Ok guys, I am a longtime user of FSX and now P3D. I have spent tons of money on scenery, utilities, weather engines you name it. I don't ever fly, instead I spot planes and follow them from airport to airport with the my most important add on called super traffic board. With it I can sit back and watch a plane leave from the gate and fly across the world and land at another airport. I love seeing all the planes moving around the airport with ground vehicles and traffic. I know super traffic board does not exist for x-plane but is there something similar that x-plane has that will more or less do the same thing. It's very important to have the right planes at the right airports and the most current liveries for them. Also, is there a list of the detailed airports that are in the release version. I am not against the idea of buying scenery but I am not sure how many I would have to buy to get the level I have now with P3D. I would appreciate any advice because I am pretty sure I am not the only one thinking of switching. Thank you so much.

If you place so much importance in AI, especially accurate AI, X Plane is absolutely not for you. The default AI system is a joke- up to 10 planes that fly random routes around you. There's two AI addons available- X-Life is free and adds random planes with random liveries on random routes, so you can see things like a United Embraer flying from Ulaanbator to Beijing or an Easyjet flight from Green Bay to Toronto. The other is World Traffic, which is a little more accurate in that you build AI per airport and tell the program what number of flights should operate there by each airline, but the routes/types are still random. You can try the XP11 Demo and X-Life for free just to play around, but I doubt it's what you're looking for. 

X-plane shines when used for "flying" your own plane, not sitting around watching others.

As far as the scenery...there's tons of it and mostly freeware...with some payware. IMO the out of the window look in XP default scenery is far more real than what I had in FSX... to me XP is just a much more realistic experience all around, especially in flight modeling and VFR plausable scenery.

That all said Id say to stick with what you've got. Sounds like you more into "watching" than flying...and X-plane cannot be used with tons of AI anyway. AI (and ATC) are XP's weak points.

Is this for real?  Why spend tons of money to sit and watch virtual AI traffic?  

Stick with P3D 

3 hours ago, bosflo said:

I would appreciate any advice because I am pretty sure I am not the only one thinking of switching.

I get the whole virtual aircraft spotting thing - a simulator can be many things to different people. Heck, I've spent too many hours simply sailing a boat in FSX...

However, X-Plane is most definitely not going to be the choice for your preferred activity. As pointed out, the default AI is not at all realistic, and there simply aren't any add-ons to bring it close to that level.

 

Come on guys, everybody is entitled to fly however they want, its his money after all.

@bosflo

I doubt that you will find something similar to what you are looking for, however, XP shines in other areas, for $60 you get both version 10 and 11, take the plunge or download the demo and decide for yourself. 

2 hours ago, CarlosF said:

Come on guys, everybody is entitled to fly however they want, its his money after all.

@bosflo

I agree the immersion is different for everybody and not per se the same

As for the OP just try the demo ;-)

If you wish you can follow the author's thread on world traffic V3 release  http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/107522-world-traffic-30/&page=13#comment-1162268

 

7 hours ago, bosflo said:

Ok guys, I am a longtime user of FSX and now P3D. I have spent tons of money on scenery, utilities, weather engines you name it. I don't ever fly, instead I spot planes and follow them from airport to airport with the my most important add on called super traffic board. With it I can sit back and watch a plane leave from the gate and fly across the world and land at another airport. I love seeing all the planes moving around the airport with ground vehicles and traffic. I know super traffic board does not exist for x-plane but is there something similar that x-plane has that will more or less do the same thing. It's very important to have the right planes at the right airports and the most current liveries for them. Also, is there a list of the detailed airports that are in the release version. I am not against the idea of buying scenery but I am not sure how many I would have to buy to get the level I have now with P3D. I would appreciate any advice because I am pretty sure I am not the only one thinking of switching. Thank you so much.

Eventually this will come, not right now.

Next version of WT3 will get closer to what you experience in FSX with traffic board. My database is growing fast, I have now 400 carriers updating them to the most available real schedule. Also updating liveries although many special skins are not available due to FAIB refusal to grant permission for his model conversion. A real pity because nowadays most of the liveries are done for FAIB model and we had to resort to old DJC models for Boeing and Airbuses. But I'm none the less enough satisfied.

In my case (I'm testing WT3) I get pretty realistic traffic at airports where good ground routes (read Afcad) are available. Traffic follow SID and STARS and realistic airport flow can be assigned (for example heavies on 34L at Rome while mediums on 34R and takeoffs splitted on 25 and 34L).

What I hope will grow fast is the availability of covered airports with the new option to automatically create ground routes from WED layout. I will never stress how important is for scenery developers to provide a wed ATC net but some are still too lazy to create one.

I was going through the thread of World traffic v3 and i saw also one reply from the developer about WT v4 here:

"Wt4 - networking, advanced ATC, ability to act as air traffic control controller, interface with x-combat to provide some combat capabilities like sending AI planes to bomb stuff"

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/107522-world-traffic-30/&page=9

And i found another hint here about WT4 :

"That's the plan for WT4.  I want to create an air traffic controller plugin to take over plugin control of aircraft so that the user can take over the role of Air Traffic Controller if they want.  If you can use speech recognition I think we should collaborate on this as that's outside of my expertise."

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/109233-sample-world-traffic-30-auto-generated-ground-routes-for-ksea/&page=2

 

Seeing this topic's title, I thought this might be an interesting the thing for me to try.  But reading on, it assumed too much prior knowledge.  My question would be:

I have used only FSX for years, and almost always with Photo' Scenery.  Would X-Plane be an improvement for me at this stage (for example, would I need to purchase again all my Photo' Scenery) or would I get others things not available on FSX?

 

I was a virtual traffic spotter for years. Usage of FSX was limited to make AI flight plans, paint AI planes, install everything, keep it up to date and enjoy spotting what was created before. Could not do that with XP9, so I started flying the flight sim again and it much fun again. Maybe you give it a try. 

29 minutes ago, twister1853 said:

I have used only FSX for years, and almost always with Photo' Scenery.  Would X-Plane be an improvement for me at this stage (for example, would I need to purchase again all my Photo' Scenery) or would I get others things not available on FSX?

FSX photo-scenery is not compatible with X-Plane, but the good news is that there is a lot of free photo-scenery available for X-Plane and, more importantly, you can create by yourself photo-scenery for every part of the world by using an utility called Ortho4XP.

What would you get by using X-Plane?

.) A more advanced rendering engine in terms of lighting, reflections, etc.;

.) Realistic lights at twilight/night;

.) The ability to integrate photo scenery with 3D OSM buildings, producing a very realistic scenery. See e.g.:  http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/30549-w2xp-vfr-world-sceneries-hd/     http://simheaven.com/?p=14454

Thanks guys, I'm glad I asked. I am staying with P3D.

MyTraffic, Ultimate Traffic even Traffic 360 for FSX/P3D and then SuperTraffic Board - well there is not even a whiff of these in XP11 and I'm a guy who rarely flies P3D  anymore despite the fact I like to fly heavies. I do it because of the great 64 bit format, graphics, stability, and the growing list of super and complex planes being developed for XP11. I know about WT3ff but if anyone came up with a comparable traffic AI to MT or UT THAT would be paydirt.