I would like to thank Markus Brunner, on what could be one of the most innovative pieces of freeware for FS 2004.GA-Traffic is a great utility for generating AI GA traffic. Third Party AI traffic generators often add GA traffic only to the larger GA airports that commonly border the larger ones frequented by the heavies.The result being, the further away you get from a "large" aiport the more barren your GA traffic will be.GA-Traffic generates traffic independently of the other programs, the result is the presence of GA traffic hundreds of miles away from a major airport. It also evens out the skies, as now all the traffic isn't going to and from a hub.But as powerful as the program is, there are 3 hints that I feel are vital to your enjoyment of the program (I uninstalled it twice due to performance issues before. I followed these guidelines)1. GA-Traffic adds a tremendous amount of traffic to your exisiting traffic patterns. As you know, traffic and weather are the biggest frame rate consumers. If you are using Ultimate Traffic or My Traffic, recompile your traffic.bgl for UT or MT so that it excludes GA traffic. GA-traffic will make up for the slack, beleive me.2. Cut back on those sliders. With the additional traffic*.bgl, you will more than double the amount of traffic you had without it. 100 percent, can bring even the best computer to it's knees in congested areas. Cut back your traffic density to 80 or 60 percent. You will still have more and better distributed traffic than you previously had, and your frame rates will not suffer quite so bad.3. Lastly and most importantly. Only use GA planes that can be compressed by the "make AI Plane function". The default models for the GA Planes are very appealing, but were only designed to be shown a couple at a time. An airport full of Lears, Kingair's, or Extras will slow your approach to a crawl. By using the "Make AI Plane" checkbox, and limiting textures to 1.5MB or less, you get a huge performance increase with a very small loss in quality. In fact, I am so convinced of the need to compress the textures, that I don't use a plane in GA-Traffic that can't properly compress.Hope this helps some of you. The program is truly amazing, and the results while you are circling KSEA at twilight, and you see the flashing of anti-collision strobes all around, it's truly immersive.

I second that.Lately I hardly got away from the Canaries due to all those C172s buzzing about doing touch'n'goes.Well done Markus.ByeStephan

Thanks for the post, Will. It's a big help to those of us using GA-Traffic. And, of course, thanks to Markus for a great program.Jim

Some great hints and a great program.I'm not sure about #3 though. It seems the more complex aircraft still slow the sim down to a crawl even if you compress them. I think it is because the 3D model itself is still very detailed. So, I still won't use the Carenado Bonanzas or Flight1 C152's as AI :-lolSpeaking of which, anyone know of a framerate-friendly C152/150 that works as AI?Also, I never set the "Percent of GA parking spaces used for GA traffic generation" - geez, couldn't he come up with a shorter name for that slider? :-lol - anyway, I never set it to the max, I always keep it 4-5 notches down. There's still plenty of traffic, believe me, and framerate will be higher. It also means that there will actually be room for me in the traffic pattern.

where can i get it from? and i have Project AI installed as well. will that create a conflict with GA-traffic?

You can find it right here in the AVSim file library. Simply search for ga-traffic_setup.zipI recommend you go to http://www.projectai.com/packages/installer.php and use the FS2004 General Aviation Traffic Remover and if you want, the remover for Vintage traffic as well. This will leave only airline traffic. You can then install the GA Traffic Generator. Project AI will work fine with this program - PAI is only airline traffic while GA Traffic is only general aviation. I'm running this combo myself and it works great.

"Speaking of which, anyone know of a framerate-friendly C152/150 that works as AI?"I found a FS9 150 over at Simviation that works guite well as AI. File title is Cessna150.zip. Author is J.E. Narcizo. 1.36Mb zipped.Greg

I didn't mean to imply that a Carenado Bonanza compressed would be acceptable. I just meant, if I can't compress it, I won't use it. I've got some Abacus stuff I would love to throw in the mix, but they don't compress right. So I don't use em.As far as the slider goes, the parking slider goes to 150% so keeping it at default sets it to 100%. Sometimes I choose a little less, just to leave some space at some airports.I notice at 100% KRNT is chock full. And being a stones throw away from SEATAC, it's quite a challenge if the sim bogs down.

HiI have three questions:1) do you recommend to reduce the size of all FS9 default GA and historic aircraft with the "make AI" function?2) do you also observe that there seems to be a lot of AI historic aircraft around? I have reduced the probability mostly to 1% or even below, but I am still seeing quite a lot of these aircraft (sometime more than one of the same type at the same airport, which is a bit unrealistic).3) Size of the GA-traffic.blg. When I first generated the traffic it had a size of about 51 MB. I took back to slider from the default 100% just about one or two notches and now the size is only about 35 MB. Is this normal?ThanksWalter

The old gforce 150 should work fine. I'll try to post a link if i can find one...Best,sg

Hi Walt,1) No. Even using the "make AI" function within GA-Traffic the FS default aircraft can cause a noticeable performance hit. As Markus has pointed out, Chuck Dome's aircraft are a very good choice to use with GA Traffic.2) Yes. Check to make sure you have also limited the aircraft that may be in the subheadings of each airplane folder. Also, limit the "Useage" as well as the percentage of use.3) Alot of variables here, but your bgl size seems normal. I have my traffic slider (within GA Traffic) set at the exact middle position, and my latest bgl is 47Mb. I have plenty of traffic.Hope this helps,Greg

I agree mostly with what Greg said.I do have some Abacus Addon's that are lower than 1.5 Meg that I use uncompressed, (since it won't properly compress those). Any add-on that is greater than 1.5 megs, I either compress it to under, or don't use it. I haven't tried the chuck Dome stuff yet, mostly because the models I have seen listed here haven't ruffled my skirts as far as paint jobs go, so I'm worried that I wouldn't have many variations on the planes.As far as the default planes, there is no reason not to compress them. All of them are larger than 1.5 mbytes, so the compression can't hurt.As far as historic traffic. I have a differnt take than most people. I view only the DC-3 and the Piper Cub as being two planes that one might see with some regularity. So I use those. The piper cub I use quite often, and the DC-3 has less than 5% occurance so one is always either in the air or on the ramp.I then excluded all the others, such as the Curtiss Jenny's, the Wright Flyers and the Lockheed Vega's, since they are more likely to be hanging in the Air and Space Museum than flying over it.

-"As far as the default planes, there is no reason not to compress them. All of them are larger than 1.5 mbytes, so the compression can't hurt."-I have not installed the GA-Traffic program yet and have a few questions.What exactly is being compressed? Are you talking about the aircraft textures? As an example, the default C172 uses a 1,366KB (C172_T.bmp) dxt3 texture. Is this changed to a different format or size? Kurt M

Hello GregThank you for your answers, which helped me a lot.Regarding 2) I still make strange observations (I checked all the subheadings of each plane):I use the following as acceptable GA-Aircraft: All default aircraft, the historic aircraft mostly at 1% or below and with very limited usage and the modern aircraft (Cessnas, Lear, etc.) at about 40-80% with extensive usage. Additionally I installed as recommended about 7 or 8 of Chuck Dome's aircrafts and give them all 100% and extensive usage.After creating the GA-blg (now about 51 MB) with the default slider setting for parkings (100%) I see the following:- historic aircraft now greatly reduced- FS9 default aircraft seem to be preferred over Chuck Dome's aircraft, allthough the percentage is lower. I go to many airports and see masses of FS9 default aircraft, but not one of Chuck's- sometimes I see at airports all GA-parkings filled with like 10 Learjets and nothing elseAm I still doing something wrong?Best regardsWalter

>Hello Greg>>Thank you for your answers, which helped me a lot.>>Regarding 2) I still make strange observations (I checked all>the subheadings of each plane):>>I use the following as acceptable GA-Aircraft: All default>aircraft, the historic aircraft mostly at 1% or below and with>very limited usage and the modern aircraft (Cessnas, Lear,>etc.) at about 40-80% with extensive usage. Additionally I>installed as recommended about 7 or 8 of Chuck Dome's>aircrafts and give them all 100% and extensive usage.>>After creating the GA-blg (now about 51 MB) with the default>slider setting for parkings (100%) I see the following:>>- historic aircraft now greatly reduced>- FS9 default aircraft seem to be preferred over Chuck Dome's>aircraft, allthough the percentage is lower. I go to many>airports and see masses of FS9 default aircraft, but not one>of Chuck's>- sometimes I see at airports all GA-parkings filled with like>10 Learjets and nothing else>>Am I still doing something wrong?Hi Walter,all planes are handeld only by there probability setting. There is no priority setting for the MS aircraft.Did you set the probability for every livery? If you use the MS planes they have several liveries and Chucks sometimes has only one. So if you have three Cessnas at 100% and one other at 100% the probability of each plane is 25%. So you will get 3 Cessnas before you got the other plane. If you whant even probability you must set the three Cessnas to 33% and the other plane to 100%. Also the size, IFR equipment, cruising speed and others values of the aircraft is used to determine if it is usable for a particular airport. Esp. check the 'Money per flight' if this value is lower than the 'landing fee' for a airport you will not see the plane on this airport. I guess that the airport with the learjets has high landing fees.>>Best regards>Walter