Cloud Surfing

That simulator-time option makes sense for evening flying. What has kept FSHud Traffic useful for me is a different part of it: at busier airports I have compared the injected departures and arrivals with FlightRadar24, and most of the operation was close enough to feel credible. I especially like seeing both departures and arrivals represented, because the airport feels like an actual working timetable instead of just a collection of parked aircraft.

I have had a similar result from a slightly different angle. I usually leave the simulator at the current time and compare what FSHud injects around the airport with FlightRadar24. Depending on the airport and time, I generally see roughly 80–90% of the commercial movements represented. It is not a perfect one-for-one match, but seeing both arrivals and departures in the same flow is what makes it convincing for me. The occasional aircraft type or livery mismatch stands out less than an airport that feels operationally empty.

That depends a lot on where you tend to fly. From my experience with the 737 at busier European airports, FSHud adds enough to the IFR side to justify keeping the subscription. The traffic flow during approaches and departures is genuinely better than what I have seen from standalone injectors, and the airport configuration control ties the whole environment together. For VFR at smaller airfields, I can see the value being thinner since the traffic density is not really there. One thing that has kept me around though is the voice side - the pronunciation has improved noticeably compared to older versions, and that matters during a longer IFR session where you are listening to ATC for most of the flight.

That chart covers a lot of ground. I would not call FSHud rudimentary either, but I think the comparison depends on what you actually need from the tool. For my offline IFR sessions with the 737, the vectoring and separation behavior during climb-out is where FSHud tends to shine. The traffic actually sequences itself around the airport configuration in a way that feels coherent, and I have not seen that level of flow consistency from the other options I have tried. The airport configurator point is interesting too. I can see how it could grow into something more substantial, but even now it does a decent job of keeping departures and arrivals aligned with what you have set up. For the kind of flying I do at busier European airports, that predictability matters more than having every feature under the sun.

Those subscription concerns are fair. I've had moments where I questioned it too, especially when flying at smaller GA airports where the traffic density is low anyway. For the kind of offline IFR I do though, mostly at busier airports with the 737, the departure sequencing is what makes FSHud worth keeping around. The traffic flow actually adjusts when you change the airport configuration, and that makes the whole ATC handoff sequence feel more natural during climb-out. Not perfect for every use case, but for my typical session it does the job.

That climb-out point is one I've noticed too. When I'm departing and the traffic is already airborne, FSHud seems to handle the vertical separation pretty well in my experience. The patterns look different from what I see closer to the ground where the airport configuration has more influence on the flow. I've also found that the departure routes tend to match real operations more closely when I compare them against what flight tracking shows. It's one of those details that makes the subscription worthwhile for offline IFR sessions.

This ties into something I have noticed with FSHud specifically. When the airport data is solid, the vectoring and separation behavior around the airport feels much more natural. It is not just about the taxi phase either - the way FSHud handles runway assignments and holds traffic in the pattern depends heavily on having accurate runway and taxiway data. I fly mostly offline IFR with FSHud and AIG traffic, and the difference between a well-mapped airport and a default one is obvious straight away. At airports where the taxiways match the real chart, the whole ground movement and departure queue looks like an actual operation rather than a guessing game. Thanks for putting the work into these. Do you have a sense of which regions or airports still need attention? For the kind of flying I do around European hubs it would be interesting to know where the gaps are.

Count me in as a subscriber too. For me the big thing was how well the injected traffic matches real operations - I've compared it side by side with FlightRadar24 at a few busier airports and saw maybe 80-90% correspondence depending on the airport and time of day. Both departures and arrivals looking right, not just one or the other. That kind of realism matters a lot when I'm doing offline IFR and want the airport to feel alive. The FSHud airport configuration side is a nice bonus. Being able to set which runways are active and having the traffic actually respect that setup makes the whole session feel more coherent.

I would separate two things: the base sim load and the amount of content it has to scan or validate. With 2024, a fairly clean setup feels quicker than 2020 to me, but once you add downloaded world updates, marketplace aircraft/scenery and Community scenery, the start can still become slow. With fewer than 50 add-ons, I probably would not add another manager as the first step either. I would first try a clean Community folder test, then compare it with only the scenery/aircraft you really need for that flight. If the difference is big, then a linker starts to make sense, even if you only use it for scenery and liveries rather than everything. For aircraft alone I would not expect miracles, but scenery and streamed/downloaded content seem to be where the difference shows up most.

The split is useful, but I still treat Community2024 as the clean/native side and keep anything older or uncertain out of it until I've tested it. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier, because if something odd happens after an update I can disable the legacy batch first instead of trying to remember which add-on came from where. For aircraft and utilities I'm a bit more cautious than with simple liveries or scenery. Some 2020 packages work fine, but I don't assume they are harmless just because they load.

I haven't picked this one up yet, but this thread has been useful because it shows the kind of details that matter after the first impression video is over. For a business jet I care less about the headline feature list and more about whether the avionics, VNAV/approach behavior and general IFR workflow feel believable over a normal sector. If those parts are solid, the Sovereign+ becomes much more interesting to me than just another fast default-style jet.

That's a smart way to handle the airport problem. An owned-airports filter is probably more useful than trying to guess what everyone has installed, and keeping it in browser storage is the right kind of simple for this sort of tool. I also like that it still keeps the route generation quick. For me the value of something like this is getting from 'I have time for one flight' to a plausible SimBrief sector without turning the whole evening into planning.

The route/add-on check is the part that interests me most too. Once you have a pile of airports, liveries and GSX profiles, it is very easy to forget that one scenery is not active before starting the flight. The Addons Linker transition would have to be really clean though. A lot of us already keep the Community folder almost empty and let symlinks do the work, so I would want Preflightly to detect that setup instead of asking me to rebuild the whole library from scratch. If it can handle that gracefully, the flight-planning side looks quite useful.

That 90/120 minute slider makes the tool a lot more useful for airliner flights, in my opinion. For PMDG/Fenix type flying I often want something short enough for an evening, but still long enough to feel like a proper IFR sector rather than a quick hop. One small filter that might be useful later is an airliner-friendly option, basically avoiding routes into very small strips or awkward airports when a heavier aircraft is selected. Even without that, it's already a nice idea.

From what I’ve seen so far, most of the examples are still Garmin-style glass rather than more complex airliner displays. I’d probably wait for a confirmed PMDG 737 report before relying on it for the PFD/ND, but if it handles those cleanly it gets a lot more interesting for me too.