No traffic at departure airport
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I've been using FS Traffic for almost a year and have rarely had problems with traffic not showing up at the origin airport. I think it only happened to me 2-3 times.
However, recently I tested different graphics settings in MSFS to get better performance, but I didn't end up liking it and reverted to the graphics settings I used before. Since then, I started having problems with FS Traffic.
Now, traffic constantly doesn't appear at the origin airport when I load a flight for the first time. Out of the 5 times I load it, in 4 there is no traffic at the airport. It doesn't matter if the airport is big or small. This problem is solved if I go back to the menu and load the flight for the second time, but it's inconvenient to have to do this almost every time now just for traffic to appear.
I checked the manuals, selected wingspan compatibility mode (high), disabled ground services and none of this fixed it. I don't know what kind of graphics settings may have interfered with FS Traffic, but I reverted all of them to the ones I used before and the traffic settings were not changed.
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@edu2703 Could you let us know if you are running Sim Update 14, or are you running the Sim Update 15 beta? I'm not able to replicate this issue with Sim Update 14 but cannot rule out this being an issue with the Sim Update 15 beta as I don't have that installed.
We have come across some instabilities with SimConnect during testing, which can cause issues with the generation of Ai traffic in the simulator, so that may also be a factor in why traffic doesn't always generate.
With regards to settings, there shouldn't be any settings that would prevent the generation of AI traffic at the departure airport. There are, however, certain settings that can increase the object count/VRAM in the simulator significantly, and that can cause the simulator to cull the AI traffic models and cause the AI traffic to appear invisible. If you suspect this may be the issue, we would recommend setting the following in MSFS Options > General Options > Traffic:
AIRPORT VEHICLE DENSITY: 0
GROUND AIRCRAFT DENSITY: 0
WORKER DENSITY: 0
LAND AND SEA TRAFFIC: All set to 0Hope that helps.
Mark - Just Flight
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@edu2703 Could you let us know if you are running Sim Update 14, or are you running the Sim Update 15 beta? I'm not able to replicate this issue with Sim Update 14 but cannot rule out this being an issue with the Sim Update 15 beta as I don't have that installed.
We have come across some instabilities with SimConnect during testing, which can cause issues with the generation of Ai traffic in the simulator, so that may also be a factor in why traffic doesn't always generate.
With regards to settings, there shouldn't be any settings that would prevent the generation of AI traffic at the departure airport. There are, however, certain settings that can increase the object count/VRAM in the simulator significantly, and that can cause the simulator to cull the AI traffic models and cause the AI traffic to appear invisible. If you suspect this may be the issue, we would recommend setting the following in MSFS Options > General Options > Traffic:
AIRPORT VEHICLE DENSITY: 0
GROUND AIRCRAFT DENSITY: 0
WORKER DENSITY: 0
LAND AND SEA TRAFFIC: All set to 0Hope that helps.
Mark - Just Flight
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@edu2703 Could you kindly get in touch with Just Flight support via the following link and they will be able to look into this further for you: https://www.justflight.com/support
They will likely ask you to send over a console log of what the FS Traffic module is doing in the background and we should be able to tell from that what the cause of the issue is.
Mark - Just Flight
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@edu2703 Could you kindly get in touch with Just Flight support via the following link and they will be able to look into this further for you: https://www.justflight.com/support
They will likely ask you to send over a console log of what the FS Traffic module is doing in the background and we should be able to tell from that what the cause of the issue is.
Mark - Just Flight
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@edu2703 Support should provide you with a document with all the steps required, but if you would like to look in advance the console log can be found via the following method:
- Turn ON Developer Mode via MSFS Options > General Options > Developers > Developer Mode > ON
- Move your mouse to the top of the screen so the black menu bar opens
- Go to Debug > Console
- In the search bar, search for "FS Traffic", and that will filter out all non-FS Traffic-related messages
- Click the "Warnings" and "Messages" tabs to disable the excess messages.
Note: Having developer mode enabled may cause an additional performance impact as it has debug information running in the background, and it does prevent the simulator's log book from updating at the end of a flight, so we would recommend only enabling developer mode when necessary.
Mark - Just Flight
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@edu2703 Support should provide you with a document with all the steps required, but if you would like to look in advance the console log can be found via the following method:
- Turn ON Developer Mode via MSFS Options > General Options > Developers > Developer Mode > ON
- Move your mouse to the top of the screen so the black menu bar opens
- Go to Debug > Console
- In the search bar, search for "FS Traffic", and that will filter out all non-FS Traffic-related messages
- Click the "Warnings" and "Messages" tabs to disable the excess messages.
Note: Having developer mode enabled may cause an additional performance impact as it has debug information running in the background, and it does prevent the simulator's log book from updating at the end of a flight, so we would recommend only enabling developer mode when necessary.
Mark - Just Flight
@Mark I believe I found the problem:
I did a test running only FS Traffic, without any other addon and FS Traffic worked perfectly on the first load.
So my first suspicion was that a specific addon was causing interference with FS Traffic. I downloaded MSFS Addon Linker to gradually add my addons back to the Community folder. I added around 80% of my addons when FS Traffic started having the problem of not loading traffic on the first load again.
Doing additional tests, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't an specific addon causing the problem. Basically FS Traffic doesn't like that I have too many addons in the community folder.
According to Addon Linker, I have a total of 454 addon folders, which together take up 879GB of disk space, with the vast majority being airports, so it's quite large compared to the average user. I know the general recommendation for those who have a lot of addons is to use Addon Linker and only load the addons that you will use in each session, but I confess that I was lazy about this and didn't do it.
So I don't know if this can be classified as a bug or just a limitation of FS Traffic, but anyway, I'm having success with FS Traffic loading airport traffic on the first load, limiting the amount of addons to load.
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@Mark I believe I found the problem:
I did a test running only FS Traffic, without any other addon and FS Traffic worked perfectly on the first load.
So my first suspicion was that a specific addon was causing interference with FS Traffic. I downloaded MSFS Addon Linker to gradually add my addons back to the Community folder. I added around 80% of my addons when FS Traffic started having the problem of not loading traffic on the first load again.
Doing additional tests, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't an specific addon causing the problem. Basically FS Traffic doesn't like that I have too many addons in the community folder.
According to Addon Linker, I have a total of 454 addon folders, which together take up 879GB of disk space, with the vast majority being airports, so it's quite large compared to the average user. I know the general recommendation for those who have a lot of addons is to use Addon Linker and only load the addons that you will use in each session, but I confess that I was lazy about this and didn't do it.
So I don't know if this can be classified as a bug or just a limitation of FS Traffic, but anyway, I'm having success with FS Traffic loading airport traffic on the first load, limiting the amount of addons to load.
@edu2703 Interesting! Thank you for letting us know. We haven't seen this reported before but I have made a note of it so we can take a look into this further.
Without us knowing which addons you have installed, do you suspect it may have been caused by the sheer number of mods in general, or do you suspect it may have been caused by having a large number of mods installed and loaded in close to the airport where you were having the issues at?
The latter we have seen in the past, as MSFS seems to have some sort of object count limit where it starts to cull Ai Traffic once a certain object count limit has been exceeded. This may be the case if, for example, you are at a highly detailed third-party airport, with lots of clutter (baggage carts, cones, people, stairs, etc), then additional road traffic, sea traffic, Ai traffic, etc.
Mark - Just Flight
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@edu2703 Interesting! Thank you for letting us know. We haven't seen this reported before but I have made a note of it so we can take a look into this further.
Without us knowing which addons you have installed, do you suspect it may have been caused by the sheer number of mods in general, or do you suspect it may have been caused by having a large number of mods installed and loaded in close to the airport where you were having the issues at?
The latter we have seen in the past, as MSFS seems to have some sort of object count limit where it starts to cull Ai Traffic once a certain object count limit has been exceeded. This may be the case if, for example, you are at a highly detailed third-party airport, with lots of clutter (baggage carts, cones, people, stairs, etc), then additional road traffic, sea traffic, Ai traffic, etc.
Mark - Just Flight
@Mark Please forget what I said in the previous comment
After having problems again with FS Traffic not showing traffic, even with few addons loaded, I went back to investigate the source of the problem.
After several tests, I was able to verify, this time without a doubt, that the problem was in fact a specific addon, in this case, GSX Pro. I actually had a problem with GSX Pro, where couatl.exe, which is the program that needs to be running in the background for GSX Pro to work, most of the time it would crash the moment I loaded a flight in MSFS and I had to manually open it for GSX to work.
It turns out that every time coualt.exe crashed, FS Traffic didn't show traffic at the origin airport for some reason. After several tests I was able to confirm that this was the reason FS Traffic didn't show traffic. The times that FS Traffic showed traffic on the first load were precisely the times couatl.exe didn't crash after loading a flight.
I searched the Fsdreamteam forum for how to solve the couatl.exe problem and found out by simply running FSDT Live Update. I no longer have crashes and as a result, FS Traffic is working normally with all addons loaded.
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@Mark Please forget what I said in the previous comment
After having problems again with FS Traffic not showing traffic, even with few addons loaded, I went back to investigate the source of the problem.
After several tests, I was able to verify, this time without a doubt, that the problem was in fact a specific addon, in this case, GSX Pro. I actually had a problem with GSX Pro, where couatl.exe, which is the program that needs to be running in the background for GSX Pro to work, most of the time it would crash the moment I loaded a flight in MSFS and I had to manually open it for GSX to work.
It turns out that every time coualt.exe crashed, FS Traffic didn't show traffic at the origin airport for some reason. After several tests I was able to confirm that this was the reason FS Traffic didn't show traffic. The times that FS Traffic showed traffic on the first load were precisely the times couatl.exe didn't crash after loading a flight.
I searched the Fsdreamteam forum for how to solve the couatl.exe problem and found out by simply running FSDT Live Update. I no longer have crashes and as a result, FS Traffic is working normally with all addons loaded.
@edu2703 Thanks for letting us know. We have recently received a comment from another user reporting that a GSX/couatl crash caused some engine/APU issues in one of our aircraft, so it looks like this GSX/couatl crash may be affecting more than just AI traffic.
We'll get all of this feedback logged and we'll investigate if there's anything we can do to improve this on our end. Thanks again for the informative feedback!
Mark - Just Flight
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I have actually the same problem, which couldnt be solved by support, as I had problems with analysing and sending the results of the console, so I gave up.
At first only a few airports were affected, but now all of them are. When I try with the same flight again (not just resuming or restarting) generally traffic appears.
I dont use GSX, so the couatl.exe is not the problem for me. -
I am another user who is experiencing the problem of no traffic at the departure airport. The problem seems to have started around SU15 but I think I had it prior. Sometimes I could restart MSFS and get traffic but now it happens almost all of the time. I also use GSX and GAIST (Shipping Traffic). I have tried disabling GAIST) to see if that would help and it worked a couple of times but I am still experiencing the problem on most flightsim sessions.
Jeff -
I am another user who is experiencing the problem of no traffic at the departure airport. The problem seems to have started around SU15 but I think I had it prior. Sometimes I could restart MSFS and get traffic but now it happens almost all of the time. I also use GSX and GAIST (Shipping Traffic). I have tried disabling GAIST) to see if that would help and it worked a couple of times but I am still experiencing the problem on most flightsim sessions.
JeffMuch will depend on the airport(s) you are departing from, where you are going, time of day and what else is going on in the rest of the game. I think your best bet would be to contact Just Flight support and they can look into this specific case for you. There is a link on the website www.justflight.com
See: https://www.justflight.com/support
