Ultimate Traffic II Tutorial - Part 1

Ultimate Traffic II Tutorial - Part 1

by Erik Whitehead

November 4, 2009

Setting Up Ultimate Traffic II

Preparation is essential to get the best performance out of your PC. Overclocking your computer's processor and your graphics card are going to provide you with a smoother flight experience with higher frame rates. Defragmentation of the hard disk on which FSX and UT2 reside is also critical to good performance. In my first attempt to run UT2 without defragmenting my drive, traffic would take about 10 minutes to appear at the Charles De Gaul airport in Paris. After defragmentation, the time to get traffic to appear drop to about 3 to 5 minutes with 100% of all UT2 commercial traffic included worldwide. The disk defragmenter I recommend is Raxco Perfect Disk 10, although there are others available such as Ultimate Defrag.

In order to be able to have enough performance to run the simulation in real time at full HD video resolution, my PC is equipped as follows:

OS and CPU:

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate
Version 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, 2668 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB

Graphics Card:
Graphics Card Manufacturer Built by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Device ID 9460
Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16
Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5
Core Clock in MHz 850 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 975 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 124.8 GByte/s

Monitor:

HP w2408

Installation

The installation process using Flight 1's downloader is described very well, and will take some significant time even with high speed cable modem connections. You should download the Flight 1 downloader first, and then download the install package at http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=ut2. You run the install package and you will then be able to purchase Ultimate Traffic II online.

When you start Ultimate Traffic 2, this is what you will see on the home dialog box

Update your installation with any hot fixes that are available (hot fix 2 is available as of 11/04/2009).

When you finish installing Ultimate Traffic II, run your disk defrag program again to remove any additional fragments in your files.

Configuration - Traffic Options

The amount of commercial traffic and general aviation traffic can be adjusted to your preference. Note that if you want to see all airline scheduled traffic, the settings you see for "Check airlines to display" and Commercial Traffic Density slider at 100% have to be selected.

The setting for enabling moving jetways (for AI aircraft) can be set to save some processing time and achieve higher video frame rates by unchecking the Enable moving jetways check box.

There are other settings and utilities that can be used, but I will cover them in separate articles, as they are not necessary to start flying with traffic.

Flying Las Vegas

As a test, my first flight involved flying IFR to KLAS (Las Vegas). in the picture below you can see the aircraft lined up for takeoff with their airline livery based on the departing flight numbers.

The Air Traffic Control window is up to show the Ground Control traffic with real call signs for a Southwest flight that is ready to taxi at the gate. In the top left is a camera view of an AI aircraft with Southwest livery taxiing in after arriving at KLAS. I was watching this aircraft along with the traffic waiting to depart. I was also watching the UT2 status board for KLAS (not Paris) which looks like this:

Synchronizing time to get the flight status to match FSX flights is difficult and a limitation of all Traffic Generating applications. UT2 by default keeps its time matched to real time on your PC. This means that unless you specifically setup FSX and UT2 to use some other simulation time, they will not match. During the start of a flight, FSX needs to be manually setup with your PC's clock time in order to synchronize with UT2.

If you pause FSX, the traffic and the time will not move forward, creating a time difference between FSX and UT2. While you use other programs, FSX will be paused, which will create a lag in FSX versus the UT2 schedule. If you aren't interested in following specific flights, the traffic at the airport will still be realistic and you can file your own flight plan to fly with the AI commercial traffic.

Heavy Traffic in Paris

Charles De Gaul (CDG) airport (LFPG) in Paris, France provides an acid test of sorts for traffic generation due to the extreme traffic levels. Given about thirty minutes, aircraft will be landing and taking off at a very busy rate, with either a landing or takeoff occurring every 60 seconds on average 18 hours each day.

Here are some of the screen shots I captured at CDG:

Lining Up on One of Four Runways

The View From Above

Conclusion

The UT2 package provides excellent FSX specific DX10 capable aircraft models and features along with realistic airline traffic schedules world wide. The traffic levels provided make the flight experience more interesting without a big frame rate impact.

Flying Hawaii with High Quality Add Ons

In this FSX tutorial article we look at the interaction of the scenery and traffic FSX add ons. The setup of Flight Simulator X to make these packages play well together is described.

The Machine:

In order to be able to have enough performance to run the simulation in real time at full HD video resolution, my PC is equipped as follows:

OS and CPU:

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate
Version 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, 2668 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB

Graphics Card:
Graphics Card Manufacturer Built by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Device ID 9460
Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16
Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5
Core Clock in MHz 850 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 975 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 124.8 GByte/s

Monitor:

HP w2408

The FSX Setup:

Flight Simulator FSX Gold Deluxe is installed plus two of my favorite add ons:

1. MegaScenery Hawaii Oahu
2. Ultimate Traffic 2 (Demo) - Now Released!!

In this scene, we see Honolulu International from the air in full High Definition (1920x1080 pixels) , notice the airport 3D features such as the buildings are on top of the MegaScenery 2D image of the area. You can see the aircraft lights lighting up the tarmac as they taxi or sit at the gate.



The FSX scenery library settings are first setup as follows:



Note that in the Scenery Library settings that the MegaSceneryX Hawaii Oahu is in position 14 above "South America" as it is part of the base scenery for FSX Gold Deluxe. Some of the scenery files are left above MegaScenery as they have unique components and only cover those areas needed for Las Vegas, etc. Note that you can turn on and off different scenery areas by unclicking the Enabled check mark to the left of the Scenery Area.

After setting up the scenery in the correct priority, the FSX settings must then be setup to display the best picture your hardware can produce, some of the settings are more fine grained than others. As an example you can select whether you want to have light bloom occur when a landing light is pointed at you.

1. Display



2. Aircraft



3. Scenery



4. Weather



5. Traffic


Results:

Flying FSX with the addition of these add-ons provides a more accurate and realistic view of the world, adding traffic in the skies and on the ground.

And now a couple of pictures you might like:

First, a picture with some traffic over Honolulu



Second a view of Waikiki:



And finally a slightly larger aircraft to take you home:



Posted by: Erik Whitehead

Flight Simulator FSX Scenery Tutorial 2

Adjusting Settings

When you install your add-on scenery, you need to take into account how fast your computer and graphics capability are. The rate at which the screens are updated while you fly affects how smooth the view outside of your cockpit will be.

The higher the resolution setting, the slower the view updates will be accomplished. The view update rate is also known as "frame rate". Standard USA television frame rates are actually about 30 frames per second. If your computer can support that rate, you will get nearly flawless views. A high end computer today with a high end graphics card can drive the view at this frame rate in High Definition (1920 by 1080) with all scenery settings at their highest settings.

Additional Considerations

If you also buy (aircraft) traffic generating add-ons such as Ultimate Traffic X, the processing load goes up considerably, and a faster processor and hard disk will help keep the simulation running at full speed with no affect on frame rate.

Traffic generators create airline traffic and general aircraft traffic at large airports. In my case, the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport is simulated with the complete airline schedule with "MegaScenery X Phoenix" providing the scenery on the ground, and Ultimate Traffic providing the airline traffic including ground traffic, autos on the freeway, etc. Ultimate Terrain provides the roads and other enhancements to Phoenix, so that it looks like a real city, especially at night.

Flight Simulator FSX Scenery Tutorial 1

Flight Simulator FSX Scenery Tutorial

Very significant advances in scenery for Microsoft Flight Simulator X have been introduced over the past few years. High definition monitors along with ever faster 3D graphics have made what once was a future dream of realistic flight scenery on a moderate cost desktop PC a stark reality today.  This FSX tutorial provides an introduction to scenery for new FSX pilots.

FSX Native Scenery

FSX out of the box provides a set of scenery covering the world which provides a limited set of scenery at reduced resolution. Scenery is displayed of natural 3D terrain, some stock building types and specific buildings created for well known landmarks such as the Las Vegas strip.

Adding Scenery to FSX

Numerous advancements in FSX scenery such as the MegasceneryX disks from www.megasceneryearth.com provide a great view while flying your simulated aircraft. The scenery view of the ground is displayed at 1.19 meters per pixel. This resolution combined with the topographic mapping creates the 3D effect of mountains and other natural features in the area you are flying in.

By buying Flight Simulator Gold Edition, which includes FSX Deluxe and the Acceleration Expansion Pack, you will experience the fastest performance possible from your computer. The scenery add-ons provide higher resolution imagery so that you can find your own house (if you live in an area with good satellite imagery).

Other Scenery

Also available are special interest area scenery packs which provide 3D items from areas such as the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.