Critical feedback regarding FS Traffic usability and performance in MSFS 2024

artkatz

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artkatz

Dear Just Flight Team,
As a long-time customer and owner of FS Traffic (currently running v1.0.8+), I am writing to express my deep dissatisfaction with the current state of the product, especially following the transition to MSFS 2024.
While your marketing highlights "native compatibility," the actual user experience remains frustratingly over-complicated and suboptimal. I would like to address the following points:

Obsolete Workflow: Why does the end-user still have to manage a manual "Layout Rebuilder" and dozens of external settings to get the addon working? In a modern simulator environment like MSFS 2024, this level of manual interference feels like outdated software design from the FSX era.
Poor Reliability vs. Complexity: Despite following all instructions (disabling default traffic, setting ground density to 0, etc.), the results are often disappointing—incorrect gate assignments, erratic AI behavior, and poor interaction with the simulator's ATC.
Injector Issues: Even with the latest updates, the injection system seems to struggle. I find myself spending more time in the Traffic Control Centre than actually flying.

I have previously used free alternatives like FSLTL because they offered a more "plug-and-play" experience with better visual results. As a paying customer, I expect FS Traffic to be significantly superior in terms of automation and reliability, not more cumbersome.
What are your concrete plans to automate the "Layout Rebuilder" process and improve the AI injection logic so it doesn't require constant manual babysitting from the user?
Looking forward to a detailed response.
Best regards,

artkatz

In continuation of the above, I could attach a bunch of videos to you, but I'm sure this is unlikely to help. Sometimes the add-on starts to work, but the variety of airplanes is completely miserable, as well as the presence of planes too, the feeling that you do not visit airports. Then there is such a thing as schedules, why 2022-23, who should update it??. IN GENERAL, there is a complete feeling that you developers do not care at all about the support of the software add-on for sale. And fs traffic should serve MSFS, not the other way around. OTHERWISE DISABLE THIS IN MSFS because it interferes with your program--absurd.

hunterdouglas

I very much agree with Artkatz but I feel that the developers are not good enough to solve the problems so they have just washed their hands of it.
That are two main problems they have not addressed

start up there is no traffic, but if you do a restart traffic appears. WHY?
Their answer to no GA traffic is rubbish and just shows they cannot be bothered.
I can import plenty of FSLTL GA aircraft and modify the airport timetables myself so why can,t they?
So again what Artkatz states,, if a freeware program such as FSLTL works, why can't a product that I paid good money for work.
Having said this, once FSTraffic for X was a brilliant product

Derek

@artkatz said in Critical feedback regarding FS Traffic usability and performance in MSFS 2024:

Looking forward to a detailed response.

Thank you for your forum feedback and also the ticket you raised with Support. Given the length of time the software has been out (it was released in 2023) I am not sure our idea of a detailed response will be the same as a satisfactory response for you. However, we will have a go....

we continue to work on FS Traffic. As our biggest selling title of all time it is a given that it will command some development resources. Our current priorities are pretty much the same as we advised at the end of last year: A year of updates

At the moment our main goals are still to get FS Traffic to run on console and to release another aircraft/livery update.

You ask why 2022-23? FS Traffic uses a static database of flights. We have, in the past, looked at 'dynamic' flights using live data and it simply isn't reliable enough for us. That aside, unlike some freeware competitors, we are a commercial business and so we need to pay for a full licence for our database; this is one of the largest development expenditures in the program. Licensing a source of live data for "use in a computer game" is not really practical.
So, we use what we feel is a reasonably up-to-date real-world schedule that will provide users with realistic commercial traffic at airports. Of course, this can throw up the odd anomaly when airports shut or airlines close and open, but we do update the database periodically and it is also possible to update the airports and airline data manually.
For example, we added the 22/23 schedules in version 1.0.5. They are designated 22/23 because they are from the last week in December and overlap with the first week of January.
Re: the layout rebuilding process, this has been incorporated into the TCC and will be released in the next update.
Re: "Injector issues", the TCC doesn't have anything to do with the traffic injection so you shouldn't need to do anything in there to get traffic to generate.
Various:

Incorrect gate assignments - this is a scenery issue and shouldn't really have anything to do with FS Traffic.
Disabling default traffic - You don’t “have” to. but if you don’t, you’ll get fictional airlines and, for example, you’ll get gliders at international airports and other odd aircraft at odd places.
"I find myself spending more time in the Traffic Control Centre than actually flying" - We are surprised that you find this neccessary. Most users only open it to look up where things are likely to be and when.
“Native compatibility” – that’s a Microsoft term, meaning that a product works in MSFS2024, but the model itself is MSFS2020 native, not solely MSFS2024 native. Our stance on this would be that the AI aircraft aren't really any different in either sim and so, unlike a complete plane, there's not much, if anything, to change.

The bottom line is that FS Traffic is a complex program that aims to provide realistic traffic in the host game that is better and more accurate than the default; this has been our objective for the 25-odd years we have been developing and publishing the Traffic franchise. However, it will always have to make some compromises to realism and functionailty. If we had made MSFS ourselves we probably wouldn't have done the AI traffic the way it's been done. That said, we are only making an add-on to that game, so there is only so much we can modify.

Since its release we have made numerous changes to FS Traffic in repsonse to customer feedback and we will continue to do so. As per the news item on our site, we have another update in progress and hopefully, due for release this year.

Derek

@hunterdouglas

@hunterdouglas said in Critical feedback regarding FS Traffic usability and performance in MSFS 2024:

they have just washed their hands of it.

Lavabo manus - as a famous pilot(sic) once said? We would respectfully disagree. Given the number of updates we have released for the latest incarnation of this title and the fact we have been making it for a quarter of a century, I don't think that's a very fair assessment.

With regard to your two points:

This issue is certainly fixable. If you contact Just Flight Support they can go through the usual causes and hopefully find a solution.
GA Traffic. I'm afraid you have us stumped here. We're not experts on FSTL, but we think you are referring to the way it used FlightRadar to import flight schedules including those for GA aircraft? It no longer has the FlightRadar data AFAIK. You say you have been able to manually update airport timetables to add GA traffic.
Can you explain this a bit further? We were able to create GA traffic in X-Plane and FSX but that's not possible with the current way MSFS traffic works. We have looked at workarounds, but it is horrendously complicated and it's not a case of 'cannot be bothered' - if we are to supply a GA traffic expansion (and therefore make some money from it) we (and our customers) would want it to work to a reasonable standard and, currently, that isn't possible.

We're always open to suggestions, of course. Can you explain, using your system, how you would create GA traffic at, say, Little Gransden EGMJ? Where are you getting the data from to discover what flies there and how would you do this for every GA flight globally? As I wrote above, in the past we created a database of dummy flights for our fleet of GA aircraft and applied these flights to a designated set of airfields. That's no longer possible due to the way the sim works; although finding an alternative way of doing this (that works) is something we might look at for a future version of Traffic.

hunterdouglas

The first answer is not fixable, I also use a brilliant addon GSXpro which is updated nearly weekly. The answer I got was I'm using up too much memory running both, And FStraffic is a standalone product not built to be used with othr add-ons.
But this never explains how I can go and restart and then traffic appears along with GSX running
All I want explained there is why a restart fixes it.

I'm not using any data, just adding in GA aircrat to airports that are not in your system such as EGMJ, Instead of blank airports I now have GA aircraft moving around
I'm doing it all through the FStraffic schedules and aircraft menus. It might not be perfect but it works. If I wnted to be more realistic I could have copied data from flightaware
First I downloaded the FSLTL fleet into my community folder.
I then went to selected aircraft folder and used aircraft 100 (all my GA aircraft are aircraft 100)
Then I went to the Aircraft menu and started adding in the FSLTL GA fleet
ie I picked the FSLTL_GA_C152_ZZZ just copy and past exactly from the C152 model title
ie another one is the FSLTL_GA_C172_ZZZ
Next EGMJ is not in your schedules so you need to add new airport,
Easy to find details for it, just use wiki, cordinates etc all there.
Once added I went into the Schedules menu and started pumping them in, I did it at 30 mins intervals

Lastly your other post ) "I find myself spending more time in the Traffic Control Centre than actually flying" - We are surprised that you find this neccessary. Most users only open it to look up where things are likely to be and when)

I think you will find MOST users do spend most of their time manually adding schedules because lack of product details . A good example EGNH Blackpool, NOTHING. So your customers need to spend their time fixing in th blanks

And what I would like to see in updates. A menu to modify Arrivals,

otreblA

The next update needs to be really, really good. I'm also very disappointed with this add-on.