.Creating AItraffic

AI Traffic is an innovation ported from CFS2 traffic engine. Though it is wonderful in many ways it does have limitations such as creating AI Helicopters...but more about that later. Traffic.bgl can only give you the option of having a fixed wing aircraft take off from one airport, follow a flight plan and land at another airport. Nothing more, nothing less

Though FS2002 has 23115 default flight plans the traffic obviously in no way represents the amount of real world traffic. This is why from the get go programmers and compilers needed to decompile this .bgl and customize it. Luckily for us Lee Swordy the Author of Ttools beat the commercial developers to the punch and offered a freeware solution.

We can now add traffic but not only that....airports as well! The following tutorial/example shows how we created Bagram AFB scenery, AFD info, added it to our Traffic.bgl file and populated it with some flights. Below is Bagram as viewed with AFCAD.


New airport with AfCAD

Traffic Tools
Note:you can download AFCAD and Aieditor with ttools from Planesimulation file library

To create your own AI Traffic you will need a program to help you. Download Traffic AIeditor. There are other programs built upon Ttools as this one is. It's up to you.

The following example shows how we created Bagram with Afcad and Aitraffic from scratch. Bagram was created a few months ago for our Operation Anaconda but it still needed ATC and AI. First we load our scenery compiler to get the exact location or field reference.


Exact location

Now we take the location and open AiTraffic. First select open FS2002 traffic.bgl. As a new project we select Airport.


Click Add

After clicking add we can enter the airport info.


ICAO Code

After you click add the entry will appear at the bottom of the list. Click on it and you can enter the location reference.


Enter location


Save Project
Click on file >> save project as >> give it a name >> save.

Import Project
After saving the project we need to merge it with FS2002. The image below shows us selecting the newly created project containing the airport Bagram(Z00A) that we added.


Merge with FS2002



After adding the airport, saving the project and merging it we can move over and select Flight Plans. Enter the code of your airport in this case Z00A. It will refresh and you will notice there are no flight plans, now the fun part!


New Airport found

In the above image the new Airport we added is found. We created a flight as an example from Bagram AFB Afghanistan to Andersen AFB Guam. What you add here is entirely your choice!

GMAX
It has been noted that non-GMAX aircraft tend to not display the wheelset when used as AI. As to the rumor that GMAX aircraft are more FPS friendly....we cannot confirm that. In fact the FPS was the same for non AI dynamics as GMAX AI dynamics. We've done a lot of testing in this respect and believe this is more hearsay than substantial fact.

Adding New Aircraft
We will now work with aircraft.cfg (configuration) files. 

[fltsim.0]
title=Boeing 737-400
sim=Boeing737-400
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
kb_checklists=Boeing737-400_check
kb_reference=Boeing737-400_ref
atc_id=N900MS
atc_airline=
atc_flight_number=1123
ui_manufacturer=Boeing
ui_type=737-400
ui_variation=American Pacific Airways
description=One


Change to

[fltsim.0]
title=Boeing 737-400
sim=Boeing737-400
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
kb_checklists=Boeing737-400_check
kb_reference=Boeing737-400_ref
atc_id=
atc_airline=Air Canada
atc_flight_number=ac1711
ui_manufacturer=Boeing
ui_type=737-400
ui_variation=Air Canada 
description=//whatever you want
atc_heavy=1

All you have done is re-arrange the call-signs to match your paint scheme. Sometimes it is necessary to add the following under general in the aircraft.cfg. This is more specific to non-default aircraft.

atc_type=BOEING AIRCRAFT
atc_model=737-400

Cruise Speed
While you have this "aircraft.cfg" file opened scroll down till you find this section:

[Reference Speeds]
flaps_up_stall_speed=130.000
full_flaps_stall_speed=100.000
cruise_speed=350.000

Non-Default AI
Aitraffic will locate and list all available aircraft that you can use. As we mentioned earlier helicopters are a no go because of cruise speed. FS2002 won't even bring gear up with helicopters because under 120Kts it "thinks" the aircraft is nowhere near takeoff therefore no gear up. You can add helicopters to AI but they will taxi and take off like fixed wing. Not cool!

The Flight Plan
As we showed in the above image adding flights isn't so difficult but you must remember to fill in all the information regarding the flight.

Compile time
Now that we have added the airport and given it one flight, it is important to add at least one flight otherwise the airport is non-existent as far as FS2002 is concerned we can compile. So, click compile FS2002 traffic.bgl. This takes some time so make sure that everything is correct before clicking away.

By: Garreth Jones