I haven't had a lot of time to look yet but I did see something about airport modification while I was watching the install proceed. I hadn't really looked at airports before buying MyTraffic but at a setting of 50% at PHNL almost every gate was full and at 35% all parking spots at Princess Julliana were in use, I was on short final with an AI 747 hot on my tail.

Kael, I'm not an expert here, but I do know that My Traffic X - and its previous versions - adds zillions of afcad files. Thus I would presume that it does create parking spaces for its many planes and flights - otherwise, why add all the afcad files?Robert

I was under the impression that there is no Afcad editor currently available for FSX. If true, wouldn't that make it difficult to implement a traffic add on to FSX? Fitz

Fitz, my flightsim machine is ripped apart right now so I can't check this for you. As I said, I'm not an expert when it comes to AI. I did reinstall fs9 last night on my FSX machine and I may have gotten confused between the two versions. You may well be right. I just don't know, and apologize for any confusion that I might have caused if I'm incorrect.Robert

I don't know if or how the MyTraffic team may have implemented any updates to airport parking.Unlike Ultimate Traffic, Traffic 2005, PAI and World_of-AI, MRAI - MyTraffic uses the Microsoft TrafficDatabase Builder program to generate flight plans - not Traffic Tools.This results in less airport over utilitzation since it does check a reference file to see if the destination airports have sufficient parking before compiling the traffic file.TDB also results in "cleaner" traffic files with fewer errors and missed approach issues than TrafficTools.The MyTraffic team has been interested in dicussions on FSX airport parking.The short answer is that we can modify and update FSX airport parking and parking assignments.AFCAD files from FS2004 can be used. Unfortunately they will eliminate most of the changes / updates to the airport and how the AI work. Also they probably will not line up correctly with the visible FSX scenery and jetways. They are a very BAD idea/ last resort.FSX airports can be updated / changed in a text mode to retain all the FSX airport information and the updates/ changes. These files retain all the new FSX features for AI.There is still a lot of research and testing being done, and working to develop some standards.FSX changes a lot about AI - for one the way minimum aircraft parking spot size is determined.You can expect items to start appearing later this month.Remember, when FS2004 was released - it was four months before we had AFCAD available, and another six months before Lee was satisfied it was stable enough to not need new tweaks.We are far ahead of that timeline with FSX and our ability to make changes - but don't hold your breath waiting on a graphical tool.There are some folks working - but it will take a while.If you are interested in making changes to airport parking now - visit the ProjectAI forums - www.projectai.com

A newbie here ...Would anyone care to recommend between MyTraffic X and Justflight's Traffic ?Thanx ...

>>This results in less airport over utilitzation since it does>check a reference file to see if the destination airports have>sufficient parking before compiling the traffic file.>I have encountered this issue with TDB in my creation of Northwest Airlines schedules/traffic for FSX (which by the way, is about 75% complete and working well. :) )With no capability to add parking spots, there is only so much a person can do. Lowering the half span size for an aircraft is an option, but it comes with the possibility of the a/c wings rubbing a building or other a/c.Really some sort of AFCAD-like tool is needed to really bring widespread improvements to the FSX AI situation. If it is as easy to use as AFCAD, it will get general use and we'll see great AI packages.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2530 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>A newbie here ...>>Would anyone care to recommend between >MyTraffic X and Justflight's Traffic ?>>Thanx ...I bought and use MyTraffic X and I'm very pleased with it. I usually have my AI Airline traffic set at 35% in FSX and I get plenty of planes at the gates at whatever airport I'm at.PLUS, the planes that are at the gates make sense for where you are at. I flew into Lisbon and saw lots of Iberia planes, Frankfurt was loaded with Lufthansa and Paris has lots of Air France. There's others too of course but its not purely random and/or it makes sense to see the airlines that you see there.Of course the planes aren't just at the gates, they are following flight plans so you'll see plenty on the taxiways and in the air with you too.Overall I'm very satisfied with MyTraffic X.

I've had MyTraffic since FS2002 and have always been satisfied with it. It's huge with loads of GA and military aircraft as well. Very easy to install. I was using the freeware World of AI which although good nevertheless there just isn't enough traffic by far. So I purchased MyTraffic FSX (comes with the FS9 2006 version as well) and jacked up the AI to 70%. Huge amount of traffic and very frame rate friendly.I won't be purchasing many addons for FSX for obvious reasons (fps issues) but this is one which was a necessity along with FSNavigator when it comes out for FSX.

Check Burkhard's thread - Modification of FSX airports using AFCAD2 on the My Traffic support forums. (http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?p=359215)His tools include a few steps to decompile the FSX airport data, compile it into a file AFCAD can understand.You can work on the AFCAD with FSX open - FSUIPC 4 will maintain the link between AFCAD and FSX.Then save the AFCAD created modifications - and merge them back with the FSX only data to compile a modified airport for FS.

Reggie,Can you elaborate about why the TDB is cleaner/more error free than using Traffic Tools? I've been using the ultimate traffic flight plans with FSX and havn't yet noticed any problems at all. All aircraft appear to be there. What difference is using the TDB as opposed to TTools?What makes you beleive that using TDB results in less missed approachs? Also, is there a way to use existing flight plan files and compile them with TDB? Will this produce any result different to TTools?Cheers mate, I appreciate your insight.Kael

I bought My Traffix X and am extremely happy with it. The frame rates are great for how much traffic there is. The planes up close are pretty ugly but its worth it for the fps. At 35% I find all the gates are full and there are flights going in and out every couple of minutes. I think the military traffic covers a lot of the higher % level as the bases are pretty sparse at that level. I also owned Ultimate Traffic but was not happy with their ai models which were too taxing on frames so I converted to mytraffic2004.I thought justflights version was a rebranded my traffic, maybe with different models......I could be wrong.

I also use Ultimate Traffic for my FS AI management program - most major carriers replaced by packages from other sources. But still a great tool.I have UT, MyTraffic and Traffic 2005 all setup in their default format available to use for testing AFCAD files and airport modifications.We have observed since the release of FS2004, that TDB traffic files have fewer missed approaches, less flocking of arriving aircraft, fewer aircraft popping up at the gate than TTools files.A big part of that is the inability to overschedule airports.For example - most realistic AI flight plans and their TrafficTools compiled files call for around 340 aircraft on the ground at KATL. FS2004, and FSX, will only allow an airport to have / use 255 parking spots. AFCAD does not check for this FS program limit.Jim Vile did a lot of discover work on how the timing works, or fails to work properly in FS2004. Among these was the discovery that FS2004 "back times" all arrivals by 15 minutes. This is the source of many issues we have. But FS2004 timing sequencing is far from reliable at realistic traffic levels.Changing flight plans to TDB format is a lot of work. Seldom worth the effort.And in FSX we are seeing issues with TTools and TDB traffic files being incompatible - i.e. both won't display in the sim at the same time.There is also a major issue with all weekly traffic files in FSX - the aircraft fly one day later than the date scheduled. This is true of TDB and TTools traffic files.

Reggie,So if I understand correctly, the root cause of most of the problems is that when using TTools flightplans, every aircraft is placed in the air/ground, whereas if you compile using TDB, it limits the number of aircraft to the space that is available?I guess that makes sense. Having owned both UT and Traffic 2005, I beleive Traffic 2005 places far to many aircraft into the flight plans. I've found Ultimate Traffic to be more realisitic and place traffic at reasonable levels. When using UT I've noticed far fewer go arounds and very very few aircraft appearing at gates.Just on that note, what causes an aircraft to just appear at a gate? Presuming you've been spotting at an airport for 30 minutes, and traffic is fairly light with runway space/landing time available, why would an aircraft just appear at a gate? Surely if its arriving from another airport it would land first? Perhaps its just departing this airport and appears just to fly this leg. Any ideas?I appreciate your expertise in this field mate. Your FS9-FSX airport comparison list has been invaluable changing over my UT flightplan file :)Kael