Live traffic landing on opposite runway to real world?

Bug Reporting Hub ATC, Traffic & NAVAIDs
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1

I’ve been sitting watching the live traffic at Miami International (KMIA) on the sim while watching FlightRadar24 at the same time and to my surprise, when an aircraft landed, despite the same flight number etc, it landed on the opposite side of the airport and in the opposite direction. I’ve downloaded the latest update as of 26th March 2021 but the same happened the other night when I was watching live traffic and before the performance update, so that makes no difference. Does anyone else notice this?

Is this a known bug?

(I wouldn’t mind so much but I swear I saw the passengers at the gate run for their lives to get to it when they realized it was landing on the wrong side of the airport!)

I also don’t have anywhere near as many aircraft at the airport compared to the real world airport. I’ve tried changing settings from medium to Ultra but no difference. I’m currently sitting at Atlanta (KATL) where, on flightradar24 I can see around 30 aircraft. In the sim I can see, let me count… 0. I have live traffic and live weather/time on. I must be missing a setting somewhere?

Steve

2

Others may know more about live traffic, but from what I understand, it’s just the flight plans that are in the sim, not the actual tracks. So if in sim, the wind direction is different than the current real-world direction, it makes sense that planes could land on the opposite runway.

There are other threads in the forum describing how “Live Weather” is not exactly what is being experienced in the world but more of a prediction model that is close to real. I know that is not what simmers would prefer, but I think that’s as good as it will get considering that it’s not feasible to get super accurate real world weather data across the entire globe.

3

Real air traffic is actually realtime, but close to the airport the AI takes over and communicates with ingame ATC following the active runway etc.
So you’ll see a discrepancy depending on the weather conditions in the sim.

Aircraft on ground are not rendered from live traffic, they are randomly spawned. Real traffic adds up just prior departure.

Not sure how your setup is but I always have plenty aircraft standing at the gates/parkings, but you won’t see any nameplates on them since they are inactive.

Also note that the number of real time (or active AI) traffic will be reduced if you have multiplayer aircraft in your vincinity. They have priority and there is an overall limit of 30 or so closest active aircraft rendered at any time.

4

The Real Online Airtraffic data is just used to spawn the aircraft. Their current position, altitude, their origin airport and their destination airport. Once they’re spawned, they’re simulated like a normal offline AI traffic, with its own ATC clearance and depending on your current weather and active runway.

They don’t “stream” their position and altitude from the real world data every second.

5

We had a really good Live Traffic plugin in Xplane. Would be nice to see something like that in MSFS. :slightly_smiling_face:
I did think that was what it would be like when I heard there would be inbuilt live traffic within MSFS. Its quite different now that I’ve seen it in action and not nearly as good or accurate.

6

I’ve never put 2 and 2 together on this issue. Recently, I’d set up a flightplan in SimBrief and it would assign a specific runway. I’d then spawn into the airport and see traffic on the opposite end - I just figured that the wind shifted in the few minutes it took me to get loaded up. The LIVE traffic “had” so much potential - seems like a missed opportunity.

On that note, I would be happy with the “old fashioned” importing of flight plan files that get released seasonally and adding a few AI traffic (slightly lower detail) aircraft types and liveries like the old FSX had.
You could tailor it to the airlines that use airports you like to frequent the most… Why is something like that not available yet? If it is - please point me in the right direction!! :wink:

7

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

No

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons? If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the Community Support section.

Yes

Brief description of the issue:

KSAN realtime traffic seems to be usually landing on runway 9, while IRL most traffic lands on runway 27 due to prevailing offshore winds.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

Screenshot_20240410_110308
Screenshot_20240410_1103081368×376 74.3 KB

Note that I’m distinguishing from player traffic in this report. The aircraft shown above without nameplates are the realtime traffic.

METAR pulled when I took this screenshot:

SAN DIEGO INTERNATIONAL \LINDBERGH FLD, CA, United States (KSAN) 32-44N 117-11W 12M
Apr 10, 2024 - 01:51 PM EDT / 2024.04.10 1751 UTC
Wind: from the SW (220 degrees) at 8 MPH (7 KT):0
Visibility: 10 mile(s):0
Sky conditions: clear

From my local observations IRL KSAN does turn around once in a while, but the vast majority of time wind direction dictates use of runway 27.

ICAO or coordinates (DevMode > Debug > Display position)

KSAN

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Turn on realtime traffic, watch it go and compare to what’s actually happening on https://flightradar24.com

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

n/a

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

As far back as I can remember…

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

8

@Scramblejams It is a known issue with MSFS ATC and handling of AI aircraft.

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9

Thanks. Seems like it impacts some locations much more than others, then.

10

It would be nice if MSFS 2024 had the capability of recognizing dominant runways for airports and also preferred airliner parking locations! This was working very good in FS2004 as we were able to specify the dominant runway (through AFCAD) and also parking spot and the AI planes wouldn’t necessarily just park around your plane! Many airports in the world have a dominant runway that they will only change if the tail wind exceeds 10 knots or so (because of their locations, mountains, cities, etc.) and this is missing in the current MSFS version! I hope we can at least get it to as good as it was in FS 2004 which is 20 years ago …

1 Like
11

Good idea, this would be very helpful.

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