FS Traffic and Traffic Tools

by Mark Greenough

Almost from the day I first started using FS2002 I found myself lamenting the fact that Lago's FSTraffic (FST) program wasn't compatible. At first I was wooed by Microsoft's AI dynamic planes and interactive ATC but I increasingly found myself yearning for the days when the airports used to look 'alive'. With FS98/2000 and FST the only maxims on moving aircraft and vehicles was the size of the airport and how much video ram you had!

I had been fervently hoping for a solution to this, praying for the day Microsoft would get off their laurels and reveal the secrets of the AI scenery, when along came an innocently looking application discreetly posted on various resource sites; Lee Swordy's Traffic Tools.

All the default dynamic scenery is contained within the traffic.bgl in the fs2002/scenedb/atc/scenery folder.

Traffic Tools is basically a DOS based compiler/de-compiler. Lee discovered how Microsoft had coded the traffic.bgl and his program breaks this down into 3 text files - 1 for the airports (ICAO code and location), 1 for the planes and 1 for the routes (great circle routes only, straight from A to B).

The basic package has seen a revision - read 'Patch' :) - already and there have been other developers jumping on board and adding their own front end Windows utilities.

The last month has seen a large collection of flight simmers own created AI flights being posted on the websites; Avsim.com has even given them a separate heading to their filing system.

Anyway for the last few weeks I have been tormenting myself aiming to get realistic looking airports in FS2002. I have had to cope with some software corrupting and/or deleting my files (I cant stress enough: always backup your originals!), or losing my last 6 hours work - very, very annoying, I can tell you.

Then there are the aircraft themselves - not all a/c are compatible or suitable for use as dynamic traffic. Unfortunatly most of the aircraft you have downloaded and installed are not going to look right. If the a/c was created for an earlier sim or made using the software designed to make planes for earlier sims then it most likely will be incompatible. By that I mean most animated parts will not appear never mind move and some planes will just crash land or crash on takeoff. I havent witnessed any crashing (would've been interesting) but I have seen plenty of planes float and glide about like Luke's Speeder on Tattooine.  GMAX is a commercial 3D modeling tool which has been supplied with FS2002 and was used to make the default aircraft.

If any given plane was made and animated using GMAX then it will most likely be compatible, at this time most of our fleet are designed for FS2000 (or earlier) and are not compatible - unless you are willing to accept the replusor-lift modifications :)

I was working on re-creating our timetable for use as dynamic traffic but came up against Microsoft's limitations which make it impractical. What I am doing instead, is adding our routes to the dynamic scenery, but having to accept that the times will be wrong (flights will become more regular!).

The ATC identifies our planes by registration because  'UK Direct' is not in its vocabulary!

If this has you interested then lookup these....

ttools12.zip by Lee Swordy. 233kb this file is essential and the accompanying text files explain everything clearly - payware developers take note.

aishuffler07.zip by Elijahu Litvak 430kb. This neat little program is the easiest and simplist way to change all those American callsigns and N numbers to appropriate regional equivalents.

Its all automatic but you can edit it as you see fit. The more varied aircraft types and airline liveries you have installed the better this works. I found using the program easy enough but the manual (translated) hard going - it made  more sense after playing with the software.

If your looking for compatible aircraft the best way is to search for the words  GMAX, G-MAX, or 'default' at all the usual suspects. http://www.avsim.com            http://www.flightsim.com

The following site by Tom Woods has many repaints of the default aircraft and all will work perfectly, (and as a bonus for those people interested in the BAe systems Jetstream there is a page all about them too plus a decent model to download - and yes, its built with GMAX!)