I flew into DD KEWR after updating to ver 10.4 and even after reading the release notes I could find no way to get live below 34 - live parked 19 + live 15. I clicked off autorange and set it to 2 (min setting) and that's how I got live down to 34. I can not figure out any way to get it lower and with my weak cpu at complex airports I need an absolute max live (live parked + live) of 20 or I get terrible stutters and sometimes even the sound starts to cut out.

PLEASE PLEASE add Max Live back to the UI or I will not be able to use PSXT at complex airports that consistently have lots of live traffic. The settings in 10.3 were perfect for controlling traffic - the new settings are so complex I'm not sure I can even understand them. 10.3 allowed strong systems to max out traffic and range, but also allowed weak systems to enjoy meaningful traffic without being completely overwhelmed. There seems to be no limit to the amount of static parked my system can handle but too much live makes it unusable.

I am not a fan of the new UI; it seems to be an overly complex way of doing the parking. I do not like having percentages for determining the parking. A simple max number of parked aircraft and a max number of live aircraft (with the option of unlimited) would be a simple and easy-to-understand way of controlling the input to the sim. I don't think that having these parameters linked to the airport size by using a percentage is an effective way of solving the issue of controlling sim performance.

Edited January 20, 20251 yr by Harrier77

1 hour ago, Harrier77 said:

I do not like having percentages for determining the parking.

That has been the case for 10 years now and nobody complained sofar 😉 

The percentage  is because you have airports with 20 and with 200 stands. With a generic  number of live and parked of say 40 (with would do for Heathrow), would make the small airport become fully populated, which is also an immersion killer, is not it? So you also have to make these numbers airport specific and then there is no difference with using percentages wrt UI handling.

Edited January 20, 20251 yr by kiek

6 hours ago, somiller said:

There seems to be no limit to the amount of static parked my system can handle but too much live makes it unusable.

That's strange, my observations at KORD and EGLL show that the parked aircraft are the fps killers not the Live traffic. That's why you now have a generic Max Park in the interface. Set that at 34 and use auto range. When on the ground autorange will limit live airborne traffic to below 3000 ft above ground only, so you will see traffic lined up for the runway and traffic taking off only ...(new functionionality).

 

6 hours ago, somiller said:

The settings in 10.3 were perfect for controlling traffic - the new settings are so complex I'm not sure I can even understand them.

There actually is not much new with the settings. At first it may look overwhelming, but one parameter was already present as a hidden parameter, the default percentage is only giving more flexibility (instead of hard coded in PSXT), but if you want I can remove that from the UI and make it hidden, the only new thing is Max Park instead of Max Live. 

BTW: you can now set radius at 1 nm, maybe together with Max Park 25 it solves your problem.

EDIT: In 10.4.1 I've cleaned up the UI a bit

EDIT: What are your sim settings? At these big airports Ultra settings are frame killers too ...

Edited January 20, 20251 yr by kiek

I am not EVEN going to get into a discussion about sim settings - prior to 10.4 I had traffic set to work within my system constraints, after 10.4 I am unable to use PSXT at airports with lots of live traffic. A radius of 1NM doesn't even make sense (or 2 for that matter). At many airports if one is sitting at the the terminal with a 1 NM radius one wouldn't even see traffic at the end of many runways. Prior to 10.4 the default radius when on the ground was 8NM and that worked perfectly when using Max Live to limit live traffic. The best part of Max Live (as I recall) is that live traffic was culled starting with airborne live furthest away.

As far as percentage for traffic limits - doesn't matter to me either way...a percentage or a max number does the same thing but I see Harrier77's point. In fact I use percentage to give a max limit. A lot of traffic at a small airport is no more immersion killing than a small amount of traffic at a large airport - the point being that for limited systems we ALL have to limit traffic at large airports.

Obviously since this is your program you can do what you want, but with the current settings options in PSXT I will probably start using one of the canned traffic options and abandon PSXT.

This is EXACTLY why I had posted a suggestion in another PSXT thread to slow down/stop updates to PSXT other than for bug fixes - it was stable, with more than ample options for controlling traffic volumes. Instead here we have an unnecessary re-write of the UI with, to the user, no apparent benefits and significant limitations.

@somiller No worries mate, Max live is back in 10.4.2

It looks like I've fixed the bad allocation bug.

I'll stay quiet now for at least a month, I hope.  

Last week was also a week without updates, so I'm beginning to learn 😉 

 

Nico,

I can't thank you enough. Hopefully others see the benefit of your efforts to restore Max Live.

Please don't stay quiet as we can all learn from your knowledge.

On 1/20/2025 at 12:39 AM, kiek said:

That's strange, my observations at KORD and EGLL show that the parked aircraft are the fps killers not the Live traffic.

I have a guess about this... 

My guess is that static aircraft are just objects placed into video RAM, while live aircraft need CPU cycles to calculate something about them, maybe where they should be from one moment to the next, or what their airspeed is, or something like that. 

In other words, static aircraft may be GPU dependent, while Live aircraft are CPU dependent. This would explain why different users see different effects on performance when one or the other is maxed out. Just a guess...

On my system, it's the live aircraft that slow it down.

Yes you're exactly right and this has been discussed in this forum before - live aircraft are responsible for the strain on system resources. Static parked require very little resources. I suppose it's possible to reach a critical limit of static parked, just like there seems to be a critical limit for any objects in MSFS, but that limit is certainly many dozens if not hundreds. On the contrary I have tested live aircraft limits in MSFS and I can NEVER set a limit above 20 at large airports without my system struggling - even a limit of 30, just 10 more live and my system becomes overwhelmed. Once again this has been discussed many times and several other posters have mentioned difficulties with too much live traffic, even on systems with the most capable CPU's.

At large airports I usually am able to have 80-90 static parked in addition to live aircraft. I suspect without live aircraft my system could easily deal with 150-200 static.

5 hours ago, prolixindec said:

My guess is that static aircraft are just objects placed into video RAM, while live aircraft need CPU cycles to calculate something about them, maybe where they should be from one moment to the next, or what their airspeed is, or something like that.

Wrong guess I'm afraid. Live aircraft and static aircraft are all created with the same SimConnect call SimConnect_AICreateNonATCAircraft. So they are treated exactly the same in MSFS, the only diffrence being that there are no position updated needed, but for instance the lights controls are still working, as you can see if you toggle Nav lights in the UI.

Static parked aircraft that come with addon airports are really dumb object and are part of the scenery.

 

 

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by kiek

4 hours ago, somiller said:

Yes you're exactly right and this has been discussed in this forum before

No he is not, see my previous post. But static aircraft do not need a position update every frame, so a lot less SimConnect calls, that's why.
Live aircraft are more cpu intensive then static aircraft, especially because MSFS does not have a very efficient handling of SimConnect calls, and unfortunately that has not been improved by MSFS 2024...

4 hours ago, somiller said:

On the contrary I have tested live aircraft limits in MSFS and I can NEVER set a limit above 20 at large airports without my system struggling - even a limit of 30, just 10 more live and my system becomes overwhelmed.

Well your system must be less powerfull than mine, or it is still the difference in MSFS system settings (you no longer want to talk about 😉) but I can easily have 120 live aircraft at Heathrow with say 80 parked without stutters... Although a lot of them are in the air, so they do not need much attention from the "rendering" engine maybe?

Maybe the number of aircraft (live or static) on the ground  at the airport is the limiting factor?

 

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by kiek

10 hours ago, kiek said:

"Well your system must be less powerfull than mine..."

 

My specs are in my sig. so no need to speculate. Maybe if you shared your specs we could gain a better understanding of what type of system is required to run 120 live and 80 parked.

Intel core i5 13600K, RTX 4070 12 GB, 32GB RAM,  one 3440*1440 Monitor

MSFS in Window mode with these settings.

 

Exactly what I wanted to see. Your specs tell me that when I finally DO build a new pc it will be able to handle substantial amounts of traffic. Thanks Nico.

My PC is from May 2023. Today you can build even better then that.