Additional Warning/Violations

Features
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Server Feature Warning/Violation Requests

Hello IFC!

With the recent addition of automated warnings like the beacon light requirement during taxi, I have noticed that pilots still have way too much freedom to do whatever they want when ATC is inactive on the Expert Server. While the server is great, I believe we can make it even better, more realistic, and more strictly enforced. Let’s make it a fun and rewarding challenge for serious pilots!

To improve professionalism and realism, I want to propose a few new automated warning and violation systems for the Expert Server, including a brand-new way to handle UNICOM.

1. Automated Taxiway Centerline Compliance

Right now, pilots can cut across grass or ignore taxi lines entirely when ATC is absent.

  • The Rule: Aircraft must keep the taxiway centerline or lighting track centered between their main landing gear.
  • How it works: If a main landing gear goes completely off the paved taxiway or drifts too far from the taxiway center node for more than 5 consecutive seconds, the system triggers a warning. To prevent technical glitches, this would only be active at optimized 3D airports with clear curve lines.
  • The Penalty:
    • First offense: An on-screen caution stating “Keep center on taxiway.”
    • Second offense: A Level 1 violation and a temporary taxi speed restriction capped at 10 knots to force the pilot to correct their steering.

2. Strict Anti-Incursion & Runway Integrity Protection

We still see issues with aircraft cutting in line, taking off over someone else, or entering an occupied runway.

  • The Rule: No aircraft may enter a runway or begin a takeoff roll if another aircraft is currently occupying that same runway, unless the ATC said so for “line up”.
  • For Unicom: Once a departing aircraft initiates its takeoff roll, waiting traffic on UNICOM is only allowed to line up and wait. If a following aircraft crosses the hold-short line without announcing their intentions on UNICOM first, or enters too close behind the departing plane, they trigger the incursion warning.
  • How it works: The system monitors the runway boundary just like approaching and entering a runway.
  • The Penalty:
    • On the Ground: If you cross the hold-short line while the runway is occupied, an immediate flashing “HOLD POSITION” alert appears. Failure to stop within 10 seconds issues a violation.
    • During Takeoff: If a pilot deliberately forces a takeoff roll while another aircraft is still on the runway ahead, an automatic system report is issued upon liftoff, ghosting them straight back to the Training Server.

3. Smart Unicom “Final” Reservation via Approach Cones

To stop the chaos at unstaffed airports, we need to link our radio calls directly to server automation using the map’s geometry.

  • The Rule: Pilots must announce “Final” on UNICOM to officially reserve the runway. Once reserved, any aircraft on the ground attempting to enter that runway will trigger the incursion warning.
  • The UI Lock: To prevent pilots from abusing this or calling it from 20 miles away, the “Inbound on Final” UNICOM button will remain completely grayed out and unclickable. It will ONLY unlock when the aircraft is 5 miles final, physically aligned and established inside that runway’s visual Approach Cone on the map.
  • Opposite Traffic Protection: If two aircraft approach opposite ends of the same runway, the first pilot to enter their cone and press “Final” locks the runway. The opposite pilot’s “Final” button will instantly lock out, and their HUD will flash a message saying “RUNWAY OCCUPIED BY OPPOSITE TRAFFIC - EXECUTE GO-AROUND”.

The Ultimate Pilot Challenge

Let’s be honest, this is going to be a heck of a challenge for everyone actually! Pilots will seriously have to lock in, focus, and align their aircraft just the good or maybe perfect way on the taxiway and the vacancy of the runway just to avoid penalties. It turns the entire flight into a test of pure precision and skill, which is exactly what the Expert Server should be about.

  • This will obviously result in higher violation counts for careless pilots.
  • That is the fun part because it separates the true expert pilots from the rest!
  • And I’m neither a realism user or a careless user, so don’t worry! :rofl:
  • This will honestly push more of the “goof-around” users back down to the Training Server.

And here’s where things I want to suggest as well, Training Server must have 3 warnings before it becomes a Level 1 Violation

  • With the new 3-warning safety net system active down there, even the Training Server is about to become a half-Expert server for them!
  • If a user ignores all 3 warnings on the Training Server, they get a Level 1 Violation.
  • If they just go AFK or refuse to comply, the system will keep spamming another Level 1 Violation every 1 minute until they fix it!
  • We will keep it strictly to Level 1 violations since Level 2 and 3 are for real ATC, but this will definitely force people to pay attention!

This is just for my idea to be implemented here so I don’t need to duplicate such topics, so its all in here

I would love to hear what the community thinks! this is a whole suggestion thought by me, and maybe suggest some ideas with me too.

Some sounds not reasonable since its a mobile sim after all or my idea was just poor-stated, and this ideas is just for additional warning concept for similar topics if more were created later on

This way, Unicom would be more prioritized and will be strict before or during the ‘event’, since its Expert Server after all

3 Likes
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A couple faults I can immediately see with this:

What about lining up behind a departing aircraft, or behind an aircraft lining up at an intersection ahead (both common practices in real life, and used by IFATC).

The cone is roughly 11 miles long. With a typical approach speed profile - this would take 3-4 minutes to fly. This is a long time for pilots at the hold short point to have to wait when the runway is technically clear, and is safe to depart on for at least 2 of those minutes, in which 2-3 aircraft could depart.

I would perhaps modify this to essentially say:

If approaching aircraft is within say 3 nautical miles of the threshold, no aircraft may enter the runway.

Don’t have it be based on when a pilot calls final (because not everyone uses Unicom even when they are supposed to).

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Thanks for the feedback though and may have thought too focused on these

  1. You are totally right about “line up and wait” behind a departing aircraft or intersection departures. To fix this, the automated rule should only trigger a warning if an aircraft initiates a takeoff roll or enters the runway without utilizing standard spacing buffers, rather than just locking the whole pavement down.

  2. Instead of locking the runway the exact second you enter the 11-mile cone, maybe the UNICOM “Final” button only unlocks and activates the reservation when you cross the Outer Marker or reach 5 miles out on final descent. That gives ground traffic plenty of time to slip 2-3 departures out safely before you arrive

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Nah bro we get enough violations

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I appreciate your thoughts on addressing some of the most annoying things on the Expert Server!

The number one thing that annoys me & that I encounter most commonly are definitely runway incursions/people departing/landing 180 relative to you even after calling taxi-out or inbound.

As mentioned, basing off of Unicom won’t work. In my experience people don’t even use Unicom correctly or at all. So I think there also needs to be a way to remind people or even require people to make their call on Unicom.

I agree that a trigger to protect an aircraft on final is that it must be within a certain distance from runway.

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Sometimes u dont see them approaching until they pop up like half a mile away cuz of render distance

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That’s not an excuse because you can literally open a map that shows other aircraft, and it will be obvious if someone is on final.

People should actually be aware of the airport traffic because of Unicom calls, but again people use them incorrectly or don’t use them at all, and that should really be addressed on Expert Server…

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Honestly nothing is an excuse in expert server just like in real life, if u mess up get a phone number from the tower and all ur certs revoked. Aviation isn’t a joke.

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I agree the Expert Server needs this, but maybe don’t implement some of these ideas such as the no lining up while another A/C is taking off

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I have so many issues with this request. And before I list them, I promise I’m not trying to rag on you or say this is a bad thing, I also agree with the idea behind this request, and want more professionalism on the expert server. But I see some major issues that would come with this.

First: anything military related would need to bypass all of this. The problem is, there’s no automatic way to tell if an aircraft is doing realistic military things or just trolling. And I’ll go ahead and explain: military aircraft often line up and take off in quick succession. We often don’t follow the lines when doing formation lineups and photo ops. We often do formation flights in which only the lead aircraft does ATC callouts. We often have aggressive maneuvers right before final which would make ATC callouts impossible with these feature requests implemented. And there’s more, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Second: the taxiway centerline really can’t work, because a lot of airports allow aircraft to turn and maneuver outside of these lines, especially when closer to gates.

Third: Many airfields have finals that are curved, especially GA, but also many commercial fields. How should the system approach this? What about fields that don’t have a strict curved final, but you could make one anyways if approaching from a certain direction in order to get to the ground sooner? An automatic system can’t account for this. Once again, a pilot might be actively doing patterns at an airport. Just because a random aircraft decides to approach from the other direction shouldn’t ban the original aircraft from continuing the proper procedures, especially if the second aircraft is messing around or going the wrong way on the runway.

Now, I know that’s a lot, and I want to reiterate: I appreciate and support the idea behind this, but I don’t think these methods are the way to go about improving the expert server.

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Hey, no worries mate! I just wanted to put this in the IFC so that my thoughts on these suggestions are out of my mind. It absolutely makes sense coming from my nonstop imagining brain, and I love the issues you pointed out. Thank you very much for the specifics

To address your points, I want to add a few ideas on how the mechanics could handle those situations:

  1. The Military/GA Exception: The system can easily check the aircraft type. If you are flying a Fighter Jet or doing military operations, these automated rules would be completely deactivated for you to allow for formation flights and tactical maneuvers.

  2. The Gate/Ramp Zone: You are totally right about maneuvering near gates. The centerline tracking would ONLY be active on designated taxiways. The moment your aircraft crosses into a terminal apron or ramp zone, the tracking automatically shuts off so you can park freely.

  3. Curved Approaches & Traffic Patterns: For airports with curved arrivals or pilots flying visual patterns, the system wouldn’t just rely on a straight cone. It would also look at your active flight plan or your altitude in the local traffic pattern to validate your runway reservation.

This is a mobile sim, so automation definitely has its limits, but tweaking it like this keeps it flexible for the military guys while still stopping the careless airliner pilots! What do you think?

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Unfortunately, this still doesn’t fix the issue, because trolls and inexperienced users could easily abuse it. Also, what about the generic livery, or what if we’re using a typically non-military livery in place of a military aircraft that isn’t in the sim? We often use the B377 and B738 generic liveries as the E-7 and the P-8, respectively. Are those now going to be counted as military? What about escorts for civilian flights?

But like I said, we often move away from these lines, even away from the apron. Also, how would you have the system designate between the areas near the gates and areas farther away, unless you had IFAET editors manually go back and enter in sections or zones. Right now it seems that the moment I turn my aircraft off of a marked taxiway to go towards and apron or gate, even if the airliner would make that move IRL, the alarm would sound and I’d start pushing violation territory.

Right, but your suggestion was that the “final” button be greyed out until you satisfy the requirements. It just seems like you’d have to make a sweeping circle around the entire airport and surrounding area, at least 5nm. According to Google, larger jets can call out final from as far away as 12nm. That’s an incredibly large distance for a general area to be covered, and clearly the staff doesn’t have the ability nor the want individually mark and prepare every airport depending on the traffic size.

Also, another thing I noticed is that what constitutes a take off roll? Using thrust at all? A certain amount? What about planes that are lining up and need to use a significantly larger amount of thrust than normal to finish their turn onto the runway, or to move into position. There are just too many cases that can’t be foreseen and definitely won’t be understood by the system

I think at the end of the day, adding any more automatic violations is risking too much backlash from the user base, since there really aren’t anymore clear cut situations like what the speed and aerobatics violations have.

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Also, adding lots of conditional triggers (and any exceptions) would get very complex very quickly from a coding perspective, which opens up the door for lots of bugs and erroneous violations.

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or maybe its just my overdrive brain doesn’t match the violation I wanted to challenge myself, oops :rofl: