by Mothball » Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:20 pm
I have had some real bad luck with payware AI traffic programs. I read all the labels and reviews, and thought that I had done some good homework, but it came down to just buying them and checking them out for myself. Here are my humble and not so humble opinions... Ultimate Traffic & UT7 were not worth the $30 I spent on each of them. They both boast of realistic planes, realistic flight schedules, realistic everyhthing. Well, when I loaded them into FS9 & FSX respectively, I found that they weren't exactly user friendly, but I tinkered around a bit and got the hang of it. Anyway, the end result was the same for both of them - a major airport with maybe 15-20 aircraft and lots of open concrete. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. I bought My Traffic X, which comes with a program for FS9 also, called My Traffic 2006. MT2006 works great in FS9. It has plenty of realistic aircraft that fill every major airport to the brim. Now, the not-so-good side is the FSX program. I can get it to load just fine, but I have found that if I open the MTX file to get a look around, that there is no traffic anywhere in FSX after I peek into the folder. I don't know why this would happen, but have un/restalled MTX several times to get it to work again, and have repeated the process several times until I got tired of it. The best luck I've had is with Traffic for FS9 & FSX (w patch). This program does have quite a few ficticious airlines and a few really dumb looking paint jobs, but overall it works fine everytime. The airports and skies are filled to capacity most of the time. There are also expansion mini programs that are available called Traffic packs that work with, or independently from the Traffic program. One of each for commercial jets and commuter jets, and two for military traffic. I have all the packs with the exception of the commercial jets, but I am very pleased with Traffic programs as a whole. Traffic also has some neat stuff like 4 different pilot and ATC accents that you can use solely or in tandem with the 9 stock voices along with some flight planning devices that I haven't figured out yet. There is a program that you can run called AI SMooth which is an ATC voice which sends traffic into a holding pattern so the aircraft aren't running into each other and getting the go-around instructions. I do have to say that the lady's voice they use IS quite aggrevating, but it is interesting to sit on the tarmac and listen to. Now, I'm not sure if you "fly" into a lot of mid-size and smaller airports, but THE best money I've spent on payware was the HTAI Cessna package. For $15 you get each type of Cessna from the 120 to the P210 Centurion with multiple liveries of each. Everytime I go up I see at least twenty of them "flying" around and, when they are parked on the tarmac, they have wheels choked, pitot tube cover dangling and have the wings tied down, which I think is pretty cool. My best advise to you is to stick with the freeware stuff with exception of the HTAI Cessna package or the Traffic Military Packs all for about $15 each. You're just as well off using freeware from SimV, UGA, WOAI etc.. Hope this helps. Semper Fi, Dave
