RealTraffic - fly with live and real air traffic in your simulator

How does it work, and what does it do?

Supported Flight Simulators

New: Ground coverage quality checker

Supported Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs)

Standard Edition Licenses

• IMPORTANT: The license will be issued to the email address registered with your paypal account! Make sure that email address is up to date PRIOR to purchasing the license!
• Access to real-time traffic only.
• No satellite data access.
• Only run a single instance of RealTraffic at a time.

BEST VALUE 12 month license (all platforms) USD $107.99 25% discount on monthly

6 month license (all platforms) USD $57.59 20% discount on monthly

3 month license (all platforms) USD $28.79 20% discount on monthly

1 month license (all platforms) USD $11.99

Price frozen 24 day standard license

24 day price freeze license (all platforms) USD $9.99

Upgrading your existing standard license to a professional license

• It is now possible to upgrade your standard license to a professional license.
• Please click this link to go to the upgrade page.

Professional Edition Licenses

• IMPORTANT: The license will be issued to the email address registered with your paypal account! Make sure that email address is up to date PRIOR to purchasing the license!
• Access real-time and two weeks of historical traffic data.
• Access to destination traffic pre-filling when using PSXT.
• Global satellite imagery for the past 7 days (subject to data availability)

BEST VALUE 12 month license (all platforms) USD $203.39 25% discount on monthly

6 month license (all platforms) USD $108.47 20% discount on monthly

3 month license (all platforms) USD $54.23 20% discount on monthly

1 month license (all platforms) USD $22.59

NOAA are flying their P3 Orion through Hurricane Dorian (use the time slider to go to September 1 2019, 13:55 UTC):

Current traffic status

And the combined coverage seen in the last 24 hours:

Current satellite status

True color (day) / Infrared (night) composite. Satellites (left to right): GOES17 / GOES16 / Meteosat 10 / Meteosat 8 / Himawari 8

FAQ

• What do the data labels mean?

• true color imagery (day time) with blended transition to infrared (night time),
• Infrared false color imagery showing in colour areas of convective activity (thunderstorms, dangerous weather airplanes shouldn't be in)
• Radar image, which looks similar to what you would see in the aircraft's own radar display.
• For developers: RealTraffic provides the satellite and radar imagery on a socket to any flight simulator plugins that want to use it to enhance the reality of the weather in the simulator and its visual surrounds.

Installation

Windows 7/8/9/10

MacOS

Linux

Configuring RealTraffic for use

• If you're running PSXT (with P3D, FSX, or MSFS), all options will have been properly pre-configured, no further action from you is required.
• If you're running LiveTraffic, make sure the "Broadcast traffic to 3rd party apps" is selected. Then choose "Show GND TFC" to show ground traffic, "Show AIR TFC" to show traffic in the air, or choose the Auto button to let RT determine whether you're in flight or not and which traffic to show. Ideally however, you disable Autoselect AIR/GND TFC and have BOTH GND and AIR TFC selected. This will show everything.
• If you're running Aerowinx PSX, bring up the instructor screen in PSX, select the Network/Main tab, select "The main server" and press "Start". You should now see a "Client 1 accepted" message if RT is connected. Then, still in the instructor screen, select the Situation/Human/Traffic tab, and select "Externally controlled"

Fault finding / debugging instructions

1. Drag the RealTrafficLauncher app into the Applications folder from the downloaded DMG.
2. Open a terminal window (go to Applications/Utilities in Finder and start the terminal)3. On the command prompt, enter this command: java -jar /Applications/RealTrafficLauncher.app/Contents/Resources/Jars/RealTrafficLauncher.jar
3. If this worked, you're all set, and the RT window will show after it has started.  If it didn't work because java couldn't be found, you have to install the java runtime environment (JRE). Go here https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-jre8-downloads.html and download and install the "macOS x64 installer", and repeat the steps above. You won't need to reboot, but you will need to close the terminal (type exit <enter> at the command prompt) and re-open a new terminal AFTER installing the JRE before you try to re-enter the command above.
4. For most installations, double clicking the RealTrafficLauncher.app icon should now work as well.

• Remove any equipment from your network that might be trying to put itself inbetween your computer and the internet. This can result in security exceptions and the connection won't succeed, preventing RealTraffic from running. There are for example free internet deals in the US where marketing firms will sniff your internet behaviour by injecting themselves between your computer and the servers you're retrieving data from, in return for free internet. This won't fly, literally, with RealTraffic.
• To see whether the server RealTraffic needs to be able to access to run is reachable, try connecting your browser to the RealTraffic status image https://rtw.flyrealtraffic.com/tfc_l.jpg on the same computer as RealTraffic is running on. If you can't connect, the problem is network related. Check your internet connection and your DNS settings.
• Finally, make sure you have all the software bits and bobs connected. RealTraffic is completely "add-on" agnostic - it doesn't know whom it is talking to on the server port, whether that's PSX, PSXSeeconTraffic, X-Plane, or another third party app. Make sure they are indeed providing the data RealTraffic needs to function.
• And then, as a last step, if you're really convinced you've found a new bug, please run RT in debug mode: Create an empty file named "debug" inside the directory where RealTraffic.ini is located (see above to find it) and start RT. A file called RealTraffic_debug.log will be created in that same directory, run RT until the problem manifests, then send us the log file via email: support at inside.net. Delete the "debug" file or it'll continue to write to that debug log file.

Information for developers and power users

Release history

• Option to set pilot eye height for output sent to synthetic vision systems Foreflight or Garmin Pilot
• Display more GFS derived weather parameters in the radar display

• Access to satellite derived aircraft positions
• Global weather coverage

• Minor fix to prevent .ini file corruption when java.exe or RealTraffic.exe are killed.

• Aircraft labels are now customisable with a rich and sparse default selectable, as well as a user setting that can be saved and loaded. Additionally, origin/destination can be displayed in ICAO code rather than IATA code.
• Keyboard input +/- anywhere on the app window zooms the radar display in/out
• New filter to only show traffic labels to/from the same destination or spotter location
• For ground traffic motion vector lines: Use true heading if available, if not available, use true track, if not available, don't show.

• All new v9 release.

• Service release with updated debugging facilities.

• Diagnostic enhancements.

• Fixed missing airport identifier for OTHH.

• It is now possible to use any true type font for the traffic display. Some special characters like climb/descent and degree indicators may not work correctly. This must be done manually by editing RealTraffic.ini. This file can be found here on Windows: C:\Users\<your username>/AppData/InsideSystems/ On MacOS it's in ~/Documents/.InsideSystems, and on Linux it's in ~/.InsideSystems
• Set the base size (works for both the default font and any custom you may use): "displayFontBaseSize":12
• Windows: Set the filename to the TTF font file. You must use double backslash in the path: "displayFont":"c:\\windows\\fonts\\arial.ttf"
• macOS/Linux: Set the filename to the TTF font file: "displayFont":"/System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/Arial.ttf"
• To reset to the default, set this line: "displayFont":"default"

• Minor GUI updates and a bug fix.

• Time offset is saved.
• Display satellite overlays with selectable opacities.

• Traffic now available since May 1st 2020, satellite imagery for the past 7 days.
• Standard and Professional level subscriptions with different features.

• RT now loads the latest version automatically. No software updates need to be installed by the user.

• Finding flights now supports search by Hex ID
• Satellite imagery is now available on an (almost) global level. Never fly artificial skies again!
• While we tune the performance of the global satellite imagery system, access to the satellite data is free. Enjoy!

• A bug introduced in 7.1.70 makes this update mandatory, apologies!
• Minor internal improvements.
• Waypoint types are now drawn correctly: Triangle for regular waypoints, a star for RNAV waypoints.
• Graphics optimised for smoother dragging and redrawing depending on zoom level.

• In preparation for server side upgrades the client requires a mandatory update. Sorry for the inconvenience.
• Emergencies window no longer opens on its own.
• Better cache handling on the server side and some minor GUI bug fixes.
• Dragging the map in spotter mode is now smooth and the spotter position is recalled correctly after a program restart.

• A weekly list of emergencies is now available. Select a flight and click the "Center on this flight" button, and the time offset and spotter location will be automatically set so you can follow the emergency. Note: The list is somewhat optimistic: Many of the emergencies listed currently aren't real but rather due to data feeders incorrectly reporting the transponder code. I'm implementing some cross checking on the server side over the weekend to reduce the number of false positives.
• To watch a recent emergency (BEE1331 EDI-LCY, landed at Birmingham BHX), set the history slider to 2019-07-22 06:26 UTC. The emergency window will pop out and you can select and center the flight and watch it descend while orbiting several times, and land. All were safe.
• Emergency and Search window positions are saved for the next time the windows open
• If any emergencies are present worldwide, a window will pop up showing the details of the affected flights. As in the search window, you are able to jump to the selected flights if in spotter mode.
• Click the "Find flights..." button to search for flights at the currently selected time. If in Spotter Mode, you can then center your view on the selected flight.

• Better handling of connection and read timeouts when fetching traffic data.
• It's now possible to ignore the AIRAC out of date messages when starting RealTraffic.
• Simulator settings changed to allow setting Ground/Air traffic for LiveTraffic.
• the "last position" timestamp is now available in the UDP data sent on port 49003
• Switching between spotter mode and flight simulator modes no longer requires restart of RealTraffic.
• A much improved radar display that can now be dragged with the mouse to view traffic further away from the current zoom level. In spotter mode, the new centre position is retained after releasing the mouse button.
• Information popup showing data about the clicked on traffic.
• Display and calculation of correct flight altitudes for flights that are below the transition altitude of the nearest airport.
• Removal of the injection logic, a very little used feature.
• Tracking of flights in spotter mode: Click "Follow this aircraft" in the info popup to center the radar display on this flight and follow it until it ends.
• Flights squawking an emergency transponder code (7700/7600/7500) are displayed in red.
• ...and last but not least: Time offset/historical data is back!

• First public non-beta release.