AI formation flight of Lancasters to Peenemunde

Golden Rocket

Golden Rocket

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Michael and I had the idea to create an AI formation flight to Peenemunde. Here what has been done so far:

- taking off of twelve AI Lancaster from Fiskerton (all at the same time)
- overflying Helgoland two hours later, the group is shown as one aircraft
- while following them with TVB, some time later the twelve slowly separate from each other and create a formation (here over Rostock)

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- reaching separately the waypoint over Peenemunde, the aircraft lowers landing gear. That's not quite what we would like to see!

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- It continues its flight and begins to do eternal circles over Baltic Sea, instead of flyingback to Fiskerton.

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This is the actual situation. The waypoint created is the same as used with FSX "JYAI RAF Ford 1944 AI aircraft" package. Frankly speaking, not very truthfully neither, BTW.

So our question is, does anyone have any proposal, how to improve the project and get a suitable operation? Many thanks for any advices and suggestions.


Bernard
 
FS9 doesn't do formation flights as you well know. You're way seems to be the best option, the other one is to set departure times 1 minute apart, but then they will all fly line abreast all the way.

I suspect the reason they do not return to Blighty is the same as lowering their gears. They are trying to land at Peenemunde (the fake waypoint airbase?), and upon failure go back to their ingress point to circle ad infinitum. That's what it looks like in your flightplan pic anyway. As for solving that, dunno. I remember some AI Tonka flights that took them down loch ness for practice runs, they lowered their gear too, can't remember if they RTB'd though.
 
Thanks for your evaluations. The gears lowering could be avoided with deleting the Peenemunde Afcad and just remaining the coordinate entry in aiport.txt file. But even then, neither the circling effect, nor the missing return flight would be solved.

Endless circling flights might at least be acceptable with airshows or for flypasts.

Bernard
 
The other thing is FS9 doesn't like flights to start and end at same location ( it only does that with touch and go flightplan)
Try departing or arriving from a different nearby airfield ; and you'll need enough parking spots at the airfield you use ( Scampton might fit)

Ttfn

Pete
 
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The flightplan is scheduled like this with different waypoint and home codes:

AC#1,LANC,50%,24hr,IFR,08:00:00,10:46:57,100,F,0001,PEEN,10:48:55,13:35:52,100,F,0001,X4FK


If it should do a simple pattern flight, it would be set as follows:

AC#1,LANC,50%,24hr,IFR,08:00:00,08:15:00,100,F,0001,X4FK,08:17:00,08:32:00,100,F,0001,X4FK

And that works practically in all cases.


Menawhile I replaced the aircraft by a WOP Lancaster. Although the first one was explicitly an AI model, it was unsuitable for this purpose. Here in addition a second group over Berlin ...

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... and the Peenemünde group returning and approaching Fiskerton.

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Even if it's not perfect and not entirely satisfactory, IMO the project allows to explore the diversity of FS9, which is not entirely unfortunate!

Bernard
 
Bernard, As Huub and others have pointed out, FS doesn't "do" complicated AI flight plans. :indecisiveness:
Part of the problem is that FS AI is meant to populate most of the planet. I don't think any of us want a 15 to 20 minute start-up process which keeps the AI VERY simple. :dizzy:

I started out with FS5 and FSfW95 back in the mid-90's and there's a good reason why I didn't get into AI until last year. :suspicion:
Its a pain in the neck just to get close to something that looks "almost right".

The best trick after all of these years is to place a "phantom airport" (nominal 1 foot long runway) at the end of a desired flight track then add the phantom to a traffic BGL. The AI take off and fly direct to the phantom, but because its only 1 foot long, they can't land so they do a kind of Missed Approach/touch-and-go until the cows come home (actually, until the traffic BGL times out).

So, is there a way to "beat" this limitation? :unsure:

"Probably". Keep in mind that my two main hobbies with FS are collecting odd-ball files and taking FS code apart.
You can find traffic files in the Carriers2006 scenery set that take off, fly around, then land ON THE SAME CARRIER scenery.
So, its more than Possible. The BIG question, is it worth the effort?
Another traffic file you may want to play with is for the Tu-95 Bear traffic file in the old Abacus Viet Nam Carrier Ops scenery ( Yankee Station).
The Bear just kinda shows up, flies near the carrier, then "goes somewhere".
I can post the AI BGL's if you want to play with them using Traffic Tools.
Traffic Tools and Afcad2 have VERY good Help files. Give them a read-through. :encouragement:

BTW, this was why I was hesitant to come up with that traffic file for Castle AFB.
Traffic is a pain in the neck. Back in my professional days I did a lot of 8 bit and 16 bit machine code.
Traffic is the equivalent of trying to figure out 32 or 64 bit code. Its possible, just make sure you have a lot of Aspirin. :dizzy:
 
Sbob, thank you for your ample answer and your insightful assessments. It's always the challenge that drives someone to try new things or implement them in different locations. As far as the limited capabilities of FS9 allow, of course. And the effort is truly worth it, even if it ultimately isn't feasible. Running FS9 this way, it still justifiies its purpose and continues to be inspiring!

Concretely, I only realized later, that John Young did the same thing with his FSX "JYAI RAF Ford 1944 AI Aircraft". As already mentioned, I used the same technique for the AFCAD, that you also mentioned above. However, even John's traffic isn't error-free either, as his Lancasters crash over the target shortly after the start of the return flight!
,
Regarding what you say about Carriers2006, I would be very interested in your traffic file for the Tu-95. I could incorporate it into my CalClassic version. BTW, AI traffic has been my main activity in FS for almost twenty years. A lot has worked, some haven't!

Bernard
 
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Bernard, here's the Tu-95 traffic for the Abacus "Yankee Station" scenery.

I've already modified it to use the SBAI Tu-95. Without all of the scenery and AI aircraft, this BGL is only useful for "disection purposes". :encouragement:

You'll notice that the Flightplan section is pretty basic. I have the probable base near Vladivostok where the Bears took off from and landed. I was going to try to include this base but the traffic file would mean the Bear would show up many hours after I loaded the Yankee Station scenery. :dizzy:
 

Attachments

  • VCO Bear Traffic.zip
    93.5 KB · Views: 3
Good evening Bernard,
I just had an idea:
once There was avaible for fs9 a formation flight with an Hurricane, a Spit and a Bf 109.
In fact this formation of three airplanes where in reality just one aircraft and modeled as three aircraft.
It was published aerplane heaven I believe.So if it would be possible to model several Lancs or Halifax
as one aircraft perhaps it would ease the things.
Than instead of using Peenemünde airfield as way point just to use a wp just beneath of the airfield.
In reality the most bombs has been droped over Karlshagen where had been the housings and baracks.
Than if the aircraft later disapear over the baltic sea - - -
The main reason of the suggestion did grow in my head by the thread about the night fighters.
Why not in fs9 to simulate an interception "mission" in fs 9 ?
As I said on some topics before I believe that there is still a lot of potential to devolope life for our venerable FS2004.
Kenavo from Brittany
Michael

Ps Bernard, just for experimentation, can you send me the files you almost have?
LOL I am hot to try to make some screeniesLOL
 
Thanks Sbob. Unfortunately I'm not able to decompile the file in order to see what it includes. I also searched for the SBAI TU-95, but it seems not be available. Eventually it could be replaced by another aircraft of this type.

BTW, I intend to create others formation flights as shown above. I particularly thought about Ploesti and Schweinfurt. Towns wouldn't be very sensitive, even after more than eighty years.

Bernard
 
OK, that's because Traffic Tools wants properly named traffic BGLs and Abacus was..Abacus. :ROFLMAO:

Rename that BGL to something like -

Traffic_VCO Bear (BE SURE to include the underscore after "Traffic")

and try it again. :ernaehrung004:

I'll also include the decompiled text files:
 

Attachments

  • VCO Tu-95 texts.zip
    74.5 KB · Views: 1
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