What caused a total or near-total freeze of FS9 for me on approach into EGLL?Too much AI by Ultimate Traffic. Yeah!I had it set at 50% which I thought was low. I'd been able to set it at 80% for almost everywhere else in the world and not freeze and still be able to approach with decent fps. But not at EGLL. It froze me solid at 1 nm to 7 nm out. I'd be cruising in in ymy 747 at IAS 155 ready for landing and BLAM! out of left field, with fps at a steady 14-15/sec, freeze. Aaaargh!Ditto at Gatwick. It was horrific. I scratched my head and wondered: oh, no! now what?!I did some searches and found from the many threads that AI kept appearing as a possible cause. I saw notes about "bad" bgl files and "corrupted" afcad files, etc., and feared the worst.Then I decided to reduce UT's AI to 0% in FS9. Bingo! Successful approach and at 22 fps (my cap) all the way to TD at EGLL in the POSKY 742.I have now-reset AI to 10% at EGLL and still have a fair number of a/c on the ground even at that very low percentage. It hits fps strongly too, they fall to an average of 18 on approach, dipping to 14 at times in SPOT view. What a remarkable and unexpected impact.I shall test further to see at what point the sim freezes.This is a relief. Wanted to put my experience out there in case it's of use to anybody else.JS

While AI use a fair amount of resources, they are only one contribution. So pardon the following queries to clarify:1. Are you using the default scenery?2. Are you using the default or UT (or other) provided AFCAD?3. Are you using any weather add-ons that increase 3D clouds at these times?It would not hurt to look at the traffic board for these airports to determine the AI present both in the air within 40 nm and on the ground to get a feel for the resources sucked up at these places. Perhaps flight plan adjustment in these areas will allow you to maintain the fifty percent goal you have set that seems to work OK. I would also look at the AI models present at these locations to see if perhaps specific aircraft are causing problems.If you have a registered FSUIPC or even an application registered version (I think UT uses it for its included TCAS) use the included in the zip AI Traffic Look that generates at a refresh rate you select a table of air or ground AI in a window while you are in flight or parked. See the included docs.

JS,Whilst your solution may work for your system I can assure you that I don't get any such problems on my system and I'm running UT at 100% together with Gary Summons' London Airports.I have a P4 3.0, 1Gb RAM and Radeon 9800Pro 128Mb card. I think something else is causing the problem. Maybe a bad AFCAD file as you suggest. Difficult to determine I know but my confidence in UT remains.Cheers,

Ray:I never (and I mean never)had any such problem until I flew into EGLL using the POSKY B742. Over the years, I've generally found that POSKY jets presents a challenge to whatever video card I am using and result in a slower-than-normal texture refill. I am sure that this stress plus 50% AI at EGLL, heavy default scenery textures at EGLL, overlaid by Chris Arrington's Fs2night textures, all combined to just make the system seize up.I have typically run UT at 75%, and sometimes 80 to 100% at many other airports, including KJFK which has very dense AI. Typically, anything over 80% would result in a severe chop to fps (I have DELL P4 2.53Ghz, 1024RDRAM, Ti4600) and you do need those valuable fps for t/o and landing! I shall check the traffic density using the TCAS and also run FSUIPC's traffic watch window as well to see how dense EGLL is. As best I can see, UT places volumes of traffic inconsistently with the percentage specified by the AI traffic slider within the SETTINGS window of FS9. This was certainly not a "normal" solution for me, given the great success I've had to date running FS9 on my PC with a zillion add-ons, but it was a step I decided to take after seeing threads indicating how AI could indeed cause sim freezes.Now that I've found a fix, I can focus on experimenting to find the ideal AI traffic level. I may tryot search for a bad AFCAD or bgl or whatever, but I am not sure how I'll do that. JSP.S. Ronzie: I have default scenery at EGLL. I use 3rd party, reduced density clouds globally.

JS,<>Ah, so you could switch to another aircraft temporarily, increase the Ui traffic to 100% and check if the problem occurs. If it doesn't then it's the Posky aircraft that's to blame, not UT or a dodgy AFCAD file (unlikely). Your mention of night textures also changes things. Do the crashes happen in daylight or only at night?I've flown into KLAX with over 130 aircraft displayed without a crash happening although frame rates were given a good bashing of course.<>I agree. Reducing the slider can have little or no effect but at some point reducing it by a further small amount will result in a large drop in aircraft. Difficult one to call really.If your system will allow a higher number of Ai aircraft to be displayed without killing the frame rates it seems a pity if using the Posky 747 limits UT's potential.Cheers,

Not familiar with the POSKY 747, but are you using detailed VCs for the various views?

No VCs used with any of my 3rd party 747 panels. Only VC for any of my 747s is the default one used on default 747-400. I am about to test things at EGLL once again....JS