Great test!
I will, tonight i´m performing the test and i´ll let you know.
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I completely agree. Your detractors in this thread are likely suffering from what I described in another post here:
A not-insignificant portion of the community has been desensitized to software flaws through a long period of neglect, and third-parties picking up the slack for the prime.
OK, so Iâm starting to get an understanding of what the live traffic is doing and how it works. First off, I am not seeing an instant difference when I toggle Off then back On the live traffic. There could be, but I want to test this more. What it definitely DOESNâT do is suddenly pop in a load of live traffic planes.
So Iâve just parked myself in the drone above JFK at New York, and fired up flightradar24 and also the live departure/arrival boards. Then Iâve spent the last hour or so observing what is going on at the real airport, as reported by the two different sources and then what is happening in the sim.
First thing to note is that flightradar24 and the arrival/departure boards ARE NOT in perfect sync. They seem mostly correlated, but I was seeing planes land that had already landed 20/30 minutes before according to the arrival/departure boards and also planes taking off that tooks off a while ago. So there is some lag somewhere in the system.
That being said, with one exception, I could see all flights on both flightradar24 and the arrival/departure boards. I think the one I couldnât see was a GA plane, and so I guess that makes sense.
So how did MSFS get on?
OK, so the way to think about this is that when you start up the sim, the airport is âemptyâ. There is a lag - I would estimate 15-20 minutes from the real time flights. So to start with, you basically see nothing at the airport for that amount of time. Then what I started to see were the landing and departing flights start to appear.
At first the sequencing seemed a bit strange - a plane that departed after another one arrived would appear at the departure stand before the landing one was in sight. Then I realised that the planes that are departing will spawn in some time before they actually taxi and depart. And that is what I saw - many of them sat at the stand for a good 10-15 minutes before taxiing around the airport and eventually taking off.
Each of these planes corresponded to the live departures and arrivals.
The name plates show the originating airport - so it is easy to tell apart the arrivals from the departures - the departures all show KJFK on their name plate.
Take off runways did not correspond to the same runway I was seeing on flightradar24. However, in all cases, the landing runway did correspond to flightradar24. Not sure what to make of that.
The number of planes active at the airport at any one time is actually relatively low - at least for JFK over the period I watched (mid afteroon local time). Although flightradar24 might show a dozon plus planes at any point in time, I was typically seeing 3-4 preparing for take off and 1 or at most 2 landing/taxiing to stands. This was mirrored in MSFS. The most I saw simultaneously on screen at once was 8. See screen shot:
I think this was the most surprising thing - the relatively low numbers. I would see planes appear, sit at their gate for a few minutes, taxi to a runway and take off. There might be 2-3 doing that at the same time. Whilst that was going on, 1 or two would be landing.
I accurately tracked and watched 7 landings and 8 take offs in 60 mins or so - about one take off/landing every 4 minutes. However, in real life, and in the sim, it was not evenly spread. For example, I saw three back to back landings at the beginning of my observation, and then a 20 minute gap with no landings and then another 3 in quick succession. But this was actually what was going on in real life.
In conclusion, it seems to me that live traffic DOES work. Just the way it works is not necesarily how you might expect it to. From the moment you connect to the sim, you will need to wait a period for the live traffic to start to appear. Planes parked at stands and âinactiveâ appear on flightradar24 but DO NOT appear in MSFS (there is a separate option to show static ground traffic). Therefore, the number of active planes even at busy airports is relativey small.
Note that when I watched for a bit, then switched the traffic Off and the On again, the flow of data did not pick up where it left off - rather I had to wait another 15-20 minutes to see planes again - it was like it was reset, and the clokc restarted. I assume that the lag is something to do with how the data is captured and made available through the MS servers.
Hope this helps.
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Now I tried to stay on topic but dude, you completely missed the point. Detractors? What detractors? Detractors from basic decency and a positive attitude?
OP: Yay! I think this is so cool!
Someone: No. Thatâs not how you should feel about this game because of this and that and this and this and that and this and this and this.
like wtf.
The fact is there are problems with this simulator, itâs painfully obvious. BUT as with anything else, you either go â â â â â about it around everyone and everything until it becomes so loud, so abhorrent that itâll send ripples causing birds to fall dead from the sky
OR you can try to solve the problem (or go around them) by having an objective discussion about it where appropriate.
I donât know about you, but this is one of those things in life where being boring is actually good for society and our sanity.
Now stay on topic please.
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Ok guys, please take it to the DM. This has nothing to do with Live Traffic.
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Correct. I believe that the proper outcome for this debacle is insolvency for Asobo (not sure what else they have in the pipeline?), and a mention in MSFTâs next earnings call as a reason for a reduction the forecasted earnings per share.
Gaming has become a multi-billion dollar world-wide industry. And unfortunately, trends like development shops releasing half-baked products for full price wonât stop until their principals are punished financially.
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I wasnât suggesting it was the entire world I was simply providing some info since the problem hasnât been experienced in all countries.
I also grew sick of everyone going on about Europe and North America, those two places are also not the entire world.
I canât believe how toxic the Flightsim community has become since the release of MSFS.
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This seems to be similar to my experience. What I think they need to do is to turn on the switch that allows us to spawn traffic as they are presented live in FlightAware, not this âreset and wait until planes start to populate the areaâ. Thatâs probably what they are struggling at the moment, finding the right balance between whatâs been streamed and the impact on systems. I would think that every other plane that is not controlled by the player should be a placeholder model (nice looking but just an empty shell) to keep the usage low but somethingâs definitely not right.
So to conclude - the topic title is deception at best. The live traffic is not working as advertised and it is NOT amazing.
The msfs development team may eventually fix it but we will have to waitâŚthe theme of this âjourneyâ.
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IF its working explain THIS 748 doing low altitude stunts starting at 33:00:
I see this same thing all over the world - NOT other players, it is the AI
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Without wishing to be pessimistic or say that it isnt the case as you describe but unless everyone can repeat the steps you take and have the same result it can not be said to be working.
It just means that it is very very unpredictable and not constant: it will work for some people sometimes for some of the time.
It needs fixing.
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I think I can say that my experience is that it works to the extent that live planes appear in the sim in a predictable way. I have not looked at what they do once they get there other than the fact that the ones that landed did land on the right runway and taxi sensibly around the airport. I didnât check if they went to the correct gate or not. I watched the planes taking off, but didnât follow them to see what they did.
It would be helpful if you could try repeating the test I did and report back as to whether you experience a different result - i.e. giving the planes time to arrive into your world? Not saying tis is how it shoud be, but I think this is what is mostly making it appear as if live traffic is not spawning in the sim world.
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Not my topic title. Iâm just reporting what I have observed and my conclusions.
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The arrival and departure boards are nice but you canât do much with them. You canât click on a flight and be taken directly to it and you canât follow them either. I am wondering if that is a future feature because that would be a huge improvement. How can you sit at an airport and follow planes without the plane moving? Has anyone noticed the departures and arrivals are reversed?
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Use the search optionâŚ
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You can lock your drone to other planes. I think that would enable you to follow them if you want
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I have never had that problem, so donât kid yourself. Live weather, and wind always worked wellâŚwestern Europe server.
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Exactly what the Xplane plugin does. Live traffic is dependent on the aircraft having its transponder on, and you see eratic behaviour because of the delay in how the data is transmitted. Youâll hear atc calling flights out over and over for being ridiculous levels below or above their assigned alt. You are 12000 below your assigned altitude, or planes will take off and fly level at 1500f/agl for miles because the tracker hasnât transmitted a new position. So is Live Traffic working? Yes, like the Garmins technically âworkâ. Itâs all smoke and mirrors, because at the core - this âsimâ is sorely lacking.