2005 Traffic

The Good
I am a big fan of Microsoft Flight Simulators (MSFS), not so much the early versions but I found MSFS 2000, MSFS 2002 and MSFS 2004 to be excellent products with great depth.
I had never paid much heed to the background scenery before. It was nice to see some static aircraft but they weren't that important to me, I was interested in flying the planes. This product changed that.

It helped that I'd had to re-install MSFS 2004 so that all I had installer were the scenery files. Flying around looking at a couple of airports before loading 2005 Traffic and everything looked OK and I thought "What could this package offer?"
The difference was obvious immediately. As soon as I reloaded MSFS 2004 and took to the air I could see there was much more activity at the airport both on the ground and in the air, and this was activity 'coz those planes were moving! Now I've seen these planes move before but not like this. Two or three at a time were taxiing down the slipway and queuing to take off. Planes were stacked in the sky as they made their approach to land and all this was happening without me doing anything.
What's more the planes were ones that I recognised, BMI Baby was there, so were Virgin and Thompson, just as they should be in Manchester.

After I'd got over the early 'Wow!' factor I started to dig into what the product had to offer. It's not a lot, just three new views that are accessed via the aircraft menu and a couple of tools on the menu bar, but they are well done and easy to use.
I really like the tower view, being able to watch the airport function while listening to the ATC chatter is surprisingly enjoyable. Driving the car around the airport is fun too, in other flight simulator add-ons where I've loaded new airports I've had to scoot around them in a Cessna which is not ideal. The car despite its limitations, see below, is a good thing to have. The virtual aircraft spotter is another nice tool. This can be used anywhere and while I don't expect to play with it very much I will definitely be using it in conjunction with other add-ons to get a close up look at what I've purchased / installed.

Finally there's the 2005 Traffic tools, not the ones that get dumped in the Just Flight folder on Windows' start menu but the two that are accessed via the flight simulator's menu bar. These show all the traffic that is active on and above the ground and allow me to swap to any of them. How cool is that? I can listen to air traffic control talking to the pilot as they approach the airport, swap to that plane and follow it in, I can follow any plane from the departure gate right through to take-off and beyond, it's great.

All of the above may have been done before, and they may even have been done better, but this is the first time I'd encountered anything like this functionality and I found it simple and refreshingly different

The Bad
There's not a lot wrong with this package and I like it a lot. There's just a few little niggles like the 'Follow Me' car which has a terrible turning circle and drives like it's a plane in disguise. It also sinks below the surface of roads that go uphill and undulating ground. I've noticed this before when I've installed and explored enhanced airports and, while it is probably a feature of the way the airports are represented rather than a fault with the car or this product, it is still a pain.

The airport tower view is limited to just a few specified locations. While these are fun I'd have liked to see it implemented in a few of the big international airports.

The add-on needs the flight simulator patched to version 9.1. This is a Microsoft patch and it's on the DVD so all's well there. Installing the patch did give a warning that some 3rd party add-ons may not work when the installation was complete. I had just re-installed MSFS 2004 so I had nothing to lose but if I'd got my simulator loaded with additional planes, airports and scenery packages I may not have gone ahead with the install. Consequently I would have liked to have seen this information printed on the outside of the case.

This product puts several tools into the Just Flight folder on Windows' Start menu. It's appropriate for some of these, like the Repaint Assistant, to be there but I would have liked to have seen others like the Voicepack and Taxi tools integrated into the flight simulators menu bar.

The web site for this product, along with the associated forum, is no longer active. This is understandable because, at the time of writing, it's seven years old, but the web site is referred to by the manual as being the place where the player can check whether a 3rd party add-on is compatible with 2005 Traffic. It seems that information has been lost.

The Bottom Line
Overall it's easy to install, easy to use and, in my opinion, it breathes new life into my flight simulator.

I spent a pleasant half hour today watching planes land, taxi and take-off while listening to air traffic control and drinking coffee, which is what I tend to do in a real airport while waiting for a flight.
Or to put it another way, I fired up my flight simulator and did nothing but look at it and I may do the same again tomorrow.
This one's a keeper.