Ultimate Traffic Live new version 1.2.0.0 Any Thoughts?

[fluffyflops 1,858]

1 hour ago, Dave_YVR said:

 

 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.

 

My beef dave is that it had they potential to be a fabulous program if they updated it regularly and made a power pack for it.  The guys at ai alpha group and UTT work tirelessly to make schedules, UT live could be the same 

[carlito777 712]

Even if that might sound really harsh, but viewed from a distance one could really think that some people get obsessed with that "as real as it gets" stuff. Most people around here are living their childhood dream of becoming an airline captain in a desktop game, because for whatever reason they never made in the left hand seat of a real airliner. What difference does it really make if every AI plane you see from within your desktop game corresponds to a real world airplane? Especially considering the very real life reasons why the developer has not made the initially promised progress. Just get chilled, guys.

[simbol 5,819]

1 hour ago, KL Oo said:

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.

Hi KO Oo,

Thanks for your message, please understand my analysis is considering starting a project from scratch.

You are missing another element of the puzzle, the 3D AI models, it is not just painting them, you have to build them using 3DSmax, and each model then has to be animated and programed:

Air dynamics (.AIR file)

Aircraft configuration (weight, engines, trust factors, center of gravity, gears contact points, wing span, parking radius, parking codes, icao codes, and hundreds and hundreds of variables that are required to allow the AI models to fly and interact with the sim). AKA Aircraft.cfg file.

Effects (lights, smoke, contrails, touch down, etc)

Sounds

Then test all the elements above to modify what doesn't work and test again, testing AI models is not easy, you have to generate the traffic and wait for it to show, this is very time consuming.

Repeat all the steps above (which is just a summary) for each AI model (A320, A319, B787-8, B787-9, Cessna 152, etc.) Each model has different air dynamics and variables.

Then the process of paintings repaints for each model, you cannot use repaints from other vendors, each texture is linked via 3DSmax using UV maps, so basically when you create your AI models all paints need to be built again from scratch. In other words you cannot use the A320 easyJet repaint from FAIB for the A320 for UTL as textures don't match the source model in 3DSmax, you can try now and see the results, it will be fun I promise you..

Basically building an AI model can take as much time as any flyable model, except you don't need to develop and program the virtual cockpit and gauges, but all the aerodynamic elements need to be created, tested, etc.

Coding and developing the GUI is the easy part, building and painting all those models is the biggest task, worth years of work, there is a lot of work behind the scenes that you guys have no idea about it.

This is why people like Erez Werber (FAIB AI models author) and mostly all the providers of freeware AI models hold my biggest respect and admiration among the flying simulation developers as the amount of work they have given for free to the entire community during years is just immeasurable.

Kind Regards,

Simbol 

Edited December 26, 2018 by simbol

[Christopher Low 5,353]

I don't know how much has changed between UT2 and UT Live, but UT2 already has a working PowerPack. I guess there must be significant modifications required for the UT Live version.

[SunDevil56 183]

8 hours ago, carlito777 said:

Even if that might sound really harsh, but viewed from a distance one could really think that some people get obsessed with that "as real as it gets" stuff. Most people around here are living their childhood dream of becoming an airline captain in a desktop game, because for whatever reason they never made in the left hand seat of a real airliner. What difference does it really make if every AI plane you see from within your desktop game corresponds to a real world airplane? Especially considering the very real life reasons why the developer has not made the initially promised progress. Just get chilled, guys.

Well said.

[Peter Webber 339]

The only issue I had with UTL was that I purchased the product based on the "live" component. I already had UT2 and my main problem was the plans used out of date codes, FAJS (Now FAOR), FADN (Now FALE), etc. Therefore there was no traffic was spawning at those locations. To my dismay, it was exactly the same with UTL...no difference...just a new UI...Then they told me the upcoming powerpack would sort that out. Why? Why must I modify a so called "live" product using a powerpack? My idea was that those who wanted to retain the old ICAO indicators should be using the power pack (of which never materialised). I don't care about latest liveries, etc. I just expect a "live" program with latest schedules to use latest airport identifiers. How can this latest schedule use codes which are so out of date? I just can't get my mind around this.

Edited December 26, 2018 by Peter Webber

[IUBrian 151]

I think it’s fair to criticize a commercial product for lacking features that were believed to be part of the program so people can make an informed decision about whether to purchase it. That said, I do wonder if the features that are lacking were in such demand and so (relatively) simple to address, why, in a free market, aren’t there more competitors willing to offer a competing product? I don’t know, but I suspect it may because more purchasers of AI traffic are like myself - it’s eye candy. I want to fly in and out of an airport that simulates a real world airport, in terms of airlines, GA, etc., but it’s not important to me that every livery or schedule is an exact replica of the RW - an approximation is good enough because I’m not really that focused on it, as opposed to my own plane. And I want something that’s relatively easy to use, proportionate to its relative importance to me. I recently switched from FSX to Prepar3D, and from mytraffic to UT Live, and UT Live meets my needs in that regard, and I’ve been quite happy with it. Again, I’m not dismissing the criticism as unimportant, especially if one feels the issues are significant enough that they feel misled in their purchase, or that it detracts from their own sim enjoyment, I’m just wondering out loud if it’s really that important for most people who buy traffic add ons. 

[Nyxx 6,993]

I've not updated as am happy as it is, but if i do does it reset all the setting?

[SunDevil56 183]

1 hour ago, IUBrian said:

... I do wonder if the features that are lacking were in such demand and so (relatively) simple to address, why, in a free market, aren’t there more competitors willing to offer a competing product? I don’t know, but I suspect it may because more purchasers of AI traffic are like myself - it’s eye candy. I want to fly in and out of an airport that simulates a real world airport, in terms of airlines, GA, etc., but it’s not important to me that every livery or schedule is an exact replica of the RW - an approximation is good enough because I’m not really that focused on it, as opposed to my own plane. And I want something that’s relatively easy to use, proportionate to its relative importance to me. I recently switched from FSX to Prepar3D, and from mytraffic to UT Live, and UT Live meets my needs in that regard, and I’ve been quite happy with it....

That pretty well sums up my opinion of UT Live.

I did the 1.2.0 update yesterday, installation was a breeze and it works well IMO.

[SunDevil56 183]

4 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

I've not updated as am happy as it is, but if i do does it reset all the setting?

No, not as far as I can tell.

I also had some custom add on schedules for freight airline traffic installed, and they are still there and active after the update.

Edited December 26, 2018 by SunDevil56

[Nyxx 6,993]

15 minutes ago, SunDevil56 said:

No, not as far as I can tell.

I also had some custom add on schedules for freight airline traffic installed, and they are still there and active after the update.

Thank you

[duckbilled 310]

1 hour ago, Nyxx said:

I've not updated as am happy as it is, but if i do does it reset all the setting?

You do need to back up your assignments, and if an airline has added equipment or changed the aircraft, you may need to redo a few assignments.

Edited December 26, 2018 by duckbilled

[fluffyflops 1,858]

7 hours ago, Peter Webber said:

The only issue I had with UTL was that I purchased the product based on the "live" component. I already had UT2 and my main problem was the plans used out of date codes, FAJS (Now FAOR), FADN (Now FALE), etc. Therefore there was no traffic was spawning at those locations. To my dismay, it was exactly the same with UTL...no difference...just a new UI...Then they told me the upcoming powerpack would sort that out. Why? Why must I modify a so called "live" product using a powerpack? My idea was that those who wanted to retain the old ICAO indicators should be using the power pack (of which never materialised). I don't care about latest liveries, etc. I just expect a "live" program with latest schedules to use latest airport identifiers. How can this latest schedule use codes which are so out of date? I just can't get my mind around this.

I'll guess the data they bought used iata codes not ICAO.  The oag/amadues data available is only in iata format not icao

I imagine the airfield data they had was from the old ut2 database as UT Live is just a rehash of ut2 with a new modifications, no menu glitch, traffic over water and they canx a few flights here and there. But the basic idea is the same as UT2

But the airlines and schedules they bought where new.  As it has the 2nd Virgin Atlantic AOC with the Caribbean flights assigned to it.   This would show up in Gds/amadeus/oag bulk data 

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by tooting

[AnkH 2,262]

I am still a happy UT2 user. The menue bug is a little bit annoying, sure, but the availability of a working Powerpack easily compensates for this. The bug with traffic being not displayed over oceans also does not bother me really that much. But at least I can redirect my traffic pretty easily to airports not included in the old FS database. Means: even after release of the new schedule there is little to no reason to abandon my heavily customized UT2. Honestly, as mentioned elsewhere, I still do not understand why UT2 was not simply updated and bugs fixed instead of releasing a "new" beta product...

[pracines 823]

47 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Honestly, as mentioned elsewhere, I still do not understand why UT2 was not simply updated and bugs fixed instead of releasing a "new" beta product...

I'm guessing hospital and doctor bills, because there is very little activity and life in this UTL project.