Just watched three flights land at LEAL (Alicante) on FlightRadar24.
None of them appeared in FS2020.
No idea where the sim is getting its ‘live’ traffic from but regrettably, it is hopeless.
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Yeah it doesn’t match FR24 for sure but I would not call it hopeless even though it’s kinda bad for a release version.
That’s not what they told us in the Discovery series.
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I don’t think it’s up to snuff with what was promised, but I was flying off the coast of British Columbia between WA and AK last weekend and saw two flights up there that matched within ~5 min with flightaware data.
So it’s doing something…
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You are correct. It is doing something…but only catching about 1 in 5 live aircraft.
I use FlightRadar24 for live tracking and so many flighs land at LEAL (a major tourist airport) yet only a few are followed by the sim.
Maybe next update…or the next…or the next…lol
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I’ve written about “live traffic” before (not nearly as often as “live weather”). What I would say to you all is that, as implemented, it does produce a sky full of roughly accurate traffic where otherwise there would probably be something AI-generated that was even less faithful to reality.
The biggest issue with “live traffic” is how it integrates with airport surface movements, and unfortunately ADS-B (which feeds flightaware and flightradar24) is just not as good as ASDE-X or ASSC. How it integrates with players is even less realistic, and honestly, they can’t do much better here.
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Fair comment.
In which case, please - improve AI generated traffic.
Fed up with aircraft that disappear on landing and which frequently do not take off.
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So perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me will weigh in, I have not ever disabled “live traffic” so I don’t know how the AI traffic works in comparison.
However, yes… they’d have to ditch the “live” part of it if you want aircraft to taxi to/from takeoff/landing. I’d stick that request in the wishlist forum if you feel strongly about it (and it doesn’t already do that in-game with live traffic off).
Although this was 1.8.3 or before, the problem I’ve noticed is that the live air traffic will simply vanish once you get close to the airport.
I was on ground at a busy airport, waiting for other traffic, but nothing ever came. Once I had taken off and was about 10 - 15NM from the airfield, I saw the entire ILS approach packed with aircraft, and plenty more being vectored in.
When I returned to the airfield and came in to land, it was dead quiet again.
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Roughly accurate! I’ve seen Ryanair at Dublin represented by a 172! I think you are being generous with that description. 
There is sometimes an aircraft in the place where one should be, but it is rarely the correct type. And the less said about liveries the better! I wouldn’t even mind a few low polygon models of generic liveried aircraft - but there needs to be more variety - some 737s at least! I am hoping something like FStraffic comes along that we used to have for fsx that incorporates more real life models and liveries. But the trailers led me to believe that “live traffic” would provide that anyway.
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Again, not to defend the developer here 
but there isn’t really a way to make it live that extends down to the ground. These websites rely on ADS-B information which tends to disappear at low altitude close to the airport. I actually have an ADS-B receiver running that feeds flightaware through a software defined radio; you don’t get to see what happens when the signal goes away. For security reasons, no government entity is going to give you real-time access to aircraft position information from their systems.
Think of “live traffic” in the game as an in-the-sky only feature rather than a plane-watching at the airport feature.
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I agree with you…
In which case the devs should make something available in the ground to at least give the impression of a busy airport.
Gatwick EGLL is one of the busiest airports in the EU. In FS2020, it is like a deserted wasteland. Same goes for most other airports as well.
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They could use all the fancy AI to map out what aircraft do before and after landing. Essentially use AI to fill in the missing data.
They should also be able to match up aircraft types. I don’t care if they are 100% accurate, but typically I see everything live traffic in my sim as a BE36
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You are absolutely correct. They could. It is just a matter of what amount of time (money) investment it would take, and whether or not you (and others) would be willing to trade that feature for something else.
EDIT: Sorry, that’s not fair. Perhaps they can get everything else working as well. I’m just a bit disappointed overall at the moment. I really want them to deliver a fully realistic piece of game mastery.
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I would happily trade. I hate empty airports lol.
I understand, it breaks the immersive experience to go to a major international hub and there is nothing on the taxiways. It would still be a pretty impressive feat to somehow work you into a CTOT in the real schedule. And a decent feat to implement A-CDM in an AI-only environment.
I actually posted an A-CDM thread in the wishlist, but nobody wanted it.
For the uninitiated, airport collaborative decision making dictates movements at major airports. In real life, if you’ve ever seen the electronic signs at your gate or ramp parking with things that say “TOBT” (target off-block time) or “TSAT” (target start-up approval time) and a time - that is A-CDM.
I wonder if they dumbed it down because of Internet issues some players are having in multiplayer and in general latency issues some people are having.
I really dont know but I think the amount of data that is constantly being sent to our computers is larger than any other video game ?
We don’t want to fully represent live traffic until they have the sim rendering optimized. Your CPU would melt, or crash.
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Yours might. I suspect mine would not.
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You clearly aren’t in the same sim as the rest of us and also don’t know what you’re taking about. Generating traffic is simply CPU bound and generating all that traffic would destroy your frames, even if you had a $5000 CPU.
I have a 3700x and an RTX 3080 and the max I get at LAX or any other custom large airport is 10fps if I max out AI traffic running at 4K.
It’s a problem with the sim.