentioned above, static aircrafts would add immersion as written by Isaak.

So in my opinion on a long-term view it would be the best to add an option to enable/disable the static aircrafts. I'll take a look at that in detail on the weekend

* I haven't much experience wit the AI-Traffic system but if the gates/stands aren't hard-coded and given by AI or availability it could lead to collisions with static aircrafts. Especially if someday the ground-nets were used from X-Plane gateway where all RL gates were included. In that case it wouldn't be useful to delete all FG static aircraft blocked stands out of the scenery as it might be done with the current scenery.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby V12 » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:10 pm

I hope, all ojects are in the SQL database, so it should be done by simple SQL script. Try to ask scenery admins.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Alex H » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:14 pm

V12 wrote in Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:10 pm:I hope, all ojects are in the SQL database, so it should be done by simple SQL script. Try to ask scenery admins.


I think the question is what should be done?

Someone should also ask this on the developer's mailing list, because for some strange reason they don't read this forum.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Lars » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:22 pm

I will ask on the mailing list the next days.

I also thought about the SQL database but I guess that differentiate between static aircraft on apron and other static aircrafts that shouldn't be removed is not really possible.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Alex H » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:29 pm

Jarvum wrote in Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:22 pm:I will ask on the mailing list the next days.

I also thought about the SQL database but I guess that differentiate between static aircraft on apron and other static aircrafts that shouldn't be removed is not really possible.


Only if you know which are wrong and which are right :(
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Thorsten » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:52 pm

Well, I would say if the static aircraft is in a position likely to be used by a 'live' aircraft, at a gate for example then it should not be there.


Or the possibility to select the gate could be blocked.

Actually I never do MP flights or even use FG online, I still like to see a populated airport now and then, it's 20.000 airports on the planet, perhaps two dozen are actually heavily populated by many static aircraft, so the thing I'm wondering is - can't the MP people use the 19976 other airports and leave the few populated ones in peace?

Surely the FG world is such a vast place that we can for years to come have plenty of airports of both types without the need to remove anyone's work.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Lars » Thu Apr 04, 2019 7:11 pm

Thorsten wrote in Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:52 pm:Surely the FG world is such a vast place that we can for years to come have plenty of airports of both types without the need to remove anyone's work


I fully agree with you on this point.

Thorsten wrote in Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:52 pm:[...], it's 20.000 airports on the planet, perhaps two dozen are actually heavily populated by many static aircraft, so the thing I'm wondering is - can't the MP people use the 19976 other airports and leave the few populated ones in peace?


Speaking for VATSIM (and also maybe multiplayer):

Isaak wrote in Thu Apr 04, 2019 1:23 pm:[...] I 've had to ask for another parking position on VATSIM earlier, and it 's not fun to do when you're participating in a big event where gates are carefully planned by the controllers.


Is there any official "rule" which static aircraft positions were accepted? Even if there aren't many airports nowadays containing static aircraft it may rise in the future.
But as already written I guess that there isn't an easy and fast way to implement such a method as there might must be some changes in the .stg (?) files and model database to determine if an object is a static one.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby legoboyvdlp » Thu Apr 04, 2019 7:15 pm

Unfortunately the issue here is that at airports such as Boston there are very few parking positions - and not one of the parking positions as far as I can see is open - all of them are taken up by static aircraft.

Furthermore, they tend to conflict with AI traffic; not only multiplayer aircraft.

The solution technically is to create better groundnuts with more gates that are open - and the groundnet submission webpage looks good for that; however in the meantime something like a custom STG flag would be useful to hide these aircraft.
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby Alex H » Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:35 am

Boston Logan has 51 static aircraft and (according to Wikipedia) 102 gates - is that not enough?

I must admit that i know nothing about 'large' aircraft movements, but whoever put all that scenery into Logan did do a good job.

@Thorsten, I'm coming round to your idea - static aircraft do make the scenery better for the majority of users (who only fly one aircraft at a time).

@legoboyvdlp - how many aircraft normally participate in multiplayer scenarios?
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Re: Static aircrafts at airports

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:57 am

On Vatsim, there are 400,000 members - usually between several hundred to several thousand online at any one time.
On FlightGear's servers there are between ten and fifty online at a time.

At Boston there are only six parking positions in FlightGear and as far as I can see all of them are occupied by static aircraft.
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