Living World Config Parking Type

[MSFS 2020] Questions & Community Discussions Airports & Sceneries
1

Hi. I realize we have a long way to go. But I’d like to understand what the
radius of a parking spot means to what types of planes get placed. And why
aren’t I seeing the types of planes I want to see for particular spots more
often? This is a typical Living World General Settings section I’ll create. I
expect to control the types of aircraft by the types of parking spots I
create. I work on only GA style airports, from sizes like KACK and KBED, down
to NH31 and the like. I really want to have tight control over what types of
planes show up in parking spots.

This one is for KCON, which has a large preponderance of GA_SMALL spots and a
something like 5 GA_Medium and 2 Cargo, and 2 MIL_COMBAT and 1 MIL_CARGO. To
give a sense to my choice of Rates for Ambient Vehicles, I have 81 Parking
spots, at the airport, 10 of which are vehicle spots. (Although, I think I’ll
be getting rid of some of the vehicle spots. I was hoping operations trucks
would head out to places like ILS stands and such. Instead, fuel trucks, do.
It would be nice if we had Vehicle_Fuel and Vehicle_Ops type parking spots).
First question: The Good to Bad Match rate… How does it figure out where
to put a plane? As seems to be described in the SDK, it chooses a plane based
on its Wingspan vs the parking spot radius. With a good to bad match rate of
.8 for RAMP_GA_MEDIUM and a radius of 12 m, I expect to see TBM’s and
Longitudes, and CJ’s and the like. Instead I get Xcubs and Stearman. It’s
awful. Fortunately, I can keep them out of Gates, but I can’t keep them out of
any GA parking spots. I fly into KACK and I want to see a large number of Jets
and Turboprops, and instead I get Bleriot XI’s and Xcubs. I finally had to
remove the Bleriot because it showed up so often. So, What radii are expected
for each of the three sizes? GA_Small, GA_Medium, and GA_Large. I typically
use 5 - 8 for GA Small 9 - 14 for Medium, and 18 to 30 for GA Large. If I try
to create a GA_Small at 10, it tends to automatically change it to a Medium.
Are these correct values? What is expected? Second Question : How close
can we put parking spots to each other and still have planes show up? At any
airport you go to, aircraft are often parked almost wingtip to wingtip. But FS
seems to avoid this. Can parking spot radii overlap each other and still each
get an airplane? How do we know what the limits of this are? How closely can
parking spots be to each other? Is this what the “View/Render Parking Spots”
means? If that extra diameter overlaps with another, then only one spot can
get an airplane? Third Question: Does the radius set an upper limit on
wingspan, but anything below that will go in it? That would be awful. Can this
be changed at some point? I really don’t want Xcubs spawning with a pushback
and baggage loader in my GA_Large spots. Or is there an upper and lower bounds
on the parking spot radius value (say +/- 3m), and it’s just not working
properly? Fourth Question: How do Mil_Combat and Mil_Cargo spots fit in
with parking spot radii? It seems like there are ranges that GA small, medium,
and large are expected to fall within, what about the Mil spots? As more
military aircraft are created, or AI military aircraft, I’d like to see them
populate in airports appropriately where they are supposed to be, since,
usually, they have one area of the airport they congregate in. So I’m
interested in how these spots work. It would be nice to have some ability to
control this, but I’m ok with doing it by atc_parking_types= and it is what it
is. Fifth Question: And maybe this solves my general problem, but I’d
still like answers to the above questions because I think there are important
details to be understood regardless… Is it not working properly because I
have “Use Generic” set to off? I was getting major CTD issues with it turned
on, but I think it was due to some old liveries and I’m going to test it
again. I would have to ask, if so, why would “Use Generic” set to off turn off
all respect of parking spot radii? Thanks. I’ve been working really hard at
this since October, and I think I’m finally understanding how to properly
write a Services and Living World Config file, and I would really like to get
my sim working properly and have appropriate vehicular traffic and services
for all the types of airports there are. I’m getting there. This information
would help. For reference, a lot of what I think I know came from this thread
(and others, but this is the best), but I don’t know how correct they are
<https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/the-parking-stand-radii-they-are-
not-what-they-seem.451632/> and I was hoping for some official answers to
these questions.

2

I willt try to help here a bit with the information we at AIG have collected
in MSFS and over the last years in other Sim regarding airport design and how
AI is using this airports: 1) In FSX there is a so called parking score. Based
on different varaibles (size, parking type, parking code) the “best” match of
free parking spot will be used to park or spawn the aircraft. In FSX it has
always been first come first server. So if you have two spots on large and one
small, and the large has the parking code the smaller does not and you spawn
an A320 first it will spawn there, adding now the 777 will end up having no
free space left. Because of this we at AIG are have dcided to put the large
aircraft first in the BGL files so they will spawn first for each airline. 2)
Thats a tricky, in FSX we had to make sure they do not overlap. In MSFS it
seems this is now handled by the internal AI system. Each spot has its own
size + 6m extra radius. If some other bloicked spot is within this extra
radius the spot will not been used. Resulting a large airport currently to
issues cause there is no space in reallife for this extra 6m… I have
forwared this issue already directly. 3) Correct, you have to work there with
the parking score (see Nr. 1) 4) Use the fltsim values for parking type. Based
on the Score (see 1) they will be used. So if your aircraft as as first type
MIL_CARGO it will always try to find a MIL_CARGO spot when possible. 5) no
clue… I know you are focused on Living World, but I guess it is using the
same methods as the internal AI system, so i hope this helps. I am currently
in the process f creating a first for AI optimized Airport with the current
SDK. When I am done I will share it with you guys so you can take more
information from it for your own projects.

3

Hi @Kaiii3 Thanks for responding. Well, too me, AI and AS and LWC are all part
of the same thing, and I certainly hope they are being designed to work
together. In fact, I’d love to see them unified. I’m working very hard to have
the environment at the airports I develop match their real environment, and
I’d hope that these three tools were developed to work together? It’s hard
enough going back and forth from Services definition to Living World
definition trying to get them to play together. I hope they’re not interfering
with AI rules as well? 1) I assume by “in the BGL files” you mean the AI BGL
files? To this point, as noted above, do auto-parked aircraft follow the same
rules as AI? I hope they are actually pretty much one in the same? 2. I hope
they address your request to fix the +6m rule. It is an interesting problem to
avoid getting wings crossed given the random choices they make for aircraft to
place. However, it seems to me a much better solution would be to choose
planes based on Radius describes the largest wingspan available (why radius
and not diameter btw? now I gotta do math, grr) and the smallest plane that
should work would be R-30% maybe, or, allow the developer to choose that
smaller radius. 90% of the time, I end up with C172’s or Bonanzas in my 20 or
21m radius parking slots. And my services GoodtoBadmatch ratio for large and
medium slots is 0.9. Or even better, forget about it, let the developer place
parking spaces where they want and be responsible for making sure to avoid
planes sitting on each other. Key to this would be giving us more control over
what planes go where. And make the rules for livery development clear, and
work. 4. Ahh, I didn’t realize the order of atc_parking_types matters. Thanks
for that tidbit. 5. FWIW, I turned on UseGeneric planes, and there was no
change in what it chose for parking slots, though, I do see a slightly
higher percentage of generic skins. But that could also be because I haven’t
really reintegrated my liveries since SU5. 6. Along those lines…liveries…
I understand there’s a limit on the number of AI livery slots that can be
used, 13, or you get a CTD? How do users manage this and not get CTD’s all the
time? I wonder if this is what was happening last time I turned on UseGeneric
Planes, and I started getting CTD’s left and right? (I at the time attributed
it to poorly written liveries, as I’d been collecting them since September.
CTD’s stopped when I turned of Use Generic Planes.) I’d post a picture of my
gates at KACK filled with C172’s instead of A320’s and CJ’s that should be
there. But, the system isn’t letting me post pictures currently. Thanks again.

4

Hey, yeah I hope they all share the same logic as well - so fixes and
improvemtns will be used in all use cases :slight_smile: 1) yes I was referring to AI BGL
files, I have not checked with the “auto-park”-feature yet. My AI Setup is
currently 100% SimConnect based to avoid all the issues. 2) AFAIK they added
the 6m radius for the service vehicles to not crash into the next parked AC.
The idea with the parking score based one the dirretent settings is quite good
and worked for many years. We just need a public info how this score is
calculated and maybe some more varaibles to set. Basically some rules for the
internal ATC would be nice. So it can decide use 2 smaller gates or one bigger
→ suggestion already made. 6) glTF seems no limit at the moment, but when
using MDLX files it seems the limit is at the moment 13. No clue why this was
added (maybe a bug) but before we had no issues with more then 13 MDLX files.

5

“6) glTF seems no limit at the moment, but when using MDLX files it seems the
limit is at the moment 13. No clue why this was added (maybe a bug) but before
we had no issues with more then 13 MDLX files.” Ahhh! Thanks for the
clarification. That helps. What about MDLX models converted to glTF? I’m new
to modeling so don’t know all the details. Once it’s been converted, is it
native glTF? (I’m assuming the converted MDLx file is what would be in the
.bin file?)

6

yes, once it converted it is ok. Sadly converting Ai models takes quite a lot
of time and even then we do not have premisison from all developers cause they
are no longer active and can not be reached… I am currently in the process
of running more tests regarding the MDLX issues.