Arrivals
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I know that there has been previous discussion about airport arrivals, and it was stated that FS Traffic attempts to space out arrivals to eliminate go-arounds that are done so badly in MSFS. However, I notice that the schedules folder contains an arrivals folder containing .ini files listing arrival times for each airport. I further notice that adding a new airport departure to a destination does not result in an entry in the corresponding arrival file for that destination.
Can someone explain what impact, if any, this has on the added flights and how these arrival files are used by FS Traffic?
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wow, thats a great find, or error on their part. I tested it out, created a new schedule, then checked the arrivals file it it's not there, you are right
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@hunterdouglas I'll enter a ticket on this issue and try and get it explained
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@hunterdouglas said in Arrivals:
@hunterdouglas I'll enter a ticket on this issue and try and get it explained
Any word?
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@art_p This is what I got in reply, but it does not really answer the question
Hi,
Thank you for your email and we apologise for the delay in getting back to you.
It is not currently possible to alter the arrival traffic in FS Traffic as the arrival traffic uses a significant amount of custom code to workaround some limitations with the MSFS traffic engine, and any changes to the arrivals could lead to this code not working as intended.
We recently posted a response on the Just Flight Forum regarding how arrival traffic functions in FS Traffic which we'll include below:
"Just to give a brief overview of how the arrival traffic works in FS Traffic.
One of the more common support tickets we receive is regarding Ai aircraft frequently going around on approach, either due to traffic on the runway, or more commonly, due to traffic not having the correct separation on approach.
The limitation we face is that the MSFS Ai Traffic / ATC system does not apply any form of separation to the arriving traffic. ATC just directs them to start the approach immediately and does not take into account other traffic in the area.
This then leads directly to another issue we face with the default MSFS traffic system which is when an Ai aircraft performs a go-around, there is a sizeable chance that the aircraft will not receive further instructions from ATC to rejoin the approach. If the Ai aircraft does not receive instructions from ATC it will not know where to fly to, so the aircraft will fly back to the last waypoint on its flight plan (which in our case is the destination airport) and will fly over the airport at a very low altitude.
As MSFS doesn't handle this separation, we have to add separation via code and the only way we have found to do this is by controlling the timing and position of the arrival traffic generation.
So the way the arrival traffic currently works is we take all the arrivals in the 1 hour period the player is currently in, and then space those arrivals out equally over that 1 hour period. For example, if you load into an airport at 1020, we process all of the scheduled arrivals between 1000 and 1059 and then generate them in equal time periods for the duration of that hour (so if there are 6 arrivals scheduled in that hour, an arrival aircraft will generate every 10 minutes). With v1.0.5 we also added a hard limit to this arrival traffic of a maximum frequency of 1 arrival every 3 minutes. From our extensive testing, this provides the best balance of arrival separation and quantity.
As we have to apply a fairly significant amount of code to make sure the arrival traffic is generating correctly and with the best separation, it is not currently possible to add custom flights to the arrival schedules.
We hope that helps clarify the logic behind the arrival system.
To clarify for future reference, the above is all correct using MSFS SU12 and FS Traffic v1.0.5, but this can and likely will change with future sim updates and updates to FS Traffic."
We hope that helps cover any questions you may have about the arrival system in FS Traffic. If you have any followup questions though, please do not hesitate to ask.
Kind Regards,Mark
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@art_p You are right, so I did a little testing at a small airport that only had a few departures/arrivals. FS Traffic schedules often duplicate same flights with them departing and/or arriving a few minutes apart. I observed one of the duplicate flights in the arrival schedule get there pretty much as scheduled but the other did a 360 away from the airport to delay it's arrival. AI flights will not arrive at the departure or arrival airport unless they are in the arrival schedule. AI flights from your departure airport will arrive at your arrival airport even if they are not in the arrival schedule. That made me wonder if I would see duplicates of AI arrivals from my departure airport if they were on the arrival schedule. That did not happen.