OpenSky Network

OpenSky is available as a tracking data source to everyone and immediately

OpenSky works out of the box as a flight data tracking source and is enabled by default. You can activate/deactivate it any time in the Settings > Input Channels:

Settings > Input Channels > Open Sky Network (no credentials yet)

Without a user account you are only allowed a very limited number of requests per day, with an account you are allowed a lot more (details).

It is advisable to register a user account with OpenSky Network. Once you have that user,

1. go to your OpenSky Network account page, and

2. in the "API Client" section on the bottom right create API Client credentials. These credentials consist of a Client ID, which is then also shown on the account page, and a Client Secret, which is not shown on the account page. Instead, a file named credentials.json is download to your computer, which holds both the Client ID and the Secret.

3. Back in X-Plane and LiveTraffic's settings, click the "Find crentials.json..." button and in the appearing file selection dialog find and select the just downloaded credentials.json file. LiveTraffic will read both Client ID and Client Secret from this file to use it with OpenSky. With the next refresh you should see the "requests left today" counter increase.

Settings > Input Channels > Open Sky Network (with filled in Client API credentials)

The number of remaining requests per day is displayed here, as well as in the Status page.

Keep the credentials.json file safe. It is the original place that holds your Client Secret. You cannot look up the Client Secret on the OpenSky account page. You can remove it from the Downloads folder, though, LiveTraffic has a copy of your Client Secret in its settings file.

The credentials.json file is just a text file in well readable JSON format. You can open it in any text editor to see the actual values of Client ID and Client Secret and copy them from there over into LiveTraffic if reading from the file directly doesn't work for any reason, or also into a password safe .

If on the OpenSky account page you click "Reset Credential", then the previous Client Secret becomes invalid. OpenSky creates a new Secret and downloads a new credentials.json file, that you then can use with LiveTraffic.

The fields of the OpenSky settings in detail:

Setting	Default	Description
OpenSky Network	Enabled	Enables usage of OpenSky Network as a live flight data channel. As this channel provides positional information only, OpenSky Master Data (see next row) is forced to be enabled, too, as long as OpenSky Network is enabled. If interested find API documentation here.
OpenSky Explorer		This link opens the OpenSky Explorer, in which you can check current coverage.
OpenSky Aircraft DB File	Enabled	For fetching master data on the involved aircraft (aircraft type, registration, operator, ...) OpenSky requires this additional channel, but it is also queried for flights read from other channels. So generally, it is a good idea to keep it enabled. This service downloads a database file from OpenSky once per month, then uses it to look up plane data essential for Model Matching.
OpenSky Route Info	Disabled	This service looks up route information (departure, destination airports) from an OpenSky API. Route information is for display only, hence to reduce network overhead this channel is by default disabled.
Registration		This link opens the user registration page at OpenSky Network.
Find credentials.json...		This button opens a file dialog, in which you can find and select the credentials.json file downloaded from your OpenSky account page for LiveTraffic to read Client ID/Secret from it.
Client ID Client Secret		API credentials of your OpenSky account. To save new entries click the [Save and Try] button.
Connection Status		Displays current status info, including number of remaining requests today. The same info is displayed on the Status / About page.

Request Limit

Since July 2022 OpenSky Network restricts the number of requests per user, see here for current limits. If you use API Client Credentials of a registered user account then the request budget is significantly higher. And it gets another boost if you actively feed ADS-B data to OpenSky.

How long any request limit lasts depends mainly on the Live data refresh rate, ie. you have it under control.

You control the number of requests LiveTraffic sends per minute via the Advanced Setting Live Data Refresh. The default of one request per 20s is totally sufficient for fluent aircraft display and means that you use just 3 requests per minute and the anonymous 400 requests limit lasts for 2.2 hours, while the 4,000 requests a register user is allowed would last 22.2 hours of active flying.

To further save on your request budget, you can separately define a higher refresh period in the Advanced Settings > Aircraft Selection while you are flying your user aircraft higher than a configurable height above ground (default: 60s when flying higher than 10,000ft).

LiveTraffic displays the remaining requests per day in OpenSky's connection status, see screenshots above for examples. Please note that OpenSky might run in a different timezone than you are in, so the end of an OpenSky day might not be your local midnight.

LiveTraffic displays a warning once the number of remaining requests reach 50 and once again when it reaches 10.

In case you run out of requests OpenSky sends an information when budget is available again. LiveTraffic displays this as local time in the Connection Status.

Contribute by Feeding ADS-B Data

If your are running an ADS-B receiver please consider feeding OpenSky Network to grow all our network.