I kid you not, I had my first live traffic plane in MSFS today! One. 

Yeah, they are a very rare site atm.  Particularly in the UK there is hardly any rw traffic movement at all.

3 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

I kid you not, I had my first live traffic plane in MSFS today! One. 

I have airline traffic off and only live players on. I wish the recognition lights were a bit more pronounced at times. If I turn player names on they seem to be everywhere in certain parts of the world...with it off it feels like 1 out of 6 or 7 have lights visible from more than a mile or two away. Actually had a fun time exchanging touch and goes out of KFHR the other day with some random guy. Was good stuff. Then had a few people in 152’s fly up in me in my Waco around KAUN and try to formation. I was flying an FSE job at the time so I didn’t join it but it’s certainly fun to see the random stuff going on.

I've not seen one at an airport for ages.  Saw one in the distance yesterday while flying around Hong Kong and heard one on the atc but that's about it. 

Lot of traffic in the Bermuda Triangle !

Airports are dead. Lifeless.  This is a big big flaw that seems to be ignored.  The only traffic that gets heavy is a community fly in event with aircraft everywhere.  Then there are groups trying to get an AI package together like AIG but they are all at an impasse with aircraft rights/licences, conversions etc and no help from MS-AS.  Not looking promising.  

Despite all the promises ATC and traffic never manage to get properly done in any simulator. What I don't understand,  in general, is why with all the cash accumulated you don't simply outsource these tasks to external developers who have expertise in this field

Why do you opt to slow development with your own resources being stingy and pissing the customers off when you can use dough and order turnkey solutions and and incorporate various modules in the sim.. It is just the greed or laziness that is preventing faster and more effective development.  Why not keep the customers happy and profit from the influx of new  users if they see your product is far superior to competition.

If you want to have a stellar product simply  INVEST and distribute development. If IFR, complex systems, big iron, ATC and traffic were done at the same level with scenery and weather nobody would ever mention X-Plane and all of their customers would be yours.

Edited January 31, 20215 yr by versus

44 minutes ago, HighTowers said:

Airports are dead. Lifeless.  This is a big big flaw that seems to be ignored.  The only traffic that gets heavy is a community fly in event with aircraft everywhere.  Then there are groups trying to get an AI package together like AIG but they are all at an impasse with aircraft rights/licences, conversions etc and no help from MS-AS.  Not looking promising.  

I figure MSFS is going to be a long burn, I haven't flown in about 2 months now but I continuously check the forums to see where development is at. I imagine in 5 years MSFS will be to where FSX was at the end of its lifecycle. They apparently have a 10 year plan, as long as M$ doesn't pull the rug out from under them I think we will get there with a decent sim and better traffic than fsx. 

44 minutes ago, snwboardn said:

I figure MSFS is going to be a long burn, I haven't flown in about 2 months now but I continuously check the forums to see where development is at. I imagine in 5 years MSFS will be to where FSX was at the end of its lifecycle. They apparently have a 10 year plan, as long as M$ doesn't pull the rug out from under them I think we will get there with a decent sim and better traffic than fsx. 

I hope MS continue to support the sim until they develop a new one.  Ideally, I would like to see MSFS develop in a way that a new sim will not be needed, but in a few years we will have faster and better PCs and their tech ability will improve too.  I certainly hope we don't get big gap like we did after FSX as I gave up on it 5 years ago and only MSFS has renewed my enthusiasm.

I guess at some point, the world updates may cease to be free though and Microsoft will find various ways of making money from it (which of course they need to continue development) 

As a matter of interest, where do we see develooment going over the longer term?  What we have today is where I thought we would be in 10 years 30 years ago.

Edited January 31, 20215 yr by cianpars

My sense is this is slow played by Asobo because the game still is not fully optimized.  When you get real traffic right you will have a lot more planes (even in COVID) and a lot more complaints they can't address from simmers with lower specs having major FPS issues.  

My frustration is this was part of the video series pre-launch. 

I get plenty of planes through IVAO but they are random liveries that don't fly to certain airports and it just kills the immersion, but better than no planes at all.

Edited January 31, 20215 yr by knich

I've been seeing live traffic since launch. Some places I've seen up to 20 planes, usually on the west and east coasts of the US. China too I'll see a lot of lights around the major airports.

The Sim Update after the UK/Ireland World Update should allow us to see even more, as they'll be deploying new code that should show flights that have incomplete data on flight aware. Apparently this is very common in Europe, so we should be seeing more real flights over Europe with the update.

Right now the sim won't display flights that don't have a destination and/or arrival airport listed, and there are also other factors that I can't remember, something about altitude data?

After that, the March World Update will include some more aircraft models for the traffic to use, these ones will be real aircraft, not generic like the current AI models are.

Edited January 31, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

24 live flights in the New York Area

Edited February 2, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

If you go to KLAX or KSAN there is plenty live traffic

I had so much live traffic Friday Night I waited almost 20 minutes for P2ATC to let me take off at ohare. They were lined up at least 3 deep on approach to R10L And fllying into katl Saturday I had atc call go around for traffic on the runway and sure enough in front of me was a Heavy crossing.

Last Week traffic was off the wall. 

regards

Edited February 2, 20215 yr by Denwagg

I wonder if they're doing back end changes to the servers which is allowing more traffic to appear. There's also meant to be changes to the system with the update that comes after the UK update, to show more planes.

Edited February 3, 20215 yr by Tuskin38