What FS Traffic *CAN* do that FSLTL Can't
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WARNING: This is long-winded and verbose.
Cutting to the chase-- In FS Traffic you can create your own routes from scratch, FSLTL you can't. That's it in a nutshell, if interested in more, then read below--I have personally had a week to tinker around with JFFST (Just Flight FS Traffic), from this point simply referred to as FST), though will admit I have no personal first-hand experience with FSLTL, other than what others here and on YouTube have said it is. So a quick caveat that I'm no expert, but here are my observations on what FST can do, that FSLTL can't.
FSLTL from what I understand, injects live traffic all over-- no matter what airport(s) you depart or arrive. There are no traffic location limitations like we've seen in FST, but FSLTL has limitations of its own. You can only get LIVE traffic for the moment you are in flight simulator, and no other time of day.
So let's say you get off work at 8pm, get home and eat, and by the time you sit down to enjoy a little simming before having to go to bed, it's 10pm. You have FSLTL, and would love to interact with traffic during morning or afternoon rush hour, but you can't, because all FSLTL will give you is the level of traffic that is live at ten o'clock at night (in your local time zone)-- which won't be much. Now yes, you can go ahead to a location 8 or 9 time zones ahead of you and it may be morning rush hour for airlines there, but let's say you want to see rush hour traffic at your local airport.
FST on the other hand, can give you traffic any time of day you choose, (just so long as you start the simulator with the clock already set to your chosen time of day-- changing the time with the slider in the on-screen weather menu, while in the game-- won't change traffic at all). You want another time of day, you gotta' go out of the sim and come back in with the new time. Okay, a bit of a PITA, but I'm sure they are working on it to the point that one day, that will not be a factor.
Yes, the routes are from a fixed week in the summer of 2022, but that's okay. It is not meant to be live traffic, and the developers never promoted it as such. In fact there are some advantages that I will bring up in the paragraph below. If you recall the old AIFP and AIG-- working in concert with one another-- had flight plans from various seasons back in the 2012 to 2016 range, and it was more than suitable for flying AI traffic and populating the skies.
The point being, FSLTL and FST are two completely different animals, and can't really be compared.There's one other thing I have not seen anybody bring up, that I think is a valuable pro to FST. You can create your own flight plans and choose your own planes and departure/arrival city pairs. It can be as fictitious and "far-fetched" as you want it to be-- and from a creativity and customization standpoint, I think this aspect is actually more interesting than just injecting live real traffic and forgetting about it. But that's just one man's opinion. I can see the value of live traffic, but I see the value of fictitious time-tables as well.
For example, last week, I noted that there were many Southwest Airlines planes parked at Oakland, CA; Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc. Southwest owns some of these places (or so it would seem by the number of their planes generated). And if you look at the timetables for SWA, they literally leave a place like KOAK every 10 to 15 mins beginning at 0605 local.
I really couldn't tell for sure which planes in the flight plans I saw taking off, because so many of them were Southwest. So to be certain that the customization of my own flight plan worked, I decided to try something way out of the box:
I created a city pair from Travis AFB (KSUU) in Fairfield, CA to Edwards AFB (KEDW), and told the program that I wanted a SWA 737-800 to leave Travis every day (1234567) at 0200 hrs, and fly to Edwards. Unlike the old AIFP program, it doesn't yield an arrival time down at Edwards, but it did acknowledge my departure time at Travis.
So why would I do such a thing? In the absence of all other aircraft, it would theoretically be my test that the program works as intended for that one aspect of creative flight planning. In other words, adding yet another SWA flight from KOAK to KLAX, isn't going to show me much, as I'll lose my flight in the may lay of all the other SWA's also in the area. But nothing else is programmed to take off from Travis AFB and fly to Edwards AFB, and certainly no SWA planes have any business being at an Air Force base; so if I see my plane at 2am at Travis, then I know the program works.
Point is, this is a creative use (just one of many I could imagine) that you can accomplish with FST that FSLTL you can't.
Now that being said, I was unfortunately unsuccessful at creating my KSUU to KEDW SWA flight, leaving at 2am 7-days as week. But also bear in mind, I haven't completely read the manual all the way through, and was just jumping around and pushing buttons and making edits, hoping I'd get it right. If I actually take the time to read the manual all the way through, I'm sure with a little patience I can make it happen.
At this point, the program is not nearly as robust as AIFP was for making complex fictitious and/or historical flight plans that go everywhere. But given time, patience, and a little positive vibe sent their way, I don't see why this program can't be the new AIFP on steriods-- so to speak.
In conclusion, I just want to say there's been a lot of negative comments here, with the assertion that FSLTL can do it better. All I'm saying is FST was never meant to be another iteration of FSLTL.
For the creation and editing of existing flight plans, there really is nothing else like this out there. Give the program and the developers a chance and with subsequent updates, and they may just surprise us all.
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Well, fair enough that you counting on JFFST. But to be honest to payware 30-40 Euros only to create a own FP at the end which might be work or not is not what users want I guess. FSLTL is freeware and yes you cant create your own FP`s but this was as well never the itention. FSLTL brings more models, more repaints to the sim as JFFST and , at least actually, the program works in comparison to JFFST. I didnt have one single problem during installation nor during the use. It brings live traffic as it should be. And Ok if mentioned the timezone....I live in Germany...if I fly in the evening european time there still a lot of traffic and if I like I change to the US and fly there with live traffic....
So I guess we could discuss here hours and hours abour pros and cons....if i look in the JF forum or other bigger Sim Forums there are a lot of unhappy and frustrated people this is needs to be mentioned as well.
Lets see how the bugs get sorted out in the next weeks/month....for me, at the moment absolutely no reason to pay for such a product if I get another one for freeCheers
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I can confirm everything that B3 Burner says about it. I've waited a long time for a program that is as flexible as FS Traffic. It's not perfect yet, but I hope that the developers will work with Asobo to get the problems under control.
Actually, it's exactly the same discussion as with the weather engine of MSFS. The problem: MSFS weather is always live weather. But I need historical weather and this is where xEnviro comes in.
I don't have the perfect solution yet, but it works quite well:
When it occurs to me that I want to fly a morning flight from EDDH to EDDL in northern Germany in the evening, I use the historical weather from xEnviro. Then I plan a flight in Simbrief with historical weather. I get the weather data from Active Sky XP. The weather snapshot from Active Sky XP can easily be used in Pilot2ATC to fly from Hamburg to Düsseldorf with the prevailing air traffic at the time thanks to FS Traffic and weather with full ATC support. You can try anything, it works!
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Good read.
That's actually also my main reason to go with FST (if it works), the ability to inject "historical" traffic.
I usually only have time to go flight simmin' near midnight, so live traffic at that time doesn't really satisfy my needs, as I'm primarily fly real life flights/routes/times. I have a similar issue with weather. Until we finally get historical weather in MSFS (like activesky provided for P3D) I'm stuck with "live" weather that doesn't reflect the temperatures etc. on a - let's say - noon summer flight with 38°C OAT, as it will always be much colder at midnight (when I fly).
So I hope FST will further improve an iron out some bugs etc. as historical/flexible traffic is something I really like.Cheers
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@disco79stu xEnviro 2020 for MSFS delivers historical weather. And it is in sync with AS.
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now with FSTL injecting FST models, that difference is gone. Their discord channel is also full of useful info
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But as with everything.... JF will improve it and it will evolve.
If nothing else, that is a given.
Having said that I'll wait until it does improve.
I currently use default Ai traffic at very low levels... like 20 percent, as it really hammers the CPU at big airports.
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@fugazi74 The difference has not gone away, since each program works in a different way.
FSLT uses FR24 as a source to inject traffic in "real time".
FS Traffic uses flight plans from an internal database to inject IA traffic at the departure and destination airport and the route between them. (Although I have observed that the number of flights between the route is very low).As they are two different solutions it is difficult to compare them. The only thing we could compare is the quality of models and textures and their performance in the simulator.
For me, at the moment, they are complementary. Sometimes it is better to use one than the other.
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@b3_burner said in What FS Traffic *CAN* do that FSLTL Can't:
FST on the other hand, can give you traffic any time of day you choose, (just so long as you start the simulator with the clock already set to your chosen time of day-- changing the time with the slider in the on-screen weather menu, while in the game-- won't change traffic at all). You want another time of day, you gotta' go out of the sim and come back in with the new time. Okay, a bit of a PITA, but I'm sure they are working on it to the point that one day, that will not be a factor.
You have to leave your flight and go back to the flight map and reset the time there, there is no need to leave the sim though, I have checked.
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@digfs the sweet spot for me is using FSLTL injector with FST models, they offer support for this and according to several yt videos it appears to be the best solution across the board. I've deleted all AIG and FSLTL models that FST carries anyway.
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@fugazi74 said in What FS Traffic *CAN* do that FSLTL Can't:
@digfs the sweet spot for me is using FSLTL injector with FST models, they offer support for this and according to several yt videos it appears to be the best solution across the board. I've deleted all AIG and FSLTL models that FST carries anyway.
Yes I know. I've tried it too, but this has nothing to do with the previous conversation.
The internal functioning of both programs is completely different. FSLT's injector injects the simulator flights by reading the data through the FR24 app, while FS Traffic has pre-arranged flight plans for each airline, based on the day and time you fly. Therefore, a fair comparison cannot be made.
