AU Traffic Not Working

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi guys, I've had a look through the AU AI traffic issues that other people are having and I've had a look at the tutorial which is stickied but I still don't know how to get it to work. I've got a fresh install of FSX Deluxe with SP1 and SP2 and .NET 2008 frameworks installed thus far. No custom AI has been installed, no AFCADs have been edited, nothing has been done apart from SP1, SP2 and .NET 2008. I think the main thing that has not worked is the manual addition of the scenery files into FSX as outlined in the last step i.e. the entry FTXAU15_SCENERY (is it even meant to be this file that has to be present or is it a type and FTXAI_TRAFFIC being the file that actually has to be in there?) must be present (according to my interpretation of the troubleshoot). Not only is it not present, but none of the other FTX files are present if they indeed have to be in there somewhere. When I go to add area and go to all the folders in the ORBX folder which was created in the FSX directory, I go through all the folders and I don't see any files that the Scenery Library is able to recognise... they are all blank (they seem to have all the necessary files as outlined in the tutorial in Windows Explorer). I'm stumped... what should I do?

P.S. All my traffic is set to 100%.

P.P.S. I don't have any other payware or freeware ORBX programs installed so I don't know whether that's a prerequisite for AU_Traffic to work? I was under the impression that the free stuff section would work regardless of having the various payware products that ORBX offers?

[bennypage]

Hi mate.

I had a similar problem but it was due to GA traffic bgl files I added which were not compatible with FSX even though I thought they were. Before I removed them I noticed it stopped all my FTX AI traffic from displaying. Not sure if this will help mate?

[Wolter van der Spoel]

if you have any AI files that are from a fs9 origin then no AI traffic will appear in fsX, alas that is fact so you will need to check all your other AI addons to make sure they are of fsX origin

[Atomic_Sheep]

No custom AI has been installed, no AFCADs have been edited, nothing has been done apart from SP1, SP2 and .NET 2008.

As I said, no AI has been added. I'm aware of the FS9 AI incompatibility when placed into FSX and I've made a query into the complete compatibility of AU traffic with only FSX to ensure that no AI clashes would occur but I didn't get an answer.

The other thing I'm not sure about is the fsx.CFG file. Under Documents and Settings\Administrator\ I only have Flight Simulator X Files folder i.e.

Documents and Settings\Administrator\Flight Simulator X Files

not C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\FSX

and after a search of my whole computer fsx.CFG does not exist/has been created. I don't know if having two partitions is a problem when installing ORBX AU Traffic.

[bennypage]

Are you displaying hidden files/folders in Windows? I think the application data folder is hidden by default.

[Atomic_Sheep]

I thought I made it visible... had another look... and made sure it was ticked and yes its now there. Had a look and the fsx.CFG file is indeed present. I did actually manage to get the AI working. I didn't realise that you had to add the whole folder not its contents in the FSX Scenery addon menu. Now that I have the AI working, I do have a few questions none the less.

Why is the AI using both runways at Melbourne (YMML) for take off and landing at the same time? i.e. with todays real world weather enabled, traffic was being directed to land on runway 09 (what appeared to be exclusively - very strange as there's basically no wind in Melb today, and I can only imagine the longer 16 runway would be the preferred landing runway due to its length over runway 09) and the other issue was that traffic was also directed to runway 09 and runway 16 to take off. I've similarly never seen AI go through one another but today for the first time, I saw a landing aircraft taxiing to the gate with a taking off aircraft going directly through it and taking off. Whats going on? Another thing I noticed was the lack of aircraft at Essendon (YMEN) for example. There appeared only a King Air 350, some small business jet and a DC-3. How many GA AI are there in this AU Traffic package? I didn't see any REX airlines, but I did notice Travolta's 707, Emirates, Thai, JetStar, Tiger, Virgin, Qantas but not REX (maybe there really wasn't any REX at this particular time on the schedule but that's hard to believe as there is usually at least 2 on the ground at any one time at YMML?). I haven't flown to Moorabbin to see whether there was more GA aircraft there, but overall it just seems kinda empty over all. Am I missing something?

[Graham Eccleston]

Quite a lot to digest there, but I will do my best to cover it all.

Let me take the easier points first. There is very little in the way of GA traffic plans included in this pack. It is essentially an airliner pack with some of the smaller regional operators and a few specific groups such as the Royal Flying Doctor and Customs Australia,  included. It is a mammoth task to put together a reasonable and workable GA pack that would suit a wide range of simmers, and that assumes we are able to obtain the appropriate aircraft along with approval to use them. We would like to offer a GA Traffic pack in the future but it will not be available in the short term.

There are lots of REX aircraft included in the pack. I generally have at least 3 or 4 aircraft on the stand at Melbourne so I am surprised you are not seeing any. Is it just Melbourne that you are not seeing REX or are you not seeing them at any airport. Try Sydney (YSSY) and if you have none there, then we will need to investigate further.

The runway issue is a more complex one. The original Orbx YMML used the standard FSX single runway setup where only one runway was used at any one time. This created problems with the volume of AI traffic as aircraft were waiting so long for their turn to take off, they just disappeared after the FSX 5 min time limit. Users were also commenting that the airport normally had two runways in operation, could that be recreated in the sim.

FSX cannot handle crosswind runways so in order for us to use the two runways concurrently, we had to convince FSX that the two runways were in fact parallel. FSX therefore thinks the two runways are side by side so will direct traffic accordingly dependent on the wind direction. From memory, the 'parallel' runways are 16/27 and 9/34 and FSX will always look apron each of those sets as though they were one.

The next issue with this configuration is that FSX will prevent aircraft from crossing a runway once it has given ownership of that runway to a landing aircraft. That usually happens when an aircraft is about 10 to 15 klms out. This resulted in many aircraft being held prior to crossing the active runway well before the landing aircraft were anywhere near the airport. During my testing, I had one aircraft after another just disappear with the FSX 5 min timeout situation. It became a lottery as to whether an aircraft could actually make it to rwy 34 for takeoff.

The solution to this problem was to unlink the two runways and some of the crossing taxiways. The downside to that was that aircraft using the two runways would not know of the existence of each other or of aircraft using the crossing taxiways and this would result in the possibility of collisions. Nevertheless, I tested this setup for many days and had only one serious incident and a few near misses.

For relaxation, I love to set up my control tower and just do a bit of plane spotting at Melbourne. I can sometimes do this for a couple of hours at a time. For the most part, what I see is a well choreographed display of aircraft movements but yes, I do have the odd 'incident'. All in all though, I have found this to be 'as real as it gets' and I would not like to go back the single runway configuration.

Unfortunately, there are many issues with the way FSX handles AI aircraft, and while we will never be able to replicate the real world of air traffic controlled aircraft, we will continue to try and outsmart this beast called FSX.

[Atomic_Sheep]

Ok thanks... I'll keep a look out for REX. I was surprised myself when I didn't see it. I've only had about half an hour to check it all out. As for the GA, I've actually found a program thats also free...

http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=108949

I believe that's it... that is meant to have a lot of GA included. I'm yet to try it and I'm not too concerned about the lack of GA being present in AU Traffic as I know a GA package exists. I just saw some GA and thought that maybe GA was also included so the lack of it basically freaked me out a bit and that's probably what made me think that even the main airlines weren't loading entirely.

I do have another question though. I believe when I was using World of AI in my previous FSX install (this is a fresh install), coupled with custom AFCAD files (by Ray Smith I believe... also found on flightsim.com), his AFCAD files basically had optionally unlocked crosswind runways. This meant that you did actually have the possibility to arrive at an airport from any which angle depending on the weather BUT, only the runways facing into the wind were utilised with the other ones being empty. In other words, from memory, I believe that for YMML, you could be directed to various approaches depending on the weather conditions and only one active runway would be used. Sure there would be bottlenecks but it just seemed a lot more realistic. Is there a way of for example either getting rid of the trick that makes FSX think that crosswind runways are parallel or somehow making it work based on weather conditions as what I believe was the case with Ray Smith's AFCAD files. I could be wrong in relation to Ray Smiths AFCADs but in that case I think I'd rather just have the good old FSX stupid way of managing the aircraft departures and arrivals.