In the last few days I've spent hours just enjoying planespotting in XP12. IMO it's the sim that can provide the most immersion for that.

What is incredible is the physics of the AI aircraft. The movements are incredibly smooth and realistic, both on the ground and in the air.

I  set up some gusting crosswind + turbulence, and looking at them crabbing and landing is like watching a real planespotting video. The big airliners slowly rock and sway, but the smaller GA planes are more affected and unstable, just as in RL. And as the aircraft roll out, you can see the landing gear suspension working on the asphalt irregularities.

The most dramatic effect is in lowish visibility, where XP12 probably has the most realistic lighting of all sims. Watching them turning the landing lights on as they enter the active runway and then spool up the engines is so satisfying. In some cases, looking at them afar from the (virtual) tower, I felt like it could be mistaken for a real video.

And the sounds, oh my God! Not only the spooling up and down of the turbofans, but the loud noise of the turboprops (which are actually even louder from a distance than turbofans, as in real life) and the transition to the even louder sound of propellers reversing on the landing rollout!

And of course, in addition to all of that, the new background noises of the airport environment, added by Daniella in XP12.

-

As I said, they still need to improve many things though. At the moment, using the max number of 19 AI aircraft has too big a toll on performance, even on my Ryzen 5600X, and even using optimized AI models. Although, it must be said that just a few AI aircraft might be sufficient, because they are very active. Using the max number of 19 aircraft, and after the first 10 minutes when you just have them approaching the airport or taxing to the active, I had for the next 20 minutes an average of 1 movement every 2 minutes. IMO that seems good enough, even for a busy airport.

I used to think that XP would need much more than 19 AI aircraft for a realistic depiction of traffic, but not anymore. If they improve the performance cost of them, 19 AI would provide plenty of movements and realism.

Talking about performance, from the micro-profiler it appears that AI flight models are already multi-threaded, and even 19 aircraft aren't computationally expensive. So it's unclear why they actually have that big performance toll. That's something to ask to Ben Supnik.

The other issue, is that AI pilots and ATC are not perfect. Sometimes they are unable to deal with significant crosswinds and do runway excursions, although it might be due to flaws in the specific AI aircraft model used. Also, aircraft separation is sometimes not enough, don't know whether because of ATC or because AI aircraft are too slow to vacate runway, which results in many go arounds (although go arounds are nice to see!).

And finally, the historical flaw is that AI traffic cannot be controlled by plugins (as far as I know?), so you always have either the same aircraft or random ones, with no realistic flight plans.

Correct those flaws, and XP will have unbeatable traffic realism.

35 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Correct those flaws, and XP will have unbeatable traffic realism.

LiveTraffic and RealTraffic is unbeatable for realism.  

52 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

LiveTraffic and RealTraffic is unbeatable for realism.  

Doubt it... Or better said, depends on what one considers "realism".

What I find immersive is the absolute smoothness and realistic physics of native AI aircraft, in addition to the fact that they interact with atmosphere, have correct behaviour (landing lights, gear, flaps, even flight controls!) and of course also interacts with ATC.

As far as I know, most or all of those things are missing in those addons, and they would kill immersion for me.

 

Edited October 9, 20223 yr by Murmur

word on the streets is that Xplane default AI traffic is dumb as nails😁 i'm waiting for JustFlights traffic Global XP12 update soon👍

It's the "feature" I always start by disabling before starting a sim session in XP12, but now that @Murmur has acknowledge having used 19  AI aircraft I am eager to try it too 🙂

How does XP calculate their trajectories? Do they obey flightplans? For instance, during arrival to Lisbon, will I be able to share the skies with various other aircraft, including airliners, arriving from other airports, or, if I follow one that takes off, will I be able to see it fly to, say, London?

12 hours ago, Murmur said:

As I said, they still need to improve many things though. At the moment, using the max number of 19 AI aircraft has too big a toll on performance, even on my Ryzen 5600X, and even using optimized AI models.

What optimized models are available?

3 hours ago, jcomm said:

How does XP calculate their trajectories? Do they obey flightplans? For instance, during arrival to Lisbon, will I be able to share the skies with various other aircraft, including airliners, arriving from other airports, or, if I follow one that takes off, will I be able to see it fly to, say, London?

I thought they simply used the same flight model algorithm as the user-controlled aircraft. Maybe with the minimal setting for "models computed per frame". But I don't expect that to change an external view much.

So that would mean they probably just get heading and altitude targets from ATC and the autopilot tracks accordingly. I've wondered about approaches though. ILS would essentially be "autoland". Non ILS? I like that question. They know the real runway heading and touchdown location in 3D space. I'd bet they essentially create a fictional ILS and just follow it. Maybe? Sometimes they land like poor students!

The FPS crash with 19 of them is a head-scratcher for me too. The FM calcs do get sent out to 2 different threads when all are enabled. The resulting FPS hit seems a bit excessive for how long the threads take to compute.

I've never had the patience to follow one very far after takeoff. I guess one would have to listen to the ATC to know destination. Formation flying from Lisbon to London would be an interesting exercise in military ops!

And oh yes, the sounds....mmmm very nice.

Edited October 10, 20223 yr by blingthinger

3 hours ago, Colonel X said:

What optimized models are available?

Search the .org for "AI traffic pack optimized for 11.35" by DazzyB.

5 hours ago, jcomm said:

It's the "feature" I always start by disabling before starting a sim session in XP12, but now that @Murmur has acknowledge having used 19  AI aircraft I am eager to try it too 🙂

How does XP calculate their trajectories? Do they obey flightplans? For instance, during arrival to Lisbon, will I be able to share the skies with various other aircraft, including airliners, arriving from other airports, or, if I follow one that takes off, will I be able to see it fly to, say, London?

With 19 AI I get less than 25 fps, they need to improve performance.

From what I reckon, aircraft are initially spawned in a circle around the player. Some of them in the approach phase, some cruising, some at the gate. They follow some sort of SID/STAR (visible on the map by activating a specific option in the developer menu).

2 hours ago, Murmur said:

Some of them in the approach phase, some cruising, some at the gate. They follow some sort of SID/STAR

One thing I notice is that the helicopters follow taxiways to depart. And then they get stuck at a taxiway node for no obvious reason. This is around KPDX at least. Looking forward to the final WED release to take a look at these taxi networks. I do also like dragging them around the airport with the map to see how they try to return to following their instructions.

Consider XP12's default AI more as an audiovisual ambience supplier than actual traffic, because:

• AI aircraft are only generated in the vicinity of the user aircraft and do not follow schedules. They only know departure, arrival and going somewhere for a hold.
• Even at the most remote airfield on the planet XP will generate the number of AI aircraft specified.
• "Randomize aircraft" only works on XP session start. You will encounter the same n aircraft whereever you go on your flight.
• AI and ATC chatter is way too frequent when aloft. Good luck acknowledging that frequency change when ATC and 10 AI aircraft are having a "turn heading xyz" back and forth on the airways. (This may have been fixed by now.)
• AI and ATC take separation and approach paths very seriously. Squeezing a low-wake, quick takeoff between two arrivals on a single runway airport is not possible. Those two C172s on final will land undisturbed and they will have their 10 nm separation, even if it'll take half a day to get everybody in and out!

That being said, preflighting in the cockpit with a door or window open and hearing the AI take off in the background kind of makes up for it - until other, smarter and more flexible third party AI add-ons start offering FMOD soundsets of their own.

I, too, am enjoying some plane spotting in XP12. I have the AI pack mentioned above. My home is KAEG and I am very happy that the planes make their presence known to the KAEG controller and take directions too.

One thing I noticed is that if you check the "Select random AI each flight" box it errors frequently due to the same FMOD pack being used for two of the same planes it randomly selects. A crash is imminent when this happens.

OK !

So I decided to give Murmur's suggestion a try, enabled 9 AI aircraft of different types and made an IFR flight from Cascais ( LPCS ) to Lisboa ( LPPT ).

ATC worked pretty much as expected, and indeed the experience from the AI aircraft interacting with ATC and manoeuvring around was great !

 

35 minutes ago, jcomm said:

OK !

So I decided to give Murmur's suggestion a try, enabled 9 AI aircraft of different types and made an IFR flight from Cascais ( LPCS ) to Lisboa ( LPPT ).

ATC worked pretty much as expected, and indeed the experience from the AI aircraft interacting with ATC and manoeuvring around was great !

 

I have to give that try myself. I have use the default ATC and it seems to work pretty good except for me there some issue coming into the KATL so I have give it another again while my plane sits at LAX. Believe or not I have been using World Traffic ATC with the traffic and works very well. Of course it recognize is own which is really nice touch to have. It even tells you to speed up or slow down on descent. The only problem with WT is there is no sound. The developer said he is in the process converting the sounds to Fmod, so will have to stay tune on that. I have activated the ai aircraft so I can at lease get some sound with visuals in the airport. But looking at any aircraft take off and land while in VR is epic. 

@BobFS88, thx for the precious details on WT !  I will surely give it a try sooner or later !