Hey guys - so the Aerosoft Simple Traffic is finally out. However reading about it and watching youtube reviews I’m confused about what it actually does.
Routes: the video posted on Aerosoft’s own page states that routes aren’t affected, however on the page it seems to contradict tis… “Offline AI traffic routes and schedules are derived from over 30 million records of real-world ADS-B flight data enabling pre-Covid airline traffic levels globally within the sim.”
Liveries: in the video it also says ground planes aren’t location matched to the new liveries and you have to disable it. This seems contradicting too as I thought the whole point of this tool was to inject correct liveries into the correct airports?
Let me know your all’s thoughts. I want to figure all this out before I think of purchasing it.
The MSFS routes are unaffected when in online live traffic mode. When off, ST uses its own traffic file (worldwide with gaps to be filled in later)
That’s mostly static (parked) traffic. So set that option to 0 or MSFS will randomly pick an aircraft to park on the ramp or gate. Which means you might see an Air Canada Airbus in Tahiti. Not the end of the world… just not realistic. This is not a flight plan aircraft. It’s decoration to give the appearance of a busy airport.
Both have disadvantages since Asobo bugs interfere, but overall even if AIG was payware it still beats simple traffic by miles with minimal fps impact.
AIG may be far superior in content but it’s extremely user-unfriendly while installing it:
you can only select airlines, but not specific regions. So if I only fly in Europe or North America I have to select everything manually.
manually selecting the airlines is a real pain due to the sheer number of them (over 1200)
for many airlines the so-called One-Click-Installer cannot download the aircraft and you have to do it manually and then point the installer towards the downloaded file.
everytime you have to download something manually the installer stops working and doesn’t even notify you with a ping.
So even with downloading some 25GB you can’t simply sit back and leave it alone and just download the stuff manually when needed, but you have to be present at your computer for hours on end. (I’ve been on it for about 2h now, and had to manually download something 10 times. And I’m still at “A” like Air France…)
Also I’m not really interested whether the Lufthansa plane in Munich is actually an A320, E170 or A319. Of course it’s more accurate and realistic to have basically all aircraft models present, but it’s so much hassle and especially the ones with two engines under the wings look very much alike anyway.
So all in all I will keep downloading AIG and testing it. But honestly I believe many people will prefer Simple Traffic for its simplicity.
point 1) ok so it does make the AI traffic (offline) routes better?
point 2) this is what I don’t get. if you set static traffic to 0, won’t all of your airports be empty? you need static traffic to be on in order to populate airports. otherwise the only liveries that will be injected will be to planes in the air?
To rephrase what Aerosoft posted… their traffic routes are similar to pre-pandemic. MSFS Live traffic is what’s happening today and still not near what it was years ago. So it may be accurate to say the skies are busier when using AS ‘offline’ traffic vs online Live traffic. ‘Better traffic’ is subjective.
Yes, that is partially true. With static set to 0, you will indeed see many airports (regional and smaller) empty. You wont see GA parked and you wont see smaller regional aircraft. The trade off is the larger airports handling commercial airline traffic will be populated with real-world liveries. (MSFS AI models, not 3rd party)
My assessment is that pilots who like to fly small GA in and out of small airports will not benefit from either Simple Traffic nor the freeware AIG. Yes, you can set your static aircraft to a non-zero number (with or without Live traffic) and you will see an assortment of parked aircraft. But since MSFS picks randomly, you are likely to see unrealistic liveries parked at airports capable of handling those larger commercial airlines. Personally, I don’t mind that. Seeing a Delta aircraft in Paris is better than seeing those unattractive generic paint jobs. Others may disagree.
I currently use AIG and I agree with your statements. Other things…
** load time for MSFS much longer
** I don’t have models for all the definitions so I don’t really have some traffic I wanted (Moku for example)
** I’m not a fan of using an external client to load traffic. So I keep it on “Live” to avoid that.
I’m willing to give Simple Traffic a try when released even though I use small airports frequently. It’s not the perfect AI world but Aerosoft are not claiming it is.
gotcha. yeah as a mainly GA or small jet pilot i enjoy having all of my regional airports populated with planes on the ground or else the world feels really lonely.
problem is the MSFS logic for ground planes is at a ridiculously bad level, with BN-2 Islanders parked at jetway gates or 10 Bonanzas in a row. it’s only slightly better than having no ground planes at all, which isn’t saying much.
It’s one of the biggest realism-killers currently in the sim IMO. As an IRL small plane pilot I’m used to seeing a solid diversity of small planes and jets at every airport I visit so I’m hoping either a future addons or just Asobo itself will fix this glaring issue. #rantover
Absolutely true. But for the casual pilot, just seeing a tail with a recognizable real-world airline is a good thing. I don’t expect perfection from a $100 simulator.
So i was sitting at Fukuoka while using AIG. In the meantime an ANA 777 is rolling to the runway, a 777 with special star wars livery is landing and a Dash-8 is getting ready for taxi.
I would say the casual pilots (i’m also more casual btw) will buy simple traffic (i’m not) but get bored quite quickly after seeing the same models over and over again.
All in all, it is not a complex product, the only thing it does is give the default AI a livery that belongs to the geographic location, Air France in Paris, KLM at Schiphol. It does not change the behavior of AI or the sim in any way, it just looks better. Install and forget, updates are automatic as we add more liveries and more covered airports. It does not even need its own interface, just use the Traffic interface of the sim.
To avoid confusion we will recommend strongly that people who are interested read the manual where the strengths and limitations are explained. Then you can decide if you want to invest 12.50 euro (plus VAT when applicable).
see i read this and get more confused as I thought another one of its main selling points is the changing of AI routes all over the world, not just cosmetic. doesn’t this indeed update the sim so planes fly in different, more logical routes as well as correct liveries?
Does that mean your choice is not using either package? Neither offer a GA enhancement. But with both, you can still have GA (set static to greater than zero) as long as you don’t mind MSFS popping in a random livery here and there. I’ve tried this with AIG and it’s not the worst thing in the world. Yes, I did see a Frontier Dash 8 in Hawaii but I also have small GA too. Simple Traffic will be the same experience.
Can confirm: yes it does. Simple Traffic adds realistic offline AI traffic plans, so planes with Simple Traffic liveries take off to realistic locations and land in realistic locations.
