Here is where I feel you are wrong. The thing that makes better pushback shine is the fact that it pusbacks are different. In real life, pushback trucks don't work like trains on tracks. They can move where ever they like. There will be times when ATC will give you a specific pushback route, or when ATC will in fact ask you to pause your pushback.
- The ATC in FSX/P3D doesn't care about pushback so, this is irrelevant if you are using that one.
- If you are using a human controller, if it change directions once your pushback started, planning a route of the x-plane plugin won't help either. If it's just the issue of a allowing for a pause, we can easily add a pause/wait command in the GSX pushback.
When we get gate to gate towing, this on rails attitude will create even more issues: The follow me facility is as of now unusable because there is no way to make it follow a specific planned taxi route.
I'm not sure I understand the issue here. Does the x-plane pushback plugin has a follow me feature to that interacts with it, so you can plan both a gate-to-gate feature AND have the follow me car following it too ? Or, were you just saying something about you wanted to add to GSX ?
I want to be able to tell the tow truck exactly where I want my plane to go. I do not want to have to use the cumbersome editor to make permanent decisions every time I fly for every single gate. Especially when going into slew mode with my crappy joystick means sending my plane slewing all across the ramp.
Fact is, at many airports that have special pushback needs (those that couldn't be sorted with the standard Left/Right logic), DO have PERMANENT pushback routes and arrival points and, having to be forced to pre-plan them over and over, is unnecessary AND "cumbersome", when you might simply have them saved.
So, ideally, we would have to have all 3 different features, and I'm listing them from the most commonly used:
1) The standard Left/Right logic, with the ability to change a different ending point and save it, which is how GSX works now.
2) The ability to create custom routes and save them, without having to repeat them each time
3) The ability to create a new route to be used only once, with the ability to change direction after pushback is started (does the x-plane plugin allows this ? ) and to pause if required.
GSX already has #1, so we'll surely add #2, initially, and we might eventually get to #3 but, again, doing #3 before having #2, is just wrong, because it would then force to redo over and over the same route, even when it's not required.
I cannot comprehend what's wrong with giving us more control over pushback.
Because having to be forced to ALWAYS pre-plan the pushback route, it's not the right way to do it. The right way to do it would be working automatically most of the time, and being able to do a custom route too.
One thing we were thinking, to get you "more control", would be allowing you to DRIVE the pushback in first-person mode. That would be far more fun and immersive than using a CAD-like interface, as if you were a airport planner/architect.