Asking ChatGPT for routes to fly
Introduction
I have been using ChatGPT on my day-to-day life for a while now, mainly to get some help for college assignments I don’t just copy paste it though lol and other general things, and few days ago I saw a post on Reddit where someone asked this AI to plan them a route for Microsoft Flight Simulator given a few preferences. That post got me thinking how could I use it for Infinite Flight and I have found a very unique and interesting way to get ideas from ChatGPT, and I want to share it with the community.
What is ChatGPT?
Some of you might know ChatGPT, some of you may have never heard of it, so to make it simple to understand for everyone, here’s a brief description of this tool:
ChatGPT is an advanced computer program that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to have conversations with people. It has been trained on a vast amount of written text from various sources, such as books, articles, and websites, to understand and generate human-like responses. By analyzing patterns in the data, ChatGPT can provide helpful and informative answers to a wide range of questions. It’s like having a virtual assistant that can engage in natural language conversations and provide information on different topics. It’s designed to simulate human-like interactions and assist users in finding the information they need. I used ChatGPT to generate this explanation lol
How does this Challenge work?
For this challenge there is a HUB AIRPORT, which I will choose myself, where all the different routes will depart from and come back to. Then, there are the destinations. I ask ChatGPT for an extensive list of some type of destination, for example, scenic places around the world, and I must keep the original list it gives me. If two places are veery close, I will group them in one single destination. Finally, there are the routes to get there from the HUB to the destination, which are also provided by the AI. Basically, I ask it to provide me with a route from HUB to Destination, one by one so that it doesn’t mess up.
HUB Airport
For my HUB airport I have chosen Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN/LEBL) in Barcelona, Spain. Here are the main reasons for my choice:
1. I live in Barcelona, so for obvious reasons it was on my radar from the beginning.
2. As of 23.2, Barcelona-El Prat is a 3D Airport in IF. AT LAST
3. Barcelona does not serve as HUB for any full service airline. This means that there aren’t a lot of direct Long Haul flights around the world, so more stopovers will be needed, adding some spice to the routes, and also, there is a lot of interesting airline variety to play with.
4. Barcelona is one of the largest airports in Europe, but it’s eclipsed by the super-HUBs like Heathrow and Schiphol, so it’s one of the many important forgotten airports in IF. I hope this challenge gives it a little bit more visibility and some of you decide to visit it from time to time.
5. Last but not least, Barcelona is a beautiful city, so why not visit it frequently?
Aerial view of Barcelona-El Prat’s Terminal 1 (close one) and Terminal 2 (far one)
First Destinations
The first set of routes includes 40 scenic places and 30 destination airports. ChatGPT gave me the full list of 40 different places around the world, and I saw that some of them were very close together, having the same gateway, so I decided to merge those cases in a single one. Here is a map with all the destinations:
Initial Conversations with ChatGPT
Here I ask it to give me some challenge ideas for the flight simulator:
I really liked the idea of the scenic destinations, so I asked it to give me a long list of those kind of places:
Now that I got the destinations, I had to select the airports, which I did manually because I wanted precision. I tried to find the closest commercial airport to the destination, either big or small, and for the destinations that are regions rather than specific places (such as Hawaii), I’ve tried to include multiple destinations there.
Routes
To find the routes from Barcelona to the Destination airport, I’ve asked ChatGPT to give me a full itinerary, including the necessary stopovers. There were cases where it would give me multiple airports to stop on the way, in which case I would ask him to choose only one airport for each bound flight, one for the outbound and a different one for the inbound. As AI is not perfect and it does not have up to date data, sometimes it would give me a route with a multiple stop itinerary where there would be more direct options, for example, on a flight to Calgary, Canada, it suggested I took a one stop itinerary through a major European HUB like Frankfurt or Heathrow, but there are direct flights from Barcelona to Calgary in which case I would take the suggested route for one part of the route and the better one on the other part.
Example of route suggestion
Here I asked ChatGPT for a route from Barcelona to Cape Town, and it suggested multiple stopover options:
Then, I asked if it could provide me with only one option for each part of the route:
For the execution of these flights, I have set a list of rules I must follow:
1. All flights must be flown on regular scheduled commercial flights, by the exact airline and variant. The aircraft model can change from the real one if it doesn’t exist in Infinite Flight or if the livery is only available in another variant. For example, if a real flight is operated by an American B788, I will fly the B789.
2. I must follow the exact itinerary given by ChatGPT, except:
- There is a direct real flight between two airports given by ChatGPT, in which case I can only change one part of the route, the outbound or the inbound, but not both.
- ChatGPT continuously gives me non-real routes, such as flights from Europe to Sydney.
3. Once I get to a destination, I must do a sightseeing flight in the Daher TBM-930 from the nearest suitable airport, if the scenic place cannot be seen during approach on the main flight. If this requires additional, longer flights to get closer, Such as for the Grand Canyon, that I have to get there from Las Vegas I must do them in the Challenger 350.
4. I must do all flights in order, I cannot fly, for example, from Oslo to Bergen first and then Barcelona to Oslo.
How will I choose a destination from the list?
That job can also be done by ChatGPT. I will give him the list of remaining destinations and it will select one randomly, and I must fly that one.
And now, time to EXPLORE THE WORLD!
Panoramic view of Barcelona from Tibidabo
Oh, and of course, feel free to join me on any route!
