Hi John,
On Monday, July 26, 2010 04:47:41 pm John Wojnaroski wrote:
> Thanks Durk,
>
> I was looking at the wiki page and that was helpful.
>
> Still trying to decipher what launches the traffic. Is it a case where
> the traffic manager is instantiated and automagically searches and
> creates AI objects? That being the case, then the demo xml files in the
> AI directory while still functional are NOT the way to create a
> scenario. It wasn't clear on the wiki page how that all ties together;
> i.e. will the traffic manager create and position AI aircraft on the
> ramp if KSFO is specified as the departure airport. Is there some time
> span prior to departure that the specified aircraft object will be
> created, start and taxi to meet the departure time.
In essence, there are three ways, in which you can drive AI models; 1) through
the multiplayer system; 2) by means of a script, and 3) trhough the traffic
manager. When you use the script (i.e. the demo xml) files, you have extremely
tight control over the AI model, but then the AIModel in question won't really
respond intelligently to the environment (in the sense of interacting with
other traffic).
The traffic manager is, on the other hand, a more global level of description.
You just specify which aircraft are available, and which flights need to be
done, and the system itself tries to resolve all the routing, ATC, etc etc.
The way it works, is globally this: the traffic manager reeds all the aircraft
and flight information from the traffic xml datafiles. Then , once
FlightGear's main loop starts running, it iterates over over each aircraft
entry (at a rate of one per frame), and it seeks to find work for it. For,
this, it searches through the list of available flights, and assigns the first
one that has the same key as the aircraft itself. Flight
are rankordered chronologically, so the first available flight is closest to
the current time. If a flight is entirely in the past, it's departure and
arrival time are updated the the repeat time factor, until it is in the
future again. During flight assignment, a whole chunk of flights are assigned
to the aircraft, such that the next flight needs to depart from the same
airport as where the previous flight arrived.
If the current flight for a particular aircraft is partially in the past
(departure time in past, arrival time in the future), an AI model is created
in air, along with a flightplan that will allow it to finish its flight. If
both the departure and arrival time are still in the future, the AIModel will
be placed at the airport,.
>
> In the real world, arriving aircraft taxi to the gate, passengers
> deplane, and the bird is serviced and scheduled for the next flight.
> While that would be an awesome feature, I gather that is not how the AI
> world works. Intriguing idea though, don't you think? Create a list of
> available equipment by carrier at a particular airport that is depleted
> as aircraft are scheduled/assigned and replenished as aircraft arrive
> with some delta time to represent service time.
That would be nice, but I'm just not ready to tackle that. ...
>
> Wow, that's a lot of work and data you created for the AI world!
>
Thanks for the comments by the way, I hope to add a more conceptual
introduction, as written above to the wiki page. Please let me know if you
have any further questions.
Cheers,
Durk
--
The Palm PDK Hot Apps Program offers developers who use the
Plug-In Development Kit to bring their C/C++ apps to Palm for a share
of $1 Million in cash or HP Products. Visit us here for more details:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;226879339;13503038;l?
http://clk.atdmt.com/CRS/go/247765532/direct/01/
___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
