For me, some part of immersion is the sound. This includes the sound of ATC voices. Even if 3rd party ATC products provide some realism regarding the procedures, most if not all of them still use these robot kind of voices. This is understandable:
MS as a big company has the resources for systems like Azure. Whereas small companies aren’t able to develop something like Azure. As Azure is still not 100% like real voices, it sounds better than the choppy robot voices of 3rd party addons.
This is the main reason for me to not use 3rd party ATC products and hoping for MSFS ingame ATC to get better.
Back in the FS2000’ish days, there where these things called adventures. And some of them used it to build whole IFR flights from A to B, with the according, pre-recorded ATC communications. It did lack variety, cause a flight was always totally the same. But it was great for immersion (sound wise).
1000% agree. I’d also add that the A.I. Assistance is broken, has never really worked reliably (from the very start), and continues to be an embarrassment. It appears to be impossible for the A.I. to fly a plane from one (predetermined and flight-planned) destination to another without a complete clown show ensuing. In 2022, how is this possible?
This is what the product will most likely be like:
They won’t be live flights but will use snapshot traffic files similar to any other previous captured traffic offered in other addons. All they’re doing is bringing it to MSFS. With Ultimate Traffic Live:
They provided updated schedules that you could purchase for spring, summer, and winter. This would probably work the same. This summarily offers what AIG does except without the consistent and constant updating. I would see no reason why their product would at this stage be able to circumvent the issues everyone else is having. They have the same access as every other developer or should.
That is my sumation/question as well. Current AI solutions inject FP’s into the sim, FST will do the same. The question(s) imho are:
Have the FST team been given the ability to work on the AI at the core level to address/correct the fundamental AI/ATC issues?
Remember, part of the AI/ATC issues seems to be related to the airport layouts themselves. Assuming that’s true, has the FST team been able to correct them also? At least at the major airports.
If none of the above are true, how will FST be any different than the free solutions that are currently available?
With that said, I will be looking forward to it’s release but I will say this now: As it is a payware product and assuming Asobo and/or the FST team has not corrected the fundamental AI/ATC issues, I will not be the first one to purchase it. I also will not purchase it until the basic AI/ATC issues are resolved.
I am not going to pay for what my amount to a ‘Lipstick on a pig’ approach to dealing with core issues.
Correct, if FST was for some reason given access to fix core issues, they would have already been fixed by other developers. If they somehow manage to do something different I will be SHOCKED. The airport theory is out of the window. They would have to cross check every airport in the sim or at least develop a tool to scan and make those amendments, again not something I think would be possible otherwise I think someone would have done it already. Even if, the only surefire method has been with ADE and editing airports, with the latest SDK video announcing WorldHub, this is more likely, where people can edit airports and add them into the sim. I standby my point, they’re just bringing their previous traffic products to MSFS, even the layout of their product page is the same and this is with over 15 years of the same product. No doubt hardcore supporters of their products will buy the product even though IMO other freeware solutions like AIG and FSLTL offer a lot more.
I will buy FSTraffic anyway.
They got well optimized models and liveries!
I just hope their injector works different than the others to override internal MSFS traffic issues!
My head says you are right. My heart says FS will be a pleasant surprise.
I’m far from tech savvy so I’ve never fully understood the tech issues 3rd parties face, other than they are locked into core behaviour controlled by MS/Asobo.
I don’t really mind if live flights aren’t captured (though FSLTL’s Flight Radar tie-in was great). I’d just like an airport environment that looks and sounds realistic. Hopefully FS can get around the full throttle while taxiing sounds, and have planes taking off and landing in a realistic fashion and frequency. The models and local liveries look good (as they do in AIG and FSLTL). I’m not even overly concerned with ATC integration as I turned ATC off nearly from day 1.
FSLTL was also easy to install and load which FST promises to be, I tried to install AIG on two occasions and gave up both times (see above re tech savvy).
I agree with the other poster, I don’t expect I will be the first to buy FST either. In the meantime I live in hope (my default state of being since purchasing MSFS).
slaps head I hope you enjoy the product. There’s no logical reason to suggest their injector tool would have any other difference than what everyone else’ injectors have because it’s the SIM that is responsible for controlling the aircraft, NOT the injectors. Hopefully they accept refunds.
AIG is really straight forward, if you like help you can PM. Summary is just download their manager, set the file path and select the airline you want and click install using OCI, all of the models and textures will download and self install into your community folder. Takes 1-2 minutes to configure the manager and then as long as it takes to install everything. I covered about 10+ airlines in 30 minutes. You can also bulk install rather than one by one.
That is a fair point but unless it DRASTICALLY improves FPS performance when using traffic the core issues remain and will remain a non-starter for me.
BTW - none of what I mention here should be taken as a dig against the FST team. Just thought I’d get that out of the way just in case
Same. No slight towards them. But for people to assume their product will somehow magically fix or alter the issues that everyone is having with AI in sim, that’s just being ignorant.
I really haven’t been following FS traffic but I did just look at their website.
They really are forthcoming about the challenges of SU11 and they are working on it. I agree that it is doubtful they will fix it until Asobo improves things.
The only difference from FSLTL is they are using historical flight data instead of “live”, which I like as I often will fly at off hours. Perhaps there will be a way to “inject” the historical data that bypasses the STAR assignments by Asobo.
Your opinion makes no sense. Everybody say it’s the sim’s problem and that you can’t do anything about it. But there is AIFlow, AIGround, FSHud which all change the behaviour inside the sim. So why could FSTraffic not do that?
“Finally, it’s worth highlighting that FS Traffic is now being developed and tested using the MSFS Sim Update 11 Beta. We have found that this has brought about a multitude of improvements with how Ai traffic behaves in the simulator” FSTraffic quote from their product website
That is what I am hoping for. If there is indeed a ‘fix’ for the current AI/ATC problems in FST, I think your theory would be the only practical way to do it. Like you, I am is fine with this. I am not too hung up on needing ‘Live Traffic’ so long as the traffic and (eventually) ATC that is there works reasonably well.
Thinking about it, historical traffic seems like a reasonable work-around. But, assuming the airports and taxiways are still jacked up, how would taxi outs and taxi ins be handled? I doubt historical data exists for these parts of flights.
Third time lucky maybe with AIG. Not a pressing issue right now as I’m enjoying a GA tour far from busy airports. But plan on heading Glasgow direction next to fly some LoganAir routes in the Twotter.
But…they did go on to say: “…however, there are also some areas where we have noticed new issues regarding AI capability in the sim. We are now investigating these areas and are working to try and overcome them.”
From my limited understanding, the traffic cannot be injected with procedures. MSFS assigns the first alphabetical procedure no matter what was imported, producing wonky AI traffic behavior. None of the 3rd parties you discussed, including FSLTL, AI flow and AI ground, can overcome this. I’m sure it is the same for FST.
AIGround controls taxi speed and stops AI that get too close to each other, the sim doesn’t control or care about that, speed wise, the sim will stop and hold AI if there’s a taxi conflict. Also having AI do control checks or activating flaps is another thing not controlled by the sim. An older program AISIDSTAR would scan and map out the telemetry and taxi paths of an airport and provide the best taxi route to the assigned runway (which could be defined) and essentially overrode the ATC instruction of the sim, hence why you couldn’t use AISIDSTAR and have ATC. AIFlow is very similar as in it “slews” or changes the speed of the aircraft to maintain separation and uses “vectors” to mitigate incursions and separations, this can be problematic in a way that the AI will first and foremost conform to what the sim instructs it to do in terms with altitudes and headings, which I haven’t been able to observe because I never got to use AIFlow before all of the issues arose. Again, AISIDSTAR followed defined SIDS/STARS following speed/altitude restrictions, but in order for AI to conform to those it needed to be out of the control of the sim, no ATC. Unless the sims ATC has recognized hard altitudes to set for approaches, such as the IAF, you’re going to still have high approaches. This can be changed within ADE’s approach mode where you can define altitudes for fixes in the sim but you’d need to do that for every single airport you want. I don’t know the logic of the sim and how it reads fixes in the sim as I haven’t been able to see any loaded fixes within ADE when loading default airport data. Can’t speak to FSHUD since I have never used it.
The bottom line is that external programs can adjust aircraft functions that the sim doesn’t control. If the sim has any control over it then for these external functions to work in a real world capacity, you’d need to cancel out the ATC. You’re essentially having two cooks in the kitchen.
Great explanation, although I’m not sophisticated enough to follow 100% of what you are saying.
If it is a choice between having ATC and AI, I would lean towards ATC for me, but can understand why others wouldn’t.
I will have to load Simple Traffic again and try it out (as it uses historical data), but I assume the same limitations would apply.
