Some Questions for the Autodrive Buffs

[raran]

When using CP AND AD it's also handy to disable the "display hud with mouse" in CP and use the AD middle mouse button. only downside is you have to do this in every tractor.

[cwattyeso]

Nice to see this thread has been bumped and some more people sharing handy tips about Autodrive.

I have got another question about how to get the best out of autodrive, this one specifically in regards to trailers providing service to Forage Harvesters. I have only done Forage Harvesting once so far in the game, and well autodrive didn't seem very helpful at all. Trailers took far too long to react to me driving the harvester meaning I was harvesting crop but the trailer was nowhere in range to receive the material so I was losing it. Then when the trailers did catch up, they proceeded to drive directly behind the harvester, right up my ass and not alongside me and where the pipe could rotate and unload into them. Instead they were directly behind me and out of range for the pipe on the harvester I was using, meaning I could not unload at all. I had to give up with autodrive in the end, hire a normal worker to drive the harvester and me myself had to drive the trailer. So what settings would need to be changed to make a trailer better for Forage Harvesting? Would it be better then as well to have a specific tractor and trailer for that job with specific settings saved permanently for forage harvesting, as opposed to regular harvesting and trailer settings? Also why are some settings saved on a per vehicle base, when it would be much more handy to have them as a global setting?

[raran]

Usually when it is sniffing your behind so to speak it's "avoinding crop" even when you have no crop to the side of you. Not sure why that happens, having a long pipe on the forager should help as well. The cue for any helper on carting is basically "pipe out" so if it seems like the helper is struggling it sometimes helps to do pipe in pipe out.

The last question is a good one. I downloaded a ADcourse for Hof Bergmann which seems to have the corner speed for new vehicles set to 60%, which i prefer. I'm not sure why or what. On my other saves new vehicles always are set to 100% corner speed. But again i think this is down to the devs.

[norfolk farmer]

With the forage harvesters you need too get a good few headlands off once you have then then autodrive normally comes alongside rather than follow, I'd agree adding a longer discharge pipe makes it work easier.

[Mwal]

I would agree with the headlands, I also like to make sure my path enters the middle of the field from the side I started harvesting as well it quickens the drivers up considerably when they’re able to make a straight shot. I would also add that sometimes especially in bigger fields it can take a bit for them to calculate a course to you

[cwattyeso]

Well the Forage Harvester I was using was the Krone 1180 with the Longest Pipe possible to configure from the store, and my harvest method was the same with any harvester really and that's start on an edge of the field and work in a spiral fashion to the centre, this ensures with the standard harvesters the pipe is always on the opposite side to the crop and accessible. However what I notice with the Forage Harvester is that with the Pipe unfolded and in the 'Out' position is sits directly over the harvester and point over it's own backside. It's not until a trailer comes alongside that the forage harvester pipe rotates to a more normal harvester unloading position and unloads to the side. This is where I think I'm running into an issue, because the tractors are always seeing the Pipe as out on the Forage Harvester as it has to be unfolded for you to be allowed to harvest, yet they are locking in and targeting the spout which initially is just over the rear of the harvester, which they can never get to. It's almost like I need to tell the tractors and autodrive, that we're unloading a forage harvester, so don't aim for the where the pipe is but drive alongside the harvester and the pipe will then find you. Propbably would be helpful if there was a way in the game for me to manual set the position of the Harvester pipe after unfolding, like maybe have some controls like with a frontloader or something so I can manually position the pipe off to the side, rather then it doing it's auto trailer hunting thing.

[raran]

Well the Forage Harvester I was using was the Krone 1180 with the Longest Pipe possible to configure from the store, and my harvest method was the same with any harvester really and that's start on an edge of the field and work in a spiral fashion to the centre, this ensures with the standard harvesters the pipe is always on the opposite side to the crop and accessible. However what I notice with the Forage Harvester is that with the Pipe unfolded and in the 'Out' position is sits directly over the harvester and point over it's own backside. It's not until a trailer comes alongside that the forage harvester pipe rotates to a more normal harvester unloading position and unloads to the side. This is where I think I'm running into an issue, because the tractors are always seeing the Pipe as out on the Forage Harvester as it has to be unfolded for you to be allowed to harvest, yet they are locking in and targeting the spout which initially is just over the rear of the harvester, which they can never get to. It's almost like I need to tell the tractors and autodrive, that we're unloading a forage harvester, so don't aim for the where the pipe is but drive alongside the harvester and the pipe will then find you. Propbably would be helpful if there was a way in the game for me to manual set the position of the Harvester pipe after unfolding, like maybe have some controls like with a frontloader or something so I can manually position the pipe off to the side, rather then it doing it's auto trailer hunting thing.

Haven't tested this but there's a pipe control mod now.

https://farming-simulator.com/mod.php?l ... tle=fs2022

And i think you're on to something with the "locking in" when the pipe is still behind.

[cwattyeso]

Downloading and checking that mod out now, as that will probably help a lot ot be able to manually set the Pipe Position on the Forage Harvesters and make sure Tractors always 'Lock In' and go to the correct place to unload. Now to fiddle about with their fill level settings to make sure they seemlessly empty me, and not do what they currently do which is one trailer follows me until full, another trailer follows that one whilst its filling, when the full trailer pulls out to go and unload, the following trailer doesn't then immediately come and take it place but decides to stop and read a newspaper for five minutes, before then taking the place of trailer and allowing me to continue harvesting.

[Dezza69]

Thank you for this thread, it's really interesting to read how others do stuff and I've learned quite a lot.

Here's how I do things:
I use a combination/interaction of AutoDrive for getting vehicles to places which connect to CoursePlay for field/tool work, with Guidance Steering for helping create really straight tracks on my self-driven paths in AutoDrive where desired.

The course editor in AutoDrive is excellent and it's quite easy to create a path exactly where wanted.

This is where it gets a little like I got mad cow disease ...

Previous versions of CoursePlay allowed for easy self-made "off-field" work course creation - for example mowing large plots of land in one continuous path, however the devs have (unfortunately) removed this feature from the FS22 version and now offer only "custom field" creation. Which is great!!! But doesn't suit my play-style.

BUT!! Yesterday I learned of a little "hack" via the AutoDrive and CoursePlay Github's from another user (thank you very much Michael) and found it's still possible to create custom off-field work paths for CoursePlay converting custom field tracks to work paths. It's nowhere near as elegant has having an option to "save track as custom field or work path", but it works quite well and requires no hacking of anyones intellectual property/code. I'm just hoping, as the devs seem quite protective of their vision of how to use CoursePlay, they don't change the ability to do this ...

The suggestion on the GitHubs was good, and I've adapted it to suit me and make use of "regular expressions".

Here's a simple 10 step outline of how to do it. It may be convenient to have a custom course already saved by CoursePlay in the "Courses" folder for your guidance with the XML structure.

Ready??

!. Lower the tools and drive/record your path with AutoDrive (use Guidance Steering/other if ya want), editing it to suit. Once recorded, AutoDrive will not "drive the path" with the tools engaged, but Guidance Steering can show width guidance if needed.
2. Set an end/final "target waypoint" in AutoDrive.
3. Set both the drive/corner speeds to be fairly slow in AutoDrive.
4. Return to the start of the path.
5. Drive the path using AutoDrive and record the drive using CoursePlay.
6. Save it as a custom field.

(STAY WITH ME!! )

7. Navigate to the folder containing the custom field save file and load it into NotePad++ or BBEdit (Mac) - or any other app which makes use of "regular expression"
8. Do a find and replace using this "regular expressions" and replacement.

Regex:
(\-?\d{0,3}\.\d{2})\s(\-?\d{0,3}\.\d{2})\s(\-?\d{0,3}\.\d{2})\|

Replacement:
<wp>\1 \3 - - - - - - -</wp>

9. After doing a regular expression find/replace, copy the entire block of text of all the "<wp> ... </wp>" 's and paste them between appropriate XML tags (see example) and .. Remember to change the name and workWidth to suit your path, although the workWidth doesn't really matter. This is new to me too so you'll need to play with the numHeadlands and multiTools options to see what you get...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<Courses>
<Course name="CustomPath" workWidth="8.9500000" numHeadlands="0" multiTools="1">
<waypoints>
<wp>-126.26 -685.39 - - - - - - -</wp>
<wp>-128.40 -684.74 - - - - - - -</wp>
</waypoints>
</Course>
</Courses>

10. Save this new file into the appropriate "Courses" folder/directory.

INSTANT CUSTOM WORK PATH in 10 simple to follow steps!!!

- PRETTY EASY! Hey!!!

See the closed issues on the AutoDrive and CoursePlay Github's if you're interested in background.

--- apparently my "Your message contains too many smilies. The maximum number of smilies allowed is 8."

Happy Farming!!

[IseOlen]

Previous versions of CoursePlay allowed for easy self-made "off-field" work course creation - for example mowing large plots of land in one continuous path, however the devs have (unfortunately) removed this feature from the FS22 version and now offer only "custom field" creation.

This was excellent for mowing grass in non-field areas. Create the track and then use the same track for mowing/tedding/windrowing/baling/pickup, just make sure your implements are relatively the same width. Really miss that functionality. Sometimes, when there was more room around the field, I even created some mowing courses around fields and did those just before harvest time to "save" that bit of grass
Would use this on Frühling, where some grassfields are very odd-shaped and manual track-creation would give much better results.

[Dezza69]

This was excellent for mowing grass in non-field areas. Create the track and then use the same track for mowing/tedding/windrowing/baling/pickup, just make sure your implements are relatively the same width. Really miss that functionality. Sometimes, when there was more room around the field, I even created some mowing courses around fields and did those just before harvest time to "save" that bit of grass
Would use this on Frühling, where some grassfields are very odd-shaped and manual track-creation would give much better results.

Please go to the CoursePlay Github and lodge an "issue" stating such... Hopefully they'll listen to how people actually utilise their mod and add an option to save the track as a course again.

Edit - here's a link to their GitHub "issues" page https://github.com/Courseplay/Courseplay_FS22/issues

Also, I pretty much explained a workaround to get the exact same functionality back in my post! It works well - you can just drive the course you want.

Happy Farming!!!

[TobiHH]

Will not happen...

https://github.com/Courseplay/Coursepla ... ssues/1551

[IseOlen]

Also, I pretty much explained a workaround to get the exact same functionality back in my post! It works well - you can just drive the course you want.

What's the point of AD in there? I did save "custom field" track by accident once (as I was used to in FS19 just mowed the grass and recorded the course at the same time). So I suppose I just need to check the second part (editing with Notepad++).

[Dezza69]

What's the point of AD in there? I did save "custom field" track by accident once (as I was used to in FS19 just mowed the grass and recorded the course at the same time). So I suppose I just need to check the second part (editing with Notepad++).

… this thread was about how AutoDrive is used … I use AutoDrive so I can edit a path before using CoursePlay to record it.

Yes, seems the Notepad++ stage is where you are!!

Hope you can get it sorted!!

Happy course creating

[raran]

But you don't need to record courses in 22. If you want a custom grassfield mowed, just do the headland. CP then should detect the field. Or draw it on the map but that's a bit clunky.