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Virtual Air Traffic for X-Plane 12

Virtual Air Traffic is a freeware AI traffic plugin for X-Plane 12, designed to enhance the realism of airport operations with intelligent, schedule-driven aircraft movements. The plugin features dynamic aircraft injection, real-world flight schedules, and full gate-to-gate operations, including taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Optimized for performance, it supports procedure-aware navigation and integrates seamlessly with existing X-Plane systems. With continuous updates and a comprehensive database covering over 600 airports, Virtual Air Traffic aims to create an immersive flying experience.

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Description

Virtual Air Traffic Brings a New Generation of AI Traffic to X-Plane 12, for free !

Virtual Air Traffic, a newly developed freeware traffic plugin built from the ground up for X-Plane 12, is preparing to bring airports and airspace to life with intelligent, schedule-driven aircraft operations. 

Rather than simply placing aircraft at fixed positions, Virtual Air Traffic operates its own native AI system. Aircraft are dynamically injected around the user and managed throughout their journey, including gate operations, taxiing, takeoff, airborne routing, sequencing, approach, landing and arrival at the destination gate.

Created in native C++ with performance and smooth operation as key priorities, the plugin combines real-world flight schedules with airport-aware routing and traffic management. Its database currently covers more than 600 airports and over 600,000 real-world flights, with schedules continuously refreshed to create true to life airline activity around the world.

Key features

  • Real-world airline schedules with operator-appropriate traffic and liveries.

  • Full gate-to-gate operations, including parking, pushback, taxiing, departures and arrivals.

  • Intelligent traffic sequencing and conflict management for aircraft operating around the player.

  • Procedure-aware navigation, supporting SIDs, STARs and approaches.

  • SimBrief integration, allowing airport runway operations to align with the user’s filed flight plan.

  • Native X-Plane TCAS integration, displaying traffic on compatible navigation displays, the G1000, X-Plane map and supported external applications.

  • Animated aircraft models with functional landing gear, flaps, spoilers, windmilling and other moving components. Choose X-CSL or Bluebell packs.

  • A modern in-sim traffic manager with airport arrival and departure information, traffic monitoring and performance controls.

  • Full VR support for aircraft, contrails and the plugin’s menu interface.

  • Native C++ architecture, developed with an emphasis on scalability, low memory usage and reduced simulator stutters.

Virtual Air Traffic is designed to be straightforward to use: install the plugin, begin a normal flight and allow the surrounding world to populate automatically. More advanced users can use the in-sim interface to configure traffic density, performance settings, labels and SimBrief connectivity to sync runway usage. Optionally configure key-bindings to show/hide the interface or show/hide the plane labels.

Virtual Air Traffic is currently being developed for X-Plane 12 on Windows. Please note: create a (free) account on our portal to register your installation.

More information and beta registration are available through the Virtual Air Traffic website at https://www.virtualairtraffic.com

Changelog

  • v0.78 04. Sep 2026
    0.78 BETA:

    - Improved the crash-handler to properly escalate application crashes up the chain (credits to Jim Keir).
    - Improved the external camera to allow for zooming.
    - Improved weather handling at airports to improve active runway selection. (simbrief info will still keep priority over weather info for active runway selection)
    - Improved runway selection code to account for extremely short or non-pavement runways.
    - Improved ground logic to make planes taxi more straight on the centerline of taxiways.
    - Improved take-off logic to prevent planes from having too much drift on the runway during strong crosswind conditions.
    - Airport fill percentages now follow the airport's natural flow cycle better (in general: more planes parked at night, less planes during the day. Cargo terminals: vice versa).
    - Upgraded Simbrief integration code to json v2.
    - The arrival board now shows delayed planes on top.
    - Increased the speed of planes on a departure to better match their real-world speeds.
    - Added rudder deflection animations on takeoff and landing in line with pilot heading corrections and weather/crosswind conditions.
    - Fixed an issue with parked aircraft landing gear looking all weird for some specific X-CSL models.
    - Fixed an issue with departing planes aligning on the runway chasing a last taxi node causing weird turns. (examples: ZBAA 36R, EDDB 24L, KMIA 12)
    - Fixed an issue with scheduled departures not spawning at some airports (example: EGLL).
  • v0.77 01. Sep 2026
    0.77 BETA:

    - Added custom dataref 'virtualairtraffic/traffic/planes_freq_s' to control the frequency of refeshing 'virtualairtraffic/traffic/planes_json'. (0= disabled)
    - Some improvements of the APT parser to not completely fail loading on a single airport corruption in the file.
    - APT parser will now also parse the taxi network for custom airports (instead of falling back to the default X-Plane APT taxi network by default). Errornous taxi routes on some custom airports (like FlyTampa EHAM) will be ignored and fallback occurs automatically.
    - ATC: will now give vectoring and/or altitude instructions to planes on cruise which have a possible traffic conflict with the player.
    - ATC: Improved vectoring logic to allow planes to be quicker on the STAR and follow their approach path to the active.
    - Improved taxi logic to prevent planes from driving through grass on some occasions.
    - Based on realtime world traffic, the livery matcher will no longer match aircraft types that are no longer in use by the particular airline.
    - Added setting to disable static plane rendering on airports to only leave you with the moving traffic. (tab 'settings', option 'disable static rendering for ga and airliners')
    - Arrived traffic will change status to 'ARRIVED' instead of 'FINISHED' and properly turn off their beacons lights.
    - Fixed a compatibility issue where airplanes were not visible in LittleNavmap.
    - Fixed some issues with the sounds. (more work on sounds will follow later)

Comments

Add Your Review
User avatar
SlaagiSaalginen 09. Sep 2026
3rd pic seems to have some AI elemnts on it O_O
User avatar
schmokedpancake 01. Sep 2026
already reviewed on the org forum, Amazing addon once again thank you! using x-csl models seamlessly working
User avatar
towfique1 31. Aug 2026
does not work. The game breaks

Download

Version: 0.78
Size: 401.39 MB
Uploaded: 04. Sep 2026

Author

timonr

Joined Nov 2024
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Contributors

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Requirements

  • • X-Plane 12 or later

Information

Release Date 30. Aug 2026
Downloads 383
Rating No ratings yet
Category Utilities / Applications