Re: [Flightgear-devel] changed runway selection behavior

[Durk T. <d.t...@xs...>]

On Thursday 04 October 2007 20:06, Melchior FRANZ wrote:
> I've today changed the runway selection behavior. In the past,
> runway 28R was pre-selected in preferences.xml, and a heading
> of 270 was hard-coded in options.xml.
>
> So, if you started from another airport, fgfs first checked for
> a runway 28R, and if there was none, chose the runway with
> heading closest to 270. This was totally independent of the
> wind, and often one was dropped on a silly grass stripe
> because that one matched the required heading a little better
> than a perfect concrete runway in almost the same direction,
> or even parallel. (e.g. in LOXZ, LOWL)

Sounds like an interesting change. Another thing to consider for the future in 
this might be the runway preference file, if that is present for the airport 
in question. The runway prefs file has a slightly more explicit set of rules, 
handling things like using separate runways for landing / takeoff, seperating 
runway use for commercial / military / general aviation and the like.

>
> Unfortunately, wind is only considered when set via --wind
> option. The live-METAR wind comes too late for this phase, and
> we still have to find a solution for that.
>

One thing I'd like to add someday is an option like --parking=A1, which would 
make use of the ground network (if present) to position the aircraft at a 
parking location, so that one would be required to taxi to the runway first. 
By the time one had a taxi clearance, metar would probably have started 
already. :-)

Cheers,
Durk