''Air-AM''

[strucka]

Hi!
A few seconds ago i was checking out the SCAG part of the forum, and someone wrote ''it would be nice to see these planes on the runways''. Which gave me an idea. We have gotten to a point, where you great modders made CAN-AMs, which are basically bus based network of ships. So how about if you could make something similar with the airports, or at least make automata drive around on the aprons. Should be based on one ways or with ''red lights'', so the planes wouldn't collide. The only concern i (as a layman in modding) see here is whether or not should this be something with a capacity or just with some traffic creator tiles, that would (in the best possible option) maybe even have a slider for how much traffic it makes and check boxes for which type of plane's it will allow to run around. At the end the plane would drive onto the runway and start speeding up (again in the best option it would ''see'' how long the track is and predict if it has to speed up quickly for people with short tracks or slower for those of us that build 2 or 3 km long runways(same for landing)) and fly away as the animated planes do at the moment.
This possible or hardly to impossible

I am posting this in the NAM, AC team and SCAG sections of this wonderfull forum.

Removed the AC and SCAG cross-postings.  There is no need to post the same request thread three times. -Tarkus, Admin

[WC_EEND]

As far asmy modding knowledge goes, I can tell you this: having the planes taxi shouldn't be to hard if the network is puzzle-piece based like the CAN-AM. Only problem I can see is that like car automata they can crash into each other and just dissapear. As for having them take off and land in a realistic way, this can be  very hard to implement, since every plane type has a differnt size and weight and minimum runway lenght for take-off needed, etc

EDIT: forgot to mention 2 things:

1. I like the idea a lot, that would truely be a revolution for realism
2. The pathing of takeoffs and landings would be near to impossible to make, since they go up to a certain height and then turn a few times, descend and land. Also, puzzle pieces for neighbor connections would need to be made, since the planes need to go somewhere. In short: als long as the planes don't need to take off or land, it should be doable

[adroman]

hmmm... I do see what you're looking for, strucka, but like WC_EEND I don't know if it would be possible. I know that the Aerospace Consortium has released pieces in their RMIP packs that have Maxis animations, and if you combined that with a Custom Automata mod, you could get things very close to real life.
I also know that SCAG is working on the taxiway portion, Joel (joelyboy911) has started creating Mayor Mode Ploppables that fit very nicely on the Taxiways that AC has released.

Also, I think that neighbourhood connections would defeat the purpose, you wouldn't see the plane land/take off properly. I don't know how well it would work, in all honesty, as the marking systems are quite complex.

Just my opinion, once again. 

All the best,
Adrian.

[fafalone]

It would definitely be awesome, but it would be a massive undertaking, and it seems to me that it would be more complex given that planes are between 1/2 (cessnas) to 5 (747, a380) tiles wide. The implications are 10 tile wide taxiways to allow planes to go either way between points without head on collisions, or only having a single direction planes can follow through your airport, which kind of defeats the realism given how limited it would make designs. Not to mention the work required converting planes to ground automata. I just don't see how it could be done in a realistic enough way to justify ditching the existing taxiways.

Given the complexity, drawbacks, and quality of existing taxiway systems, unfortunately I just don't see it happening. All of the current work is directed at improving the realism of the current runways/taxiways (in addition to AC's RMIP3 I'm working on a yet unannounced project to expand taxiway paths).

That said, I'd love to be wrong and see something allowing realistic plane taxiway traffic come out, as it is a fantastic idea.

[joelyboy911]

I think the idea is a neat one, but I'd suggest a different method. In airports at the moment there are lots that simulate the landing and takeoff of the planes. There is a prop in Lot Editor that generates this effect. In my opinion it might be more beneficial to try and pick those files apart and see if we can find some sort of path file or something similar that would allow us to create other aircraft movement props.

The other problem is that I don't think anyone from SCAG, AC or NAM is going to have the time spare to spend too much time on this project. NAM has roads to worry about, and SCAG/AC are focussed on BAT aircraft since it became more fashionable than automata reskinning.

[MandelSoft]

The biggest problem would be pathing. Since paths can handle only one tile at once, it would be impossible to make take-off paths, unless you want a huge space-consuming puzzle piece of let's say 16x2. Again, puzzle pieces cannot be any bigger that 16x16 tiles. I also second what Joelyboy911 said that there would be no-one whould spend so much time on this.

[Jonathan]

Also if you used paths, it would be hard to implement the take off effect, they would be limited to either set runway lengths (and then the planes would just vanish after a certain hieght) or to ground level.

[strucka]

WOW! what a response!
Well another way would be a combination of animated lots and ground (taxying) automata or maybe some kind of animated planes driving around. Definately the take off and landing should be animations and another thing is for sure, either the taxiways go one way or they have some stop paths (like traffic lights or rail crossings). It would definately add that last piece of realism that lacks at the totally awesome looking modular airports we no have. The problem definately lies in the complexity of the airports I for instance have one huge airport, where you can get lost just driving an UDI plane, imagine how tough would it be for the simulation.

Well if someone discover's something don't keep it for yourself =)