I am at a lost: Flight planning/flight plans

[gui]

Hi. Just getting into thes area of flight sim. I have found flight plan already drawn up at Avsim library. I have download the flight planner from
Don Grovestein. If flight plan is already, how does one install into flight planner? I know I can use Woai, but I like to learn this side of flight sim. Do I need Tt tools also? Thank you for your help. Gui

[opaplano]

Hi. Just getting into thes area of flight sim. I have found flight plan already drawn up at Avsim library. I have download the flight planner from
Don Grovestein. If flight plan is already, how does one install into flight planner? I know I can use Woai, but I like to learn this side of flight sim. Do I need Tt tools also? Thank you for your help. Gui

It would appear that you may be confusing the creation of a Flight Plan which an aircraft you are flying would use, with Traffic files (flightplans) which control AI (Artificial Intelligence) aircraft.

Don's great program, which is used for the latter, comes with a comprehensive instruction manual which must be read in order to properly use the program. I believe it also includes Traffic Tools.

Flight Plans for aircraft you are flying are created within the sim. The Learning Center (in the sim) discusses this.

WOAI packages (when installed using their installer) provide AI traffic and their associated Flightplans (Traffic files) automatically.

It would help to know which aspect of "flightplans" you are referring to so we can direct you to the proper tutorials etc..

[gui]

Thank you. Well what does one do with the flight plans that can be downloaded from a library? Also there are islands where there is slow traffic. Flights may only come and go a couple times per week.
I have a scenery where there is no ai at all. Scenery is beautiful but I'd be happier to see some tourists. I guess we have to create something. I hope I explain well. Thank you very much. Gui

[opaplano]

Thank you. Well what does one do with the flight plans that can be downloaded from a library? Also there are islands where there is slow traffic. Flights may only come and go a couple times per week.
I have a scenery where there is no ai at all. Scenery is beautiful but I'd be happier to see some tourists. I guess we have to create something. I hope I explain well. Thank you very much. Gui

The very first step is to get a basic understanding of how Traffic files work and what the three components of any traffic file are.

This tutorial may be helpful:
http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=99920

And this link has good AI info:
http://michaelstanton.net/ai/tutorial.htm

Anything you may have downloaded likely included a list of aircraft which you must find and install as these are the aircraft which the Traffic file will use as AI aircraft in the flightplan.

I would also suggest downloading and installing the free Traffic Tools utility by Lee Swordy. Not only will you eventually need it but it has a very good Help file which further explains the Traffic concepts.

Name: ttool202.zip Size: 135,501 Date: 08-20-2003 Downloads: 81,976
FS2002/FS2004 TrafficTools v2.02. This package allows you to program the AI traffic. You can view and modify existing AI flight plans or create new ones. You can change aircraft models, tail numbers and flight numbers. You can create new AI flight schedules and increase or modify the type of traffic at selected airports and generally make the AI traffic do what you want, within limits. TTools is now a single program that can both compile and de-compile By Lee Swordy. (Previous version had 36363 downloads.)


Once you have a grasp of the basic concepts, you will find that creating Traffic files is not difficult at all.

[scott967]

At the risk of being argumentative, I would keep to AI flight Planner and not bother with the older traffic tools.

You need three things to to make the AI flight plans work:

1. You need the flight plans, compiled into a traffic bgl file. Typical is that the download has this already. If not, the download probably has 3 text files, which AI Flight Planner will use to create the traffic bgl file. Once obtained, either in the download or via AI Flight Planner, the traffic bgl is copied in the the \flight simulator x\scenery\world\scenery\ folder to "activate" it.

2. You need airports set up for AI aircraft. Mainly, this means having parking spots for the AI. In FSX, many airports are already adequately configured for AI, or you can download so-called "AFCAD" bgl files that have been configured. These files, if used, also need to be copied into an appropriate scenery area folder to "activate". Many users create a scenery area folder structure (can be as simple as \AFCAD\scenery\ anywhere on hard drive) which they add to their FSX scenery using the scenery library. Once that's done you can just copy new AFCAD bgls into this folder to activate.

3. You need AI aircraft. This can be a bit tricky. The naming method for airports is pretty universal, but AI aircraft can be given various names. This is where AI Flight Planner can help, in that it will list out the required aircraft names. Often there is a readme with the flightplan download which suggests an aircraft model, and airline livery texture set that can be used. Finding these models and textures can require a bit of hunting around various online file libraries (which is why WoAI is popular -- they do the hunting for you!). Once you finish your hunting you need to properly install the aircraft into FSX, and then open the aircraft.cfg file for that aircraft and make sure the "title=" line for your texture variant matches the aircraft name in the flightplan (as viewed in AI Flight Planner). You can edit the "title=" line, or modify the flight plan in AI Flight Planner to match the existing "title=" line (your choice, but if you edit in AI Flight Planner you have to recompile the traffic bgl to update it).

scott s.
.