In previous years, I had enjoyed flying MSFS into EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh in real time following the arrival procedures in the NOTAM. I enabled live traffic, real weather and current time. I would tune in the arrival ATC feed provided by EAA. It was enjoyable because I would insert myself into two arriving aircraft that were one mile ahead and one mile behind. If ATC had the plane I was following hold at one of the lakes, I would follow and hold as well. Flying in the real weather added to the challenge. I felt like I was actually flying into Oshkosh!
Since then, real-time traffic seems to be…. different. It’s not broken. I can see all the real-time airliners flying overhead but most all GA traffic flying into and around Oshkosh are not in MSFS. Attached is a snapshot of the VFR Map as I was flying the arrival procedure and a snapshot of ADSB traffic at the same time. VFR Map shows about eight aircraft. ADSB shows a lot more aircraft.
Did I miss something in previous release notes that removed GA traffic from Live Traffic? Live Traffic is not broken because there are airliners displayed properly. AFAIK Live Traffic can’t be customized or filtered. Any ideas?
I think that you have hit upon an area of the sim that has been fairly widely discussed before and something that I have noticed as well. It is a feature of the sim which, in my opinion has regressed, for whatever reason (and I’d be fairly sure there is a reason), significantly over time. Maybe this is one of the reported shortcomings that was proving difficult to overcome and that prompted MSFS 2024?
Part of the problem is the ADS-B as you can see in the FA window. The other is unknown. As players know, too much traffic can be a big performance hit. As it is, Live Traffic aircraft are dynamically removed from view and environment interaction in a 40NM radius around the player ship. My personal thoughts are that the amount of traffic may be capped to prevent the sim from becoming a slideshow.
Performance hit where? Certainly not with ADSBexchange. Too much traffic? How come it worked fine in previous years? Displayed traffic is reduced to about 8 airliners. Seriously? If I turn on multiplayer, there is going to be more than 8 aircraft! Real-Time Traffic was displaying about 8 airliners which is about 2% of the total traffic. How about making that 2% be the GA aircraft closest to me? How about putting out a message saying Real-Time traffic is significantly throttled because… or turn it off completely until it can handle everything in the sky. In a sense, having to throttle is a requirements bug because someone missed the requirement that there could be hundreds of aircraft nearby. Design and code from that requirement.
There are issues and complaints about Live Weather in MSFS matching the weather outside. Real-Time traffic should be identical to ADSB data that matches the sky outside.
Live Traffic with how MSFS integrates it with FA is quite poorly done. It’s not 40 NM it’s 30NM, I’ve tested. If the user spawns at a lower class airport then you’ll get surrounding and overflying traffic. But if spawned at a larger airport you’ll only get traffic for that specific airport and you won’t get any surrounding airborne or overflying traffic and traffic will only be generated within 15-20NM of the approach… Again, tested at LAX, DFW, ORD, with consistent results and compared against FSLTL.
Per CasualClick’s last post on the last Live Traffic debate thread where I did a lot of testing between MSFS Traffic and other traffic offerings about how MSFS and FA interact, they’re using a Firehose API that is supposed to inject aircraft within a 80NM 360* view of the user. This does not happen with MSFS traffic but is easily seen in other products like FSLTL or PSXT where the traffic extends up to 80NM (which can also be customized for performance if needed as well.)
The limit of (40) actually 30 NM is indeed an attempt to save performance and improve FPS. But even at a place like Oshkosh, we’re talking about small GA traffic, not heavy airliners so there’s really no need to limit traffic in that example. But at major airports that dynamic attempt to save performance is taken a step further and limits aircraft to that immediate field. So while you’re removing airborne traffic for whatever reason it wants to fill airports up to capacity. This was again tested at LAX where I had 4 arrivals, no airborne traffic, but every single parking spot was full at the airport. Per Littlenavmap the total AI count was well over 100 and it was all from parked aircraft on the ground at LAX. No traffic at either BUR, ONT, SNA, or LGB which all falls within the 30-40 radius cap.
The other issue is how the data is being pulled/used. Since FA doesn’t offer any ADS-B ground coverage you’re not going to really get any ground traffic. Most of the traffic will spawn either as it’s departing or once it’s in the air. Any ground traffic is incidentally being injected because it’s actually working the way it should and is going off of the times listed on FA but that seldom actually happens. However, with GA/VFR traffic these timings are not really posted unless the pilot files an IFR or sends their VFR plan to ATC so that the times make it into the system. So with VFR, you won’t know until they’re up in the air and ATC can input that data into the system which is then fed to FA and then to MSFS.
So summary:
MSFS Traffic needs a lot of work and how the data is handled and injected needs to have a deep look at. FSLTL has slowly been adding GA models and now supports VFR aircraft both active and historic parked in their latest version:
If you’re wanting a more accurate representation of live traffic within MSFS I would use either FSLTL or PSXT. I’ve been involved with AI stuff in FS since way back in FS2004 so I understand the different methods out there and of all the ones available MSFS would be my absolute last resort.
