Still no Live AI traffic

I don’t think I did after I updated. Thanks!

@madbraindoc Pleasure. Happened to me too lol.

@W1ldF1re6 Fair enough. This is why I have been harping all over the AI/LIVE threads about standardizing the terminology. Take a peruse through the thread and the numerous others and you will find posts discussing LIVE traffic intermixed with posts about AI traffic. You and a few others here may not be confused and have been concise throughout about AI traffic not working, but there are then users, like myself, that are following a half dozen threads on traffic and it is nearly impossible in some cases to know which system is being discussed and some don’t know there is a difference or use the terms interchangeably.

I have never had AI traffic enabled on my sim. I exclusively use LIVE. Most complaints about LIVE traffic tend to be regional. Not where the user is flying, but where they are based. Speculation is that it is somehow related to the same ‘bandwidth’ issue that was causing issues with the LIVE weather. This is the reason users point out the areas they fly and the traffic they see. So those that are not seeing traffic can fly those areas and see if they get any traffic.

I was unaware, and frankly surprised, that AI traffic was exhibiting similar issues. That is what made me think that you were discussing live, not AI. The fact that AI is not dependent on server traffic or “bandwidth” issues does present a puzzle. I would have expected that AI - ON would generate traffic, no matter where you are flying. I can only surmise that there must be an algorithm that determines density based on large airport proximity.

My apologies for blurring your discussion. This is definitely something that will require additional study. I will check these dead zones and present my findings.

In the meantime, for #insert deity here#'s sake can we please refer to offline as AI and online as LIVE? :slight_smile:

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I agree that standardization is a good thing, but why are you so determined to use LIVE vs AI in your terminology when ONLINE and OFFLINE perfectly describe the scenario. Kai has made that suggestion already and we can move away from words that have no direct meaning to the setting. ONLINE and OFFLINE directly define what we are talking about.

When you are using online traffic, it can’t be anything other than Flightaware data. When you are using offline traffiic, it has to be stored traffic files. At least when live is used it somewhat relates to live data, but AI is so ambiguous because it refers to so many different things.

Simple. Those are the options in the sim. I would happily use whatever terminology you prefer as long as you can get Asobo to match that terminology in the settings.

The idea is so that new users can understand with out needing a glossary.
If the button on the screen says LIVE, call it LIVE. ( I know, in the sim they use “Real Time” on one screen and “Live” on the other. :thinking: )
If the button says AI call it AI.

There seems to be a lot of terminology issues when it comes to MSFS. A lot of terms are thrown around to mean different things. And I can totally understand how people can get confused between them. Really, when it comes to traffic, it should be 2 distinct things:

  1. AI Traffic: NOT based on real world traffic. Fake AI planes added to the sim to add traffic. This is what the traffic quantity sliders affect. Traffic quantity slider really should be attached to this setting in the UI to clear up this confusion.

  2. Live Traffic / Real Time: Based on real world air traffic data obtained through FlightAware. AI traffic sliders have no effect on this type of traffic. And really, the slider for AI traffic should be greyed out and inaccessible when this option is chosen.

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It is in my options. ?? Not yours?

This is another one of those UI elements that adds confusion and really should be fixed. Mixzing terminology like that is never a good thing.

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You know, I’m going to have to check to make sure. I know that at one time it wasn’t and remember thinking it was a terrible UI design choice (75% of my job at my work is UI / UX, so those things stand out to me).

I don’t know if that’s been changed, as I haven’t messed with those settings literally in months. Perhaps I’m mistaken and that’s how it is now. If so, then that’s a good thing.

AI traffic cost me about 10 fps loss regardless which settings I use with the slider, 10 or 100 it doesn’t matter, Live Traffic, on the other hand, works fine without any performance loss.

enable Dev-Mode to check if the number of ACs is actual changing, and remember default offline AI is using not always the fps friendly models (mainly the GA airplanes are the UI airplanes)

And the topic was hijacked for like the third time to go into a ridiculously long philosophical discussion of live vs offline…

For both traffic and weather, I wish ASOBO would just build the underlying ability to support them and provide some basic service with the sim and allow 3rd parties to focus on providing the best possible software for injecting them into the sim. Active Sky and others did a great job with weather as did other companies with traffic. Isn’t that type of 3rd party activity supposed to be a core part of FS2020 and there is a market place right in the sim? I’d rather see ASOBO spending their brain power on the core functionality of the sim. JMHO.

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I think something is definitely “different” with live traffic now. I have all the megapacks installed and adjusted everything to work for live traffic. If I look at the the flight board when I select a starting gate I don’t see a lot of entries. In fact there are large gaps in arrivals and departures. Sometimes there is a three hour difference and this is at KLAX where there is plenty of traffic. The other observation but it’s minor is the wording is wrong on the flight board, under departures it shows where arriving from and on the arrivals it shows where departing from. I wish they would fix the live traffic instead of making empty promises and blocking 3rd party developers who are trying to solve this mess. It really has made me unmotivated to play anymore and I have been playing flight sims for years.

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When I first installed the patch I had Live Traffic on one flight. Came back the next day, no changes to my configuration and I am alone… Set to Live but there is nothing out there. A drag… I had a live traffic mod in FSX and was surrounded by live flights. Not sure why this is so hit and miss… Hope they get it right sometime soon.

I use live traffic and airports like Zurich see very few take offs, landings and aircraft at gates. Never seen aircraft waiting in line for takeoff/landing even during the peak hours.

Can this be due to lesser flights because of current pandemic?

I have a little suspicion that Asobo is generating the AI traffic centrally and injecting into the sim using the same mechanism as live/real time (did you see what I did there?) traffic - i.e. streamed. That might explain why people are seeing similar issues with both?

offline AI is based on a staticBFL traffic file
online AI is based on the data provided by FA

the BGL file is only a generic representation of actual AI movements, it is supposed to bring AI to every Airport within the Sim (living world feeling).

The online data from FA doesn’t get piped directly into the game. It goes to an Asobo server, gets prepared and than injected into the game. Once the flight is in the game it is controlled by the simulator and not live anymore.

The really annoying thing is that i can get some decent traffic at the airport but the space between the airports is dead (depending on the region). You can fly in a high volume area like Japan and the air between the airports is empty.

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MS is aware of this an I have gave Jörg already some ideas on how this can be fixed - we wil discuss this in our next meeting.

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