by drR0ckso » Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:14 am
You may need to be patient. In my experience, pulling up the MP server dialog starts the process of querying the servers to determine which ones are closest. I open the dialog, then close it... wait five seconds, open again and select which ever one it has decided. I'm about 20 ms from my nearest mpserver, so it's pretty reliable to me which one it will be. If you're having this issue and it's not related to polling, you can try manually selecting mpserver01.flightgear.org, and then looking to see if you are showing up on the server (i.e.: telnet mpserver01.flightgear.org 5001, look for your callsign@LOCAL). The problem is probably either an ISP issue with UDP port 5000, or your firewall/NAT, or both.
It also helps if you tell us which server you connected to that you observed no other users on. Of course, if your friend isn't within 100 miles of you, you won't see them.
I speak only for myself.