AFW 178 Problem

[Jaybird]

Hi Bill...

You finally got me to crank-up the old testisle.apt & have a look. In 3.0/178, I had the same result as you report: Changing the <General> window's N, S, E or W radio buttons do not effect a permanent change. Changing N to S or W to E Lat/Lon, closing the window, compiling and then re-opening the <General> window reveals that Lat has reverted-back to N and E Lon reverts-back to W. -- And the SCASM code is written accordingly. I think your report is an important one for Tom to peruse. I ran another .apt scenery file through this process and it acts the same way so it looks like there may likely be more build revisions coming 'soon as headquarters gets things sorted-out.

I suppose it's possible that Tom has "hard-wired" these Lat/Lon variables into the AFW VB OS, to effect a temporary fix for the Lat/Lon polarity problems we've been having with builds released after 175 -- but I'm not sure of that.

I would assume that the present 178 config apparently will work OK for users designing scenery located within the Northern and Western Hemispheres -- at least it corrected my IL to Tibet translation, however, I wonder if it will work OK for the guys "down-under" or east of the Greenwich meridian. I think Tom mentioned in one of the threads that there are still some bugs to be overcome regarding Lat/Lon polarities.

I never check the box to modify the FS9 Scenery.cfg at compile time, opting to search-for and activate the scenery manually from within the FS9 scenery library -- a one time operation. That way, FS9 can do it's own thing without any outside "influence" to put the scenery in it's database and from-there-on updates to reflect new bgl changes at each FS9 start-up.

ALSO, in <Options\Desktop Options>, I leave the "save bgl with APT scenery file" checkbox unchecked but I do browse-to and put the proper path to the scenery-in-work in the blank line below that check box. AFW still saves the latest compiled scenery bgl in the AFW root directory along with the excludes generated AND sends the scenery and exclude bgls to the proper FS2004\my scenery\scenery directory and that function seems to be working very well.

[wsieffert]

Hi J.R.,

Thanks for the confirmation on the problems.

If you think the "Save bgl with APT scenery file" is confusing, you ought to see what happens when you change out the Airport.exe from ver 178 back to any of the others. With the configuration sets, I have to reset all the scenery directories (folders) each time. I think Tom has the configuration sets in the registry and the older Airport.exe gets confused when I change them around.

Oh well, that is why I am in the beta testing business. Always, a challenge.

W. Sieffert

[thiscox]

Alas, my Testisle was in the northern hemisphere so this was not caught. It has been tested in Build 179 which is now posted.

the SaveBGL file location option has now changed with the addition of desktop configurations and specific file options. The rules are this:

- BGL file will be put in the Default BGL Path location as specificied on the Compile Configurations tab for the active configuration.

- if the SaveBGL File Location option is selected, the BGL file will be written to that specific location instead of the default BGL path. The SaveBGL option is filename specific.

The SaveBGL option is an old option that was used when you wanted to put the BGL file in a different location from the default path. Now that you can set up different configurations with different default paths, it is likely that the SaveBGL option is no longer needed. I suggest you setup your configurations and try not to use the SaveBGL option.

By default, the three configurations are initially set as:
1- whatever you had setup for the configuration before,
2 - FS2002
3 - FS2004

The left buttons select which configuration is shown on the dialog for editing. The right buttons select the configuration to use in the program. This selection is remembered between runs.

Hope this helps,

Tom

[wsieffert]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the explanation of the SaveBGL option. Yes, I think this could be eliminated.

I would appreciate your explanation of the LAT/LON used in AFW. From what I can see with ver 179, the following apply in the source code:

North = positive, 28.01
South = negative, -45.000
East = positive, 76.3250
West = negative, -81.0400

I uninstalled AFW (after copying the entire AFW folder to a safe area) from my WinXP Pro computer. I cleaned up what was left since I saved as noted above.

I then reinstalled just the version 3.0 (update) and to my suprise, I didn't have any API or resource files. It also placed SCASM in the AFW root folder vice a \SCASM\ subfolder. Since the file does say update, I guessed I should have installed 2.6 first but no matter. I copied the necessary files to the correct locations from my saved AFW.

Since I installed on my administrator account of WinXP Pro, I viewed the registry information. I found AFW in the My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT\Software\Airport 2.XX area. Since I made sure this key was deleted when I uninstalled, I found the new key very clean. I exited regedit and made my changes to the various configurations, exited AFW, and again reviewed the registry entries for AFW.

I then exited regedit, logged of my administrator account to my user account, reentered regedit, and found a totally different key for my user account. This key was not removed during the uninstall so it contains all the old data. I exited regedit, made the changes in AFW, exited AFW, and reentered regedit. The new data was in the key.

The only question I have is why is the key being sent to the HKEY_CURRENT area vice the LOCAL_MACHINE area. I'm not astute enough to know where these things are suppose to be located in the registry. I don't know if your installer takes into account the Windows XP Pro administrator's management.

I know some programs I install don't work in the user account because of the way they are installed into the registry.

W. Sieffert

[wsieffert]

I am getting so confused. I set my testisle to S45*, W45*, which should result in the header readings of -45, -45. Version 165 and prior plus version 175 provide these parameters. Versions 176, 177, 178 provide various problems (See Attached File).

Another area that is now confusing is the directory folder line:

Save BGL File Location with APT Scenery File checkbox and File BGL Path:

Under Ver 178, I had the checkbox enabled and set the path to: H:\Program Files\Airport for Windows\Working, which is my working folder. This seems to have caused the compiling process to update my scenery.cfg file with the Local=H:\Program Files\Airport for Windows\Working vice the proper path. Since under Ver 178, this path location is not under the configuration sets, I am confused about what this entry does.

W. Sieffert