I want to thank again Markus for GA tools. This is one of the most exciting add ins I have ever seen for FS. I have had ultimate traffic which was great for the class B airports. However, as a GA driver I rarely visit them, and go to airports I normally frequent. One of my home bases-PTK (Pontiac, Mi) is a class D airport and the second busiest airport in Michigan-almost up there with Detroit Metro in traffic numbers. Up until now-it was a desert-now it is filled with GA aircraft, in the pattern, and small business aircraft-making the airport truly alive and life like. This program is magnificent and I am very grateful for it! I can't thank you enough for this great easy to use program.Ptk now:http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

As I stated in my post on the original thread, I think this is a fantastic add for all of us who do a lot of GA flying. I'm not sure if AVSIM can do this, but as the threads and posts increase (as I'm sure they will), we may need a separate forum to discuss the ins and outs of the program. I would like to get some feedback from other GA-Traffic users as to which aircraft they find work particularly well as GA AI aircraft. I have not been able to convert some of my aircraft (Seneca, Meridian, etc) and I'd like to add some more variety to my local regional airport.Thanks again, Markus!Steve J.

One word----AWESOMEbillg

I couldn't agree more. This is a fantastic piece of work. I'm one of those guys who never seemed to get the hang of working with AI traffic. Now, with GA-Traffic, I don't have to worry about it any more. I'm using it along with Ultimate Traffic and the results are simply awesome. In less than 20 minutes GA-Traffic brought the smaller airports to life all over the world. We should all be VERY grateful to Markus for his magnificent effort here. This is the freeware spirit at it's best. Thanks again Markus. You've really helped the community.Doug

THE AIR IS ALIVE... ALIVE WITH GA TRAFIC!!! :-) I'm getting the hang of this. It's so cool to hear the radio calls while near a Class D or E, and then watch the arrivals. And stay busy while watching all the AI!Thanks Markus... you've made the sim seem so much more realistic.:-beerchug Greg

It's an excelent program and one that was sorely needed, however I can't run the generated traffic with any practicality. the BGL generated is HUGE!!!!! Just short of one gig on my set up. Took FS over 8 minutes to load. Frames were ok but if every time I want to change airports and I gotta wait 8 min to load the traffic... Nope!! If the author could add in a regional setting so only certain areas of the world could be generated it would help immensly.My hat is off to the author... I just can't run the results of the program.Brian

Couldn't agree more, Geof! Thanks Marcus. I'm no newbie to working with AI and making flight plans, etc but now I don't need aspirin after a session. ;-) I read the docs stem to stern first then jumped right in. Now I have GA AI everywhere! First thing I did was make sure some of my frame rate hogs didn't get into the mix and then started playing. It's brilliant.Best, RobRedding, CAps... as an edit for Brian.. WOW I thought the .bgl was a little large (60 MB) but I can't imagine how yours got so big! Would others please chime in and let us know how big your bgl is with GA Maker?

28.5 MB here... still causes a hit on performance. Gotta get those "framerate friendly" birds installed. :-) Greg

Brian -Have you tried turning down the overal percentage of GA traffic in the settings page? I have an older machine (AMD XP1800+) and in order to have no serious fps hit, I have used only low texture a/c thus far, and have the slider on the settings page only about half way. I just checked my GA-traffic BGL file and it is only 17.3 MB, it gives me quite a bit of traffic and doesn't take very long at all to generate or load.SteveJ.

88.7 megs here. I just upgraded a few weeks ago to a fairly high end 'puter (3.2 ghz) though-but I can't notice much difference in performance.I didn't bother with the ai reduction thing at all which is probably why the size is big.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Markus, had a great time this evening plane-spotting with GA-Traffic at my local regional airport, KHEF, Manassas, VA. Although it is a regional airport, since it does not have regularly scheduled airline flights, it was not included in UT. Now, however, I have an abundance of GA-Traffic.I had downloaded previously an updated AFCAD2 file for KHEF which includes 200+ parking slots (including 40 medium aircraft slots). Since I have an older computer (AMD XP1800+/512/ti4200) I use only a limited number of low-texture planes and on the settings page I put the slider at about half way. My GA-traffic bgl file was only 17.3 MB.To get a better idea of the resulting traffic at KHEF, I went there at mid-day and slewed my C-172 midway between runways 16L and 16R, tuned into the tower and watched the arriving and departing traffic for about 30 minutes. In no time, I had GA arriving and departing. While a C-172 was waiting to takeoff on 16R, I had a C-182 arriving from a nearby Virginia airport which proceeded to do touch and goes. As a Fokker 50 was waiting to takeoff on the longer 16L runway, a Caravan was arriving from E29 (Sonora, TX) followed by a Meridian from KGTB (Ft Drum, NY). It was fun watching this traffic, while listening to the radio traffic, requests and approvals for touch-and-goes (and watching the 182 successfully make the T&G).Thanks again for this great little program. The only problems I have had recently are in reducing the number of certain types of my medium aircraft (such as the Fokker 50, which I believe is one of the UT AI planes less than 14000kg), even when I turn their percentage to 10 or even 1% I still get several. My next goal is to learn and understand how to download and install some additional low-texture GA AI aircraft. While I was plane spotting, I was wondering if the Ultimate Traffic plane spotter would somehow work with the GA aircraft at KHEF. The UT plane spotter showed all of the traffic going in and out of KIAD nearby, but had nothing in its database for KHEF. I'm wondering if there is someway of getting that plane spotter to recognize the GA-traffic bgl file as well (perhaps such a modification is not allowed...I'm not certain of the legalities).Thanks again,SteveJ.

Thankyou Markus......................................size of .bgl 57.7megsIve never been so happy to wait in line for takeoff at my local airport.............Ed:-)

My thanks as well, although I only just downloaded and read the manual, haven't really gotten started, but I see lots of possibilities. Wouldn't have known about it without posts like this. Thanjs for that as well.A few quick questions for those who have used it some.Am I correct assuming it won't chnage the default AI at all? I'm really getting tired of all those Mooney's, seems like there's always 2 or more everywhere, at any given time.Steve J said he couldn't get the Meridian to work. I converted it to AI ok. At the end it said it would change the base plane as well, I said no to that. Also converted the 421C Golden Eagle as well. The manual for GA Tools says it uses TTools. As a test, I loaded the converted AI versions with TTools, and they work fine. In the attached screenshot, you can see the reduced quality in the textures, so I know it's using the AI version. Am I correct assuming if they work with TTools as a stand alone, they'll work with GA tools?And last, I agree, this may need it's own forum, or perhaps be included in the TTools forum.Larry Shttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/72183.jpg

Hi Brian,like SteveJ said before reduce the overall usage of available parkling places. Remember that the right most setting means 150% of all available GA parking spaces are used! Try to set the value to 50% and the traffic should be fine. A Regional setting would be possible, but I think the overall slider do the work.Your BGL file is really one gig? Not the Flightplan-GA.txt file? On my PC with Ultimate Traffic and all available PAI AFCAD2 files I got a Traffic.BGL file which is around 60 MBytes and the Flightplan-GA.txt file is at 80-100 MBytes. So 1000 MBytes sounds big, how much AFCAD2 files did you have installed?ByeMarkus

Hi Larry S,the texture reduction didn't change the orginal one. The question you answerd no is not realy needed and I will remove it in the next version.If the 'Make AI' function didn't crash the plane work :-) GA-Traffic generates the files needed for TTools, means Airports.txt, Aircraft.txt and flightplans.txt and then start TTools to generate the BGL file. This is done automaticly so you didn't need to fire up TTools by hand. The BGL file is called 'Traffic-GA.BGL' so it will not harm any other installed AI files.Nice screenshot which shows the work of 'Make AI'. The reduction is only visible at close distance, but the FPS bost is huge.