Vox traffic levels

[pegruder 65]

Hey all - Im trying to figure out how to tweak my traffic levels.  If I set around 50%, I have ALOT of traffic at the gates, but not much actually doing any flying.  This is tending to lead myself to lower frame rates for just static A/C and not much by way of taxiing/takeoff/landing,  Maybe during about 15-20minutes on the ground 1 plan lands or takes off at populated airfields.  Any idea how to tweak this?  Im using the AIG AI traffic.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Chris,

I would make sure that your don't have a traffic limiter active (like the one in FSUIPC5) and you don't have any FS9 formatted schedules active in your scenery library. Other than that, this problem seems to be very airport dependent. If you are using AIG schedules in their default mode, all the flightplans are IFR and have a 1% activity level. That means in P3d4, no matter what you set the activity level slider to (except 0% for no traffic) you will see all flights. VOXATC on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to figure out. One could assume that VOXATC uses the same logic and that would mean that the activity slider in the Settings utility would also have no impact on traffic levels. VOXATC seems to park a ton of AI at certain airports because it plans ahead to have them take off at some point later in the flight.

Also, VOXATC has a built-in traffic limiter (like FSUIPC5's limiter) that allows tweaking of traffic levels, beyond the activity level slider. It's explained in an older thread:

 

but I can provide a quick summary here. The settings are in VASettings.xml which is found here in your APPDATA folder:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Internal Workings\VoxATC P3D 4

The settings that I have been using are:

    <MaxParkedAircraft Value="50" />
    <MaxEnrouteAircraft Value="50" />
    <MaxActiveTerminalAircraft Value="20" />
    <TrafficGeneratedAtAllAirports Value="TRUE" />
    <MaxParkedHelicopters Value="40" />
    <HelicopterTrafficDensity Value="60" />

You can ignore the two helicopter settings and be advised that the configuration file does not have all six settings by default. These settings are the maximum values one will see within the user's "reality bubble". The default values (of which only <MaxParkedAircraft Value="120" /> is exposed in the file) lead to ~250 maximum AI aircraft generated within the URB. That's the maximum. A combination of the VOXATC activity level setting (0-100%), the airports in the user's flightplan and the AI schedule's used all will dictate what the user actually sees, in terms of numbers of AI aircraft.

Just recently, when I was helping out another user with a problem with ENGM, I noticed that about 8 airliners were always stacked up in the landing queue and 3 or 4 were always taxiing out/taking off. It made for a prolonged but realistic ground experience. But if I go to a smaller airport (like KALB which I use for testing) only a few AI aircraft are ever active at one time, but almost all the gates are occupied. 

Jay

[pegruder 65]

Thanks @jabloomf1230!  I had a feeling there was something in this file I was missing.  I've always gone here to tweak the taxi speed a bit but never really looked over any of the other settings.  Interesting to note, Im missing the following settings:"MaxEnroute, MaxActive, TraffigGenerated at all, and Max Active Terminal A/C.  They simply don't exist for me.  This was a fresh install when I built this PC so who knows.  Im going to add them and give them a go.  My current max parked was 120 however so I'm going to give your settings a go and see what happens.

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I mentioned that some of those settings are not included in the default configuration file. They do work, however.

They only affect the maximum number of AI aircraft in the URB. For example, setting them at extremely high levels will not make more aircraft show up at a small, rural airport. The settings affect the mix of traffic activity and are helpful for improving frame rates at big international airports located in extensive metropolitan areas. It's generally not the greatest idea to have hundreds of active AI aircraft.

Edited January 5, 2020 by jabloomf1230

[pegruder 65]

43 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I mentioned that some of those settings are not included in the default configuration file. They do work, however.

They only affect the maximum number of AI aircraft in the URB. For example, setting them at extremely high levels will not make more aircraft show up at a small, rural airport. The settings affect the mix of traffic activity and are helpful for improving frame rates at big international airports located in extensive metropolitan areas. It's generally not the greatest idea to have hundreds of active AI aircraft.

Haha shame on me - the way I had my window set I didnt see the last half of your post until I read this and went back.  So far these gained me about 10fps at Charlotte, so thats a plus for sure.  I have my traffic at around 55% and with these settings still had a few free gates at CLT, vs all of them in use.  Itll take some experimentation to get close to perfection.  I did tweak the flight plan percentages vs all the AIG plans being at 1% so that shouldnt be an issue for me (forgot to mention that before).  

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

5 hours ago, pegruder said:

I did tweak the flight plan percentages vs all the AIG plans being at 1% so that shouldnt be an issue for me (forgot to mention that before).  

I left mine at 1% and adjusted the VOXATC activity rate and the other configuration parameters, such that I got decent frame rates at big airports and enough traffic at the smaller ones. Every setup is different. The coolest setting is:

<TrafficGeneratedAtAllAirports Value="TRUE" />

As one flies along, there are AI aircraft at airports along your route, assuming that your schedules include those airports.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Since this question gets asked a lot, I did some more experimentation recently and this is what I figured out:

The default values are:

<MaxParkedAircraft Value="70" />
<MaxEnrouteAircraft Value="70" />
<MaxActiveTerminalAircraft Value="120" />

The maximum number of AI aircraft that could be active in the user's reality bubble is:

Maximum AI Aircraft = (VOXATC AI Activity Level/100) *(MaxParkedAircraft + MaxEnrouteAircraft + MaxActiveTerminalAircraft)

The VOXATC Activity Level has a range of 0 to 100. So for example, with a 40% activity level and the above settings, one will never see more than  (70+70+120)*(40/100) = 104 AI aircraft at one time.

Also, the activity levels for each flightplan contained in an AI traffic BGL file do not appear to have any effect when using VOXATC.

[vadriver 247]

51 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

and this is what I figured out:

jay

well figured ....... & thanks.

will check my tweaks to "compare".

[vadriver 247]

On 1/6/2020 at 2:55 AM, pegruder said:

still had a few free gates at CLT

chris

with vox, you'll always a free gate (or 2) irrespective of traffic density.

it involves a few tweaks to your afcad's at prefered gates & your aircraft's.cfg ,,,, i suggest a unique ICAO such as VOX (who would believe VOX is unique).

it's worth the effort to tweak.

but then again, this tip should be kept between you & fellow users (not the wider avsim "experts")

Edited February 16, 2020 by vadriver

[vadriver 247]

On 2/16/2020 at 12:02 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

Maximum AI Aircraft = (VOXATC AI Activity Level/100) *(MaxParkedAircraft + MaxEnrouteAircraft + MaxActiveTerminalAircraft)

jay / all

have been "observing" on the ground & in the air the "results" against the above (including the 70/70/120 values)

very much at a "hub" such as hongkong, the result are similar whereas at a smaller airport like cairns it is hard to compare.

my earlier & these current observations suggest "MaxParkedAircraft" is a "filler" (depending on your slider) where as at cairns there is little active & enroute traffic (10/hr) and no nearby airports to spawn at within an 80-100nm bubble. the nett result is a lot of parked inactive traffic (unlike in the sim & / or with fsuipc's limiter, parked are shed after 10 mins or so).

at hongkong (& with macau, baiyun, baoan also in the bubble), there is more than enough active & enroute to "prevent" parked aircraft being included.

as a global setting, i am reducing parked to 10 to test the above. in this way, what you see would i believe be maximum active (as per the vox slider) at all in the bubble & no "unreal" parking.

ps at hongkong, there is a good comparison with the active & enroute traffic listed by AIC with a reasonable ratio apportioned to airports in the bubble & to overflying aircraft..

 

Edited February 22, 2020 by vadriver

[vadriver 247]

On 2/22/2020 at 3:48 PM, vadriver said:

as a global setting, i am reducing parked to 10 to test the above. in this way, what you see would i believe be maximum active (as per the vox slider) at all in the bubble & no "unreal" parking.

& just to add, my preferred with vox slider @ 100% is now:

    <MaxParkedAircraft Value="2" />
    <MaxEnrouteAircraft Value="50" />
    <MaxActiveTerminalAircraft Value="80" />
    <TrafficGeneratedAtAllAirports Value="TRUE" />

  compares well to the real in my opinion, for example

• at Cairns 10-12 at 20 or so gates, a few overhead but always a spare gate
• at Hongkong, 40-50 at 80 terminal gates, 25% spare & 20 or more at Macau & over 10 overhead.

setting the slider @ 100% allows all your scheduled to be seen (1% AIG activity level).

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

John,

You seem to have hit on something. I always thought that MaxParkedAircraft referred to aircraft just sitting at gates, waiting to depart, but it must refer to aircraft that never move at all and are just there for eye candy. MaxActiveTerminalAircraft apparently controls how many aircraft actively move in and out of gates and other parking space types. MaxParkedAircraft might be useful for small airports which have few active flightplans assigned to them in traffic BGL files.

Jay

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Setting MaxParkedAircraft = 2 virtually eliminates all aircraft on the ground at other airports while enroute.

[vadriver 247]

4 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

MaxParkedAircraft might be useful for small airports which have few active flightplans assigned to them in traffic BGL files.

jay

whilst thinking it was about eye candy (& why), yes it would help as you wrote but ( think) it could only spawn more of the higher populated ones in the flightplans one may have (at cairns, more qantas, honkong more cathay).

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

eliminates all aircraft on the ground at other airports while enroute.

only the inactives i suspect (i always have actives at macau on departure / arrival, though i don't check macau ground freq). 

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I flew a bunch of flights and used Little NavMap to list the AI aircraft. With MaxParkedAircraft set that low, none of the enroute airports showed any parked traffic. I guess that there's no middle ground for this setting. Either MaxParkedAircraft is set to something like 30 or 40 and every parking spot at the departure and arrival airports are unrealistically filled, or if MaxParkedAircraft is set very low, there's nothing on the ground at enroute airports (which is not much of a loss).