Hi Guys,I've been fooling around with the Muliplayer options available when you hit the LAN radio button on the Multiplayer page. I've discovered that you can host your own private session (actually Paul from ACES pointed this out to us a couple of days ago on another thread). You don't need to be connected to any kind of network to take advantage of some of the interesting multiplayer features. It turns out that you can practice flying the multiplayer race courses, of which there are about 20, but you can also set up the multiplayer tower in free flight mode so that you can watch the AI airplanes come and go at your favorite airport. You can do a bit of plane spotting complete with radar screen, tower view, and local ATC comunications. I'm not talking about multiplayer communications, I mean free flight ATC.So, after you hit the LAN button on the multiplayer page, sign in, host a session, and on the session info page hit the Free Flight button at the top of the page, and you hit the 'Make this a private session' button at the bottom of the page. On the next page you select ATC as your role, then you set your location, time and weather, and then you take advantage of the option to save your flight before you hit the Next button! Next you actually leave the Multiplayer dialogue altogether and go back to Free Flight where you load the flight you just saved. And presto, you have an ATC tower at your favorite airport.The next step would be to save a settings file with all the air traffic sliders all the way to the right so you can see just how much AI traffic there could possibly be in this sim.I'm constantly astounded by the depth of FSX. I just couldn't have imagined how many levels this version would work on as I was flying FS9 only a couple of years ago. All these features make FS9 seem so primitive. Kudos to the ACES team!Mike.

This is only for the deluxe version, right? :(

Yes it is in Deluxe only. It's also an "undocumented feature." Pretty cool though.

Once you have selected Control tower in Multiplayer you just save that as a flight then you can just load the tower view without gooing into multiplayer, was discovered months ago , musta got lost in the ether.

Set your AI to 100% and set the wind (cross wind) to 80kts-110Kts and watch the AI aircrafts land from the tower!:)Manny

I am sure this is well outside allowed specs for a safe crosswind landing. So... did any of the AI pilots ask you (the guy in the tower) for an alternate airport to land on? ;-)

You have no idea how good these AI pilots are. They are amazing even though they suffer from "Getthereitis". They try their darnedest to land and most of them actually do succeed ... even though they tend to skid off the runway after they land some times.Its a lot of fun! :)Manny

Hi Mike:For some reason I can't get mine to work. I tried setting myself up in the tower at KLAS with 100% airline and general aviation traffic and there was nothing! No aircraft in the sky or at the gates! It looked like the Langolier airport! My radar showed no traffic also. I must have missed a major setting somewhere.Thanks for any help or suggestions!Airbus

If I'm not mistaken there could be some ambiguity in my description of the procedure. After you've set your location and weather you hit the Save Flight button, but you then go directly back to the Free Flight dialogue where you load the flight you just saved. I think you've hit the Next button on the Multiplayer dialogue which will load your private multiplayer session, and where you will be, as you've discovered, all by yourself.Let us know if this works for you.Mike.

Here's a link to Mike Singer's article on FSInsider about setting this up:http://www.fsinsider.com/missions/Pages/ListeningIn.aspx

Mike:Got it working. Thanks for the help!Airbus