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ATC Improvements


IADC

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The several improvement listed for ATC that will be implemented (possibly in the next patch) look to make for a more organised and realistic ATC. One thing we are missing is a dynamic airfield that breathes some life in to the environment.

 

In recent months we have seen scripting efforts such as troop deployment from vehicles and such which work really well. In a nut shell would someone be able to script a clip and past airfield script that can provide the mission builders a dynamic airfield template that slots into any mission they are building by just adding the trigger to deploy it.

 

Aircraft on a take of and landing loop

Vehicles moving around the airfield.

SAM systems deploying and then moving every so often to new locations around the airfield

Helicopters coming and going


Edited by IADC
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I'm curious what the actual improvements will be.

Actual change in responses and traffic flow or simply fixing bugs in the current system?

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"ATC Improvements

 

We acknowledge that the air traffic control environment needs improvement. One near-term effort to address this is a number of improvements to the ATC and takeoff and landing procedures. We plan to release these in DCS version 1.2.5.

 

- Establish orbit zones with fixed positions several km from the end of the runway.

- We have increased the landing rates.

- Aircraft taking off will now have a higher priority than landing aircraft.

- Out of fuel and damaged landing aircraft will have the highest priority.

 

Further ATC improvements will continue."

 

 

This is what I was most looking forward to in 1.2.5. I'm sure in time it will get improved. Still confused about aircraft taking off having higher priority than landing aircraft.


Edited by KaspeR32

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KaspeR32,

 

Thank you. Now you have posted I realise I had read that before!

 

Thanks again for going to the trouble...

 

Kind Regards,

 

Gary

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One biggie that I hope is included is the ability for more than one aircraft to be on the runway when taking off. Maybe a request for formation takeoff etc.

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So far thats a pretty modest improvement over anything remotely realistic. Its a good building block though. I wonder how the holding points will be handled, since in real life they tend to be waypoints already in people's nav computers or on nav charts and they reference some sort of beacon or landmark. Airfields with TACANs could do it by giving you a radial and a range I suppose and say "hold there" and you orbit gently away from the field. How they do this without TACANs though, would be beyond me.

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Simple, ATC could for instance say to hold overhead the field, or make one orbit on downwind, or a five mile final. You name it. It's ridiculous that departing aircraft get a higher priority over landing aircraft... That's the opposite of reality.

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Reality functions based on human beings making complex decisions that keep busy airfields efficiently prioritizing both departing and arriving. DCS has AI that hardly has that capacity. Even FSX ATC and all the pay ware permutations you can add on doesn't do a particularly realistic job on the whole.

 

This is a simple solution probably to sort things out.

 

The issue of hold instructions is that absent any form of marker or waypoint its a very imprecise instruction, and could easily lead two aircraft into a collision if we're talking about a busy airfield.

 

If the ATC however can come up with some way to put multiple aircraft onto a single approach with correct spacing... that would be pretty sweet. If it could space arriving aircraft in such a way as to allow departing aircraft to fit into the pattern... even better.

 

That of course requires complex scripting and things like issuing altitude and speed restrictions to maintain separation. If thats how complex they want to make it, then whooopee I'm not sad we have to wait another patch for this.

 

However, if the new ATC systems is basically identical with a hold order plus a new priority scripting and thats it... lame. At the very least I'm hoping the ATC will instruct aircraft to use ILS and give you the option to request a visual. ILS is good for spacing lots of arrivals, while visual is better for probably 99% of the rest of the time.

 

Another factor thats not acconted for yet is formation arrivals. Will the ATC comprehend both player+AI formations arriving as an ensemble? How would it cope with the fact that humans have to all be in separate flights in a multiplayer setting?

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That of course requires complex scripting and things like issuing altitude and speed restrictions to maintain separation.

 

Not an un-solvable code problem, just a great way to introduce "feature-creep." Bezier curves are a common solution to this I believe, and would function not unlike the touchscreen "air traffic control" game on an iPhone. If you can write the code to create that path/curve, adding the logic to place aircraft on sequentially deeper vectors-to-final would be relatively simple.

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