Air Traffic Control / Airport management ...

[Frag]

Hi guys,

 

I am an old time flight simmers and just came back to DCS 2.5. Wow Eagle Dynamics is REALLY on a good track.

 

The level of details of the planes, the flight models, the missions editors, the scripting language, everything is very well done. I am a developer myself and I surprised myself saying WOW out loud many times recently. Things are really well done around here.

 

BUT to my surprise, considering the level of details that Eagle Dynamics decided to invest in, I realized that airport management is really basic. This is the area that I would say I am disappointed with.

 

As constructive criticism here is my opinion on air traffic control:

 

- The ATC interaction is really minimal. It should be kicked up a notch.

 

- The mission editor scripts/commands does not allow interaction with the ATC as well, leaving the modders empty handed to write a good mod to raise that level of interaction.

 

- The pilot AI around airport is quite basic as well, refusing to land for all kind of reasons (like having a truck parked in an relevant parking, timing with other aircraft that just took-off, etc...). Saw many bugs recently in that area.

 

Again, considering the level of fidelity that DCS is investing in. I really think that the ATC should be way more detailed. This is a flight sim after all ...

 

Am I the only one who would appreciate this?

[funkyfranky]

+1, long overdue

[Kang]

Definitely true, but it's my understanding that there has been talking about major improvements in that area for quite a while now, so I'm sure ED is aware.

[JagHond]

True understanding all that, but the same this will be a nice and useful add when it comes.

With best regards,

[Andrew8604]

You're not the only one, Frag. I wish I could participate in testing and suggestions of airport traffic control and aircraft approach and landing patterns. I have air traffic control experience, but I'm sure I'm not the only one, either.

 

 

As is in DCS 2.5.3, it seems that there is a complete lack of air traffic control. Essentially, only one aircraft can use an airport at any given time and departures have priority over arrivals, even those arrivals with critically low fuel (which is backwards). For instance, there's an F-86 on a 3-mile final to runway 8 at Creech (in NTTR map), but an F-86 on the airport ramp starts up and is ready to taxi. The F-86 on final breaks off the approach and circles around to wait for the taxiing aircraft to take off! Are you kidding me? Often the circling plane will lower and raising the gear repeatedly as if indecisive--"I'm going to land...no I can't...yes, I will land...no, going around...etc". And sometimes that circling plane will decide to fly into a mountain in clear and unlimited daytime conditions. It does all this while the F-86 on the ground is taxiing to the runway for minutes. Only after the F-86 gets airborne will the aircraft in the air resume trying to land...and if there is more than one in the air trying to land, chaos sets in. I haven't been able to determine the logic behind which aircraft gets to land when. Sometimes flights of aircraft will circle to fuel exhaustion trying to figure out who gets to land...with lots of use of afterburners.

 

 

The way it should be is that taxiing aircraft are given limitations. Taxi and hold short of runway. Arrivals keep arriving and should be sequenced and spaced with adequate intervals. After an arrival passes a taxiway intersection where a plane is holding, that plane can cross the runway. There's time before the next arrival. If an arrival has to go around, it should continue flying a standard pattern, not circle on or near the final approach path. Departures can line up on the taxiway short of and clear of the runways waiting for a space in arrivals to use the runway for departure.

 

 

I have a scenario with nine F-86F's operating into and out of Creech: four departures and 5 arrivals. Plus the departures fly a wide circuit up toward Groom Lake and return to become arrivals as well. I gave them generous spacing so that they will actually conduct takeoffs and landings without conflict. But when I fly amongst them in a tenth plane, I can sometimes interfere with the "clockwork". I spawn the arrivals about 10 miles out and descend them and slow them in steps to about a 5-mile final where the AI takes them in to a landing. I time the departures so they don't make an arrival go around. It all takes over an hour to play out and gives the airport a feeling of activity which is more interesting to fly missions out of. When inbound, unfortunately, I have to look at the F10 map view to find out where the traffic is because "ATC" tells nothing. There should be a custom ATC for each controlled airport in each map...well, just Nevada NTTR, I guess, because I don't know ho they do it in Caucasus and Persian Gulf areas, and Normandy didn't really have ATC back then..."The wind is out of the West at 10. Land from the East." So I make an overhead approach at 450 knots at Creech. ATC tells me "Cleared for visual, contact tower". Tower tells me to check landing gear, cleared to land." As I streak over the runway at 2000' AGL, 450kts, tower tells me "go around, runway occupied." I know it's a lie because I'm banked 90-deg in the break turn to downwind and can see the whole empty runway below. ha

 

 

Most of the jets in DCS should normally make an "overhead approach" in visual weather conditions (in the US, anyway). Even the C-130 can make an overhead approach. That's where they over fly the runway in the landing direction about 2000 feet above the runway at 250 to 450 knots and "break" to the downwind, descending to pattern altitude and speed and circle the pattern to land.

 

 

When the weather prevents the visual overhead approach, then they will have to do an instrument approach...ILS, GPS or other non-precision approach or PAR. PAR is a precision approach directed by a controller on the ground by use of approach path and glide path monitoring radar and issuing a string of verbal commands to the pilot on the radio to which the pilot need not reply. Pilot compliance is seen on the radar scope.

 

 

In addition to this, AI "pilots" in DCS seldom fly smoothly and often cheat physics. I don't care if they fake physics as long as they fake it believably.

 

 

And then there is wind and runway selection. I guess they refer to wind differently in Europe or Russia. On the weather definition page in the sim, the arrows point to where the wind is going, not where the wind is coming from. The speed is apparently in meters per second, even though I have it set to English units and it claims "kts". So, double that and you get approximately knots. So set it to 6 kts in the mission editor and it will blow a 6 meters per second or 11.66 kts in the sim. At Creech you can set the wind to 15 kts out of the West and ATC will still tell you to taxi to runway 8. I'm not taking off with a 15-knot tailwind! I'd like to know what rules they've applied to determine runway selection for departures and arrivals. It should be less than 3 kts is considered calm wind and use airport designated "calm wind" runway...which has to be Rwy 26 at Creech. It is the longest runway and there are mountains to the west that interfere with approaches to Rwy 8. Otherwise, the runway most aligned into the wind. So, wind 240 @ 15kts, means Rwy 26 is the runway in use.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Andrew8604

[blc]

+1 same for me.

I started with "Lock On" and unfortunately I couldn't see any major improvement on that.

But anyway, in my opinion DCS is the best (military) flight simulator available - I love it!

 

 

Best regards

blc

[philstyle]

There's a real potential poening for more player-controlled airfields in DCS too.

 

 

Suntsag has recently release some modded controil towers which allow players with combined arms to operate the control tower. The player is located within the tower's observatino deck and can get a reasonably commanding view of most airfields from these objects.

 

 

A few of the WW2 players have already started with some basic use of objects like this to have player-to-player airfield control.

Obviously this is mostly applicable to VFR flying, but almost all DCS multiplayer is VFR in any case.

 

 

Sunstags mod is here: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=221377

[Xilon_x]

make a video with real pilots without using AI of how the airport air traffic should work with all the ATC rules currently in force with strong vocal communications.

[33-DFTC]

There's a real potential poening for more player-controlled airfields in DCS too.

 

 

Suntsag has recently release some modded controil towers which allow players with combined arms to operate the control tower. The player is located within the tower's observatino deck and can get a reasonably commanding view of most airfields from these objects.

 

 

A few of the WW2 players have already started with some basic use of objects like this to have player-to-player airfield control.

Obviously this is mostly applicable to VFR flying, but almost all DCS multiplayer is VFR in any case.

 

 

Sunstags mod is here: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=221377

 

There is actually a great piece of software allowing human controlled ATC and more. Players looking for some realism in their DCS environment should take a look at LotAtc.

 

The current ATC in DCS starts to be a bit embarrassing when we compare it to another milsim managing almost perfectly ATC procedures for 20 years now. At least Eagle Dynamics is aware of the problem and has promised to deliver in the future - I hope not too far away.

[bullitt757]

Even though there is a slight mod for this to bump up the airports a notch, I agree.

[jef32]

There are months I cry for recovering the old behaviour of AI when then didn't refuse to land if others Ai planes are moving on airports but ED has deaf ears since months too. However as it was the case before, I don't think they need heavy work to return of the good behaviour of AI planes. I've already asked the runway according to the direction of the wind but it's deaf ears too.

 

 

To be honest, I really doubt that this section of the forum is read by ED devellopers. I think that this section is just to give us the false feeling that our proposals are important for us.

Edited October 4, 2018 by jef32

[NeilWillis]

How do you know it is deaf ears and not just priorities?

 

They have already said that ATC is getting some love soon, and yes, AI is terribly bugged in some respects.

 

 

But ED deaf to your concerns? Really? I'd say they're doing OK for a small organization. They lead the world in combat simulation. But all things take time. A lot of time.

[jef32]

Ok I'm agree with you for some things. In exemple, the open runway matching with the direction of the wind has never be done in DCS and I can understand they have priorities before working about that.

 

But...but....the AI behaviour refusing to land if just one plane moves on the taxiway, it wasn't the case before, at 2.2 times. So I can think that it's not a heavy work for them to adapt this AI behaviour in 2.5 and I don't understand at all why it's not done yet.

[Emmy]

They need to address the surface wind direction issue as well as part of airport ops...

 

And can we please get the AI to use parallel runways?

[MasterZelgadis]

I would like to add here:

AI that can fly proper departures and arrivals. When I saw it correctly yesterday the F-18 is capable of flying the CASE I, so it should really be not a too big problem to teach them how to fly a STRYK, recovery, a HI-TACAN Y and so on. At least for the airports, where charts are published. Could be a parameter for the waypoint type "Land", then a dropdown shows the procedures for that airfield

[iPod_09]

+1