fsx-se FSX GA-Traffic

[johnbla 31]

Has anyone got this wonderful little programme to work in FSX SE? I can start it but it does not show any aircraft, only airports. When I generate a flight plan, it is only about 1kb. 

 

Many thanks

John

[Bjoern 1,157]

It shows aircraft for me, but only those in the "SimObjects" folder. Make sure the FSX path in the "Settings" tab is correct (...\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\FSX).

[scottb613 1,188]

HI Folks,

 

Hah - didn't know there was an FSX version of this - I'll have to check it out... I spent a bunch of time with this in FS9 - one issue I couldn't overcome was that it never seemed to consider addon airport AFCAD's with far greater number of available parking spaces - it just created traffic for whatever was available at the default version of a given airport - anyone know if this can be overcome in the FSX version ?

 

Regards,

Scott

[johnbla 31]

It shows aircraft for me, but only those in the "SimObjects" folder. Make sure the FSX path in the "Settings" tab is correct (...\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\FSX).

 

Thanks Bjoern,

 

I have this as my path F:\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX, It appears to read the airports on start up, but not aircraft.

 

Anyone else have any ideas or any other similar programmes.?

 

Thanks

John

[Bjoern 1,157]

HI Folks,

 

Hah - didn't know there was an FSX version of this - I'll have to check it out... I spent a bunch of time with this in FS9 - one issue I couldn't overcome was that it never seemed to consider addon airport AFCAD's with far greater number of available parking spaces - it just created traffic for whatever was available at the default version of a given airport - anyone know if this can be overcome in the FSX version ?

 

GA-Traffic is able to scan the "Addon Scenery" folder for additional airports. There's sadly no way to make it scan any other folders though.

 

 

I have this as my path F:\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX, It appears to read the airports on start up, but not aircraft.

 

Anyone else have any ideas or any other similar programmes.?

 

Even the default aircraft won't show up.

 

GA-Traffic is the only tool of its kind that I know of.

[scottb613 1,188]

Thanks Bjoern !

[Bjoern 1,157]

Alright, I got GA-Traffic to recognize my external AI traffic and ADEX/AFX/AFCAD storage folder. The trick is to set up a fake FSX folder with "SimObjects\Airplanes", "Addon Scenery" and "Scenery" folders and to use a few junctions.
I'm using FSX:SE on Windows 10, but this should work with FSXMS and any other Windows version. Probably even P3D.
 

First, make sure that you're using the RC2 version of GA-Traffic (fsx_ga-traffic_releasecandidate2.zip in the library).
 
Then, somewhere on your FSX drive (or within the GA-Traffic installation folder) create a folder and name it "FSX_Fake" or something like that (example: "E:\FSX_Fake"). Within this folder, create another folder named "SimObjects". Then, create the "Scenery\World\Scenery" folder structure as in the real FSX folder. The scenery folder is important because GA-Traffic will put the compiled traffic file there.
 
The crucial step is to create junctions (not shortcuts!) between your actual storage folders for AI aircraft and your fake FSX folder.
 
Open a command prompt (run cmd.exe) and create junctions. The basic command is

mklink /J [entire path of junction] [entire path of junction target]

 
Example: My AI Traffic is stored in "E:\FSX AI Traffic\Aircraft". So in order to link this folder to the fake FSX folder, I have to create a junction with:

mklink /J "E:\FSX_Fake\SimObjects\Airplanes" "E:\FSX AI Traffic\Aircraft"

 
The result is a "folder" named "Airplanes" in "E:\FSX_Fake\SimObjects" which actually opens "E:\FSX AI Traffic\Aircraft" when double-clicked. Exactly what I want.
 
Repeat this step for "FSX_Fake\Addon Scenery". My ADEX/AFX/AFCAD files are stored in "E:\FSX Scenery\AFX Files\scenery". The "scenery" part of the path is not necessary as GA-Traffic is smart enough to adjust for that. Hence, the command for creating the junction is:

mklink /J "E:\FSX_Fake\Addon Scenery" "E:\FSX Scenery\AFX Files"

Note: Junctions can safely be deleted just like any other folder. So if you mess up the creation, delete the junction and try again.

 

Once both junctions were successfully created, start GA-Traffic, go to the "Settings" tab and put the path to your fake FSX folder ("E:\FSX_Fake" in my case) into the "FSX Path" field.

Restart GA-Traffic. Your "planes" list should now be fully populated and pressing "Collect Data" in the "Collect Data" tab should collect data from your ADEX/AFX/AFCAD storage folder.

 

 

Notes:

• If you've got your AI traffic sorted much more neatly than in a single folder, you might have to improvise or get creative.
• Ditto for your ADEX/AFX/AFCAD files.
• Make sure to hit "Apply" after every single change you do in the UI.
• Sorting through the airplane list if you've got a comprehensive collection of AI models and (un)marking planes for use as GA traffic is a pain in the butt. Nothing you can do about it.
• For good measure, close and reopen GA-Traffic before pressing "Generate Flightplan". Otherwise, in case of a program crash during FP generation, any custom settings will have to be re-entered the next time you'll start it up.
• You might need to collect airport data before being able to generate flight plans.
• Once you're generating flightplans the GA-Traffic window will freeze after a short time and be marked as "Not Responding". Open the task manager and see that the actual process is alive and well. Watch its memory consumption increase. If prompted about the tool's inactivity, click "Wait for the program to respond".
• Even on a modern i5 or i7 with 4 GHz, flightplan generation might take ten minutes; depending on the number of AI aircraft and the settings chosen in GA-Traffic.
• 33 different types of GA AI aircraft will produce a traffic file of about 110 MB, so be warned!
• If you have the FSX SP2/Acceleration SDK installed, you can replace "TrafficDatabaseBuilder.exe" in "GA Traffic\Bin" with the one from the SDK. GA-Traffic ships with the FSX RTM version. This is not necessary, only "nice to have".
• The traffic file generation time and size of the generated traffic file may vary. I'm not sure what causes this, but one time I'll get a 130 MB file (for my 34 AI aircraft) in relatively short time while other times, the generation takes twice as long and I end up with a 300 MB file. If you think the generated file is absurdly large, back up the  first file, repeat the generation and compare file sizes. The smaller of the two files is most likely the better one.

[johnbla 31]

Many thanks Bjoern for your very informative reply and help. I am away for a wedding for about 4 days, so when I get back I will work on this and post a reply here.

 

John

[scottb613 1,188]

Hi Bjoern,

 

Holy smokes - thanks for going the extra mile - I'm looking forward to trying this as soon as I have some time... Much appreciated...

 

Regards,

Scott

[Bjoern 1,157]

Hope it works out for you, guys.

 

I've only documented my experiments as I hadn't used GA-Traffic in quite a while and needed to set it up all over again.

Hopefully, this post will be found by others having problems with creating GA traffic.

[johnbla 31]

Hi Bjoern

 

I copied your instructions to the letter. I have junctions in my FSX fake folder pointing to my FSX SE scenery/world/scenery folder and a junction pointing to my FSX SE/simobjects/airplanes folder.

 

When I open the folders in my FSX fake folder, they point to the real folders as above.

 

However, once again, GA Traffic starts and appears to read the airports but for some reason will not populate the aircraft field. 

 

As I had both FSX and FSX SE on my HD and only recently deleted my FSX folder, I am wondering if GA Traffic is looking at a wrong scenery file or something.

 

I downloaded the 5.9mb FSX GA Traffic file at http://www.flightsim2004-fanatics.com/uploads/DefaultGA/Def_GA_DL.htm, but when I put the bgl file into scenery/world/scenery, I lost all of my airliner traffic.

 

If anyone could help or know where I could download a compiled FSX traffic bgl, I would really appreciate it.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

John

[Bjoern 1,157]

I copied your instructions to the letter. I have junctions in my FSX fake folder pointing to my FSX SE scenery/world/scenery folder and a junction pointing to my FSX SE/simobjects/airplanes folder.

 

When I open the folders in my FSX fake folder, they point to the real folders as above.

 

However, once again, GA Traffic starts and appears to read the airports but for some reason will not populate the aircraft field.

You've got my instructions all wrong. If your AI aircraft are in "[FSX]\SimObjects\..." anyway, you do not need any fake folders and junctions whatsoever. Ditto if your AFX/ADEX files are in "[FSX]\Addon Scenery". You only need them when your AI aircraft and airport files are not in these folders.

GA-Traffic should simply be pointed to your FSXSE root foder and that's it.

 

As I had both FSX and FSX SE on my HD and only recently deleted my FSX folder, I am wondering if GA Traffic is looking at a wrong scenery file or something.

Check the "FSXPath" in the "Settings" tab of GA-Traffic. If it's correct and GA-Traffic still refuses to recognize even the default aircraft, I suggest checking the registry folders for FSX/FSXSE for the correct paths.

 

 

I downloaded the 5.9mb FSX GA Traffic file at http://www.flightsim2004-fanatics.com/uploads/DefaultGA/Def_GA_DL.htm, but when I put the bgl file into scenery/world/scenery, I lost all of my airliner traffic.

FS9 format traffic files wipe out FSX traffic inside of FSX. Use AIFP* to convert toe file into FSX format.

 

 

*http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=AIFP