I have settings set to live air traffic and also max ai traffic. The minimap is full of planes, loads of traffic and I can not see but maybe one or two in the air. What gives?
You don’t see the altitude of the planes on the map. In many cases, it’s likely an issue that planes are either high above you (if you’re in a GA), or well below you (if you’re in an airliner) and won’t be easy to see.
If you use an app like Little NavMap, you’ll see all those AI planes have altitudes associated with them. Makes things a lot easier to find in the sky when you know where to look.
I’m at 38000 in the a320 sky’s are crystal clear. Wouldn’t you still see strobes of GA aircraft?
Yeah, I can rarely see any other traffic at that altitude unless it’s planes flying in the flight levels with me. But those other planes are there. Probably a rendering distance thing in the sim.
Is that basically the same in rl? Or do the pilots rely more on atc when piloting the larger commercial aircraft?
I honestly don’t know. But I would assume that stuff down near ground level when you’re at FL380 is probably not very easy to see.
Agree. Thanks for the input. 
In general I am not concerned about traffic that is more than a few thousand feet vertical of me. No matter what altitude I am flying at. Don’t get me wrong, I want to know where they are and what they are doing.
Other aircraft are pretty hard to spot even with all the lights. Stand on the ground under a busy high altitude airspace and although there may be ten aircraft within a couple miles of you, the only ones you are likely to see are the ones that are leaving a contrail. Even then you may see the contrail but hardly make out the airplane.
To spot an airplane more than 5 miles (approx 26000 ft) away is a feat for young eyes. The average person, not happening.
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