MyTraffic

By John Dow (26 November 2002)

Meljet Qantas 744 (on charter) at Kennedy with  two of the day's three default AI planes visible

he scene: A bright and sunny day in Microsoft Flight Simulator Land. You’ve arrived at one of the world’s great airports to captain a highly detailed Boeing 747-400 of your favourite airline. Before climbing into the exquisitely detailed cockpit, you take a walk around the outside of the plane as you do your pre-flight inspection. Every detail you could wish for is there, from the beautiful paint job to the details on the wing surfaces. However, as you glance past the wingtip a frown creases your rugged good looks.

Scattered around this airport and surrounding your real world plane are a rag-tag selection of planes belonging to airlines you’ve never heard of. There’s a “Landmark” 777 over there, and something called a “Soar Airlines ” MD80 on the other side. Come to think of it, for such a major airport there’s really very little traffic around, and none belonging to an airline you’d expect in this part of the world. What started out as a faithfully recreated flight from the real world has just become much less real.

The same 744 at Kennedy after installing MyTraffic

Enter MyTraffic to restore much of that lost reality. This add-on for FS2002 populates 500 airports (soon to be 700 with the first service pack) around the world with 246 real world airline and aircraft combinations, including Airbus A321s, Boeing 727s and MD11s among others. Another 1350 airports get traffic that use local planes rather than the default planes. I assume this means that aircraft that relate to the area will appear sporadically but not to any set timetable.  Where possible each of the 500 airports has an authentic mix of aircraft and airlines. For instance Seoul airport in Korea is heavily dominated by Korean Airlines, while Chicago’s O’Hare features lots of United Airlines planes. Given the scale of the project it is understandable that not all the world’s aircraft types and airlines could be represented. For instance when I started up at Cairo I didn’t see any Egypt Air planes, though apparently they are there early in the morning and return later in the day.  (After flying Egypt Air from Cairo to London back in 1994, and having to sit on the floor in the galley because my non-smoker seat allocation put me between two chain smokers, I can't say I miss them anyway.)

Following a successful download of the 50 MB file installation was painless, with a fully automatic routine that worked perfectly.  There is also a 10 MB download to configure the sound file, which also installs without fuss.  Within a few short minutes I was ready to fly in a new and more realistic virtual world.  In addition there is also support for third party add-ons and AFCAD airports, available here.

In order to give the program a real test, rather than just be content with testing the obvious major airports around the world like Heathrow, Atlanta, O'Hare, Frankfurt and so on, I decided to compile a list of 40 random cities chosen from the pages of my trusty world atlas.  The airports I selected were:  Reykavik, Stockholm, Riga, Moscow, Vienna, Belgrade, Ankara, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Cairo, Algiers, Tenerife, Abu Dhabi, Lahore, Seoul, Jakarta, Osaka, Singapore, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Freetown (Sierra Leone), Nairobi, Mauritius, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Auckland, Nadi, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Seattle, Milwaukee, Albuquerque, West Palm Beach, Honolulu, Georgetown (Guyana), Quito, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago.

Of these, 30 displayed MyTraffic planes at the terminals, from as few as three to as many as sixty or more. The other 10 don't appear in the list of 500 airports configured for MyTraffic and will only show local or default traffic.

The following screen shots were all taken in a couple of sessions as I selected each airport in turn: (click on thumbnail for larger picture).  You'll note a Phillipines Airbus at Ankara and Belgrade, that's not part of the traffic, it's what I was flying (taxiing) at the time.

Albuquerque	Algiers	Ankara	Auckland
Belgrade	Cairo	Cologne	Durban
Edmonton	Frankfurt/Main	Honolulu	Jakarta
Johannesburg	Lisbon	Melbourne	Mexico City
Milwaukee	Moscow	Osaka	Riga
Rio de Janeiro	Santiago	Saskatoon	Seoul
Singapore	Stockholm	Tenerife	Vienna
West Palm Beach	Nairobi

Only the following 10 airports from my original random list of 40 around the world failed to show any MyTraffic: Reykavik, Abu Dhabi, Lahore, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Freetown (Sierra Leone), Mauritius, Nadi, Georgetown (Guyana) and Quito. None of these could be considered as major world airports. As time goes on the program may include traffic at some of these, however I can understand that when a program is limited to 500 airports around the world, some have to miss out.

Nairobi could only manage a single DHL 727 parked at the cargo area, with the passenger terminal ramps filled with default Learjets.  I don't know why Reykavik didn't have any traffic as it is included in the MyTraffic airports list, though there is a long-range airport called Keflavik a few kilometers away that has the long range traffic. So I guess Reykavik should be included in the first list if the correct airport is chosen! Perhaps at another time of day planes might appear. As the program matures I'm sure these airports will be addressed in future updates.  As well, the first service pack will generate more of the smaller AI traffic at airports when MyTraffic planes are absent or thin on the ground.

"Vienna Tower, Evergreen 3188 heavy ready for IFR departure, runway 34. "  This was the transmission from the MD11 seen here waiting for me to touch and go at Vienna airport.

Generally if you start at an airport and quickly get going you can be assured of first place in the traffic queue, but if you wait too long you'll find the taxiways get pretty busy, especially at busy airports.  Incoming traffic seems to take longer to generate.  I found that when flying circuits I normally only saw departing planes, but if I flew to another airport some distance away there would be traffic arriving and landing.  I assume that's a function of FS2002, because it's the same when just the default traffic is loaded.

If you install the sound file update, the callsigns for all the MyTraffic planes are correct as well.  Instead of the default 'November Seven Zero Zero Mike Sierra', you'll hear real airline callsigns from all sorts of different airlines coming from and going to destinations all over the world.

I did notice that at Canberra, my local airport, the callsigns consisted of four letters after the country code rather than the actual three, as in VH-ABCD rather than VH-ABC. A minor bug and I'm sure a quick email to the developer would see that fixed in the next update.

The best thing about MyTraffic is the instant transformation of many of the world's major airports (let's face it aside from your own local area they're often where you fly into or out of).  The following screen shots illustrate the difference at Seattle-Tacoma, always a favorite of mine since Flight Unlimited III introduced me to the Washington scenery, and Cologne, a fairly typical European airport.  At Seattle, you'll note that the default traffic boasts a single plane visible, while MyTraffic shows an abundance of real world liveries and aircraft types.  It's as though the world has suddenly become alive again.  Although Cologne airport doesn't show such a dramatic increase, once you've become used to seeing real world liveries, there's no going back.

Only one plane appears in this screen shot of the default traffic at Seattle Tacoma on a normal day.	With MyTraffic the airport has been filled with realistic numbers and types of aircraft.
Cologne airport on a busy default traffic day.	With MyTraffic, Cologne not only has more planes, but the imaginary airlines have been replaced with real world ones.

All in all I give MyTraffic a big thumbs-up.  The scale of the project has meant that not all aspects are perfect, however the inconsistencies are minor and do not detract from the sheer enjoyment of being in a far more real traffic environment.  If you're strictly a bush pilot or just tootle around GA airports away from major centers, the program won't do much for your flightsim experience.  But if you're like me and you often fly into or out of major airports anywhere in the world, MyTraffic will deliver a sense of realism like no other program.

When Microsoft released FS2002 it was trumpeted as being "As real as it gets". That is still true but the bar has been raised, now with MyTraffic loaded, the program is definitely "more real".

MyTraffic is available from here.

A free demo version is available from here, limited to the Sydney area.  It might change the way you view the sim world for ever.