AI Traffic: Difference between revisions

After creating a traffic file, all we need to do is make sure FlightGear knows how to use this. In earlier versions of FlightGear, this used to involve quite a bit of editing, because every file had to be referenced in a master traffic file, named fgtraffic.xml.

Those days are gone, however, since FlightGear 1.0.0, when a directory scanning mechanism was put in place. Both FlightGear 1.0.0., and 1.9.0 and beyond use this directory scanning mechanims, however, in order to separate between the traffic manager 1 format used by FlightGear 1.0.0, and the traffic manager II format used by later versions, these files are located in two different locations. In FlightGear 1.0.0, traffic files should be located in a subdirectory of the [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Aircraft directory. For example, traffic for a Boeing 737 could be located in in an xml file in [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Aircraft/737, and traffic for a 747 should be located in [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Aircraft/747.

Since traffic files for FlightGear 1.9.0 are stricktly speaking no longer tied to one particular aircraft, or aircraft type, the traffic files were moved to a different directory, namely [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Traffic. Again, the actual traffic files should be stored in a subdirectory one level below /AI/Traffic. In the demo that is provided with FlightGear 1.9.0, all traffic is organized by airline, and stored in a single letter directory. For example, KLM traffic can be found in [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Traffic/K/KLM.xml, and United Airlines traffic is stored in [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Traffic/U/UAL.xml. Although currently no formal definition exists for military or general aviation traffic, a similar scheme could be adapted. For instance, military traffic could be placed in [[$FG_ROOT]]/AI/Traffic/mil/USAF.xml