Step-by-Step
Detailed step-by-step instructions for Bluebell CSL packages installation
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.
Windows only: Do update the Visual C++ Redistributable!
As it seems that various hints to verify requirements (like above) aren't sufficient here once again in a hopefully visisble way:
Download and install https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vc_redist.x64.exe!
Otherwise, LiveTraffic might not start and might not be available in the plugin menu. In Log.txt
you'll see Error Code = 126 : The specified module could not be found.
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.
Download LiveTraffic.zip
,
unzip the archive, and
move the LiveTraffic
folder under your existing <X-Plane>/Resources/plugins
folder.
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!
So download (rightclick, select "Download") BB_Airbus.zip
and BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1.2.4.zip
and unpack them.
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.
Move BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1/BB_Airbus/xsb_aircraft.txt
into BB_Airbus
where it overwrites the existing file xsb_aircraft.txt
as indicated by the red arrow in the previous screenshot.
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:
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
Move the entire BB_Airbus
folder, which holds all model subfolders and the updated xsb_aircrafts.txt
file, into .../LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL
.
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.
Start X-Plane with LiveTraffic for the first time in KLAS, EDDM, or OMDB, and have LiveTraffic run for 2 minutes.
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).
Quit X-Plane.
Open Log.txt
(in X-Planes main directory) with your favorite text editor, usually just a double-click is enough.
Search for 'LiveTraffic' ([Ctrl+F] usually does the trick) and verify the BB_Airbus package had been loaded.
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:
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:
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.
Download (rightclick, select "Download") BB_Boing.zip
and unpack it.
The resulting structure in your download folder should now look like this:
Move the BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1/BB_Boeing/xsb_aircraft.txt
file into the BB_Boeing
folder as indicated by the red arrow above, where it overwrites the existing file.
Move the entire BB_Boeing
folder into .../LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL
.
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:
(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:
Download and unzip
BB_Heli.zip
BB_GA.zip
resulting in:
Move the corresponding xsb_aircrafts.txt
from the BB_IVAO_vert_offsets_1
folder into the inner BB_GA
resp. BB_Heli
folders where they replace existing files.
Move the inner BB_GA and inner BB_Heli folder to .../LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL
.
resulting in
Watch out to move the inner and not the outer folders. As a result, as shown in the screenshot, there should be just one BB_GA
folder and just one BB_Heli
folder under .../LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL
!
The remaining packages
...are now fairly simple and work the same way as Airbus and Boeing above:
So go ahead, download and unzip
BB_Repaints.zip
BB_Props.zip
BB_Mil.zip
BB_Leipzip_Air_VA.zip
BB_Jets.zip
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.
Move each remaining xsb_aircrafts.txt
file from BB_IVAO_vert_offset_1
to the correct corresponging model folder (BB_Jets
, BB_Leipzip_Air_VA
, BB_Mil
, BB_Props
, BB_Repaints
) where they overwrite existing files.
Finally, move the model folders BB_Jets
, BB_Leipzip_Air_VA
, BB_Mil
, BB_Props
, BB_Repaints
to .../LiveTraffic/Resources/CSL
.
resulting in (BB_Leizig_Air_VA
just shown with details as an example):
Final Validation
As once or twice before, start up X-Plane,
maybe give LiveTraffic two minutes to show some planes,
quit X-Plane, and
check Log.txt
.
You should see lines similar to the following, one for each BB model package:
You see them? Great!
Make sure some X-Plane settings are correct, especially number of AI aircraft.
And then go ahead and do your
If you require more help and support check for way here:
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