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Ok Guys, here's the question. A few weeks ago I installed Traffic PlusPak - Military Aircraft 2 onto my FSX set up. I have yet to see one of the aircraft appear in my traffic flow! I have other traffic packages that work fine, but not the military ones.  During the install I followed the instructions on the screen and it said it had installed correctly. So what has happened? Does anyone have any ideas please.

Thanks

Edited by dodgy-alan
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Is there a traffic file in FSX/Scenery/World/Scenery that corresponds to the Military Plus Pak install (it will be a bgl file with a name beginning with "traffic")?

 

Did the expected military aircraft appear anywhere in your FSX folders; SimObjects/Airplanes; Aircraft;  under a Just Flight folder?  If it installed correctly the aircraft will be somewhere within your FSX folder tree.  I think JF AI aircraft names begin with "jf", oddly enough.  Search on "jf*.air" in your FSX folder tree if they don't come easily to hand in the usual places.

 

Do you by any chance have any traffic files installed that are in the FS9 format?  FS9 traffic files will run in FSX but if present will suppress any FSX-format traffic, i.e. keep them from running.

 

Military airports in stock FSX have no parking places.  Traffic can't spawn without parking spaces.  A correct install should have put parking spaces in the FSX military airfields where the traffic is expected to appear.  You can easily check that out by going to "Free Flight" selecting a military airfield that you think should have traffic and look in the "Choose Runway/Starting Position" field.  If you only see Active Runway and the other runway numbers in the pull-down, there are no parking places at that airport and there will never be any traffic there.  If traffic, military or otherwise, is sent there it will land and disappear on the runway. 

 

Some airfields are mixed civil and military and should have both.  If the problem is that the military fields didn't get parking spaces and all else installed OK, there may still be some military traffic at some of those fields. Look at a few of those and see if there's any military traffic there.  KCHS is one.

 

John

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Thanks John, I believe the aircraft are in the main sim-objects, aircraft folder. will check out a few military bases that I know about and see if anything appears. I have a few military base add-ons that I would have thought would indeed have parking spots, i'll check those out first. All my system is FSX only when it comes to aircraft as I found that many FS9 portovers tended to lose window glass and have prop/rotor texture issues. I have JF Civil traffic on the system and that seems to work ok. Will keep trying with the military stuff to see if I can get it sorted out.

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There is no reason you can't use FS9 aircraft in FSX-format traffic files, though there is the chance, as you note, that props and windows might not render correctly.  The issue comes with FS9 traffic files - those will work but put the squelch on any FSX-format traffic files.

 

John

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Sometimes it takes time for them to populate, up to 15min for my program sometimes at certain airports. John's advice was spot on from what I have seen in the past, did you find anything out of whack in the files. Some fs9 airport sceneries had traffic files hidden in them.

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Are there parking spaces?  If not, there will be no traffic.  The install should have included add-on airports, modified with parking spaces and a taxiway node and link system.  Stock FSX military airports do not have those things.

 

John

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Maybe this might help, I found the following in a review by a fellow named Gene Davis and quote the following;

 

"The biggest problem I run into with FSX is finding the aircraft within the sim, compiling said aircraft works about the same as the FS9 stuff but I found that I don’t get as many planes in FSX as I do in FS9, even if I max out the AI sliders. This issue is a result of using the AFCADS that shipped with FSX rather than using the ones that came with the Traffic program as they are not compatible with FSX; this along with the pre-generated flight plans created for the AFCADS that came with Traffic have an issue with FSX.

For the Military traffic in FSX I need to set my sliders to well over 50% to get most of them to show and I think that as we start to see updated AFCADS for individual military bases and updated traffic bgl’s, the overall variety of aircraft will get better for each location. This will give us the populated virtual world that we are used to in FS9. I do believe I saw an AFCAD converter for FSX in the Avsim library, I have yet to use it but I am sure it will go a long way to helping with this issue.

I am not saying that the FS9 product is perfect either, each traffic AI add-on ships with new and updated AFCADS, thus allowing AI to appear in places where it hadn’t been seen before by assigning proper parking areas and such. But, and this is a big but; I found that it was very difficult to find military traffic at many of the US Airbases in the United States, as only the major military facilities are included and the lesser known ones are left out. Take for instance the military airbase in Phoenix AZ; I found my airbase there to be totally devoid of any military planes and appeared deserted with both FS9 and FSX.

Now, the solution to this is to simply add the flights yourself via the Traffic Compiler that comes with the Traffic program, but be warned that it can be a bit tedious and you have to make sure that the GMT time matches the GMT time within MSFS; otherwise you will find yourself at a deserted base once again."
                 

 

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I believe that must be a very old post and is kind of out of date/inaccurate in places.  

 

Aircraft don't get "compiled", although there is an Aircraft text file, a list really, that is one of the three components that get compiled into a traffic bgl file, whether FSX or FS9. 

 

AFCAD is an old term and was an FS9-only product.  Sometimes the AFCAD term is used generically to refer to edited airport files, however they were produced.  It was superseded long ago by the payware AFX and the freeware ADE.

 

"I don’t get as many planes in FSX as I do in FS9, even if I max out the AI sliders."

 

That's entirely dependent upon the entries in the flightplan.txt file that is part of the traffic bgl file.

 

The biggest difference between FS9 and FSX traffic files is the format of the flight plan file, another of the three constituent components of a traffic bgl file.  As I've noted before, a traffic file in the FS9 format will work in FSX but will disable any and all FSX-formatted traffic files.

 

For a payware or freeware traffic file to work it requires the aircraft, the airports and the flight plans. The stock stuff mostly works but military airports are a special case because they are supplied with no parking (nor a taxiway node-and-link system) in stock FSX military airports and edited airport files MUST be provided for traffic to appear.  If the add-on installs new airport files, they must be in the scenery list, with the entry checked and placed higher than the "Default Scenery" line.

 

John

 

EDIT: Another easy way to spot military airfields, since it's not always evident from the airport name - the rotating beacon has three beams, white-white-green, vs. the two beam white-green beacon at civil airports.

 

JDA

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Well the review was from 2007 so this pkg is kinda old and the reviewer had both fs9 and fsx. With your help to fill in the details I figured it would give Alan an idea of what was going on. I don't know much about this stuff and I know Alan said he doesn't know much about the files within fsx so this might just sound like gibberish.

 

So try turning your aircraft slider up and do a search to see if their were any addon improvements made for this title over the years to put parking spaces in many of the fsx military airports Alan.

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Cheers Guys, many of my military bases have lots of parking areas that show up as possible start points. Just deserted bases though. (It's all rather odd.) What I need is someone who's an expert on Flight sims to have a look at and optimise my set up.  Sadly my PC engineer knows nothing about flight sims. I'm somewhat isolated down here as there is no-one that I know of anywhere nearby to help. Joe is in Southampton which is about 50 miles away and Geoff is in Hastings which is a good 70 miles in the opposite direction. I'm just sort of winging it! LOL:wacko2:

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Next step, Alan.  Bring up the Free Flight menu, pick one (or a few) of those fields and then go to the pull-down box for starting point and see if there is parking listed or just runways.

 

John

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13 hours ago, allardjd said:

Next step, Alan.  Bring up the Free Flight menu, pick one (or a few) of those fields and then go to the pull-down box for starting point and see if there is parking listed or just runways.

 

John

That's what I have been doing John. 

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