Before you start...

• Understand and accept the limitations implied by LiveTraffic's design approach...there won't be planes everywhere, especially not everywhere on the ground.

• Verify requirements.

  • For Windows, this includes making sure latest Visual C++ redistributabls are installed. Download and install vc_redist.x64.exe.

  • For Mac OS here is a tip how to deal with security prompts if they happen.

LiveTraffic Archive

In the following, all actual actions are put into blue boxes like below. Impatient readers may just want to skip to the next blue box. The texts inbetween help validating the steps were successful and give background info. You want to read all text if you are new to the matter.

This is what the folder should like afterwards:

In the further course of installation we will fill the .../LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL folder. You may have noticed the ShippedCSL folder, which contains a ground vehicle courtesy of X-CSL.

Screenshots are made on a Mac simply because Macs feature this nice tree view of folders and files combined. Folders, for which their content is also show, are marked with a down-pointing rectangle, while closed folder, for which no detailed content is shown, are marked with a right-pointing rectangle. In the above screenshot you see all files of the LiveTraffic folder right as they came out of the LiveTraffic.zip archive. If your installation is missing something double-check your download and unzip process.

Bluebell CSL package by Oktalist

The Bluebell CSL package installation comprises of 10 files if downloaded as ZIP from here, which is recommended and the basis for the following description:

(If you prefer X-Plane.org then there's a 15 RAR archive version of it available, which need to be combined for the same effect.)

BB_Airbus.zip

In the end you will want all of these archives. But as a first step we will just install the Airbus package and give LiveTraffic a go so that you can quickly see something!

You should then have the following structure in your download folder:

(The red arrow indicates a file move we do in the next step below...just a second.)

BB_Airbus: model folder

The BB_Airbus folder holds all CSL models for many airbus models. The actual models and their livery live in the subfolders pictured above, one for each type from A306 through A388. (The subfolder name is just convention. Technically it could be anything, but this package is orderly organized by ICAO aircraft types.) For example A306:

BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1: Vertical Offset files

The folder BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1 only holds many xsb_aircraft.txt files in several subfolders, one also in a subfolder named BB_Airbus as pictured in the screenshot further above.

Why that? The files from the folder BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1 each include one more line per model, the VERT_OFFSET line.

Just have a look into BB_Airbus/xsb_aircrafts.txt, which is a plain text file you can open in your favorite editor, usually just by double-clicking. Now, after the move, its beginning should look like this:

BB_Airbus/xsb_aircrafts.txt (Beginning)
EXPORT_NAME __Bluebell_Airbus
​
OBJ8_AIRCRAFT A306_AAW
OBJ8 SOLID YES __Bluebell_Airbus/A306/A306_AAW.obj
VERT_OFFSET 4.6
AIRLINE A306 AAW
​
OBJ8_AIRCRAFT A306_AHK
OBJ8 SOLID YES __Bluebell_Airbus/A306/A306_AHK.obj
VERT_OFFSET 4.6
AIRLINE A306 AHK

This file is basically a directory listing of all models, which reside in the current folder (here: BB_Airbus). They define an internal name and refer to the actual .obj file. (Don't get confused by the __Bluebell_Airbus in front of the further path /A306/A306_AAW.obj, that is just the technical export name defined in the very first line. Important is, that below the current folder there is a A306/A306_AAW.obj file. And that is there as the A306 screenshot above shows...no magic at all😉)

The important VERT_OFFSET line defines the vertical offset of the model compared to ground. If this line is missing, then your aircraft is likely sliding on its belly or even sliced open. If your models - later in LiveTraffic - look like this then VERT_OFFSET is missing:

Finally, some further lines define for which airline and ICAO type this model is a match.

Move into final location

The resulting folder structure shall look like this:

Fire up X-Plane with LiveTraffic for the first time

The installation is not yet complete...but we are good to go for a first test run, just to see if we did everything right up to here. If we did we have confidence for the repeating further steps.

Depending on the time of day choose KLAS (USA), EDDM (Europe), or OMDB (Arabia) as a location as these are known to serve reasonably good tracking data.

After X-Plane finished loading, LiveTraffic should welcome you in the top right corner with some messages. We won't go into details yet (see First Steps for more), but are just interested to see some aircraft displaying. So switch to tower view [Shift+5], look around and wait for about 2 minutes for the first planes to appear. As we only installed Airbus models everything looks like Airbus (plus maybe a few ground vehicles, which are shipped with the LiveTraffic package in the ShippedCSL folder).

If successful you should have seen some Airbus flying around (which is already pretty good a verification) and the Log.txt should contain lines very similar to the following:

Log.txt (Extract)
LiveTraffic: LiveTraffic 0.92.190211 starting up...
LT - GL supports anisoptropic filtering.
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/ShippedCSL/XCSL_CARS/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Airbus/xsb_aircraft.txt
Loaded: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/64/mac.xpl (TwinFan.plugin.LiveTraffic).
​
LiveTraffic: LiveTraffic 0.92.190211 successfully loaded!

Especially important is line 4 above: It announces that the BB_Airbus package has been successfully loaded. Actually...it only says that its xsb_aircrafts.txt file has been successfully loaded. This initialization does not verify that all referenced .obj files exist and are loadable.

You may find further lines starting with LiveTraffic: in the log. Some warnings are quite common...tracking data is actually quite bad and sometimes LiveTraffic complains to tell you that it can't do any better than what you see.

You should, however, not find lines that look like these errors:

Log.txt (fictional Extract)
Failed to open Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Airbus/A320/A320_ACA.obj: the file cannot be opened.
Failed to open Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Airbus/A319/A319_ROU.obj: the file cannot be opened.

These errors would indicate that actual loading of a model failed when LiveTraffic tried using it for an actual plane.

If you were not successful please check the Log.txt for errors. LiveTraffic tries hard to output reasonable error message, which should indicate the right place to look to. Use the search here in the documentation (top right corner)...most likely your error is explained somewhere here.

If you were successful move on to the next packages.

BB_Boing.zip

Let's do one more package together.

The resulting structure in your download folder should now look like this:

Again, moving the vertical offset version of xsb_aircrafts.txt provides you with a file specifying good vertical offsets. The last move finally puts the models into the reach of LiveTraffic, which should look like this:

If you want you could again verify your installation by firing up LiveTraffic. It should now correctly distinguish between Airbus and Boeing models. Your Log.txt should at least include these lines for LiveTraffic's initialization, mentioning both BB_Airbus and BB_Boeing:

Log.txt (Extract)
LiveTraffic: LiveTraffic 0.92.190211 starting up...
LT - GL supports anisoptropic filtering.
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/ShippedCSL/XCSL_CARS/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Airbus/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Boeing/xsb_aircraft.txt
Loaded: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/64/mac.xpl (TwinFan.plugin.LiveTraffic).
​
LiveTraffic: LiveTraffic 0.92.190211 successfully loaded!

(You could play with Debug-level log in the Advanced settings and even logging model matching in the Debug settings if you are really interested in the very details of this process.)

BB_GA.zip and BB_Heli.zip

...unfortunately are somewhat special...I don't know why...but the have an additional outer folder layer, which requires your attention:

resulting in:

resulting in

The remaining packages

...are now fairly simple and work the same way as Airbus and Boeing above:

That should lead to a download folder which now looks like this:

There are some remainders (the outer BB_GA and BB_Heli folders, which nobody needs) but especially all the downloaded folders.

resulting in (BB_Leizig_Air_VA just shown with details as an example):

Final Validation

You should see lines similar to the following, one for each BB model package:

LiveTraffic: LiveTraffic 0.92.190211 starting up...
LT - GL supports anisoptropic filtering.
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/ShippedCSL/XCSL_CARS/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Leipzig_Air_VA/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Mil/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Jets/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Heli/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Airbus/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Repaints/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_GA/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Props/xsb_aircraft.txt
LT: Loading package: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL/BB_Boeing/xsb_aircraft.txt
Loaded: /Users/.../Applications/X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins/LiveTraffic/64/mac.xpl (TwinFan.plugin.LiveTraffic).
​
LiveTraffic: LiveTraffic 0.92.190211 successfully loaded!

You see them? Great!

And then go ahead and do your

If you require more help and support check for way here: