FS Traffic

@Rich ok. So the freeware o payware version of the AI aircraft needs to be obtained in order for us to be able to manipulate liveries on that aircraft then? I am interpreting correctly?

I’m shocked! The problem has been around for over a year, but it hasn’t been fixed yet. Thanks to @mhron, this method worked. But I’m disappointed in the developer’s behavior.

@Rich Thanks very much. I appreciate your help!

Hi, the TMZoffset field is no longer used and can be ignored

We would not recommend using the F28 Professional, or any other "player" aircraft, as AI traffic. These aircraft haven't been optimised to be used as AI traffic and therefore will likely cause a significant performance hit in the simulator if they are used as AI traffic.

The Ground Services page currently doesn't update if new aircraft are added to the FS Traffic fleet, so any edits to the ground services would need to be made in the aircraft's aircraft.cfg file. We have logged this as a potential feature to add in a future FS Traffic update.

Mark - Just Flight

@Rich Thank you for your reply :)

Would you say the PC-update is weeks, a few or several months from now?

It is possible to delete and add airline/aircraft combinations through the Aircraft Manager > Liveries page. Right-clicking on an entry will open a menu and will allow you to delete that entry, and that menu will also allow you to add a new entry to the page.

Creating a new airline via that method will end up being a lot of work though, as you will have to set up the airline on a per-aircraft basis and you will then need to create new schedules for the airline based on the assigned IATA, ICAO, and aircraft codes.

If you just wish to see the new airline operating flights in the simulator, you can replace a current airline just by copying and pasting the new "Title=" entry from the aircraft.cfg into the relevant livery fields in the Aircraft Manager > Liveries page. So for example, you could replace the British Airways A320 with a different model/livery by replacing the "Title=" entry, and you would then see that new model/livery operating all of the scheduled British Airways A320 routes without having to edit any schedules.

I hope that helps.

Mark - Just Flight

@phm112 There is no easy way to see that information from the Traffic Control Centre without going through each individual aircraft type, but you can see a full list of airlines in the "Airlines.xlsx" file located in the following file directory: ...Community\justflight-fstraffic-module\Data\DBs

That spreadsheet will provide a list of all the airlines recognised by FS Traffic and will provide their IATA and ICAO codes. Note FS Traffic does not have aircraft models or liveries for all of the airlines in that spreadsheet, so they won't appear as Ai traffic in the simulator unless a liveries is assigned to them in the Traffic Control Centre.

Hope that helps.

Mark - Just Flight

Some additional Dash 8 variants are something we would like to add to FS Traffic too, and we do have it logged on our internal bugs/feature request tracker. We'll revisit the likelihood of adding additional airliner models to FS Traffic once we have completed work on the GA Expansion.

Mark - Just Flight

@hunterdouglas The "Time Before Departure Valve (Mins)" option on the Traffic Control Centre > Options page controls how far in advance the FS Traffic Module looks when it generates traffic.

At its default value of 90 minutes, this means that whenever the FS Traffic Module generates traffic (either at the start of a flight or when removing/regenerating traffic in the simulator), the following 90 minutes of departures will be generated at the gates based on the FS Traffic schedules.

For example, if you load into a flight at 14:00 with a value of "90" minutes set, all flights scheduled to depart between 14:00 and 15:30 will be generated at the airport.

If you reduce this value to 45 minutes, you should see roughly half the amount of traffic generated (depending on flight schedules). If you increase this value to 180 minutes, you should see roughly double the amount of traffic generated (depending on flight schedules).

FS Traffic generates all departure flights at once, either at the start of the flight or when removing or regenerating via the In-Game Menu, so this value controls the total amount of departure flights that will be generated.

There may be several limitations with setting the Time Before Departure Value (Mins) higher, such as the number of departure gates at the airport (only one aircraft can occupy a gate at any one time, so if there are more flights scheduled to depart than there are gates at that airport, all scheduled flights will not be generated), as well as a decrease in performance as more Ai traffic is generated.

Depending on how the airport has been set up by the scenery developer, the gate sizes may not be correctly set up, and therefore, may be too small to allow FS Traffic aircraft to generate. If you suspect this is the case, we would recommend testing the "Wingspan Options" in the Traffic Control Centre Options page. With this option set to Compatibility Mode (High), this significantly reduces with wingspan values of the FS Traffic fleet, allowing them to generate at the maximum amount of gates.

I hope that helps.

Mark - Just Flight

This isn't an option mainly due to performance considerations.

As a bit of an insight, every time Ai traffic has to be generated at an airport in the sim the FS Traffic module has to process the 70,000+ schedules included with FS Traffic to find the correct schedules for that airport on that day of the week and current time, then it has to find the correct aircraft model and livery, before then generating it in the simulator. That's a simplistic take on it, but there is a lot more that happens in the background that needs to be achieved just to get an Ai aircraft to generate, and then there are extra processes for situations where aircraft with alternate or fallback liveries need to be processed and assigned etc.

As I'm sure you can imagine, that is a lot of data that has to be processed for every airport and every time those processes occur that has an impact on the performance in the simulator. This performance impact can be in the form of up to a 1-minute freeze of the simulator for the largest airports, or constant micro-stutters throughout the flight depending on how we code the data to be processed.

This was an area we spent a significant amount of time on during the testing process of FS Traffic, and the current solution is the best solution we are able to come up with that allows the simulator to feel alive with Ai traffic with the correct aircraft models and liveries.

I hope that helps.

Mark - Just Flight

FS Traffic is great, I'm really loking forward to the GA expansion.

In theory, the length of the runway shouldn't be a factor for Ai Aircraft in MSFS. If the runway was too short, the aircraft would just overrun the end of the runway and then either disappear or taxi over the grass back to the taxiway.

Depending on how the airport has been set up by the scenery developer, there may be other issues that can prevent Ai traffic from landing, such as if the glideslope being misplaced, or taxi paths being incorrectly set up. Hopefully, the upcoming MSFS World Hub should fix a lot of these types of issues with default airports.

I seem to recall during the testing phase of FS Traffic that we found that wind also affects the way the Ai Traffic follows the glideslope. The strength and direction of the wind would cause the aircraft to approach the runway too high or too low and cause a go-around. This isn't something I've tested in a long time though so I couldn't comment on if this may still be a factor.

Mark - Just Flight

Did this end up working for you? When I go to add a new airline, nothing appears in the actual simulator itself, even though I can add the airlines to the database.

Sounds very odd. Have you been in touch with Just Flight support. They should be able to look iunto this for you. There is a link on their website at www.justflight.com

https://www.justflight.com/support

@Rich Can you please also consider shortening the Q400 to make a Widerøe Dash more suitable for the Norwegian short field operations?

As a general rule of thumb, we would advise against using player aircraft as AI traffic, as these aircraft have not been optimised to be used as AI traffic and therefore can cause significant FPS/performance issues if several of them are loaded into the simulator at any one time.

If you would still like to use the aircraft as Ai Traffic, then unfortunately, the Wingspan Options setting in the Traffic Control Centre will not have any effect on the wingspan of the aircraft, as this only controls the wingspan value of the Ai models that are included with FS Traffic. You could change the "wing_span" value manually in the flight_model.cfg file of the aircraft you wish to use, but please note as this is a player aircraft, any changes that are made to the flight_model.cfg will also affect the handling qualities of the aircraft the next time you fly it as a player aircraft.

Mark - Just Flight

The FS Traffic Enable/Disable option should have no effect on the state of FS Traffic when MSFS is running, so we wouldn't recommend using it unless MSFS is closed. Any changes in the Traffic Control Centre will then take effect the next time MSFS is launched.

If you would like to remove the FS Traffic aircraft with the simulator running, we would recommend using the 'REMOVE TRAFFIC' option on the FS Traffic in-game menu.

Mark - Just Flight

@TrailerSwift89 Thank you, but I'm more interested in having a consistent approach to frame-rate friendly traffic and online-representation in MSFS. At the moment I don't own the A300 either, but again, thank you for the offer!

Unfortunately, that does sound like an issue with the taxiway paths that the Ai traffic uses to navigate around the airport.

The easiest solution for this is to see if there are any freeware or payware third-party sceneries available for LFML that may have fixed the taxiway issue. There is also the 'MSFS World Hub' which is currently in beta testing, which when released, will allow the community to fix these types of issues with the default MSFS airports and they will then be included as part of the base game.

There is also the Airport Design Editor (ADE) tool that can be used to build and edit airports outside of the MSFS SDK. I personally don't have any experience with ADE, but the FSDeveloper forum should be able to offer assistance if you choose to go down this route: https://fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/ade-2020-alpha-21-hf5.455259/

Mark - Just Flight