One of the cool new features added in the most recent release of Microsoft Flight Simulator is the importing of real-time data, which helped the developers pad the world with flight data, weather patterns, and more. All of this was done for the sake of immersing players into the game and helping them truly believe they’re flying these giant machines.
The 2020 release of Microsoft Flight Simulator takes the franchise in a bold new direction, pushing players into much more beautiful game worlds, while also giving much more realistic data to play with. Players will see dozens of other planes, both players and AI-controlled, buzzing around in the skies. And with more than 30 airports to fly from, there’s going to be a lot of data to parse.
The downside of all of this realism is that it takes much more processing power to handle it all. So how do you turn off AI and player air traffic? You can make the adjustments in the options menu, which you can visit while flying or on the main menu of the game. You have a ton of different options within this menu as well. You can also lower the density of airport vehicles, ground aircraft, and worker density in your games by changing options listed under Traffic. In that same General tab you will find a setting for AI traffic. Toggle this to turn off AI and player air traffic in the game. This can make it much easier to run the game if you’re on less-than-optimal hardware.
For those who want to keep these settings, another thing you can do to make it easier for you to play makes these airplanes more generic. By making them generic, they may not look customized or unique. Still, it further reduces your computer’s memory and CPU load. Go to the main graphics page in the general options, down at the bottom, double-check the Use Generic Plane Models (Air Traffic), and Use Generic Plane Models (Multiplayer) are both on.
