I am a total noob at this simulator. I have posted twice asking about planes flying low. With no solution or even ‘its a none bug’. I only point this out, because I just finished a flight around KCKM and surrounds with AI Offline (I cant do live, as everybody has suggested because my system can’t). Anyway my question is (and not about the upside down planes etc), are you seeing planes talking to ATC and all flying 300 to 500ft? That is my problem, I only see the lights as they move across the ground in this flat part of the country. When I fly in the hill, I can hear the planes but I can’t see them. I don’t think they even land above the runway. I only mention this, because I really would like some else to do a test flight and see if their AI planes are doing the same. I have traffic set to 100. Some planes (and I don’t know why) do fly higher - maybe the jets, so maybe the GA planes are all low and you are not seeing them - assuming like I said in this ramble that you can at least hear them talking to ATC.
PC Version
9 out of 10 times, this fix by WombiiActual will correct what you described in your original post of not being able to see other aircraft. Specifically, there is a known issue with the C172.
The link to the fix is about 4 posts down, but it will explain what EVERYONE since SU9 has had to overcome.
NOTE: Someone might have already suggested this “Now Required” fix by a 3rd party to fix MSFS, but this thread has become out of control and I didn’t read past the first few replys.
Sir,
I appreciate your angst as there are a number of things I’d love to see too - that don’t seem to be on the radar any time soon:
- Controller profiles that can be associated with specific aircraft like X-Plane does.
- Scenery that’s based on imagery that’s not ten+ years old.
- Better scenery for parts of the world that aren’t currently available as photogrammetric scenery.
- Accurate terrain models that don’t have things like rivers as plateaus or gulches. Navigable canals that have “waterfalls”, or sides that look like Moses is walking down them, don’t help.
And so on.
All of these things have been described, mentioned, and complained about for a while now - and yes, it’s frustrating.
Sometimes there are workarounds - some payware, some freeware, some being system tweaks, and there are others you just have to put up with.
It sounds to me like a large part of your frustration is because you can’t get your system to run MSFS consistently and well. Without knowing more about your system and its configuration it’s difficult to try to help you with it.
System wise, let me tell you what I do:
I have Win-10 installed, fully updated, and it’s a system entirely dedicated to flight simming.
I don’t install anything that isn’t flight sim related and I have my AMD Radeon video driver set to not provide any optimizations, letting the games handle the graphic settings themselves.
Except for either clear errors in the software, (that are usually fixed quite rapidly), or configuration issues, (that the various communities are very helpful with), I haven’t experienced any CTD’s that weren’t related to something I was doing. (Like needing to turn up the cooling on my video card.)
As I said, I understand and appreciate your angst and frustration. It happens to everyone.
However, I don’t understand, neither do I appreciate your hostile critical attitude toward those of us who wish to help you.
Both I, and several others, have proposed suggested solutions that might help your game experience be more enjoyable. Please try them and let us know if, and to what extent, they help resolve your problem.
Until then, let me offer you the same advice I offered your critics:
We’re all in this together and, in great measure we all wish to help you enjoy your simulator experience.
So, can we please all play nice in the sandbox together?
Thanks!
“Hostile” is a bit strong mate! C’mon
That’s FSLTL. I’ve tried it, and it’s great. But it’s based off live flight radar data so what it adds is 99% airline traffic and so doesn’t address the issue of broken GA traffic at all.
Hi @Jimrh1993. This reply of mine
Sure, expecting AI traffic not to be embedded in the ground, or invisible, or rotating upside down on its roof after two and a half years is exactly the same as expecting to have every blade of grass modelled
Was intended as a direct reply to this post by @anon44786522
Individual blades of grass, waving and blowing trees, and natural disasters seem to be some of the top running requests these days.
It was not intended as a general response to the thread.
Sorry if I inadvertantly caused offense.
I’m flying in the UK in relatively flat and low lying areas. Generally I see traffic spawning at what seems like realistic altitudes, but only lights, no models at all. As the aircraft come down to land I see the lights disappear as they hit the runway so there is no visible plane at all, although I can still hear their engine noise. Throughout this whole process I can also hear the AI traffic talking to ATC.
AI aircraft spawning at parking slots or taxiing behave similarly. I can’t see them, but I can hear their engines running and I can hear them talking to ATC.
I can think of a few off the top of my head.
Duke Nukem Forever
Star Citizen
Cyberpunk 2077
Daikatana
MSFS has its issues, but its still a very viable platform. From what I read your main issues were ATC, and CTD’s, and you resolved the latter with some hardware upgrades. That’s pretty good going if those were your main complaints.
Changed the topic title to something that more accurately refects the discussion.
Point noted and I thank you for your help. I have corrected this in response to your suggestion.
The OP isn’t wrong - I used to have to ‘follow the traffic on final’ at some of the towered regional airfields or wait for an aircraft to land at the ‘hold short’ line. Also used to see small planes waiting there for me to land.
Yesterday, as I landed and taxied to a parking spot for th first time in months a GA plane started its engine and taxied. It turned from its parking spot and pointed toward the taxiway then stopped but with engine still running and prop turning.
These were all GA aircraft provided in MSFS.
Now I only see a few of those compared to the overwhelming number of Jungman biplanes I can’t get rid of no matter what I do.
Something isn’t working properly wrt GA traffic.
I’m sure it’ll get fixed eventually but the OP isn’t wrong or ranting about nothing.
I found what may be a relevant post, and a possible fix, by searching for “MSFS AI General Aviation” online.
Viz.:
The relevant part is this:
I hope this helps.
Well - in my case I have never run any traffic mods. The traffic I refer to having existed in the past was all default MSFS traffic.
It used to include airliners occasionally sliding belly first across the sky or double stacked (two identical jets with almost no separation) but it also included GA single engined and twin aircraft - taxiing, landing, taking off, and flying in the sky at normal altitudes and attitudes seemingly according to real traffic patterns and routines.
Perhaps turning AI traffic off and saving then on and saving that setting will reset it? Similar to the real weather fix recently addressed? I had not thought to check that. I’ll do that next time I fly
Something I didn’t see mentioned here is that during the entire SU12 beta, I’ve not seen a single upside down spinning GA aircraft anywhere. That is a welcome fix.
To temper this, though, GA still feels very empty and devoid of activity. I flew into KSNS, yesterday and, supposedly, there was a C172 on approach/final ahead of me, but I wasn’t able to see it until I was nearly on top of it.
After we both landed, it had disappeared and the entire KSNS airport had zero aircraft — parked or otherwise — other than my own.
Baby steps, but I’ll take them.
The workaround seems to be turning AI traffic to offline instead of just off. I’m going to try that just to see what happens. (I’m currently not on any beta channel, though I just finished moving my community folder in preparation for doing that if I decide to. Result - I have to re-install a lot of my third-party aircraft. . .)
This fix is intended to augment AIG (and you can do the same thing with FSLTL) traffic with MSFS Offline AI generated GA traffic. Because AIG and FSLTL use the Flight Radar data it’s almost exclusively airline traffic. However you can modifiy the MSFS traffic file so that instead of it generating both airline and GA traffic it will only contain flightplans for GA traffic. Then, in theory, you can run AIG/FSLTL but still have the MSFS Offline AI generate GA traffic, so then you would have AIG/FSLTL live airline traffic and MSFS AI Offline GA traffic, both working together.
However, this (and most of the other fixes suggested in this thread) only works as long as the MSFS Offline AI traffic actually works, which for a lot of people it doesn’t seem to be at the moment.
Hey, it was a try. . . 
Oh jeez anyone that complains about MSFS being a broken POS needs to go play Star Citizen. If you can tolerate Star Citizen then MSFS is a cakewalk
Some of the posts here just amaze me. Maybe some GA procedure/watching fans would probably be better served by some runway webcams at busy GA airports, or perhaps Oshkosh footage on YouTube, than a simulator. 
The sim is an amazingly detailed recreation of our entire planet, with detailed replication of the system of an aircraft and the atmosphere it flies in. No, not a 100% recreation of reality, and it has its quirks and bugs and head-shaking gun barrel restriction, but overall it’s an amazing technological achievement we wouldn’t have dreamed of when I started simming on a C64. Or even in the FS2002 days.
Agreed 100%, I’d like more variety and more realistic performance/procedures from GA AI. But to say there’s nothing worth exploring in this sim because that one feature is still lacking is… just wow.
“Why kids, in my day, we were the only ones in the sky, unless we loaded up that biplane combat mission…”
AI controlled GA aircraft in circuit are going to be useless unless they are aware of you and respond to your circuit calls (both through comms and by their behaviour in circuit)at uncontrolled airstrips and when in controlled airspace they communicate with ATC in a way where you can hear their calls and the ATC responses and react accordingly.
For there to be any point in the exercise, we also would need to be able to enable collisions with AI aircraft and also get ATC calls telling us to ring a FAA phone number if we fail to follow procedures.
Otherwise it would just be eye candy.