Civilian Airliners

[hcpookie 3770]

Civilian Airliners - adding IL-62M, IL-96, Tu-154, and Yak-42 for civilians. 

 

 

Signed; published to Steam.  Also on my OneDrive for the grown-ups who know how to install mods 🙂

 

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=5B54FC51A7917265!158913&cid=5B54FC51A7917265

[Whirlybirds 12]

Many thanks and great to see these fine aircraft and working well. Unfortunately the AI is unable to land the IL-96, as it most often attempts to land about 50m -100m short of the runway resulting in either severe damage or exploding.On a few occasions it did land normally on the runway but it came down too hard resulting in severe damage. That was tested on Altis airbase and Tanoa airport. It's a similar problem I've encountered with some other large civil jets in other mods.

[DSabre 2325]

That's an AI issue. If the aircraft uses physX flight model settings AI pilots may drive planes into the ground.

Some exceptions are possible but generally they can't cope with the current state of things. AI pilots are rather limited and are also unable to use the rudder for instance.

 

[Whirlybirds 12]

10 hours ago, DSabre said:

That's an AI issue. If the aircraft uses physX flight model settings AI pilots may drive planes into the ground.

Some exceptions are possible but generally they can't cope with the current state of things. AI pilots are rather limited and are also unable to use the rudder for instance.

 

Right. I was thinking it was some in-game AI related issue or something was causing this with the big planes in particular. And it is really fortunate that even with their limited ability in most cases and for most planes they do reasonably well at taking off and landing without asking too much from them and having too high expectations. All said and done they probably do better than they should and great having these planes in the game regardless. 

[hcpookie 3770]

Published an update; the airliners now all land properly with AI landing autopilot.  Tested on Tonoa main runway.

[DSabre 2325]

how did you manage to make the ai land properly? I find it hit and miss and quite random sometimes

[hcpookie 3770]

Careful observation showed that the planes worked fine up until the last part of the landing, below 200.  Experimenting with the lowest part of "envelope" showed promise.  I also changed these values:

 

draconicForceYCoef= 9.9;    >>>> Raised this from 7.5

flapsFrictionCoef = 1;  >>>> Lowered this from 1.3

landingSpeed = 400; >>>> Raised this from 270

 

My testing showed that the "LandingSpeed" value is maintained up until that last little part, and then the speed plummets drastically until the landing is complete.  Before the values are changed, it plummets so fast you get the landings short of the runway.  So it appears the biggest impact was a combination of those values. 

 

I had it working even better before, but cleaned up the config to remove duplicate values, etc. and so there may be additional values that could further improve the performance.  At present, the planes touchdown on the Tanoa main runway at or near the "skid mark" area.

 

 

[DSabre 2325]

That is interesting. Yes I too noticed landingSpeed being ignored on final approach.

The last few days I did some experiments with flap/gear and airbrake friciton and realized AI can actually cope with high values as high as 2 or 3 under some circumstances (not sure which).

Lower part of the envelope makes a lot of sense. I have decided to stop supporting AI autolanding for my mods though : ) - too much trouble for too many aircraft.

 

 

 

[hcpookie 3770]

I don't blame you! 🙂 AI are just stupid anyway and honestly they don't seem to get the right waypoint half the time anyway, so even though they can land now, they like to fly around in circles since the flight characteristics don't mesh well with the in-world built-in landing waypoints which appear to be tailored to fighters.

[hcpookie 3770]

Sabre Here's another one I forgot to add that you might want to investigate -

 

gearsUpFrictionCoef = 0.1;

 

This is usually higher and I found it does make a difference.  It seems to be about when the gear goes down that the velocity rapidly decreases. 

[DSabre 2325]

Good point. Thank you. will have another look. I usually set mine to 1.0 so there is some penalty to flying too fast with gear extended. Think I have some aircraft that can AI land with a value of 1.0 though. Will check.

 

(PS: Did some experiments with two planes that have the exact same flight model settings - one crashes, one lands with ai autolanding. I guess geo lod or dimensions may have an effect too)

Edited July 11, 2020 by DSabre
new insights

[hcpookie 3770]

Small update:  Reduced Tu-154 roll rate