I'm a newcomer

[maximo916]

Hello,
I wanted to introduce myself and ask a question.

A little about me:
I live in California, and have been working for an airport engineering firm for 6 years. The very first computer game I ever played was FS 2(back when floppy disc meant floppy disc) and I liked it a lot but was too young to really know what the gauges meant. I am not a pilot, but working here has giving me experience with ATC and airport layouts. Everyday I see taxiways, runways, aprons, markings, on my computer, so it's cool to see all the stuff I've done in the game, and to see how detailed they are. I spent some time last night flying in and out of some nearby airports I've worked on. I'm loving FSX, though my girlfriend probably wishes some flights were canceled, lol.

My Question:
I've downloaded a couple of add on planes but am not sure how to load them into the game. I'm sure I can find out pretty easy, but I just wanted to get started in these forums.

Thanks for any advice.

[scott967]

Welcome. I also date from the old days. I bought one of the earliest IBM PCs. Initially it had only character display but eventually I as able to get a graphics card that could display CGA resolution graphics as 256 grays on my monochrome monitor, so I was able to get into flight sim. I had a hiatus for a few years when I was running OS/2 and FS from FS95 wouldn't run but came back into it with FS2000.

There are some good "how to" guides on the "main menu" page of flightsim.com.

Best advice is to read the readme or other docs with the addon and see what the developer recommends. The problem is that there are so many variations possible it is hard to give set rules. If you are a tweaker, you might want to install the SDK (assuming you have FSX deluxe) and read the "simobject container system" document. It will give you a good idea of how an aircraft works in FSX. As the title implies, an aircraft is a "container" which holds various parts that make up an entire aircraft. So you need to figure out which "parts" are included with your addon. Once you do that you can follow the guides on installing to the proper locations. Note that installing is mainly just a problem of creating the proper folder structure and FSX will do the rest.

In the best case your addon will be complete, and not expect any other prior installs of files. Typical situation is that the download contains a folder with a descriptive aircraft name. This folder and all it's contents is then unpacked into the simobjects\airplanes\ folder into which all the default aircraft have been placed. It is also common for an addon to contain files in a "gauge" folder and "effects" folder. In FSX these are common folders that any aircraft can access, and the individual files from the download are unpacked into the existing FSX "gauge" and "effects" folders (note that in some cases the supplied effects folder will also have files in a "texture" subfolder, and these need to unpacked into the the existing FSX "effects\texture" subfolder as well).

Aside from that most issues are where the aircraft developer has provided additional functionality which relies on either the simconnect.dll interface which FSX provides or 3rd party dll interfaces. A common one is the fsuipc.dll interface. You need to go through the readme and see if this is the case, and if so, how the developer recommends you deal with it.

scott s.
.

[maximo916]

Thanks Scott.
I didn't notice the link at the bottom to continue to the Main Page the first time. I kinda thought that was a weird looking main page, lol. I found it now, though. Thanks for the info I appreciate it a lot.
I'm looking forward to exploring more.