Why does Ghosting occur on servers?

[adonys]

because of mp virtual objects leftovers on the client (cached aircrafts, etc) due to desynchronization between the client and the server, which should have been collected by the garbage collector but weren't yet, or ever..

because of security and bandwidth problems, usually the client does not know all the objects (or their positions) which are present on the server. the server send the client a list with the objects going into his rendering/gameplay range, and updates this list all the time, while the client is using this list to render the objects and use them into gameplay code. if a desync appear between the server and the client, then the client has some objects into that list which are not actually in there on the server anymore and from here all the problems with the ghosting.

most probably, this is caused by the despawning of the AI flights code, which must be poorly done, or have some (logical) bugs in it.

as they enter in your visual range, the dots appear, and when you're close enough to have the objects actually rendered, the dots disappear, but of course, nothing is rendered instead, as there's nothing in there..