World Traffic 3.5 Change List

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Overview:
I've tried to make things be as automatic as possible now in WT 3.5 so you shouldn't need to define ground routes. And you shouldn't need to define parking defs
unless you want to give them priorities or assign some as for international terminals or modify push-back but even the latter should mostly work now in this update.
I defined special cases to deal with the taxi network lines extending to parking spots or cases where the plane just has to back up to the taxi network.

Changes:

• ATC
• supports IFR and VFR flight
• requires that users use valid ATC frequencies with frequencies listed on display
• has auto-tune option for frequencies
• user may be required to make speed changes or enter holding patterns to maintain separation
• gives taxi paths to and from runways
• has interface for other 3rd party ATC products
• allows for user-defined VFR airspace exit points so ATC can vector VFR flights to these positions

• Particle effects for contrails (wing/engine), tire smoke, afterburner flame
• Aircraft base file format modified to include particle placement x/y/z fields for particle emitters
  

• Labels for AI aircraft which you can turn on and off to identify aircraft near you
• Color/brightness options for arriving traffic, departing traffic, or transiting traffic
• Can turn labels on or off as well for planes on the ground
• Can set min and max draw distances for labels
• Can set data you want in the labels like telemetry info, airport info, aircraft type
  

• Airport Operations File Changes
• DynamicTaxiRoutesOnly field added - normally set to 1 (true) but can be set to 0 if the airport creator still wants to use some custom ground routes. It will use whatever is defined or create them dynamically for parking defs without fixed ground routes. I think the dynamic ones work pretty well now though. I plan on letting the airport author specify an alternate apt.dat for specific parking spots in the next update if you want planes to follow a very specific route for 1 or more parking spots. This should get rid of the need for ground routes entirely.
• option to specify if touch and gos are allowed on a runway, default is true for airports with not much traffic and false for airports with lots of traffic but can be changed.
• add option to write out default airport ops file
• added new fields for airspace dimensions (used by ATC), VFR airspace exit points (for vectoring VFR traffic), taxi bridge definitions, and exit waypoint for STARs for STARs used for multiple runways
• added fields for approaches to specify weather minimums
• add support for bridges for some scenery packages that have bridges that planes can taxi over which sometimes aren't defined correctly causing the AI planes to drop through them
  

• Diversions now supported - if weather is below minimums for an airport, it will close to traffic and aircraft will fly to alternate airports. If the weather is marginal, some planes will attempt approaches but will divert if minimum conditions aren't met.
  

• GA Traffic Improvements
• Allow specification of visual approaches for GA traffic (others too) which are often used in mountainous areas. Examples are included for LOWI.
• Added support for custom routes so GA planes can follow these on out and back flights instead of flying a random pattern. Also allows the user to create specific routes for airliners instead of auto-generated flight paths.
• GA traffic will avoid mountainous terrain much better
• GA planes will now often do touch-and-gos at airports that aren't busy
• GA planes especially light props will often not fly in IFR weather. About 85% will stay parked.
• Created auto flight schedules for GA flights between airports for better realism
  

• Better parking spot allocations - parking spots for bigger planes will be reserved for those when a smaller plane  is looking for a spot unless there are no available spot for the smaller type. This improves problem with bigger planes not being able to find parking spots on landing - most noticeable for spots shared between light props and light jets
• Added support of Navigraph approach transitions
• New separation logic (3.2)
• Interception - probably not included
• Follow me truck
• Back-tracking logic improved
• Wind gust modeling
• Auto-push-back logic so that AI planes push back to the taxi route path so no parking def customization required
• Prevent AI planes from running into user in flight or on runway if the user is not using WT ATC
• Support for ABC Camera plugin
• Added support for user defined text files for custom arrivals and approaches especially useful for GA planes flying in mountainous terrain
• Added support for simultaneous runway operations for intersecting runways so planes will wait for other planes taking off on an intersecting runway before departing
• Auto-throttle traffic at busy airports so traffic does not back up in holding patterns
• Planes will taxi faster on landing until they get to their exit
• Planes will brake harder to make runway exits to avoid back-tracking
• Handle drive-through parking spots
• Flip planes around in parking spots at a random time after landing if they enter and exit the parking spot from opposite headings
• check for runway name mismatches between navigraph data and x-plane data so when a runway name changes due to  drifting magnetic north from say rwy34 to rwy35, it is still recognized as the same runway
• add parking def option to test dynamic taxi routes