Aircraft.cfg for AI aircraft and P3D question

[FlyboyNK]

Greetings,
For AI aircraft what items are necessary or what is not required in the aircraft.cfg and still allow AI aircraft to fly (no user input just AI flying a flightplan)?

For example I understand some of these are necessary
General
Fltsim
Lights
Contact Points
Airplane Geometry
etc

But are items such as stated below needed?
keyboard_response
forcefeedback
camera definition

Will a reduction in aircraft.cfg file size (considering maybe over a 100 different files) decrease loading time of P3D?

I understand all AI aircraft.cfg would be loaded into memory when loading P3D, at the same time are all AI aircraft folders read individually for each repaint folder installed in each? Looking to see if anything can be done to reduce load times for P3D.

Thank you

[AnkH]

Ehm, did you once check how big an aircraft.cfg actually is? It is in kilobytes... Even with 10000 aircraft.cfg reduced by half in size, you might gain some lousy megabytes, certainly nothing that would change loading times by more than just a few seconds (if at all).

So no, makes no sense at all. The only thing that really reduces initial loading times is decreasing the amount of .cfg files P3D has to check when starting up, but not the size of each .cfg.

[FlyboyNK]

Yes, fully aware of the file size.

Thank you Chris

I'll wait for someone with real knowledge to comment on what I asked about on how P3D loads AI related objects, files etc.

[JorgenSA]

Get the AI Aircraft Editor (NET edition), which will let you remove what is safe to remove if the .air file defines the aircraft as an AI aircraft.

The only thing the author has not implemented yet is to remove the camera definitions, that you need to do manually.

I am not at my main computer right now, but tomorrow morning German time I can get you the download link.

But - if you are thinking of using flyable aircraft as AI aircraft, don't. You can do that, but they are far too complex and processor-demanding than purposely designed AI aircraft, of which there are plenty around. I have only one flyable aircraft that I use as AI and that is the EA-6B Prowler.

Again, if you need link on where to find AI aircraft and repaints for them, then drop me a note for tomorrow.

Jorgen

[Rob McCarthy]

Hello,

Initial load times will be reduced in the next hotfix.

Regards,
Rob McCarthy

[JorgenSA]

You'll find the AI Aircraft Editor here:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threa ... se.439834/

It includes an automatic updater, so when you run it the first time, it will update itself to the most recent version.

Jorgen