ICE AI Traffic for FSX is a program designed to work with the FSX simulator that provides improved traffic conditions in heaven aircraft and airports around the world. The program enhances the realism of the simulated flight. Disini saya menggunakan ICE Ai V6.0, namun kalau saya install total maka akan membutuhkan space hardisk 20Gb dan sifat daripada traffic terhadap FSX/P3D ini cukup mengurangi fps, sehingga saya buat hanya area tertentu saja, misalnya airport traffic untuk airport-airport yang hanya di Indonesia saja.
Hello everyone, I probably could write a novel on this. But since nobody would read it, let me try to be as brief as possible. In my FS9 world I enjoyed airports full of various AI traffic for years. When, in 2013, I switched to FSX, it stopped being enjoyable.
Using AI traffic, payware airports and airliners (yes, I am a big tube pilot) plus real weather, I had to compromise sliders, like most of you. Even then the performance was rather bad. One year ago I bought iFly 744 (I love 747) and decided to celebrate it with a 744 world tour, starting in the US. Performance was terrible and after landing at Flightbeam Denver with FPS in just single digits, I thought that was enough. I removed my thoroughly made AI traffic and since that time I started flying empty airports. Without iFly, as I hangared it due to its low performance, usually flying NGX (plus a bit of 777 and Majestic dash).
It lasted a year until recently IFly released the SP1a patch addressing performance. It did improve the performance for me, so I decided to celebrate the 'No Traffic Year' with returning to AI traffic. So for the last week or more I was again preparing my AI traffic, making sure it is up to date (latest flightplans and liveries - mostly of FAIB, TFS, AIA and UTT), FSX compiled (thank you, AIFPC!) and free of errors (thank you, ACA2013!).
Earlier today I made an iFly 744 flight between EDDF (German Airports Team) and EGLL (Sim-Wings). I know, they are huge airports, but that was deliberate. I thought if I can do it, I can do any other flight. To my disappointment (not that I expected good performance, but still), I was getting 11-14 FPS on average at EDDF, I got OOM warnings on finals to EGLL and saw single digits leaving the EGLL runway 27R (by the way I didn't make it to the terminal, as my FSX OOM-ed). So using the fact I have a free Saturday, I decided to perform some tests, and would like to share the most important results with you. I have read many times that leaving the AI traffic slider at 100% is asking fro trouble.
Various folks recommend lower numbers, some 10%, others 25%, still others 50%. But, after checking these numbers today, I came to a conclusion. There is no difference between the way the AI traffic slider influences the performance! I checked 10%, 25%, 50% and 100% AI traffic at my Mega Airport Frankfurt to see no performance change. See the screenshots presenting three of these situations: As you can see, the number of AI aircraft remains the same, regardless of the slider's settings.
Performance too, by the way. I saw no FPS difference until I switched the traffic off completely. As we know, performance is not only FPS, but also VAS. So I decided to check its behaviour depending on using AI traffic. Again, no difference with different slider's settings! I had around 3.2 GB remaining with 25%-100% of traffic at EDDF in iFly 744 VC.
Without traffic, it went up a bit, to 2.9 GB left. Now, some folks do not mind seeing empty airports in FS. For a year I tried to convince myself I could belong to that group too. But I think I can't. It takes away a lot of the immersion I feel simming.
I thought reducing the traffic slider will be a partial solution but, as you can see, it doesn't seem to be. Of course there is VATSIM but, even though I used to be an active on-line pilot years ago, currently (for a few reasons I am not mentioning here) I rather fly off-line. And when I do, those empty airports look like after a nuclear war or a global airline bankruptcy. I wonder what your experiences with AI traffic and performance are, especially concerning FPS. I will be very grateful to read some replies. I also wonder if those of you who tried to check, can confirm my observations about no impact of the traffic slider. I have autogen set at normal or dense, water low 2.x, and clouds textures to lowest possible.
I don't use (U)HD textures and I have TEXTUREMAXLOAD=1024 set at FSX.cfg. Of course HIGHMEMFIX=1 is there too.
I am on i5 2500K 3.3 GHz @ 4.0 with 8 GB DDR3 RAM and GTX 560Ti 1 MB. I use FSX (non-SE) on 64-bit Windows 7 HP. I consider buying a new PC next year (this one in 4 years old now) but I am not sure on how much it would improve my AI traffic experience.
In the end I would like to make two things clear: 1. I am not addicted to watching FPS numbers, I know it is not good. It usually is off. I turn it on only for tests when I see something is deffinitely wrong and the minimum required (for my eyes) fluidity is broken. For me there is no way back to FS9, and as for P3Dv3, I am considering it next year. Timely post Rafal.
Like you, flying seems sterile to me without traffic. I just did some AI performance testing last week.
I use MyTrafficX and wanted to compare ver 5.4b with the new ver 6.0 and 6.0a-beta4. It is a bit of a mish-mash because I have 5.4b installed in FSX dx9 and ver6 installed in P3D. The format of the data below is 'airline ai traffic density/total number of ai aircraft/number of ai aircraft at airport/FPS. For the tests I had my scenery settings maxed out in both sims, no shadows in either because it brings fsx to its knees, all other traffic at zero, clear skis. The aircraft I used was the default beechcraft baron as it is in both sims and other people could perform comparison tests. I performed the test with my aircraft on runway 35R at KSEA and also on runway 31L at KFJK. I was in the virtual cockpit, zoom 0.8 looking straight ahead and both airports are default airports.
I used the freeware software AI Traffic optimizer available on the Avsim forums to count the AI traffic. I also set the date for at noon local time.
The day/time effects the AI traffic schedules and number of aircraft. What influences performance is the number of aircraft within the user's reality bubble.
In the case presented in the first post, it's very possible that all those percentages yielded more or less the same number of AI aircraft in the bubble. This can happen if one is either near or at a large international airport.
The second post illustrates the interplay between the somewhat toothless percentage controls in the sims' UI and the number of AI aircraft within the bubble. The TO is the best solution to the flaw in both FSX's and P3d's control of AI traffic densities. Keep in mind Raf with your traffic percentages, AIFP doesn't randomize the traffic% unless you specifically tell it to.
AIG's plans are most often all left at 1% unless you change the percentage. The traffic% slider works very well but your traffic also needs to be configured for it to work.
I was just about to say the same thing. A lot of people who use WOAI experience the same thing due to the majority of the flight plans being set to 1% and see the same thing as what Rafal when they dial the sliders back. You have a fair CPU but your GPU is definitely weak, especially for P3D While I'm still on FSX, not P3D, I am aware my rig is not new (over 4 years old now), and the GPU is indeed not the latest generation to say the least.
Of course I could change the GPU into a better one, but I think it will be better to buy a whole new PC, which may (hopefully) happen sometime in 2016. Or do you think changing the GPU itself, before buying the PC some months later, would make a visible difference in performance (especially concerning traffic)?
Auto traffic also has a large impact on FPS if you are using that also. I only use auto traffic with my GA flights.
Ted, by 'Auto' do you mean the ground (road) traffic? If so, then unfortunately you are so right about the price you pay for using it. But I don't use it. Seeing screenshots featuring cars on the roads was one of the reasons for me to dream about switching from FS9 into FSX. Once I did it though, I quickly stopped using it, seeing how it kills my FSX performance. It's a pitty.
Now I laso turn it back only occassionally, when I take a GA plane for a ride. I would suggest that you download the the AI optimizer from the link on the thread here at Avsim. That's great idea, Ted. I will do so. I have already tried it, but I got discouraged as it didn't seem to work for me. I will now give it a second try as if it does what it promised, it could help with flying into large airports.
Now, I see lower teens down to single FPS digits only at the largest airports, like EGLL or EDDF. When tested yesterday at small and medium airports (e.g.
EPKK, LHBP, USSS, EDDH, EGCC, LSGG or LGAV), where the amount of traffic aircraft is clearly lower, I got quite acceptable results, about 20-25 FPS in my VC, which for me is enough to enjoy flying. So the best idea for now seems to be just avoiding large hubs and limiting my flying to small and medium size airports. Could be done. I'll just have to hangar my 747 again, as I see it destined for large aerodromes.:smile. AIFP doesn't randomize the traffic% unless you specifically tell it to. AIG's plans are most often all left at 1% unless you change the percentage.
Dave, that is interesting. I didn't think about it at all. Now, how to change it, that is the question! Now, Jay, I would also like to reply to you, but since the AVSIM forum software prevents me from using more quotes, let me do it like this: 'This can happen if one is either near or at a large international airport.'
Right, Jay, the problem is I experience the slideshow only at large airports! 'The TO is the best solution to the flaw in both FSX's and P3d's control of AI traffic densities.' What does the ' TO' acronym mean in you post? I am asking as I feel excited about a possible great tip standing behind it.
Hi Rafal, it is very difficult to say, because maybe my almost enthusiastic hardware would behave in a different way when you use it. I use AIFP and UT2 and I am happy with it. Well, at my AS-EDDF, not all stands are occupied, because it is not realistic I think. But there are enough, maybe 30. Additional 6 moving Ai are ok too, when making a t/o or a landing, maybe more, it depends on so many things.
If you are thinking about new hardware, don´t make any rotten compromise. If you can afford it. Make the full pull and you probably won´t regret it. The manual of AIFP explains the% sliders, have a look there and find your balance.:wink. A few other things to bare in mind.
The 'bubble' in a 10 mile radius for aircraft traffic. There are three separate things with AI aircraft which affect performance, the number of AI aircraft and the size of the textures. Payware programs also include large AI Aircraft graphics, while WOAI and MOST other freeware libraries have great looking, low memory aircraft. The third thing is the taxi path and flight plans which AI aircraft use. The greater the number of junctions (vectors) the more processing is required. The processor thread for AI Aircraft is deliberately different than the thread for AutoGen. There is a problem with FSX in which the same data is processed on different threads, essentially processing data twice thus increasing processing overhead (bandwidth).
This was initially seen with graphics processing, and Dovetail Games discovered (or rather confirmed) this and did a good job in reducing the problem (good reason to update to the stream version). LM did the same thing with P3D. Believe it or not, flying on VATSIM reduces the processor impact on AI traffic because some of the processing done with AI traffic does not have to be performed.
You'll still get some frame rate drop at very large VATSIM events, however I've been at airports with upwards of 150 aircraft and still had frame rates at 15% with my older first generation i7-960 rig. I'm not a fan of overclocking where 2nd generation i7 processors are concerned, and this case brings up yet another good reason to avoid pursuing the fastest processing speed via overclocking. The more one over-clocks, the greater the timing issues (I'm not talking about bottlenecks per se) between the CPU and GPU can become. The more processing required of both the CPU and GPU, the greater the impact of timing between them. Moderate overclocking (or my preference of maximizing the Turbo mode seems to be fine. Of course EACH COMPUTER RIG IS DIFFERENT, so you'll have to determine this for yourself. Finally, the advice to turn Hyper Threading off has been proven time and again, so this too can help.
I sincerely hope you find this useful. Best wishes to all for enjoyable flights!
![Ice Ai Traffic V6.1 Ice Ai Traffic V6.1](/uploads/1/2/4/0/124080938/289342893.jpg)
Hi Rafal I use FSX-SE and haven't had much problem with high numbers of AI except at some of the Mega airports like EGLL etc. And then I have to adjust the sliders to get that right balance. As one of the other posters said, I think Steam Edition handles things better than the boxed version. Just a couple of other suggestions: 1.
I have tried to optimize my AI aircraft by using FSX models whenever they are available. I also use DxtFixer to make sure the textures have alpha channels, are DXT3 etc. Checking all your AI files to make sure there are no missing aircraft can make a big difference. If there's an aircraft missing then the program keeps trying to load it and that can cause serious loss of performance. I have found that just a few traffic files with a missing aircraft or two can seriously degrade performance. It's a bit time consuming, but using AIFP makes the process pretty fast and easy Like you, I have found transitioning from FS9 to FSX-SE a mixed blessing when it comes to AI. The positives outweigh the negatives but there were and still are some things FS9 does better and AI is definitely one of them Cheers mate Ian.
Rafal, another solution that you could do to still have the ambiance at the airport but not get killed on approach to huge hubs is to zap all traffic on approach and then turn it back on once you've vacated the runway. Since your using.bgl based traffic files you'll get a quick scenery reload when you turn the traffic back on, but it shouldn't take too long. If you have the registered version of FSUIPC you can use a feature of it to assign a hot key to shut off traffic and then turn it back on without having to access the menu to do so. The other option would be to buy UT2 which doesn't use.bgl traffic files and already has those functions included to either turn traffic off or reduce the percentage on the fly all by using hotkeys.
Since you take pride in keeping the flight plans up to date you can use the UT2 Powerpack to import your schedules and planes/paints, etc. Something to consider. UPDATE I have tried the FSUIPC Traffic Density Toggle, and I must say this is a great solution! I assigned a key (T) to this function and switching off all traffic is now a matter of the single click. Restoring traffic simply requires pressing the key again. This time it takes two or three seconds more as it requires scenery reload.
But that is a very fair compromise for being able to enjoy landing at LHR or FRA. Thank you, cmpbellsjc, for bringing this idea to my mind. I think it temporarily removes my traffic performance frustration.:smile. A HD (2048 px, 32 bit) texture requires sixteen times as much memory (16 MB) as a SD (1024 px, DXT3/5) texture (1 MB). When using DXT5 compression on the HD paint, it's only four times as much memory. Take a realistic number of visible AI aircraft, say 50, and do the math for both cases. That's the reason why I fail to understand why the painters for some AI models release those awfully impractical 2048 px paints.
A few dozen of those paints in the simulator and you have yourself an open invitation to the OOM party. Just a couple of other suggestions: 1. I have tried to optimize my AI aircraft by using FSX models whenever they are available. I also use DxtFixer to make sure the textures have alpha channels, are DXT3 etc. Checking all your AI files to make sure there are no missing aircraft can make a big difference. If there's an aircraft missing then the program keeps trying to load it and that can cause serious loss of performance. I have found that just a few traffic files with a missing aircraft or two can seriously degrade performance.
It's a bit time consuming, but using AIFP makes the process pretty fast and easy So un-assigned aircrafts can also affect the performance? The freeware tool AI Flight Planner 3.2 does have a feature that will identify any AI aircraft that are not assigned to a flight plan. Whether or not that actually has an effect on performance I can't say, though if there were a lot of them I'm sure it would increase loading times. I doubt it effects graphic performance, but the cleaner you can keep your installation the less likely you are to have problems so it's surely a good idea to store any unused AI aircraft into a folder somewhere and remove them from the active Aircraft folder.
What does have a significant effect is when you have a traffic file active and an aircraft is missing in the folder. That's definitely something that is always worth checking and fixing Cheers Ian. Johny19 - if you have active flight plans for AI aircraft that are not installed I can absolutely guarantee you that you'll have performance problems. You can certainly leave out short haul flights to places you're not going to fly to, but you absolutely have to edit the AI flight plan file to eliminate those flights. If you have any AI files anywhere that have active plans for aircraft that are not installed, it will effect your performance. I hate to sound so dogmatic and I'm definitely not a tech expert, but I've seen the difference it makes when you isolate those files and fix them.
Originally posted by:Is this ai worth downloading? And has anyone made a review on it yet also what US airlines does it have they are not on the website If you want the best freeware package/installer out there, then yes. It is easy on frames, has immaculate liveries, and pretty good schedules. It does not have a steam edition compatible installer as of yet, which means you would have to manage it manually, but if you wait a couple more days a Steam Edition installer should be coming out shortly.
Let's not get so strict here because if we do, then all the freeware models in the internet are illegal. I can assure you that none of the tons of enthusiastic developers out there making free models and repaints to download so you can fly with the airplane you want has asked for permission to use things like 'boeing' or 'airbus' or their models like '747' or 'dreamliner' or 'A380' and let's not get started with the airlines (names, colors, logos.). I think these guys from SKY AI Traffic are aware of the limits they can cross and the risks they can run, but they are making a huge effort to make the simulator a little bit more realistic and I think it is great.