I must say, the live AI is really random, often non existent, and very disappointing so far.
Also when I look at the live map of AI aircraft, it is disappointing to see such low numbers. Is there anything that can be done to increase these, both in game and in the live world map?
Can anyone confirm, is this something that is to be improved soon ?
As it stands, it’s hardly worth using the live option, it just seems so hit and miss as to whether anything is actually there.
I might as well go back to the generic AI and set the percentage sliders.
There is a slider to increase traffic. It is set to 50% by default I think. Are you saying you are comparing the sim to another live traffic map and there are flights missing in the sim? The low flight numbers might be due to the pandemic. The traffic may well get busier in the coming months as things return to ‘normal’
What server do you currently use?
I was disappointed at first too, but about two days in it clicked with me: COVID has nearly killed off commercial air traffic, and even air freight is trending down. You’ll see pockets of live traffic at certain times of the day in some areas, and they may not be where you expect either, with air freight routes being shifted around to accommodate the reduction in business freight and the spike in consumer freight.
Seriously though, it’s weird IRL too. I live in southern NJ, under one of the busier approaches to PHL and you’d be able to see anywhere from 2-5 planes on that approach every 15-20 minutes. Now it’s one or two planes an hour at most.
And most of the live traffic ATC calls are something like “Speedbird 8573 you are 20,0000 above your assigned altitude.” 20,0000 eh? There’s a pilot whose passed out and left the plane on autoclimb…
Have you noticed too…if you switch off live traffic and go with AI generated then most of the aircraft you’ll hear have the callsign “Generic xxx”. Heh, ‘generic’…and people say this game isn’t in early access. Pah!
Well, it is what it is: “live traffic”. In most parts of this planet there simly ISN’T much live traffic right now, due to the pandemic (in case you haven’t noticed ;)).
So far the only “annoying” thing that I found with the AI controlled ATC (and also some generated IFR flight plans) is that it sometimes places you way too high (altitude) before landing. I mean, how am I supposed to descent from 15’000 feet with an A320neo from like 15 miles away (only) from the airport?
But if you know those quirks then it is easy to set the altitude yourself, cheat a little bit and have the ATC shout at you for a while…
Mind you, I am not a hardcore “flight-simmer”, but rather a “noob enthusiast” (coming from Falcon 3.0 of the days in the past): so I am simply happy to be able to fly from A to B with IFR and do a proper ILS landing
Unfortunately I don’t believe it’s anything to do with covid and reduced air traffic in real life. I’ve spent some time looking at FlightRadar24, and it’s clear there is plenty more traffic out there than MSFS is generating.
For example, Heathrow is busy this morning, but in the ten minutes I was watching it, just one aircraft took off from the in game version, with little to no ground movement.
It is certainly not working correctly. I also agree about the callsigns & ATC comments, they are often completely wrong.
Whether live or generated AI traffic is used, there is some serious work needed here before it even begins to match FSX AI, let alone surpasses it.
I hate having this bad feeling that many of these things will remain exactly like this, with third party software being expected to put it right - because that’s exactly what happened with FSX, and it was still never working properly.
And I’m not even an obsessive flight simmer. I just want some believable movement on the taxiways, and arriving and departing. That’s all. But it certainly is not happening (yet).
I have gotten in the habit of doing a quick Google search of AI flights when I see them take off/land in front of me at the airports. I have been pretty disappointed with how inaccurate they are. I had one of them take off out of Pensacola earlier and when I Googled it the actual flight had departed 40 minutes before the virtual one did. What’s the point if they aren’t even remotely accurate?
I do agree with you, I noticed a 15 minute delay this morning, so maybe this delay varies at different times and locations, but even if there is a delay, as long as they would actually BE THERE consistently, then I wouldn’t mind. But for the most part, they are simply not there populating the airport and air around me at all.
Devs, Please let this be acknowledged as a real issue that needs to be addressed.
Live traffic isn’t tracked on the ground, at the moment as far as I can tell. They’ll usually finish their landing roll and then despawn or turn off and despawn. I think the reason for that is because I’ve noticed ground tracking on these flight tracking sites isn’t great. Slow position updates and a fair bit of drift that puts them out of position. Another couple of things to keep in mind in re: your observations: if you have multiplayer enabled, players get prioritized over live flights once you’re in game; the API theyre using to pull the flight data is likely still overloaded and ends up being inconsistent as a result; lastly, make sure you’re checking this stuff on your first flight after launching the game. Live weather and live traffic seem to break in game on subsequent flights.
Whatever the reason for it, aircraft despawning immediately after landing, if that is happening, is plainly ridiculous.
I hope I can credit the developers with more sense than to think it would be acceptable for aircraft to disappear as soon as live tracking ends on the ground. If not, then I might as well give up hope of any improvement right now.
I have multiplayer turned off, and live AI traffic turned on.
I expect to have an experience of queueing to land and queueing to take off, and I don’t expect them to be appearing and disappearing in thin air, and that’s if I’m lucky that they appear at all.
I believe this is a reasonable expectation of this modern flight sim, but so far, I have not experienced it at all.
Yes, it’s ok if I am willing to fly in an empty world, but I’m sorry, I want some believable AI around me.
Today I got VFR flight in eastern Austria and there was a plenty live AI activities in Schwechat area. My flight was about 40 minutes and I noticed maybe 6 planes on the Schwechat approach. With real weather (same as I see from window) and following VFR restrictions very well experience.
The ATC needs a lot of work before they start messing around with adding extra ground traffic. It gets congested enough as it is. That’s not really a small order either, and I don’t think a few more months of development would’ve changed much. Now that said, my one major encounter with large amounts of live traffic was in Aspen earlier today, and there may be despawning there just because of how small the field is. I was told to hold at an intersection twice after landing, once for a player and once for something I wasn’t able to ID exactly. May have been another player, may have been live traffic taxiing before the rush of live GA traffic started piling in and overwhelming the system.
All i can say is that I definitely haven’t experienced the lack of traffic you have. I’ve flown 2/3rds of the way across the states so far and the only place where it was pretty much devoid of traffic was southern Indiana and Kansas, west of Kansas City.
Finally, if I’m being honest, I think you are being unreasonable if you’re expecting takeoff queues when playing with live traffic. Plain AI traffic, sure, but live traffic? Yeah that’s gonna be a mess since you’re expecting the game’s ATC to work around real world instructions that it is absolutely oblivious to.
You’re right when it comes to ground traffic. I’ve used the “Live Traffic” plugin for x-plane and the author of that great tool explains in great depths why traffic in his plugin lands and disappears, or takeoffs appear out of nowhere.
Its because either the pilots shut off the ads-b transmitters on the plane when on the ground, or there’s no good receiver for those signals once on the ground to inject positions into the sites such as flight radar or flightaware etc.
There are a few airports I know of in the US where ground traffic is good though. Check out KLAX or KEWR during busy times and you’ll see landings taxi to the gates and departing planes taxi to the runway.
There’s still a lot of work to be done. Some planes suddenly disappear after landing, others land next to the runway.
A handover to FS2020 traffic control AI after landing could probably fix these issues.
In it’s current state, I definitely prefer “offline” AI traffic
That’s why for this case you must USE SIMBRIEF. I don’t use the generated sim flight plans any more because the arc us way too misleading, high approaches, wrong altitudes etc. Since I have been using simbrief, the arc has it spot on now. Proper calls, approaches, correct landings etc. Did it on several a320 med haul flights and works like a charm. Please everyone, use simbrief! You’ll never go wrong!! Or go back to the default flight planner. Just make sure you match your sids and stars and runways with simbrief plans and youll be fine
fine 