Anyone who follows YouTube aviation channels will know who Steveo is and be familiar with his TMB850, N851TB.
Well, I just did a flight from KAPF to KOPF in MSFS. As I was pulling up to my parking spot, what did I spot in the distance but the familiar N851TB nameplate. I quickly looked up FlightAware, and it would seen he had also just flown KAPF to KOPF and landed 10 mins prior (IRL), so his plane was now in the sim.
So it got modelled matched as a PC-12 instead of a TBM, but it’s all good.
A couple of months ago, I also caught another “celebrity” plane at KOPF. This was Osama Arafat’s Phenom 300 jet with reg C-FWTF. Although at the time, I was using the stock models, and it used the generic dual engine jet to show his plane.
Wait wait wait, back it up, beep, beep, beep. Real world flights show up in MSFS? How do I not know about this? When I see other planes flying around in the sim, how do I distinguish if they are other “simmers” or real flights that are taking place?
BTW check out Osama’s videos on Flight Chops channel. He is a great guy and does an excellent job of explaining things. Flight Chops is good too. LOL
You can tell by turning on traffic nameplates in the settings. Real flights will say something like “UA 646” (making up a flight number) and other simmers will have nameplates that say, “KEWLDUDE69” or something.
Typically other users will have all kinds of gamer tag names. Live Traffic flights will have their airline flight numbers for airliners, and real world tail numbers if they’re GA.
That’s where I first saw him. I love Flight Chops. My plane’s tail number (C-OWTF) - is a direct derivative of his C-FWTF. Although mine does have a dual meaning - “Crunchmeister Only Wants To Fly”, and well… no need to explain the other meant of the letters W, T and F. lol
Mind…blown! I had no idea and thought live traffic just meant other live simmers. LOL I think part of it is I have had some of these turned off testing things to see what all effects it has on frame rates or smoothness etc so I have not flown with live traffic in high density areas.