Hi

I've had FSXfor a long time but not really got into it until the demise of Flight.

One thing I'd always missed compared with military sims was interacting with a functional world with other aircraft doing things and going places.

FSX AI just seemed to wander about aimlessly.

 

Now I have a new PC, a reinstall of FSX with DX10 and higher settings, some good 3rd-party aircraft and scenery, and suddenly, in just one location I get lots of ATC controlled AI traffic landing, taking-off and transitting.

 

The location is the free UK2000 Birmingham airport (which contrary to Daniel's review is now my most exciting airport! :-)

My first two approaches were waved-off by ATC due to conflicting traffic, I've been fed into a stream of landing traffic (causing silicon chaos due to my incompetence...) and held whilst taxiing to let another aircraft land.

 

Is this level of traffic due to the airport triggering the traffic (with parking spots or something else?) or programming the traffic (though it doesn't seem repetitive - I have seen other fields that generate a repeated sequence of traffic)?

Or is it just the size of the airfield?

Most importantly how do I get it elsewhere?

 

I've tried the free UK2000 Cardiff and Bristol, which seem to have minimal traffic.

 

???

 

Cheers

Keith

Would be interesting to know, if you're talking about default FSX AI (which I assume) or a third party AI program, as well as what your traffic settings are.

I don't know about the default AI, since I quit using it a long time ago, but I think it depends on the size of the airport and the amount of traffic handeled by this airport when FSX was developed, which MS probably tried to reproduce, when your settings are at 100%. This would mean that you should have a lot of traffic at major real world hubs, even at lower settings. I'm not totally sure about it, but just try EGLL, EDDF, LFPG, KSEA or KJFK to name only a few. Smaller airports, not to talk about airfields (which tend to have very little to no trafic at all) will thus have less planes arriving and departing. I don't know the airports you talk about, but I guess that Birmingham might me some kind of a hub (BA or more likely BMI in real world, I assume), wheras the other two might be some less important places.

 

If you use a third party addon, you will see lots of planes go into and fly out of airports, and waiting for a TO/landing clearence can then take quite a bit time, even at smaller airports.

But be aware, that if you use some program like World of AI, you'll get flightplans in FS9 format, which can be read and interpreted by FSX, but the backward compatibility does not allow that FS9 and FSX traffic coexist in the sim. This means, that one single FS9 traffic file will have the effect, that no FSX traffic is displayed. Hence, if you have only have the pakcage of one operator serving the particular airport, you won't see any other traffic there, unless you convert the flightplans to the FSX format. This can be done with a utility named FSX flightplan converter.

 

I hope, that this was somewhat helpful.

 

Regards,

Flo

Thanks for the reply.

I'm just using default FSX AI, the number of different 3rd-party options are mind-boggling and they are mostly airliner traffic which I don't want.

Currently got GA traffic set to about 45% as the guides generally say AI is an FPS killer, and airliner traffic to 0%. Will bump GA to a 100 and see!

 

I could accept a weighting to the larger airports (even though a lot of airliner hubs get low GA traffic) but it seems all or nothing ... hoping there is something I can tweak.

Will try EGLL and KSEA.

 

I don't think I have any FS9 traffic - I've certainly not installed any.

 

Cheers

Keith

I think Mytraffic includes a lot of GA traffic, you could try that too.

I believe the default ATC in FSX isn't really capable or smart enough to handle large amounts of traffic, hence the frequent go arounds. There are add-ons available that will smooth out the distances of the airplanes etc. so that go arounds don't happen as often, I'm not sure what the names are though.

A freeware program called AI Smooth controls AI to make sure AI is kept in a holding pattern until you land or takeoff. It also controls AI on the ground to minimize your wait time for takeoff (and other things).

 

I have my AI set to 40% and GA to 10% because it is a known frame killer. It would be nice if AI were loaded only for the general surrounding area of your flight but, unfortunately, all flights worldwide are loaded and are taking off and landing worldwide.

 

Best regards,

Jim

While the AI system devised by MS is pretty sophisticated, it's using the default aircraft which means it is using full blown designed models as it's AI... which can hurt your FPS. The good thing about them being full aircraft is they have good ADE's. There are two things I would suggest: 1) Get realistic looking but FPS "lite" aircraft models to replace the default and 2) make sure they have good aircraft ADE's (the flight model) built into them. The better the flight model the better/more realistic they will take-off and land.

 

Yes, AI does appear to be geared towards tube-liners but if you search around you can find plenty of good performing GA AI models out there. For example, I just d/l 15 different GA files/models from World-of-AI. Orbx has free AI for North America regions and Australia. I have a GA traffic bgl over 200MB! A little big, so I am breaking it down to different regions.

The good thing about them being full aircraft is they have good ADE's.

 

As near as I can tell from watching AI aircraft a lot, AI aircraft don't really use the flight model. The performance is based on a few numbers from the config file, plus possibly a few other factors.

 

I once did a hairy crosswind landing and after parking the radio traffic indicated an AI aircraft landing on the same runway I'd used. I really wanted to see how the AI would handle the crosswind, so I switched to AI aircraft view for that plane. He landed as if there was no wind at all.

 

Lots of smoke and mirrors going on there.

 

Hook

That very well could be. I was gonna suggest to the original OP to do some plane spotting at his favorite airport watching the default AI land compared to 3rd party AI (but that was getting ahead of his original question). Less optimized models will land short, stop too fast, etc., but those with a good flight model will react better. This is based on info I gathered at FSDeveloper forums over time. Could be that in real tricky weather they still can't hold up well.

AI Smooth

will get it thanks. Wonder if there is a fix for ATC left/right circuit confusion?

Get realistic looking but FPS "lite" aircraft models to replace the default

will do thanks. Is there anything documenting the traffic BGLs?

 

So I upped the GA traffic to 66% and tried several large airports in the UK ... a couple of planes in the distance maybe, otherwise nothing.

Relocated to Birmingham and within minutes I was #2 to land with another just departed and yet another holding at the runway entry for us to clear.

Relocated to Seattle, again nothing apart from a couple of lights in the distance.

 

Will try 100% GA and some airliners tonight, Heathrow and JFK...

 

Thanks for all the advice

Cheers

Keith

I can back Jim up on AISmooth. I use UT2 and mostly fly into the big airports so if I'm not flying on VATSIM and there is a large amount of AI aircraft I have AISmooth running.

UT2 is the most realistic because the AI flies real routes. For default and other addons, airplanes take off then fly gps direct to. You can put airliners down and make GA percentages high if you want in the ut2 interface.

...It would be nice if AI were loaded only for the general surrounding area of your flight...

 

Good point Jim! Perhaps I can point out that IF deliberately schedules aircraft along the route around your flight time and uses your AI aircraft.

It would be nice if AI were loaded only for the general surrounding area of your flight but, unfortunately, all flights worldwide are loaded and are taking off and landing worldwide.

 

Not exactly, Default AI is injected in about a 120nm radius of your aircraft, not worldwide. If you install traffic explorer from the SDK you can see this. UT2 injects it's own and reduces the radius to a max of 50nm, this can be further reduced by a slider in the interface. In addition there is also an option to not inject ground traffic, if you are above a set altitude (Also set by a slider.)

Thanks Tom for clarifying my comments and reading the manual. B) It might have been an earlier version of a FS that all traffic was loaded at startup. I thought I had seen it in the MyTrafficX manual but it states traffic is loaded in a 150 nm radius of your location. I do know that installing AI traffic increases the length of loading fsx considerably. I'll have to run process monitor again as I recall seeing AI loading in other States and in Europe when loading FSX but that could have been static AI from commercial addon airports.

 

Best regards,

Jim