Personally I find the name of the new option misleading which might be the result of the French/English translation.
Actually the new option finally detaches the amount of parked (static) aircraft which are automatically placed onto gates and parking spots from the “Airport Traffic Quality” setting, which is a great thing to have!
What that setting does not alter is the amount or level of detail on live traffic or multiplayer aircraft from Asobo or other ai traffic packs.
Would be nice to see this small improvement prior to the public release
That might be the case, yes - same goes also for “Airport Traffic Quality” so changing “Quality” to “Quantity” would be applicable in both cases I guess.
For the aircraft however it only affects the parked, static ones, so “Quantity” alone would not do the job imho
Interesting,
When I read it I understood exactly what they meant. My mind automatically went to parked aircraft because that’s what I’ve had the most problems with.
I also don’t consider Live Traffic or Multiplayer traffic to be Passive, since they interact with the environment.
Having said that, I hope that they also separate Multiplayer traffic from all other traffic. I want to be able to turn off Live Traffic, and have Multiplayer only sometimes.
While I had the same instant idea I had to verify what it really does (another possibility could have been LOD handling on passive aircraft models which still is an ongoing topic).
However that doesn’t ultimately mean someone without forums access and the same mindset comes to the same conclusion as fast I can imagine that someone who is new to the hobby might have trouble to understand that phrase
From what I know the team defined “passive aircraft” as all aircraft the user does not control actively which includes live traffic as well as multiplayer aircraft (from a client side of view).
I think that’s already the case since… ever? You only have to turn off either multiplayer or live traffic to have one without the other. For example turn that one to “off” and you’ll only see multiplayer aircraft:
What I meant was that previously they had one option controlling the quality of everything. Static, Live and Multiplayer. But I want to be able to adjust the quality of them individually.
If they are defining Passive the way that you say, then would that mean that I still can not set Multiplayer to Ultra while having Static aircraft turned Low or Off?
Passive Aircraft Quality are a bit confusing and misleading.
I suggest renaming as follows:
Passive Aircraft Quality to Static Aircraft Quantity or Static Aircraft Density - because this option controls the number of static aircraft, not their quality.
Didn’t Real-Time Online also handle real ship traffic? If that’s the case, what they really need to do is split real ship traffic from aircraft traffic.
I don’t know, my brain just can’t make sense of Asobo’s reasoning. Maybe you have to be French or something to get it, because I don’t understand a single thing they do. They can’t seem to get anything right
Hmm, well, there are no ‘quality levels’ on live traffic, nor on multiplayer. From looking into the files however something for multiplayer might be planned as aircraft now have specific categories like ‘phantasy’ which is for now unused. Down the road that could be used for filtering out specific types. For live traffic, well, they may be able to control the amount injected in theory…
You can - that’s why that setting is misleading the new setting exclusively affects static placed aircraft. Nothing more, nothing less. Setting that one to ‘off’ will remove all static aircraft and nothing else is touched.
All multiplayer aircraft will still show up in the same amount and quality as well as all live traffic aircraft.
I know there is no wait to specifically control the Quality of Multiplayer traffic. But for some reason leaving the airport traffic quality set to Ultra increases the chances of Multiplayer traffic showing up with the correct aircraft and liveries. Anything lower and they become more inaccurate. This is still problem in 2020 also.
When I hear the world quality, I think it must have something to do with the quality of textures or models, not the number of aircraft. That should be quantity.
What does “passive” mean anyway? Is that parked static aircraft (ie will never move) or what we know as AI as they are passive in that they can’t be interacted with
That setting is only affecting static (never moving) aircraft placed by the simulator. However the algorithm uses the ‘passive aircraft models’ of the sim - so that naming is pretty quirky.
I always thought it referred to Static Aircraft only, but now it sounds like it refers to all aircraft except your own. However I don’t agree with the use of the word in that way.
If static, which I think more likely, wonder why they’ve changed terminology? In any case there should be a ?query box in the SIM with a fuller explanation.
Maybe someone from MSFT can just jump in and share what that option means before we all guess around? Static aircraft only? Disabled of reduced quality?
I tested it on my own - finding out what it does is rather simple.
Turn ‘Passive Aircraft Quality’ to ‘off’
Enable live traffic
‘Air Traffic’ at ‘Ultra’
Set ‘Traffic Airport Quality’ to ‘Ultra’
Load into a large airport
You will see that busses, trucks and other vehicles are roaming around and that live traffic aircraft are spawning/using the gates.
Turn ‘Passive Aircraft Quality’ to ‘Ultra’
Disable live traffic
‘Air Traffic’ at ‘Ultra’
Set ‘Traffic Airport Quality’ to ‘Off’
Load into a large airport
No movement on the airport but tons of static aircraft will sit tight at the gates.
Set ‘Passive Aircraft Quality’ to ‘Low’
Enable live traffic
‘Air Traffic’ at ‘Ultra’
Leave ‘Traffic Airport Quality’ at ‘Off’
Load into a large airport
Take a look at the aircraft from a distance, set ‘Passive Aircraft Quality’ to ‘Ultra’ and compare. There will be no difference at all besides the amount of static aircraft. That was also already tested in the SU3 Beta Discussion Thread.
You could also use developer mode to see if LODs transit differently, however I’m pretty sure they don’t
Exactly that. It’s basically the quantity of freely roaming airport vehicles and if set to off it also eliminates the service vehicles standing at non user occupied gates (so empty ones or those used by passive aircraft).
