Missing air traffic & on the ground....how come?

[TerryUK]

I've got FS 2002 & 2004 & I've noticed that my skies & airports are missing other aircraft.   It's uncanny & lonely, & I'd like them back.   I think it must have happened in the past 2 weeks or so.   All the tick boxes are ticked & sliders slid for other traffic & I've ticked for labels but nothing shows.

Any ideas how to get them back will be appreciated.

Terry.

[garymbuska]

Loof inside of the Scenery/World/Scenery folder in both fs2002 and in fs2004 you should find a file that has the word traffic as part of its name in both cases the file should be toward the bottom of the world scenery file.
Make sure that the type has not been changed they should be BGL files if the files are there and still no AI recheck your settings to make sure you have Traffic turned on and rember not all airports have traffic to them. Also make sure you have set the option that shows the red letters for AI or you could miss them while flying some people turn this display off and forget about it. AI will not show up untill you are within 10nm of the AI so during the day AI beyond that point will be hard to see as all you would see would be the flashing lights.

[TerryUK]

Thank you.

I'll have a look but I have always had other aircraft flying around & have used the red labels.  I've not knowingly changed anything or a setting so I don't understand how they can vanish!  HR & JFK, eg used to be buzzing with aircraft.

I'll post back.

[wji]

The original FS9 AI traffic file is 13.8MB located here:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\World\scenery\traffic030528.bgl

One can have as many traffic_name.bgl files as there is disk space for.

[TerryUK]

FS 2004 has Scenery/World/scenery with bgl files (oblongs with coloured dots) & 2002 has SCENEDB/World/Scenery with bgl files.  There is also a scenery folder with a couple of Abacus files & it had 10 BGL files.
Traffic 100pc in both & labels are on in red.   I've just looked at HR/JFK/Seattle & Paris & the only aircraft I saw was a VC10 parked with its nose in the side of a large blue building at HR.

You're going to tell me there is a problem?!  

Thanks,
Terry.

[TerryUK]

Thanks wji.    
Are you saying disk space may be short & that's why the aircraft have vanished?      

[wji]

Negative.
The Default FS9 AI traffic is controlled by a file named: traffic030528.bgl

If you (still) have it and your traffic slider is set to anything over 50% you (should) have lots of AI traffic in FS9.

"One can have as many traffic_name.bgl files as there is disk space for." Means you may have other traffic_files.bgl as well. I've made about one-per-week since FS9's release.  :D

[TerryUK]

Good morning.

wji - I've just checked & fs9 has a file "traffic030528" but has 'utb' instead of 'bgl'  - also, I have looked via the same path in 2002 & cannot find a traffic.bgl file.      

Will you tell me: Should I change utb to bgl? & how do you make these files so I can get one into 2002?
I appear dim but I'm new to all this!!
Thanks,
Terry.

[Hagar]

[quote]I've just checked & fs9 has a file "traffic030528" but has 'utb' instead of 'bgl'

[dave3cu]

The path in fs2002 is ...\SCENEDB\ATC\scenery\traffic.bgl.

Dave

[wji]

It's been a while but I think the FS9, *.UTB file is an Ultimate Traffic (UT) Backup file which also renames your traffic030528.bgl to traffic030528.ORIGINAL (neither of which are used by FS9 but are only backups)

Again, as near as I remember (it's been over two-years since I installed Ultimate Traffic) UT makes a file named traffic.bgl (mine is 64MB) -- this is the traffic_file used by FS9 (plus any others added by user)

All-of-the-above begs the question: Do you have Ultimate Traffic installed with FS9?

[TerryUK]

Good evening!

I thought What the Hell & renamed that utb file to bgl & Bingo - all the traffic came back.  It is so great having to wait behind 7 big jets at Seattle
in my VC10.

I did install Ultimate Traffic ages ago, but it looked complicated so I left off to read up about it.  I cannot think when the 'planes stopped flying around me but it is more recent, but you're right in that it was UT that did the deed, I'm sure.   As for 2002 - I think I'll just reinstall if I cannot find the missing traffic file.

Thanks to you all for your help.
Terry.

[wji]

"I did install Ultimate Traffic ages ago,"
Ah, no kidding! It's nice to have sufficient informaion when trying to solves others problems.

By renaming your backup you've effectively disabled Ultimate Traffic (did I say waste money?).

All one has to do is run Compile in UT and indicate whether or not they want to use Default FS9 traffic. That's it. UT does the rest.

Also, by discussing FS2k2 and FS9 in the same thread only compounds the confusion: traffic.bgl in FS2k2 is not the same as traffic.bgl in FS9

Oh well . . . if you're ahppy I'm happy.

References cited:
http://ultimatetraffic.flight1.net/foru ... &KW=%2Eutb

Quoted:
"UT disables the default traffic, and they shouldn't appear. You don't say which version of FS you are using. If it is FS2002, then after you have completed the UT compile these default aircraft should no longer appear, because UT overwrites the file 'traffic.bgl'.

If you have FS2004, UT disables FS2004's default 'Traffic030528.bgl' file by changing its extension to 'Traffic030528.utb'. Go to your FS9/Scenery/World/Scenery folder and you should see two files 'traffic.bgl' which is the big file generated by UT. Leave this one alone. You should also see 'Traffic030528.utb'. If it still has the .bgl extension change it to '.utb' and Save.

If you find that the filename is 'Traffic030528.utb' then you have another traffic file somewhere which is generating the default traffic.

This can sometimes happen when scenery designers add default traffic to their work for the benefit of those unfortunate people who don't have UT! "

[TerryUK]

Mmmm.  Being new to this fs stuff, I was not aware that UT would cause damage, so didn't know that this bit of info would be important.
I have not wasted money as I may install UT (having just uninstalled it from fs9) in the new gaming computer I'm having built.  UT wasn't expensive anyway.  
I was quite explicive in my first post that I was talking about both 2002 & 2004 so there was no confusion on my part.   Even tho' new to this lark I was/am aware that they are unsimilar.   What caused the missing aircraft in 2004 will not be the same in 2002.   The problem is reading the question properly to start with?
I am happy that I have fixed fs9 but it would be nice to get helpful advice rather than acid comments.   I was told these forum is a bit like getting one's head stuck in a noose, & I now know why.
Thank you for the UT web-site url.

[Hagar]

Terry. It always helps to have as much information as possible. From what we know now it seems that your problem in both sims was actually caused by the same thing, uninstalling Ultimate Traffic. I suspect there's a backup traffic.bgl file in FS2002 in much the same way as the one you found in FS9. If you can find this & rename it that would probably return everything to the default.

Note. The location of the file in FS2002 will be the FS2002\SCENEDB\ATC\scenery folder.