How To...Organize FSTraffic Aircraft

By Dave Weir

Since the release of FSTraffic, the number of aircraft in my aircraft folder in FS2000 has grown considerably. Most of the aircraft are for use with FSTraffic, and it was getting a little crowded in the folder, especially if I need to find a particular aircraft other than an FSTraffic aircraft to change the panel or sound files.

Since I upgraded my version of FSTraffic to 2.0 I noticed a new folder in the aircraft folder. Its name is FST. OK, I am sure most of you have noticed this, but I never noticed it before, and upon further inspection I discovered it contained model and textures folders, plus associated .air files. Looking at these files I noticed that they are for the default aircraft that come with FSTraffic.

I got to thinking, I have all these other aircraft that I only use for FSTraffic, why not copy over the texture and model folders along with the .air files. And that's what I did.

First I name each texture and model folder the aircraft type and airline name, like the following:

Model.ua1
Texture.ua1
Model.ua2
Texture.ua2

The numbering sequence depends on how many aircraft types you have for each airline. If you have 10 aircraft types for say Delta, number them model.dl1-10 texture.dl1-10.

The .air file names needs to stay the same. I copied the model and texture folders of all my FSTraffic aircraft into the FST folder. Now since these aircraft are only to be used for FSTraffic I didn't copy over the panel and folders. Besides, you cannot hear the sounds and see the panels of these aircraft, and deleting these folders frees up the some disk space.

Next I made some changes to the aircraft.cfg file. This file has a list of all the aircraft in the FST folder. FS2000 will read this and display all the aircraft in the select and aircraft option. If you have 30 FSTraffic aircraft, you will need to make 30 entries in the aircraft.cfg file.

Example:

[fltsim.44] 
title=FST_twa752 
sim=B757-twa
model=B757-twa
panel=
sound=
texture=tw5
checklists=

Also what I do is change the title of all the FSTraffic aircraft in the aircraft.cfg file to fst_ and then the aircraft type/airline name. So when I select an aircraft from the selection list all the FSTraffic aircraft will all show up together. I don't have to hunt through 70 odd aircraft to the find the one I want to fly.

I hope everyone finds this useful, I know I have, it has made my aircraft folder less crowded, and now contains only the aircraft that I fly.

Follow Up

I got an email from Mathijs Kok, developer of FSTraffic, and he mentioned to just remove all the FSTraffic converted aircraft from the aircraft folder in FS2000 and FS98. Says it speeds up the aircraft selection window. Just wanted to pass that along.

Cheers.

Dave Weir
dave_weir@hotmail.com

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