- Logfiles Suck
Very frequently we get sent logfiles from customers who are having a problem, and who are often surprised when we say that the logs aren’t really of much use. It’s a perfectly reasonable assumption, that’s what the logs are for, right? How can we say they’re useless, especially when Traffic Global – or anything else […]
- Traffic Global – Light Aircraft Generation
Since the ability to create light (GA) aircraft was added to Traffic Global, there have been a lot of questions about what decisions lie behind the created flights, and a lot of people assuming that it’s a simple case of filling all GA parking at all airports all the time. In every other aspect of […]
- Traffic Global – Choosing the Runway
There are a lot of people asking a completely fair question: Why does Traffic Global not use the same runway as [FlightRadar24|X-Plane|Pilot2ATC], delete as appropriate. It feels like it should be straightforward. Weather is this, airport’s rules are this, therefore land on 08R. Dead easy. Except. The problem is that there are a load of […]
- Traffic Global – Airport Design
One of the key design decisions in Traffic Global was to avoid using any additional files to help with navigation, and to avoid any special, Traffic Global-specific rules or encodings. All the data needed comes directly from files that are required by X-Plane itself and would be fully used by X-Plane itself. Although this does […]
- Traffic Global – Adding New Aircraft
Although Traffic Global comes as standard with over 1,000 liveries there are still around 1,000 more that are referenced in the standard traffic database that are not provided. In an ideal world, every single referenced livery would be provided but the reality is that creating an additional 1,000 liveries requires a lot of time, and […]
- Traffic Global – Aircraft Substitution System
When Traffic Global reads a schedule file (BGL) and tries to find the correct aircraft model to fly a particular route, there are several rules in place about how it does this. Obviously the first thing it tries is an exact match with the aircraft name that is used in the BGL, and this name […]
- Traffic Global – Pre-release Presentation
I was reminded that the video for this is online, so it feels right to add a link here.
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – July
Originally published on https://www.justflight.com/articles/developers-diary-traffic-global-for-xplane-11 Welcome back, and congratulations on your persistence if you’ve been here from the start! This month’s diary needs to take a bit of a step back which, as will become clear, is very appropriate. I’d like to talk about something that happened during the internal beta, and I need to start by […]
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – June
Originally published on https://www.justflight.com/articles/developers-diary-traffic-global-for-xplane-11 Welcome back! So far in these diaries I’ve been trying to talk a bit about what the development of something like this feels like from the “other side”; not just a “what I did on my summer holidays”-type essay in multiple parts, but what the thought processes and drives are for someone […]
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – May
This has been a busy month to say the least. Firstly, the beta was announced last month which puts a certain amount of pressure on. More than that, it’s been a time of gathering threads together and trying to join them together without using too many granny knots.
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – April
Last month I made a promise – no more talk about traffic schedules – and you’ll be pleased to hear I plan to keep that promise, not least because it makes my head spin. This month I’ll dig a little deeper behind the scenes; we’ve already talked about the models, and the schedules, so next we need to tie the two together and track which planes are where, and a lot more besides. Oh, and (drama pause): Framerates.
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – March
After dealing with providing aircraft models and the actual traffic database – at least partly – last month, it’s time to take a step back and look at some of the design choices that were made, and why.
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – February
Last month if you recall, we found out that X-Plane makes it rather harder to add AI traffic than Prepar3D and briefly talked about the two different areas that will need to be covered – providing the routes and models, and getting the sim to use them.
- Traffic Global for X-Plane Dev Diary – January
Welcome to the dev diary for Traffic Global for X-Plane – TGXP to friends. I’m going to be talking about how this came about, what it does, what it doesn’t do, why, and quite a lot of what goes into making it work. There’s going to be a certain amount of techy background detail – hey, it’s a dev diary – but I want this to be open to anyone with a little interest in what goes into making your sim a nicer place to be.