* Pregenerating taxiroutes could interfere with runway assignments by ATC, when conditions changed, resulting in a taxi to one runway and a takeoff from another
* A simpler solution for the "Error in Traffic record bug". This still needs some more testing, but I haven't seen any error message anymore, since changing to the current code.
* Initialize AI traffic at speed zero, this should prevent some weirdness observed under boundary conditions.
* Don't activate groundnetwork proximity detection for pushback traffic until the "ready for startup message is transmitted. this should allow sufficient time for them to reserve a route, but a little more testing still needs to be done.
* Improved groundnetwork routing algorithm. Don't uncesscarily block taxiways. Instead, use a "just-in-time" blocking system. The unblocking algorithm still needs some work, but the current version is already a major improvement over the previous version.
* Some tweaks to the handover from ground to tower controller. Aircraft could refuse to take-off of even refuse to taxi onto the runway. This now seems to be solved.
/sim/ATC/radius should be a nummeric estimate of the size of your aircraft. A small aircraft fits into a large parking, but a large aircraft does not fit into a small parking space. Because the AI part of radius is also used for slightly different purposes (prioritizing gate assignmments, the given valuem may deviate slightly from the real aircraft size. See http:/wiki.flightgear.org/Aircraft.radii for an overview of currently used values for the redius property.
/sim/ATC/flight-type can be any one of "ga", "cargo", "gate", "mil-fighter", "mil-cargo", or "vtol". See http://wiki.flightgear.org/Interactive_traffic#A_technical_perspective for more information.
optionally, the property /sim/ATC/airline can be set set to a three letter icao airline code. By way of illustration, I will commit a number of startup preset files setting these properties shortly.
Also did some more finetuning to the traffic mananger routing algorithm can be any one of "ga", "cargo", "gate", "mil-fighter", "mil-cargo", or "vtol". See http://wiki.flightgear.org/Interactive_traffic#A_technical_perspective for more information.
optionally, the property /sim/ATC/airline can be set set to a three letter icao airline code. By way of illustration, I will commit a number of startup preset files setting these properties shortly.
Also did some more finetuning to the traffic mananger routing algorithm.
Traffic Manager:
* Just continue routing until we run out of flights. This change removes one of the major requirements for setting the "Home port" field.
* Add a time restriction requirement for the aircraft scheduler; this became necessary after removing the limited-to-home-port routing restriction.
* Added a new field to the heuristics calculation: take into account whether an aircraft has already been used in a previous session. Rotate aircraft assignments for greater variability across sessions.
* Added a revision number to the cache files, so that old cache results, which are no longer compatible with the new file format, are discarded.
Groundnetwork and traffic control:
* Added a revision number to the cache files, so that old and incompatible results are discarded.
* The caching algorithm probably didn't store the correct data for airports that were processed while the user was quite far away. This is now corrected by checking whether the cached elevation data are equal to the generic airport elevation.
AIAircraft:
* I've been searching for the infamous aircraft bend-over-backward bug, that can occur during initialization, but to no avail yet. The only variable potentially responsible (tgt_vs) wich can explain the irregular jumping behavior, as well as the weird pitch results is initialized in AIAircraft's only constructor (through AIBase), and I can't find any situation in the ground handling code where this variable could get bizarre values. But,
* a couple of tgt_vs. calculations appear to be completely redundant. This value was calculated twice inside the ProcessFlightplan function, and subsequently again in the updateSecondaryTargetValues function. I have removed the calculations in the process flightplan function, without any apparent side effect.
- Fixed a bug in AI aircraft ground steering code: When aircraft were not moving, the value of headingchangeRate kept increasing to insane levels. Although this was clamped to a maximum of 30 degrees per second, the initial rate could still push the aircraft in the wrong direction. In practice, this bug would be visible when an AI aicraft would be pushed back, when it tended to veer to the right.
- Make sure that the aircraft slows down well ahead of the pushback point. This change ensures that the AC will actually reach the pushback point. It also ensures a slightly tighter steering range.
- AI ground steering rate is tuned to 30 degrees per second at a nominal taxispeed of 15. I now modulate the heading adjustment rate by manipulating the adjustment using a non-linear function (the sqrt). This allows for a slightly tighter turn radius at speeds < 15 and slightly looser turns at speeds > 15.
- The AI Flightplan generation code can return false. This can be used to determine whether any additional AI aircraft may be created. Currently, the function returns false when no more parkings are available. This should limit the build-up of huge AIAircraft tower stacks.
- The ground network can now graphically display all aircraft actitivy on the ground network by using a virtual marker system.
--prop:/sim/traffic-manager/dumpdata=true: dumps the currently loaded datafile to the console for inspection.
--prop:/sim/traffic-manager/datafile=/path/to/somefile.xml: Skips autoscanning and reads traffic only from the specified xml file.
--prop:/sim/traffic-manager/datafile=/path/to/somefile.conf: Slips autoscanning and reads traffic from a plain text file, as described on the forum/wiki
* Removed the use of pointers for heuristics calculations, as urged by Frederic Bouvier
* Fixed domain error in proportion calculation during loading, resulting in random skipping of aircraft, as reported by Jorg van der Venne.
* New features
- More realistic descent paths
- Separation during descent and approach
- ATC approach controller (still silent)
- inbound traffic flow will start immediately
* Bug fixes
- Properly handle vertical speed when on ground
- Departing aircraft now wait for taxiclerance before moving
- Traffic manager waits for proper weather initialization
- Fixed instabilities in the preferential runway usage code
- Fine tuning of waypoint following code.
issue is numerical problems in _wgs84_inverse, triggered by the traffic-manager
testing enormous distances geodetically.
Changes
- refactor AISchedule::update, so the aircraft approximate position
calculation is simpler.
- refactor AIAircraft to no longer use exceptions as a return value mechanism
- change AISchedule::update to use cartesian math for in-visible-range check
* Changed the runway XX. ATC message to actually report the real
designated departure runway
* In case of multiple active runways, select the one with a heading that is
closest to the direction of the ultimate departure destination / lines up
with the arrival path.
* Some support for geometry information provided by the custom scenery
project. Current support is for AI groundnets and runway use files only
since this is a switch that involves a lot of data verification and
updating, during the transistion the actual path where the data can be
read from is user configurable. setting the property
/sim/traffic-manager/use-custom-scenery-data to true
will cause flightgear to read the ground networks from the scenery
directory (--{fg-scenery}/Airports/[I]/[C]/[A]/[ICAO].groundnet.xml to be
precise). Setting this property to false will retain the original
behvior.
* For departing aircraft, runway takeoff calculations will be done on the
basis of the performance database. For testing purposes, a performance
estimate for a heavy jet has been added.
* experimental clean-up / reduction on two of the FG headers:
(I'm going to await feedback on the developers list before doing more of
these, to avoiding going over files multiple times, but in principle it
seems pretty straightforward.)
* final fixes for SG_USING_STD removal
- Airports Directory
Thomas Foerster: Pulls out the FGTaxiNode implementation into gnnode.cxx.
Melchior / Durk: Copy Constructor and assignment operator for FGTaxiRoute
- AIModels Directory
Durk / Melchior / Czaba Halasz: Ensure that all derived classes use AIBase
member 'callsign'. Adapted, moved and deleted getter/setter functions where
necessary
Czaba Halasz: Fix AIBase model path vs. submodel path consistency.
- Traffic Directory and AIModels CreateFlightPlanCruise
DT: Temporary revert parts of the position estimation code.
src/AIModel/AIFlightPlan.hxx
src/AIModel/AIFlightPlanCreateCruise.cxx
src/AIModel/AITanker.cxx src/Traffic/Schedule.cxx:
Move member variables that should better be in function local
scope into the functions. Make more use of SGMath functions.
data/AI/Aircraft/*/*.xml and read traffic information from these files.
Current code still mimicks old behavior by reading data/Traffic/fgtraffic.xml
The latter functionality will be disabled once we have some traffic containing
files in data/AI/Aircraft.
earth model instead of WGS84. WGS84 precision is overkill for what the
traffic manager requires, and also keeps locking up while computing
course and distance for anti podal points in New Zealand vs. south west
france.
- Moved AIModels/Traffic Manager related AI functions to a new file
- Rewrote the traffic manager so that the containers use pointers to
objects instead of the objects themselves, which will allow for a
more flexible memory management.
- Rewrote parts of the airport groundnetwork code, also because the
stl containers now contain object pointers instead of the objects
themselves.
- Fixed an uninitialized iterator in the AI distance tracking code
- Fixed flawed logic in some of the traffic controller's while loops
- Added a tower controller, which paces take-off behavior of AITraffic
in a more realistic way.
- Various other minor fixes and fine tuning.
maintain a resonable distance from each other while taxiing on the same
route. The current code does not yet take crossing routes or aircraft
taxiing into opposite directions into account.
work for ground based distance separation of AIAircraft.
Traffic manager initialization related changes:
- Schedules initialize "on the fly", instead of during initialization
- Invalid routes are no longer deleted, but marked as BOGUS and ignored
- Changed loading order from a distance based prioritization to a point-
score based prioritization, resulting in a much faster establisment of
AIAircraft near the user's plane.
Preparatory work for ground-based separation of Aircraft.
- The groundnetwork findShrortestRoute function not only returns a list
of waypoints, but also a list of taxi "segments" (a.k.a. taxiways).
- The taxiway list is stored in the Flightplan, and updated everytime
a new taxi leg is created.
at (lon, lat) coordinates -1000,0. This patch fixes the AIModels/Traffic
Manager side of things. The AIModels subsystems allowed the creation of
AIAircraft with non-existent 3D models. If such a model didn't exist, the
aip class didn't get initialized, resulting in the above-mentioned bogus
position information. Here I circumvent this problem by a) only interacting
with the tile loader if the model is visible (and hence has succesfully been
initialized) and b) by disallowing the traffic manager to create AIAircraft
objects if the path to the 3D model doesn't exist.
