Changing the static/AI aircraft at airfields

[keithb77]

You can get any MSFS-native aircraft to appear as static aircraft though the degree of success varies by airfield.
Only MSFS-native AI works, which is sad as there is a LOT of FSX military AI available.


EGBW with 8 Seafires (plus one more out of shot, by the Vulcan), 2 MB339s and just one generic single
I'd be interested to know how the AI parking is defined for this field as it seems to attract a lot of Seafires...

Ensure the aircraft.cfg contains these lines for the liveries you wish to use
atc_parking_types ="ANY" ; gets everything
atc_parking_codes =""
isAirTraffic=1

You can disable the generic AI by setting their isAirTraffic=0 but that's a lot of work and will get overwritten next patch.

I did try this trick for Duxford but sadly the A320's still showed up so I think Duxford is explicitly including the A320.
You can get (eg) MB339s and Banshees there though.
Cheers
Keith

[tiger1962]

You can disable the generic AI by setting their isAirTraffic=0 but that's a lot of work and will get overwritten next patch.

You can batch change this line and any other line with Notepad++ by using the Find in Files function:

In the Search tab, select Find in Files and set the following search parameters:

Find what: isAirTraffic=1

Replace with: isAirTraffic=0

Filters: aircraft.cfg

Directory: <<The absolute path to your Community folder or other location containing only the planes you want to be changed>>

Now click the Replace in Files button, and all the aircraft.cfg files in that directory are changed in seconds flat!

[Tom Clayton]

I still recommend backing up the files first, but this would still save a bunch of time!

[K5083]

Resurrecting this thread because I have a related follow-up, and it is such a long shot that it is not worth a new thread. Anyone have any ideas on HOW OFTEN to make an AI plane appear at an airport, i.e., how common or rare the plane is? I think you get where I'm going here. I might like, say, 172s on every airport, Cubs on about half of them, T-6s on 5% of them, P-51s on 1% of them, and so on. So I want to alter the relative probability of each plane being chosen to occupy a parking spot that the sim has decided to fill. I assume there's no way to do this. Any plane (livery?) with IsAirTraffic=1 has an equal probability of showing up in its designated type of parking space. If it's by livery, I guess you could have 100 different 172 liveries each tagged with IsAirTraffic=1 but only one P=51 livery so tagged, and thus create 100x the chance of a 172 appearing as a P-51, but I'm not sure it works that way and anyway, I don't have enough 172 skins. Ideas? August

[spatialpro]

Sounds like a question to post over at FSDeveloper perhaps?

[Tom Clayton]

There's also an entire section of the official forum dedicated to the SDK.

[K5083]

Yes, those are better places for my query. But I don't frequent those forums much, and thought I'd start with my friends first! Was hoping for more of a "user" solution than a "developer" one.

August