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(More customer reviews)What do you get? This DVD-ROM installs into your FSX Simobjects Folder. You get 97, go ahead count em', 97 folders of AI Aircraft, each with up to 60 different liveries (or paint jobs) of various airlines around the world. Passenger jets, Commuter Turboprops, Cargo Carriers and even some Military Stuff. The DVD also comes with FSX Service Pack 2 (SP2), in case you don't have it already. SP2 is required prior to installation. When you run the Setup program, it will recognize if you do not have SP2, and prompt you to cancel the install of the Traffic Expansion Addon. When you do this, SP2 will install automatically. Run Setup Program again to install the Traffic Expansion Addon.
Does it work? Yes. Does it work properly? No! By this I mean the aircraft.cfg (aircraft configuration) files for each of the 97 folders of new AI aircraft have serious deficiencies. The aircraft.cfg files in each folder are plain ordinary text files that you can open with wordpad or whatever. They instruct FSX how to build and paint the planes that you see in the Flight Simulator Environment. It starts with a name. Each variation of each plane requires a unique name. Then there is the model, which is basically a plain gray 3D shape of an airplane. The texture files, which are .bmp files (also known as paintjobs) get applied to the model to give it the colors and definition of an airline (American, Air India etc). Then there's the atc statements, and this is where the problems are found. Many of the "atc_airline=xxx" [where xxx is the callsign of an airline] statements have incorrect callsigns. Some are one word and should be two. Some are two words and should be one. Some are just plain misspelled, or wrong altogether. American Airlines for example. You would expect the FSX Air Traffic Control (ATC) to address American Airlines Flight 43, as "American 43". But whatever genius designed this add-on misspelled the callsign as "atc_airline=merican". FSX ATC does not recognize the callsign of "Merican" and will address the plane simply as "43". When all you hear is a flight number, without an airlines callsign preceding it, you wonder, Who's that?? So get ready to do some work on your own, to get this to function at 100%. The aircraft.cfg files can be opened, edited, and saved where they are. I myself am quite familiar with a number of airline callsigns (British Airways is "Speed Bird", Virgin Atlantic is "Virgin", Southwest is "Southwest" and so on), but not all of them (South African is "Springbok", Air Portugal is "TAP" etc). There is a listing on Wikipedia that I have found very useful.
Ok that's the callsigns. Some aircraft folders take less than a minute, with only 1-3 variations. Others, such as the Boeing 757 have approx. 60 different liveries, whose atc statements have to be checked, and that takes longer. Once finished, you can be content with this much, or if you really want more realism like I do, then you've got even more work to do. While you're going through each of the folders and working on the aircraft.cfg files of the really big planes (Boeing 747,767,777, A330, A340, A380 etc), you'll also notice that there's no "atc_heavy=1" statement. The big boys are often referred to as heavies, by Air Traffic Control. If a United Airlines Boeing 747, flight 820, taxi's up to the line, you would expect to hear ATC say, "United 820 Heavy, ....", but without the "atc_heavy=1" statement in the cfg file for that plane, you will simply hear "United 820, ....". So while you're editing the callsign for the American Boeing 767 to be "American" and not "Merican", insert that "atc_heavy=1" statement, along with the rest of the atc statements and get both taken care of the first time, so that you don't have to go back through them again.
You get a ton of different types of planes, used by carriers, all around the world, and you see them where you would normally expect to see them. At Frankfurt, Germany, you'll see Lufthansa, Air France and Austrian, but not Jet Blue or Southwest. You'll find Southwest at Las Vegas and Phoenix, but not in Hong Kong.Not only do you find the airlines you expect to see, but you find them grouped together with each other (like all Continental Airlines at Newarks Terminal C) and not spread out all over the place, as if randomly placed or mixed. Included with the folders of aircraft is another folder of AFCADs. An AFCAD is .bgl file that is like a map of a particular airport. It can be edited with an AFCAD editor like AFX to change Clearance, Ground, ATIS and Tower frequencies, taxiways, and parking and gate areas. The gate and parking areas within the AFCAD can be edited for what size aircraft they will accomodate (Small, Medium, Heavy, Cargo etc), the gate id (Example Gate C 81), as well as, the atc parking codes for airlines that FSX ATC will direct to park in it. So for example, if you have a group of gates that have an ATC parking code of "COA", and the aircraft.cfg files your Continental AI planes have "atc_parking_types=GATE" and "atc_parking_codes=COA", then your Continental AI planes will be found at these gates with the 737 and smaller aircraft at the Small Gates, 757 and 767 aircraft in medium size gates and 777 aircraft in the Heavy Gate spaces.
So bottom line, is this add-on worth the money? I think so. The programmer did a top-notch job of building the planes, and editing the traffic.bgl file so that it appears as "Real World" as possible. The ficticous airlines like World Travel and American Pacific are no longer to be found in the AI flight sim environment, simply because they've been edited out of the traffic.bgl file. I believe they still exist and can still be selected and flown by you, you just won't see them as AI aircraft anymore. The big drawback is that half of the airline callsigns are screwed up, you have to fix them yourself, and you're left wondering why something like this wasn't corrected before the software was released? Some callsigns like Continental and Delta are correct most of the time, but sometimes you'll find a Continental jet with "atc_airline=CONT", whoops, gotta make that "atc_airline=CONTINENTAL". Luckily, like I said earlier, the aircraft.cfg files are text files that can be opened with Word, Wordpad, Notepad etc, corrections can be made and saved easily. But with 97 folders of add-on airplane models, and up to 60 different liveries per model, well, you do the math! That's allot of checking, fixing and saving. This add-on will function without any additional work by you, but it just won't feel right. So I guess it comes down to what the individual is satisfied with. If your quite technical, know your way around aircraft.cfg and AFCAD files, then by all means, go for it. On the contrary if you're not very technical (afraid of messing something up if you touch it), and will not be comfortable with the somewhat lack of realism (the messed up callsigns), then you might want to avoid purchasing this update, unless you know someone technical who can assist you. Hope this review helps. Good luck and enjoy if you decide to purchase it. :)
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Traffic X Expansion for MS Flight Simulator XTraffic X is the latest generation of the hugely popular Traffic series of AI traffic programs from Just Flight, and is the new benchmark for Artificial Intelligence traffic expansions. It includes custom features designed to take maximum advantage of the new capabilities available in Flight Simulator X and employs completely reworked and updated aircraft for FSX with new and more detailed high-quality airline liveries. Traffic X includes 84 individual, different aircraft models with numerous airline liveries and paint schemes – giving a total of more than 1,600 individual aircraft! Featured aircraft include commercial airliners, regional jets and turboprops, business aircraft, GA aircraft, helicopters and - for the first time in the Traffic series - military aircraft.There are, of course, a host of other new features - the new Traffic Control Centre gives you an easy way to comprehensively customize and expand your AI traffic; Chrono Traffic means every aircraft and flight can now be set for a certain period of years; the all-new Follow-me car and Pushback truck let you explore the airport from the ground; all-new Traffic Radar lets you view traffic information in three different modes about each AI aircraft in range; appropriate aircraft take advantage of the advanced animations in FSX to operate with airport service vehicles, and Spotty the aircraft Spotter has got an even more impressive bag of tricks!
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