I use UT2 and pound for pound it is more frame rate friendly than the default AI. However, the sheer amount of traffic you can generate is a FPS crusher, especially if you adjust the in game settings and adjust up the number of aircraft that can spawn and increase the spawning radius in addition to just the simple amounts of AI traffic. I have pretty powerful machine and I'm just hanging on to 15 FPS or a little more at major airports like KLAX or KSFO with traffic densities at 75%. There are alot of generic blue repaints which can pretty easily be fixed by downloading WOAI traffic packs and converting them, but it is time consuming to do so.

 

Also when you start out your flight it takes a few minutes for things to really get moving in the AI world, so I generally start a flight and then put the sim rate to 4x while I'm getting the flight plan ready and all of the pre flight stuff. After a few minutes things are generally really bumping though, especially at major airports there will be lines of planes waiting to takeoff and lots of planes on final.

 

Since I haven't tried the other options I can't comment. UT2 for me is good but the things I don't like are that

1) You have to manually fix all of the generic repaints

2) It takes a few minutes for things to get going

3) A massive amount of AI (which I love having) is a massive FPS hit

Run UT2 in FSX and My Traffic in P3D. Performance is about the same but my traffic seem to render AI a little better and relistic plus it has the Carrgo companies and military flights, True you can manually add a few cargo companies in UT2 but its a pain,

This MTX vs UTX stuff pops up here too often. There are advantages and disadvantages, or properly put, differences and strentghs in both of them. I chose MTX because of it has all kinds of traffic and huge set of airlines. Planes on airport at night is also important immersion factor for me also, though I don't fly that often during nights. IMO Models are good enough, as I don't do any AI spotting and MTX 5.4 especially has quite nice model quality and Burkhard has improved them with every release. AI is just for immersion for me and I don't need completely realistic schedules. If I would, I'd just subscribe MTX live and problem is solved. If you want better models and good schedules, UT2 is probably the best option.

 

All in all, I'm extremely happy with MTX. What I don't get is complaining about MTX UI as there really is no need to use it but during setup and possibly for loading patches and if you like, setting up some extra preferences for traffic.

 

For extra feature, Burkhard is bringing in MyCaptain (first release With 5.4a), which brings ship schedules to FSX/P3D. Next is direct copy-paste from the manual:

This version comes with around 100 different ships and a naval traffic in the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Sea, so the area between the island of Sardinia, Sicily and the Italian main land, containing very important harbors like Genova, La Spezia, Naples, Palermo, Civitaveccia and several hundred more, the area of Singapore and of Hong Kong, so yes you will see ships in the Suez Channel.

 

Not that important for regular flight simmer, but interesting still. May be of some interest for certain P3D professional users now or in the future. Beats me. I haven't yet fiddled with MyCaptain, but I'm still excited to see where it is developing. If MyTraffic is your choice, I would definitely go with MTX and not the Aerosoft versions, as MTX offers more for about the same price.

I have been a Ultimate Traffic fan for years. I replace a lot of the aircraft that come with UT2 - sometimes even the painted ones if I can get a better color match with freeware AI. I also use a lot of WofAI but I don't import them in to UT2. As a result, I do have traffic at airports before UT2 loads - not much but it depends on the airport.

 

I am using summer 2011 schedules and for some reason, it does hold aircraft overnight. Last year I tried to troubleshoot the issue and found that many flights were loading loading days before the flight. This can be a problem at small airport (like LLET where I discovered the issue) but it also results in large airports with more activity. It is a bug that only I seem to experience but it is a good bug IMHO. It is the reason I have been reluctant to update to current schedules.

 

So, if you think an airport is a little sparse, load a couple freeware plans in BGL format. In the US, you could install freeware United, American and Delta and deactivate them in UT2.

Perhaps because MTX has a bunch of random airlines... I wish I would have know they didn't have realistic schedules before I bought. In fact I'm probably going to be UT2 anyway....

Yeah of course a lot of routes especially with these non scheduled and smaller airlines are incorrect, but with some bigger airlines it does have real schedules, although if you put your AI slider over 50% then it adds also all kinds of random ones to fill the skies.

 

I just got myself tired of poor FPS with WOAI and just wanted to fill the skies, that's why I got mytraffic. Also I mostly fly in Caribbean and Southeast Asia and both of them have many of these smaller non scheduled airlines and others not covered by Ultimate Traffic.

Perhaps because MTX has a bunch of random airlines... I wish I would have know they didn't have realistic schedules before I bought. In fact I'm probably going to be UT2 anyway....

 

MTX schedules are pretty darned realistic at ~25% Ai traffic. To the point where I was flying for a virtual airline that used real schedules of the airline it mimicked, and I kept running into the problem that every time I tried to do a flight, I'd be in a race with an AI version of my flight which would inevitably delay me at one end of my journey.

 

My biggest problem with MTX is nothing to do with the schedules, or even the quality of the AI aircraft (although I can see the issue). It's the huge addition to the load time that it adds. It takes FSX load-up from about 30 seconds to about 5 minutes to the Fly Now dialog, and adds about a minute onto the loading scenery portion of the black screen after starting a flight. UT2 doesn't seem to affect the load time at all somehow.

You sound like you might need to defrag your harddrive if its taking that long to load, do you have a load of Photo scenery installed too?

 

With FSX and MTX installed on SSD's my load time is about 30 seconds longer with MTX active, total time to load to the cockpit on the second load of the day is about 1 minute for me, but I do have over a hundred gig of photoscenery installed too and that also greatly effects loading times. I have spent a small fortune on 3 SSD's totalling about 750Gb over the last few years though.

I must be doing it wrong, my install of UT2 has aircraft overnighting at airports...seems like every time I land at KAUS, for example, after hours, I get shunted to the GA parking or nothing because the gates (sometimes GA too) are full.

 

I've run both MTX and UT2 alternately, but have been just UT2 for the past year or so.

I must be doing it wrong, my install of UT2 has aircraft overnighting at airports...seems like every time I land at KAUS, for example, after hours, I get shunted to the GA parking or nothing because the gates (sometimes GA too) are full.

As far as I know, there are no planes at night if there are no planes scheduled to fly at certain time period. That is, if I remember correctly, UT2 spawns aircraft to airports just 15 or 20 minutes before scheduled take off, so if airport is active most of the night there is a possibility for parked aircraft to exist. Or UT2 has had an update, beats me. All I know that this was the situation about a year ago when I was doing my thinking what AI addon to get.

As far as I know, there are no planes at night if there are no planes scheduled to fly at certain time period. That is, if I remember correctly, UT2 spawns aircraft to airports just 15 or 20 minutes before scheduled take off, so if airport is active most of the night there is a possibility for parked aircraft to exist. Or UT2 has had an update, beats me. All I know that this was the situation about a year ago when I was doing my thinking what AI addon to get.

 

Heh, well, I just know that on more than one occasion, when landing late at night, I sometimes have to tell UT2 to reset the traffic in order to clear out some parking spots at the airport I'm landing at. It's completely possible that it doesn't stock airports at night; I've just not noticed I suppose.

MTX schedules are pretty darned realistic at ~25% Ai traffic. To the point where I was flying for a virtual airline that used real schedules of the airline it mimicked, and I kept running into the problem that every time I tried to do a flight, I'd be in a race with an AI version of my flight which would inevitably delay me at one end of my journey.

 

 

I can't believe that with the traffic I'm seeing where I work ATC... It's a smaller airport (but big runway) and in FSX I've got all sorts of American carriers... Do you have something that I don't? At the major USA Big B hubs 25% traffic levels are not realistic at all - there's hardly any airplanes. I use about 60% to get good levels.

I can't believe that with the traffic I'm seeing where I work ATC... It's a smaller airport (but big runway) and in FSX I've got all sorts of American carriers... Do you have something that I don't? At the major USA Big B hubs 25% traffic levels are not realistic at all - there's hardly any airplanes. I use about 60% to get good levels.

I run my MTX airliners 40 and GA 20, and major airports are packed. I've been thinking that I should probably lower the value a bit. Burkhard states that 30% should give pretty realistic traffic in the areas where schedules are available.

I have MyTraffic version whatever and I found it less intuitive than UT2 so I switched back to UT2. I have had (old install) WOAI in order to have traffic at VHHX. There is one issue that is minor and probably by design that I find annoying and that is the way UT2 spawns traffic. Let's say I am setting up a flight at an airport if I have to alt enter out of fsx because say I forgot to set my profile on my controller when I alt enter back to fsx then all my traffic resets from the terminal. So if I am setting up my flight by the time I am ready to taxi I have a very long line up of departing traffic. A small annoyance and I am sure the developer did it for a reason. It was not bad when I had WOAI installed because the traffic did not re-spawn.

The thing that I like about UT2 is that the AI flights use the jetways and I get a kick out of switching the IDs on and checking their departures and destinations for the AI I see whilst I am on route.

 

The UT2 addons for UPS and Fedex in the avsim library certainly added value to the UT2 package.

 

I tried both of the other major packages but wouldn't budge from UT2 now.

I run my MTX airliners 40 and GA 20, and major airports are packed. I've been thinking that I should probably lower the value a bit. Burkhard states that 30% should give pretty realistic traffic in the areas where schedules are available.

 

I've heard this too.... what am I doing wrong then? Most of my testing airports are payware, like FlightBeam, FSDT, and FlyTampa.

 

For instance... here's 60% at FSDT's KDFW... if I set that to any less the number of planes drops off dramatically. 40% is almost a boneyard. Are you testing with payware or default airports?