What's new in World Traffic 2.2

[hhbrbg 139]

Hi,

there are many rumors about World Traffic 2.2..
Here are a few facts.
Kind regards
Tom
 

 

[Version 2.1.3 (current)]

This is the current available version of World Traffic. If you like more info follow the link to the webseite of World Traffic or the link to the WT 2.1x documentation
 

[Version 2.2 (upcoming)]

A) AIR TRAFFIC (version 2.2)

The main focus of 2.2 lies on auto air traffic generation

 

Citing Greg (dev. of wt2) from Classic Jet Simulations below

[start quoting CJS (Greg)]

 

The autogen air traffic generation algorithm

1. Flight plans are generated for the departure and arrival airports as well as airports within 120 Nm of these airports. Flight plans are also generated for airports within 120 Nm of the great circle flight path between the arrival and departure airports. Departure/destination airports are given first priority and if not all of the allowable flights have been used, they are spread among airports in the departure/destination regions. If still not all of the flights have been used up, they are spread among major airports on the great circle path between the destination and departure airports. Options (described below) tune how flight plans are generated.
2. If any user-defined flight plans exist where enabled and where the airports are along the user aircraft's route, these will be loaded first. User-defined flight plans can be created in detail with waypoints as is done currently or in a new simple tabular format as well. These routes are assumed to be the most realistic so are loaded first.
3. Next OpenFlight data is used to create flight plans for any airports along the user's aircraft route where user-defined flight plans have not been loaded. OpenFlight data contains route information for the major airlines of the world at major airports.
4. Finally, the region files as described below are used to fill in flight plans for airports with no user-defined flight plans and no OpenFlight data. The region files will be used mostly to generate GA and regional traffic as OpenFlight has most major routes defined.

 

Traffic Generation Options

• Checkboxes to enable/disable any of the generation algorithms as described above
• Checkbox to enable/disable generation of flight plans for airports along the user's route, ie in between the departure and arrival airports.
• Slider to set max percentage of gates populated at an airport on resynch (can also be defined in the airport operations file)
• Slider to set max flight plans generated up to 20000.

 

Region Files

Region files are used as the last generation algorithm described above where no user-defined flight plans or OpenFlight data exist for an airport.

• Aircraft types are selected based on an airport's size which is determined by looking at if the airport has a tower, how many paved runways it has, and the length of the runways. An airport considered big will have larger aircraft, more aircraft, and more international flights than a small airport which will be given smaller aircraft more local flights. A really small airport will be given only a few GA flights.
• Aircraft operators are selected based on data in pre-configured region files. These files are created for each region on this map: https://en.wikipedia...on_airport_code
• As an example, a region file for region "C" (Canada) includes all of the operators that fly in and out of Canada and a ratio of flights for the various operators. Each operator has entries for all of the regions that it flies to. For example Air Canada has connecting regions C (Canada), K (USA), EG (the UK), LF (France), etc. An operator such as Air France only has LF as a connecting region so Air Canada flights can fly to any number of domestic and international airport when the flights are generated for a Canadian airport and Air France flights will only fly back and forth to France.

 

Using this algorithm, auto-flight generation will generate civilian airliner, general aviation, and military flights for anywhere in the X-Plane world for any year past or present. A future update will use real-world flight schedules for the current year for wherever they can be found so WT 2.2 will be a good base for that.

 

Here is what the region file looks like for region C, Canada. You can also add in operators that no longer exist as traffic can be generated for any year if you want to generate flights for 1970 for example and for when we get some more classic airliners available for WT. I hear Bluebell might be working on some. Fields for operators in order are:

• 3-character operator ICAO name (append C for cargo eg Air Canada Cargo would be ACAC)
• Relative ratio for that operator (if operator A has a value of 15 and operator B a value of 1, operator A will have 15 times as many flights)
• Arrival or destination ICAO airport region (* is anywhere)

START_OPERATORS
ACA 75 C K EB ED EG EH LE LF LI LS MM MY OM PA PH RC RJ RK SB TF TN UU WS VA
VH VI Y Z
WJA 74 C K EI EG MB MD MK MM MR MU MW MY PH TA TB TF TL TN TX
JZA 86 C K
TSC 4 EB EG EH EI LE LD LF LG LH LI LK LP LS MD MH MK MM MN MR MT SK
SWG 2 EG EH LE LF LI LP MD MH MK MM MP MU MZ SK TB TN
DLH 15 ED
KAL 5 RK
DAL 11 K
CSN 1 Z
CCA 1 Z
JAL 1 RJ
PAL 2 RP
UAL 9 K
CPA 5 VH
AAL 5 K
EGF 10 K
ANZ 1 Y
ASA 8 K
ANA 1 RJ
KLM 2 EH
CES 3 Z
CAL 2 Z
EVA 1 RC
BAW 3 EG
AFR 3 LF

SAA 2 FA
JAI 2 VI
ETH 1 HA
SAS 6 ES EN
SIA 1 WS
QFA 4 Y
AVA 2 SK
LAN 2 SC
LOT 1 EP
NONE 40 C K
CFC 20 C
END_OPERATORS

 

[END quoting CJS]
 

B) GROUND TRAFFIC (version 2.2)

There will be no changes in ground traffic in version 2.2 in comparison to version 2.1.x What means, that one has to use a tool like AGRE or XGRC in order to have ground traffic. Both tools need ATC Taxi routes (created with World Editor WED) data defined in the X-Plane airport database.

What this means for AI AC Landing:

Without ATC taxi routes created in WED and additional ground routes created with AGRE or XGRC, aircraft will land on the runway and will disappear there when come to a halt.

No ai ac taxi from runway to gate.

What this means for AI AC Takeoff:

Planes will appear at takeoff time on the runway and takeoff. No taxi from gate to runway.

 

[Version 2.3]

Version 2.3 has auto-ground routing implemented for airports where ATC taxi routes (taxiways) data is defined in the X-Plane airport database.

What this means for AI AC Landing:

Existing ATC taxi routes in the X-Plane airport database will be detected by World Traffic and aircraft will land on the runway and taxi from runway to gate.

What this means for AI AC Takeoff:

Existing ATC taxi routes in the X-Plane airport database will be detected by World Traffic and aircraft will taxi from gate to runway and takeoff.

[Colonel X 1,430]

Take my money.

[ohsirus 241]

Such a complicated tool to use for AI, I just don't want to have to fiddle with each and every airport I fly in and out of.

[Don Quixote 76]

I wouldn't get too excited about the update. It's been "close" for... well, a long time. I think it's great that we are getting new features, but we'll probably have to wait for a while yet.

 

Personally I've never got along too well with WT2 in it's current state. There are some great user-made tools to create flight plans and ground routes, but it still is seriously complicated. And since there won't be automated ground routes in 2.2 either, things won't get much easier soon.

But to be fair, once the routes have been set up, WT2 does work very well. If only it was a little easier to do so...

[Colonel X 1,430]

Turns out we're headed straight for 3.0 later this summer, here's the quote:

 

I'm already working on auto-ground routing, so I'm just going to skip release 2.2 and release 3.0 later this summer. This will give auto-generated flights and taxiing with the push of a button and the setting of a few preference boxes and sliders. This will give a more complete product, closer to what I had envisioned from the beginning. Again, I wish I could work on this full-time but WT doesn't sell well enough for that. Also, I'm in North America unlike our Russian X-Plane developer friends who do quite well with a much lower cost of living over there. I get a lot of flack about slow progress compared to other products, but I'm doing the best I can. Thanks for all your support.

[airlinejets 709]

This will give auto-generated flights and taxiing with the push of a button and the setting of a few preference boxes and sliders. This will give a more complete product, closer to what I had envisioned from the beginning.

 

 

 

I wish I could work on this full-time but WT doesn't sell well enough for that.

 

 

The answer to slow sales lies in the first quote.

[Colonel X 1,430]

 

 

The answer to slow sales lies in the first quote.

 

What this guy is creating own his own deserves a little bit more respect, sorry. Yes the initial version was rather uninteresting, but you have to start somewhere. Within a years time, we will have traffic in X-Plane that competes with UT2 in FSX, beating the hell out of it in terms of visual quality (have you seen the 1000+ AC models?), all done by one guy. I have fiddled a lot with version 2.1 and it's already very powerful (and completely free of bugs).

[mwilk 1,106]

What this guy is creating own his own deserves a little bit more respect, sorry. Yes the initial version was rather uninteresting, but you have to start somewhere. Within a years time, we will have traffic in X-Plane that competes with UT2 in FSX, beating the hell out of it in terms of visual quality (have you seen the 1000+ AC models?), all done by one guy. I have fiddled a lot with version 2.1 and it's already very powerful (and completely free of bugs).

It actually is a nice program, but until ground traffic is automated, it's going to be difficult to generate a large number of sales. The ground route part is just to labor intensive for most users. (me included) If he gets that figured out then this will be a great program for X-Plane.