8 replies to this topic

[PhillyPennPilot]

I'm thinking about getting a Traffic addon for FSX. I'm really new to Flight Sim in general, I'm am hardly a good flyer (yet) and I don't do any multi-player flying (yet). But in the meantime I'd like the skies to be a bit friendlier and more realistic.  It seems like there are two options that folks like a lot: Ultimate Traffic 2  and  Traffic 360.

1) They seem pretty darn similar to me.  Are there any major advantages/disadvantages to either? Anyone have a preference?

2) I'm worried about how this will impact the performance.  My machine is ok but not great, and I struggle to get a decent frame rate in densely populated areas or complex airports.  Will putting more traffic in the air make a significant difference to my FPS?  It seems that just turning up the default traffic settings slow things down, so I'm wondering if either of the two products above will do the same ... or be even worse.

Thanks for the input!

[Capt_Gabe]

I use Ultimate Traffic 2 and I'm quite happy with it, its pretty versatile (made my own schedules for airports in my home area) and I don't see any significant  performance hit, I think your system would be ok, depending on what else you're running etc. I'm not familiar with Traffic 360 so cant give you a comparison.

[PhillyPennPilot]

Capt_Gabe, on 03 May 2014 - 07:09 AM, said:

I use Ultimate Traffic 2 and I'm quite happy with it, its pretty versatile (made my own schedules for airports in my home area) and I don't see any significant  performance hit, I think your system would be ok, depending on what else you're running etc.

Huh, well you're quite lucky then.  From what I've been reading, traffic addons can be pretty big resource hogs -- and as I mentioend above, but adding default traffic kills my framerate. The only addons are Orbx FTX Global Base & Vector, but I've hardly noticed anything different after they were installed ... that is unless I'm near a big city or complex airport.  I use Ideal Flight too as my planner, but that has zero impact on performance.

Just curious: have you tweaked your config file much?  And if so, have you done anything to specifically adjust for traffic (as opposed to, for example, scenery) density?

Also, with Traffic 360, I'm assuming you can adjust how much congestion you want, no?  They boast that they have a zillion flights if you want them all up in the air, but I'm assuming you can tune that way down.  Right?

[Capt_Gabe]

I use Bojote's tweak ( www.venetubo.com/fsx.html), I find that a big help. I also have my config file edited to include the Affinity mask tweak (I'm running an i7 at 3.5GHz) :
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=244

Within UT2 the traffic density settings are 100% but in FSX I keep all my aircraft traffic at about medium (50 %), airport vehicle density at medium, road vehicles at 20% and boats/ships/ferries at 40%.

[PhillyPennPilot]

Capt_Gabe, on 04 May 2014 - 06:25 AM, said:

I use Bojote's tweak ( www.venetubo.com/fsx.html), I find that a big help. I also have my config file edited to include the Affinity mask tweak (I'm running an i7 at 3.5GHz) :
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=244

Within UT2 the traffic density settings are 100% but in FSX I keep all my aircraft traffic at about medium (50 %), airport vehicle density at medium, road vehicles at 20% and boats/ships/ferries at 40%.

I've used a couple of things to try to help my performance; most recently I bought "FTX Booster 2013" which kinda does what Bojote's tweak is supposed to do.  I think it helped a tad, but it's not very customizable as it's made for folks (like me) who don't really know what goes on behind the scenes in the config file, and just wanted to get up and running.  Maybe I'll try Bojote's, but it seems like it does perform AMD tweaks.  Hmmm.

Ok, dumb question possibly about the UT2: Doesn't it take over all the AI traffic functions?  I mean, if the program is generating planes to fly from airport A to airport B, aren't they going to actually be taking off & landing in those airports?  (Hope that makes sense.)  Thanks!

[Capt_Gabe]

Yes, it manages all the traffic, so if a plane takes off from Boston for JFK, it should fly the complete route, afaik, I don't really bother too much about that. But do you mean real world schedules ? I'm not sure about that, I know you can get updated commercial schedules, but you have to pay for them, I'm not sure if they reflect actual real world flights, and I don't see much value in that personally. I'm happy enough with what I see flying around.

[FlyThomsenX]

PhillyPennPilot, on 05 May 2014 - 11:08 PM, said:

I've used a couple of things to try to help my performance; most recently I bought "FTX Booster 2013" which kinda does what Bojote's tweak is supposed to do.  I think it helped a tad, but it's not very customizable as it's made for folks (like me) who don't really know what goes on behind the scenes in the config file, and just wanted to get up and running.

If you don't want to edit the fsx.cfg file manually, but would like a degree of customizability, try FSX GO by the FTX team. It's essentially a fsx.cfg editing interface, enabling you to enable/disable tweaks at will, set custom values, and use specific profiles for certain situations, e.g. for screenshots, for flying in busy sectors. Since it only applies tweaks when you launch FSX from within GO, all tweaks are reversible - it's just a matter of deselecting it in your tweak list. Makes it easy to manage multiple tweaks, try out new ones, or compare entirely different sets of configurations. And since it only reads your actual fsx.cfg file on launch, any updates or additions in there are in effect, unless of course you alter them with GO. It's AU$9 from the ORBX website

EDIT: I'm no tweaking buff either, I only know the basics, but tweaking with GO is super easy.

Edited by FlyThomsenX, 06 May 2014 - 01:58 PM.

[PhillyPennPilot]

Thanks guys.  Sadly I think I'm just gonna need a newer/better system to get serious improvements to FSX.  I may start thinking about building one in the coming months.  In the meantime it would be nice to see some non-generic planes in & around airports.

Btw, Capt Gabe, what you described it perfectly realistic enough for me.  Just wasn't sure if the flights magically appear/disappear once they get close to an airport if there's no room for them to land or something. I'm not too concerned with accurate schedules. If anything, I'd want to be able to dial down the amount from "real world" schedules as my computer probably won't appreciate it.  

Cheers!

[PhillyPennPilot]

Hey one more question:  Does MTX have better/worse GA traffic?  Since I'm almost entirely a GA flyer and will be using smaller airports (mostly in North Am, btw), I'm probably going to run into more GA traffic than the big commercial airliners.

UT2 boasts 1.3 mil in GA flights according to their description, but MTX doesn't really get into specifics in theirs.

Hmmm....