Ultimate Traffic Live new version 1.2.0.0 Any Thoughts?

[JoeFackel 760]

1 hour ago, simbol said:

Do you reilase how long it takes to do 1 single repaint? and the amount of work to keep updating AI schedules, AI Models, etc. all the time? just have a look at how much work people at the alpha india group keep putting every month towards this goal, and that is a team of people no just 1 developer.

So true. Only if you have collected repaints and schedules for your AI software on your own you will get a picture what a HUGE task it is to get a somewhat realistic AI traffic. And that only applies if you are a private guy and get the repaints and schedule for free for personal use. I don't want imagine what you have to do if you want make an commercial AI package, you have two options: make them all by yourself or cash the authors of the repaints and schedules. 

[simbol 5,816]

42 minutes ago, newtie said:

Hi Simbol-

What's Runway Control?

Cheers,

Mark

Your dreams come true .

I explained a bit about on my forums, let's not hijack this thread.

Regards 

Simbol 

 

Edited December 25, 2018 by simbol

[simbol 5,816]

46 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

I would be happy with a decent approximation of all the above

Lol I am sure..

Regards 

Simbol 

[fluffyflops 1,846]

17 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

 Which ones are those? Just curious.

No power pack. The product is 3 years old dave. 

[fluffyflops 1,846]

6 hours ago, simbol said:

What do you mean tooting? Do you mean were can you download it from?  The link is inside the Flight 1 forums.

Regards 

Simbol 

I meant is the schedule data from winter 18 to 19??

Can someone do me a massive favour and load up the following for me. 

1. Load up Aquaba  OJAQ - - Saturday 5th of Jan at 1720 local

Is there an easyJet A320 sitting there.? 

 

2.Same again load up Atlanta KATL Saturday 5th of Jan at 1720 local.  What Virgin Atlantic aircraft is sitting there, ie is there a 747 going to EGCC

 

If the answer to both is no then the data is not Winter 18-19. 

My guess is all flight one have done is bought some data from OAG and imported it into an XML file and then made an installer for it.

A weeks work at most. 

 

[fluffyflops 1,846]

3 hours ago, pracines said:

A total shame that this is "by far the best AI add-on" after all this time. 

I remember the days of Ultimate Airlines and Pro-Flight 2000 some 20 years ago. Them days were much better; when "innovation" and "new", meant just that. Ultimate Traffic went from new and awesome, to the same old thing with different lip-stick. I still, after all this time, am not sure the injection route was a good one....maybe it is IDK. 

Better than nothing I guess. Maybe now that we have 64-bit, another innovator will come up with something special. I have not forgotten about Alpha India 1 click.🙂 

If only we could have a combination/collaboration of JF MT AIG and UT working toward a common goal, maybe we would have had some real progress. Current and complete repaints, current schedules, realistic and diverse Military/GA, all w/copters to boot, but without the sudden popping (injection) of AI taking your place as you push back! How about "fading in" AI from a minimum distance like autogen more recently got developed? Possible?

Another case of competition amongst ourselves that stifled growth for all of us. Think about it, if it is so difficult to make AI realistic, why compete?

For the record - I'm not a globalist, I just want realism, and working together (not against each other) it is possible. If we were a huge, billion person community, then competition would not harm so much. We are a small community with a huge task.

One of the issues you have with scheduling in AI traffic is the charter, cargo and acmi flights that don't appear in OAG/SABER/GDS data format which you can easily purchase from OAG https://www.oag.com/. 

Another issue is for example there is only 2 official IATA seasons Winter and Summer, but airlines then have what's known as shoulder season these are not official seasons but a sort of offpeak part of winter and summer. 

An example of this is say the Virgin Atlantic routes from GLA and BFS into MCO we only operate them for a certain number of  weeks in the summer, not the WHOLE summer.  The OAG data will tell you which weeks so if you imported, so therefore if you import a week in May as your data its not going to be correct. You need to import the 3rd week in August to get the most traffic possible. 

The same is the same with Winter ski charters , take european ski flights for example they don't offically start until the Saturday around Christmas as ski transfer days are Saturday and Sunday to be able to stem/manage the flow of traffic and parking spaces in places like SZG/Inn /TUR/GVA/chambery

There's loads of examples of this and they are all airline specific. 

As i mentioned before getting accurate schedule data is a minefield.  And scheduling in the real world is no different you also have historical slots, traffic rights, 3rd and 4th freedom rights, curfews and parking issues to name just a few. 

Happy Christmas from gumpy PK

Edited December 25, 2018 by tooting

[duckbilled 310]

3 hours ago, simbol said:

Would you be willing to pay a monthly subscription (I calculate it would require around 4.99 USD per month with a minimum of 2,000 users to start) to pay the time, effort, required software and developing cost in order to keep your AI repaints, AI models and AI Schedules "Real"? Personally I don't think the flying sim community would like to pay on a subscription basis.., they want real time schedules with real repaints and updated AI models all for free, and that is not going to happen.

 

I would also pay. As a long time UT user, I have spent weeks updating traffic - downloading, installing and assigning paints to UT, UT2, and UTL along with amassing a large number of bgls in FSX and FS9. I've writing crude representative flightplans for US charter flights, so even from a user perspective, to get things close it is a lot of work. Now that I have a son, devoting that amount of time to FS just isn't possible and when I get a chance to fly, I want the sim in tip top condition. This is one of the reasons I'm really excited about the AIG AI Manager. 

AI Manager aside, I would definitely pay for a monthly subscription. I'm already paying for Navigraph, and I if a subscription AI services was as reliable as Navigraph with NO MORE TINKERING, I'd be down for it on day one. I'd also pay more than $5/mo. I'd even pay 1 year up front, if I new the product was going to be released in a timely manner and deliver on what is promised.

 

Edited December 25, 2018 by duckbilled

[pracines 823]

2 hours ago, simbol said:

Do you reilase how long it takes to do 1 single repaint?

Do you realize how much work went into developing the PMDG 747V3? How about the voices in RC4.3? Why would we encourage fear of or be opposed to hard or time consuming work? 

-- developers don't need people making excuses for them, they need to be encouraged to move on to greater things. Don't tell everyone how impossible things are, just do the best you can, and at the minimum, better than last time!

2 hours ago, simbol said:

Would you be willing to pay a monthly subscription (I calculate it would require around 4.99 USD per month with a minimum of 2,000 users to start) to pay the time, effort, required software and developing cost in order to keep your AI repaints, AI models and AI Schedules "Real"? Personally I don't think the flying sim community would like to pay on a subscription basis.., they want real time schedules with real repaints and updated AI models all for free, and that is not going to happen.

I pay for anything of value/worth... so yes... I shout for realism, and I have, and will pay for it gladly. I and many others pay for a Navigraph Ultimate and FSAerodata subscription. Just keep in mind I did not call for perfection, I can only expect all they can do, but I'm tired of sub standards that can be improved a whole bunch. 

22 minutes ago, tooting said:

As i mentioned before getting accurate schedule data is a minefield.  And scheduling in the real world is no different you also have historical slots, traffic rights, 3rd and 4th freedom rights, curfews and parking issues to name just a few. 

From the UT2 website long ago:

The goal of UT2 is to provide users with the most complete and realistic real-world airline flights worldwide, offer new levels of AI Traffic design, and revolutionize the FSX skies. Ultimate Traffic exceeds these lofty goals.

See how they claimed to provide, and now years later currently from the UTLive Manual intro:

Welcome to ultimate traffic Live

This manual has been prepared to aid you in learning about utLive.
ultimate traffic Live is an AI traffic generation and management program designed to
work in the most popular flight simulators. utLive can be used with Microsoft® FSX,
Lockheed Martin® Prepar3d versions 3 and 4, and Dovetail Games® FSX Steam Edition.
The default AI aircraft will be replaced with custom aircraft models and many aircraft paint
schemes from world wide airlines.
As the user, you can customize many features of utLive and also visualize the data that is
used to generate the custom AI aircraft. The user interface is the portal for making
configuration changes, display selections, and visualizing the AI system. This manual will
describe each page within the user interface and the use of each section.
 

What happened to them lofty goals from years ago, and why have they not been surpassed by now? See how they went backwards. See how now we have to do the work (under the deceptive wording "customize")? Where in this new product doc is there anything new and improved or of added value that UT "provides" to us...well a new UI... do aviators really need that new UI to improve the sim environment 🙄 

These are my thoughts on this new version. And this is how I see the whole UT franchise from the outside and compared with past versions, to properly evaluate this new version (version? or schedule - you decide). 

EXCUSES

[simbol 5,816]

You are missing my point.

The reason you don't find any AI package product with real world operations as you wish is because the complexity to develop such product would overtake any possible revenue you will receive.

I am a developer, so yes I am well aware about how long it takes to develop good add-on's, while you can spend 3 to 5 years to develop an airplane like PMDG 737-800 or RC 4.3, you cannot afford to take such time to develop an AI package tool with the specifications you desire as by the time you are finally ready to release it the product would be outdated (Repaints would be useless, AI models would be old, the schedules pointless, etc.)

So you need to put lots (and I mean a lot) of resources to deliver the product within 1 year, this however would increase the cost of production so much that it is almost certainly you would lose money.

So we have what we have, which is far from perfect but gives us a very good simulation of AI traffic for our enjoyment.

Best wishes,

Simbol 

[fluffyflops 1,846]

And simbol you miss the point that Mr Pracines makes I think.  They keep doing the same old trick release an ai traffic product that they promise they  will keep upto date to get the sales and then some 3 YEARS LATER then release some semi upto date schedules patch.

So in theory they need to working on Summer 2019 schedules right now,  with the numerous sources of data at their disposal with a team of 2 people to release it on May 1st when the season starts. 

For example I have access to unlimited GDS/Amadaus/SABER /OAG,  I've  a goldmine of information.  Have they ever contacted me for any FREE data.  Never, they waited for Tom to sort out his personal issues AGAIN for the last 3 years and word not allowed off alot of their customers again

But no like ut1 and ut2 they are relying on a dude with his sick wife that has duped the community with ut1 then ut2 and then the bug ridden incomplete ut live which has a snazzy name but it's in fact ut2 with flights over water, the menu glitch fixed and that's it. 

 

Edited December 25, 2018 by tooting

[simbol 5,816]

2 minutes ago, tooting said:

And simbol you miss the point that Mr Pracines makes I think.  They keep doing the same old trick release an ai traffic product that they promise they  will keep upto date to get the sales and then some 3 YEARS LATER then realease some semi upto date schedules patch. So in theory they need to working on Summer 2019 schedules with a team of 2 people to release it on May 1st when it starts. But no like ut1 and ut2 they are relying on a dude with his sick wife that has duped the community with ut1 then ut2 and then the bug ridden incomplete ut live which has a snazzy name but it's in fact ut2 with flights over water, the menu glitch fixed and that's it. 

 

Well fair enough but I cannot comment on such things, these are not my products, and I am not here to make excuses for other products as that is not my place.

The discussion is why we don't have AI packages with real world operations that keeps things updated all the time as in real world, I was trying to provide an insight on this matter and why it is too difficult to do so.

All the best,

Simbol 

 

 

[fluffyflops 1,846]

29 minutes ago, simbol said:

 

The discussion is why we don't have AI packages with real world operations that keeps things updated all the time as in real world, I was trying to provide an insight on this matter and why it is too difficult to do so.

All the best,

Simbol 

 

 

The reason is you need to work a season ahead to make sure when that season arrives you are ready to go.  Not 3 years late.... 

[KL Oo 695]

The schedules are one thing, but the fact the core program itself hasn't been updated despite promises it would be is my real issue. No PowerPack, remaining bugs....but lets release a schedule tell everybody they're lucky they get it for free and call it UTLive 1.2.    You can put lipstick on a pig...but it's still a pig...albeit in this case it's the only pig on the farm thats worth keeping because one day it might turn into delicious bacon! 

[Dave_YVR 968]

6 hours ago, tooting said:

No power pack. The product is 3 years old dave. 

 

 No power pack isn't a bug, it's a missing feature. UTL is also just over a year and a half since it became available as an early release. Pete, it's fairly obvious that UTL is far too beneath you to use. I admit that don't use it for my daily AI setup due to its certain quirks. But as a basic click and go option for the many that just want to get decent traffic into their sim, there is just nothing that works nearly as well.

 

Edited December 25, 2018 by Dave_YVR

[KL Oo 695]

9 hours ago, simbol said:

Do you reilase how long it takes to do 1 single repaint? and the amount of work to keep updating AI schedules, AI Models, etc. all the time? just have a look at how much work people at the alpha india group keep putting every month towards this goal, and that is a team of people no just 1 developer.

Would you be willing to pay a monthly subscription (I calculate it would require around 4.99 USD per month with a minimum of 2,000 users to start) to pay the time, effort, required software and developing cost in order to keep your AI repaints, AI models and AI Schedules "Real"? Personally I don't think the flying sim community would like to pay on a subscription basis.., they want real time schedules with real repaints and updated AI models all for free, and that is not going to happen.

Regards,
Simbol

 

Hi Simbol,

 

With all respect to you and your work I don't buy into the enormity of the challenge. There are (in my mind) three components of an AI program

 

1. The core program itself. This is the case of UTLive, Traffic Global or even AIG Manager

2. The schedules

3. The repaints.

 

1. Now in my mind, once Part 1 is complete, there shouldn't be too much work to do here. UT2 got to a point that it was pretty solid. UTLive just needs a few bugs ironed out and it would be fine. The core program can be refined and then doesn't need to be updated.

2. The schedules are something that (as Tooting as said) can be done in advance. As with UT2, I think most people would be happy to pay a small fee for a schedule update and they only need to be published once per year. I think the market would support this don't believe the cost would make the effort prohibitive.

3. Repaints. I don't doubt the amount of time it takes to produce a good quality repaint. But for the most part, most repaints exist for most airlines. I also think that this is something that, for the most part, the community understands and is happy to source themesleves where required. I have no issues with UTLive not containing every repaint - thats OK. I accept that not all authors allow their products to be distributed for commercial means. But by and large most repaints can be found with little to no effort and I for one am also happy to pay for good quality models as I have done with FSPXAI. 

 

But to answer your specific question - Yes. If somehow somebody managed to pull it all together with all the repaints and regular schedules updates, absolutely I'd pay $5 per month for for! Thats the price of a coffee here!! Take my money!!!

 

Anyway, thats just my view.