To me, there is nothing more beautiful than airport activity. The sight of beautiful aviation talent from around the globe shows that despite the fact there are different companies that compete against each other, pilots are united as one as scientists and artists of aviation. .... and it's not cool to be the only plane at the gate when you are trying to simulate such environment.

 

I would like to know more about AI traffic add-ons. Are they accurate in terms of the airlines that actually fly to a given airport (i.e. am I going to see Qantas at the airport in Dubrovink? Will I see an IcelandAir A380? )? More importantly, how is AI traffic when it comes to performance, namely FPS and VAS usage? Anything I should know about AI traffic before I blindly buy an add-on?

 

Thank you.

Great post....I am, after many years of simming, finding myself bereft of company in the air and ground...for the sake of frame-rates...

 

...except when running VoxATC...I look forward to reading the responses engendered by your post.

 

Cheers,

Chas

To answer your last part about the VAS increase, in my experience in using both UT2, WOAI and custom built AI, they don't affect VAS very much as they do overall FPS.

 

As an example, at UK2000 EGLL running 70% UT2 traffic and a bunch of WOAI cargo packages at 100% in the PMDG I typically have about 1.5 gb of free VAS available at the end of the flight parked at the gate with all the traffic running. If I use the hotkey to zap all the UT2 traffic, my VAS remains at or around 1.5 free but the FPS goes from the mid 20's to the mid 30's or higher.

 

So the AI make more of a difference in FPS on my system but don't affect VAS very much.

 

The only time you might need to be careful is if you use the WOAI packages that are labeled as FSX. In some of those packs they use higher resolution textures in 2048 or 4096 rather that the standard 1024 or 512 variety. In that case a ton of AI with large textures may take a toll on VAS.

 

Typically the biggest offenders of high VAS usage are HD cloud sets of 2048 or 4096 in either DXT or worse, 32 bit. Addon airports that use a lot of 2048 or 4096 textures in either DXT or 32bi format. Vector products like ORBX Vector or UTX with all he options turned on, namely the residential roads. And lastly running tons of photo scenery and having it all turned on at once.

 

If you manage all those items correctly then the VAS consumption from AI shouldn't be to bad or put you over the edge.

AI Traffic in P3D affects FPS rather than VAS.