AI Traffic Visibility - related to magnification?

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stevekirks
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AI Traffic Visibility - related to magnification?

Post by stevekirks »

On a flight from Torrance to Perris Valley (L65) I had significant problems picking up AI traffic. After a safe landing and a taxi off the runway, I started to search for AI traffic in the area and see if I could find one close and zero in on it. Here's what I did:

Settings:

* Current PE client for FSX
* Visibility in client set for 12 miles, 10 updates per second

1. From the VC of the FSX default KingAir 350 I looked around for traffic while on the ground. No joy.
2. Right click to bring up the view options contextual menu, and picked "Air Traffic" then picked a plane at random. Got lucky with a Cherokee 180 that it turns out was landing at L65. Drone identifier ZS10 - KCCB to L65 as a PA46
3. From the spot view on the AI Cherokee, I could see it was on a left base for runway 33 at L65.
4. Switched back to the VC of the King Air and looked for the traffic, no joy.
5. While remaining in the VC, I increased the magnification from 0.60 zoom to *3.00* zoom and could see the traffic.
6. I reduced the zoom to *2.00* and it disappeared from view
7. While increasing and decreasing the zoom level, I could make the AI Cherokee appear and disappear from view while it was on the short final to the runway.

The AI Cherokee was always within the 12 mile AI range in the client, but something was preventing me from seeing it until I zoomed in.

Since I also have a copy of Prepar3D 2.5 I loaded it up with the same KingAir at the same airport and parked in roughly the same place. I waited for the same drone to come back. I was able to see it at a much closer distance, consistent with the sim's ability to draw something that small in relation to my view. In other words, as expected.

This leads me to believe that there's something about FSX and draw distance that becomes an issue during magnification changes.
Steve Kirks (sKirks on Twitch)
KSGF--I-10 rated
Student Pilot
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Siege00
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Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2015 9:39 pm

Re: AI Traffic Visibility - related to magnification?

Post by Siege00 »

I don't know if this applies since I haven't had a chance to test it, but I just finished a flight (at parking) and another pilot was still over SNA. I watched him and he disappeared really quickly... ie. still over SNA. I did some digging and found that there is a setting in FSX.cfg called SmallPartRejectRadius. Mine was set pretty high, probably by an addon, but setting it to 1 or 1.0 may help with this. I've been flying with labels turned on so I could actually see traffic while flying, before flying through them, but hopefully this will get rid of that need. I heard this setting doesn't appear in all config files but can be added if needed in a/the [scenery] block.

[scenery]
SmallPartRejectRadius=1.0


If you figured out what the issue was or solved it via another means, please let me know.

Thanks!
Sim Enthusiast and Student Pilot (Private)
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