Multiple types of traffic hazards including drones, helicopters, hot air balloons, hang gliders, gliders, powered paragliders, and aerobatic aircraft
Dynamic and expansive low-altitude traffic coverage for the entire areas of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine
All traffic models are fully animated and flying
Traffic ranges in altitudes from the surface up to 6,000 ft with random flight tracks
All traffic is fully collision enabled and will cause damage to your aircraft with crash mode enabled
Night lighting on all helicopters and aerobatic aircraft
LOD optimization results in a minimal impact on simulator frame rates
I’m wondering how this gets deconflicted with Live Traffic and Live Weather.
Nothing like having hot air balloons floating around when it’s solid overcast from 1200 - 3000 AGL. Or having an aerobatic plane doing stunts at a Class B that sees only jetliner traffic.
So a couple of updates as I go along - bearing in mind the cost of the product, it could benefit from a little bit of object generation modifications to the traffic and where they appear. While helicopters aren’t a big deal to see virtually anywhere, it’s a bit unrealistic to me seeing gliders and hot air balloons just outside of Baltimore for example. Haven’t seen any drones yet but they are way too small I think to even pick up visually until you’re right next to them.
It’s actually pretty surprising how much the helicopters by themselves add to the overall realism. I haven’t explored a lot yet – no hot air balloons for me yet, and no drones – but a decent purchase so far. (I did like the birds a lot, too.)
Looks like it is from the same dev who did that ‘birds’ addon.
Like that one, it would seem that you are going to have to buy separate versions for each geographical area with it ending up costing a fortune to cover the areas you may want to fly in.
Don’t really like that kind of business model personally so this is not for me.
I hadn’t heard of this till today. Any idea on how traffic is generated. If it’s not linked to any real world eqiuvalent, I don’t know why this would be limited to any one geographic region. Why isn’t it global, for instance?
That’s the issue I’m having as well … I’d rather have bigger packages at a more resonable price than “salami slicing” the whole thing with tiny areas that would add up to a huge sum if you wanted to get them all. Same reason why I won’t get the Birds add-on anytime soon.
Traffic is generated in BGL files and inserted dynamically depending upon where you are. Visibility is determined by Object Detail LOD slider. I haven’t dug into them to see more details. I am in touch with the Developer to better fine tune the types of traffic and where they appear - i.e., gliders over a major city.
But that’s not the rate that was applicable for the Birds. Buying one of the Birds sets gave you a stiff discount on all the others, so that the subsequent add-ons cost about $5 US each. The entire set of US birds cost me about $40-50 I think, at most. I assume the TIS packages will be the same.
Not cheap, but not full price x number of areas, at least.
Exactly. There is still South America, Eastern Europe, The whole of Asia and Oceania to cover… that’s a massive area of the world to go still. I think it’s 11 packs so far and the rest of the areas I’ve listed must surely be at least that amount again. It’s ridiculous.
Nearly a year since the last post here, just wondering how this content is working out? I finally have a PC that might be able to handle this extra load, and tempted by the British Isles pack, but seems they have stopped doing more regions (could be a blessing in disguise).
Does it still work?
Thing is I don’t want to buy from SM. I read somewhere it was on iniBuilds store (iniManager) but I can’t see any of them there now. Maybe they have been removed - not supported any longer?
I have all the USA VFR regions and a low to medium PC (Ryzen 5 2600, RTX 2060 Super 12GB). I run it alongside GAIST Ultra V2 and Simple Traffic using Live Traffic, Live WX. Acceptable performance in the low 40s in many cases 50s at altitude. I have no issues with Simmarket, I have many payware through that Store.
Thanks for the quick reply. Is it actually good to have? I mean, do you see a lot of random and interesting traffic? Does it add to the “fun” or kinda “meh”?
I am scared to add SM to my list of stores TBH. You should see the list I already have to manage! If I go there, it will cost me as there is a whole bunch of stuff I want that is only available there, which my brain will be compelled to add to the cart on entry!
Understood. I’m afraid I can’t help you with the store choices, but I totally get it. I already have three stores in addition to Steam and Marketplace so I know the feeling.
As for Traffic in Sight, it’s great - I was departing a Municipal size airport once and a helicopter was taxiing past for takeoff. I sometimes get in close encounters with helos I get buzzed past by someone in Pitts style aerobatic trainer, so it’s great immersion. All of this happens at low altitude of course. The authors have taken a lot of customer feedback to heart and tried to make sure that certain hazards don’t show up under incorrect conditions. For example, only on totally CAVU days will you catch a glimpse of balloonists, not during low clouds/MVFR. I personally perfer this over birds if I had to pick which one would take up CPU cycles.
