FSUIPC 7.4.18 and AI traffic in EFB2

[Hans K]

For many years I have been using Electronic Flightbag (EFB2) from Aivlasoft. One of the functions is that I can see my fellow pilots and AI traffic on a map. That has always worked fine but after the update to FSUIPC7 version 7.4.18 I still can see the traffic when I am on the ground but as soon as I have taken off I see no surrounding traffic in EFB2. I do see that traffic on my ND in the cockpit and also "physical" when it is not too far away through my cockpit window so it is in the sim.

I then rolled back to version 7.4.17 and everything worked again as it always did. So it apparently has something to do with a change in FSUIPC. Can someone give me a hint how to solve this?

Regards Hans K

[John Dowson]

I will look into this but I a, rather busy at the moment, so it may take me a few days...probably next week sometime or possibly later...

There was one possible change that could cause this - from the changes.txt file (and FSUIPC history document):

Quote

  - removed automatic change of AI aircraft state (from engine start or sleeping to enroute) when aircraft altitude
    differs from ground altitude by 100 feet or more. Previous behavior can be re-instated by adding:
       AIAboveGroundLimit=100
    to the [General] section of your FSUIPC7.ini file (although this is NOT recommended).
    Note this change was made as it looks like the ground altitude for some sleeping AI traffic was changing
    to 0, causing them to switch from ground-to-airborne.

So you could try that.

But before that, please check the build date of your 7.4.18 version, in the 1st line of your FSUIPC7.log file. If this says 1st November, please re-download and re-install. It should say 3rd November. The initial release was accidentally built against the MSFS2024 SDK, and I corrected this the following day. You may need to clear your browser cache to re-download (otherwise the old cached version will be downloaded),

John

[Hans K]

Hi John,

Thanks for the very quick response. I am pretty sure I have the correct version but I will check that tomorrow and will add the line in the .ini. I will report the results.

The sim is working so I can live with it for the moment and am not in a hurry.

Regards,

Hans K

 

 

[Hans K]

The installed version of FSUIPC I had was indeed the correct version (3 nov). So I added the mentioned setting in the General section of the FSUIPC.ini file and made a short test flight. It seems that this is the solution because after takeoff I saw all AI traffic on my EFB2 screen.

Thanks for your support. I will inform a handful of other flightsimmers here who had the same problem.

Regards,

Hans

[John Dowson]

1 hour ago, Hans K said:

The installed version of FSUIPC I had was indeed the correct version (3 nov). So I added the mentioned setting in the General section of the FSUIPC.ini file and made a short test flight. It seems that this is the solution because after takeoff I saw all AI traffic on my EFB2 screen.

Ok, that is interesting. This fix/change was added as it was causing other issues, when the altitude of ground traffic was changing from the correct altitude to 0, and thus FSUIPC was changing the state from ground to airborne when this was not necessary and was due to an incorrect AI traffic ground level being received.

And also FSUIPC should not have to do this - it should receive the ground/airborne flag/status from MSFS, and this is only necessary when this information is incorrect.

This is all quire strange and I think this may be due to how the various traffic add-ons are working. Are you using any add-on for AI traffic management, and if so which one?
Could also be due to the differences between when using AI and real-time traffic.

I need to investigate this further, when time permits, but I don't know when I will have time to do this at the moment....

1 hour ago, Hans K said:

Thanks for your support. I will inform a handful of other flightsimmers here who had the same problem.

Ok, thanks.

Regards,

John

[Hans K]

For your information:

In the meantime I did a test with traffic generated by FSLTL and a second test with traffic generated by Beyond ATC. The behaviour of traffic in EFB2 is the same. Without the extra setting only visible traffic on the ground, with the extra setting all traffic is visible. Next week I will fly together with friends on a network but I expect the same results.

Regards,

Hans

[John Dowson]

Ok, that is interesting. This adjustment to the AI traffic handling was done to prevent the issues reported here: 

I don't understand why this automatic transition of aircraft from ground-to-air is needed though. I will look into this further when time permits...

John

[Hans K]

I see the reason why there was an adjustment. No problem, and with the extra line in the .ini there is a acceptable solution. But from a technical point of view it is interesting what the reason is.

Today I did two additional tests:. One was online flying so the traffic was injected by the network. That network is not as big as the two major ones but the technology is in principle the same as VATSIM and the pilot client is also the same. The behaviour of the AI traffic in my EFB2 application was the same as by the two test former test with external AI sources: Without the fix no en-route traffic visible, with the fix all traffic was visible.

The other test today was flying in a environment where the AI traffic was generated by MSFS2020. In this situation the fix was not necessary: all trafic was visible with the default 7.4.18 version so without the fix.

So it seems that there is a difference in the way AI traffic is injected by external sources (or handled by MSFS) compared to the internal traffic of MSFS2020.

Regards,

Hans

[John Dowson]

That is interesting - I will  add this info to the Advanced user guide.
I would like to look into thus further, when time permits, to see if I can discriminate between the different traffic types and come up with a solution that works for both.

Thanks for looking unto this further.

John