I am interested in proposals for an airport-vehicle system in X-Plane. I will explain exactly what I am looking for, but first I must note the oddity of this request:

99.99% of the time, users give us too many implementation details on a feature request. Usually we want to know what you want, and not how you want it done. Example:

Bad: please implement VBOs for the 3-d clouds.
Good: please improve frame-rates when 3-d puff clouds are used.

If you ask for something too specific, we can’t tell what you really want – there might be a better implementation.

So normally the feature request is what’s useful, not the implementation.

In this case, however, I am interested in a proposed system for third party control of airport vehicles. If you have an interest in this, please write up a proposal and email me. Forgive me bashing you over the head with this, but often I get flooded with email on this.

  • Please do not email me on this unless you have a full proposal for a system by which authors can control ground vehicles. Please do not email me asking for other features, telling me which type of truck is your favorite, or asking for user-level features. My goal here is to get feedback on how third parties would like to be able to customize a ground vehicle system. If you don’t understand the difference, please don’t email on this subject.
  • I cannot promise that I will do anything you say, in particular, only that I will read and carefully consider anything that’s sent to me that makes sense.
  • and I cannot say when this will be used (not that soon though — if we’re only in the RFC stage we’re only beginning to look at this). This is not a feature announcement.

I will try to respond to proposals quickly, but I’ve been pretty badly swamped by email, so it could take a few weeks!

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

2 comments on “RFC: Airport Vehicle System

  1. That’s an absolute nice idea. I thought about how to manage it myself. Here are some thoughts about this subject:

    Every user should be able to use their own vehicles, which are created bevor by ac3d for example.
    It would be great to define some standard routes for example “passengerexit – Ramp X” or “Gasstation – Gate Y”. The tool must be able to “drive” our vehicle along the defined routes by using bezier-lines und turning the vehicles.
    On the other hand there must the possibility to define situations, when to start movements. For example: 1. Situation: My plane stands at Ramp X and the engines ist stopped – 2. Reaction (defined route): A vehicle (bus) drives from the Parkinglot to my plane- 3. Reaction: The Bus waits some minutes – 4. Reaction: The bus drives to the passengerexit – 5. Reaction: The Bus returns to the parkinglot. Perhaps there may be a possibility to define periodic situations (for example: every 5 Minutes a policecar crosses the APRON). Absolutely great would be a possibility to define situations, when an animated object will start the animation. (For example: 1. Situation: Plane stopps – 2. A lift truck follows a defined route to the plane 3. The lift truck will be animated (lifting up and down) 4. The lift truck drives an another defined route back.)

    Thinking about it and writing some thoughts down I imagine that I have a hell of wonderful ideas to bring life in or wonderful (with WED designed) airports.

  2. I think it’d be great if we even had the airport scenery to start with… Buildings… Correct Taxiways…

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