Airport Design Editor

[Adam24]

Hi
I have a problem with Airport Design Editor. Ive downloaded it today, and edited an airport, but it wouldnt work. I tried everything. Then, i found out why this happened. My version of ADE edits only FSX airports. I know this because:
-When I select the fs2004 path in the settings, after restarting there is an error message saying that the path is incorrect
-I can only open .bgl files from FSX (demo)
-FS2004 stock airports wont load
-It is suposed to be "Airport Design Editor 9X", but in the window there is only "Airport Design Editor X". This means it works only with FSX
-Finally, there are features for FSX.
I cant find the FS9 version. Can anyone help?

[copperpen]

ADE9X will work with both 2004 and FSX. From your post it is obvious that ADE cannot locate your 2004 install. There is a tool with ADE9X called ADE Environment Checker found here http://www.interkultur.de/gossmann/fsx/tools.php which will help in setting ADE to locate your 2004 install.

[Adam24]

As you can se in the screenshot, when I try to select a stock fs2004 airport, ADE looks for it as if I was searching for the same airport in FSX (in this case i wanted to open Chicago OHare, and, instead of searching in SCENERY\Name (where chicago is located in FS9) it searches in SCENERY\0302 (where it is located in FSX). I tried to do something with the ADE Environment Checker, but it didnt change anything. What can I do? Also notice in the upper left corner: Airport Design Editor X, not Airport Design Editor 9. Something is wrong here.

[Adam24]

Maybe I have something configured wrong? The ADE Environment Checker says everything is okay, but its not!

[StringBean]

Adam,

ADE9X is two programs in one, ADE9 and ADE X, your screenshot shows (as you know) that you are using ADE X.

When you first start ADE9X you should see a window that lets you select ADE9 or ADE X.

Are you not seeing that window?

peace,
the Bean

[ronzie]

I suggest you use this free registry checker/ repair tool from flight1.com to check your registry path:
http://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=library

Right click on it to run at the program level access of run as admin if in VISTA or Win 7.

ADE9X determines initially your FS version(s) during the install from the registered paths and those paths are used for the stock airport search as well as to get to the scenery.cfg if necessary.

Under the file menu "open airport from stock" uses that path to get to the default scenery and also for the FS built in generic objects if used in an ADE designed airport that used them. "Open direct from .bgl" means you work your way to a file containing the afd objects (like afcad) plus more if in them. Those you browse to. "Open Airport" means you open an ADE project file that you set up in a project folder with the "File Save As" choice. Projects contain XML code output from ADE that can contain more than afd objects including information not included when you compile an ADE project to a .bgl file. Therefore for further editing always save as a project to retain those special items compiling the project to .bgl for FS.

"Open airport from XML" is for when a developer furnishes scenery source code in XML format. "New Airport" is starting a project from scratch.

"Import .bgl" or "Import XML" are additional file selections that may exist in an add-on airport as separate files but not part of the airport afd type files. With ADE you can now choose to export scenery objects (buildings, etc) .bgl files outside of the airport.bgl file you are creating to break them out if you so choose. Import is the reverse of that.

After you open a project from whatever source you may need to grab data from stock airports. Some add-ons do not include stock scenery data so you can grab let us say comms from stock scenery. You check what you want. In this example you'll get your choice of objects class from all of the airports in the scenery tile where the stock airport is located. You just open a list of comms or whatever and delete those items for other airports if not used at this one.

I thought I'd introduce you to these ideas especially in case of errors.

ADE follows the official MS rules set up in the scenery SDK. When you run the fault finder or compile you'll get a list of errors and cautions. Cautions will not cause an FS crash but may not achieve the effect you desire. As an example there is a caution of you exceed the number of parking spots allowed to have assigned parking. FS will just disregard the over the limit assignments. A warning is a fatal error that should abort the compilation and by definition could cause FS to crash.

A lot of the cautions in the list are like those in AFCAD, such as isolated taxi links, broken taxi paths, hold points too far from the runway edge, etc.

Lastly what will be new to you is the added approach tool. This is an invisible layer that includes navaid data such as ILS and default or approach paths you create for ai to follow in IFR. In AFCAD if you added an ILS it could be excluded from the map and default gps. Just your aircraft would see it. If you add it in ADE it will create a default approach path that you can then edit to follow charts you might have. The approach view shows the navaids and any waypoints involved if included in the airport scenery you open.

These ideas I hope get you on your way if you experience difficulties.

For FS9 you need to furnish the MS FS9 SDK schema file (code definitions for objects and syntax) and the later version of the XML2BGL.exe compiler from the scenery SDK from this link:

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...omp2_setup.exe

as described in the MS tech article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555857

If not the version 2 compiler it will throw errors when you compile your project.

[Adam24]

Adam,

ADE9X is two programs in one, ADE9 and ADE X, your screenshot shows (as you know) that you are using ADE X.

When you first start ADE9X you should see a window that lets you select ADE9 or ADE X.

Are you not seeing that window?

peace,
the Bean

No, I didnt see that window.
Here is a screenshot of the ADE Environment Checker. It says that I can run FS9 ADE. But I cant. I have the FSX version. Maybe the fact that I have FSX demo changes something?

[Adam24]

Okay, first, Im running the registry repair tool. Nothing changes after using it. The problem wasnt it. Now Im installing bglcomp2. Okay, it installed succesfully. And what to do now?

[Jim Robinson]

There's a global.ini in the ADE install folder containing [TARGET]Version=FSX, maybe if you open that in Notepad and change it to Version=FS9 it'll work for you. I'm skeptical though because I think all that does is pre-select the last used version on the "select version" startup dialog you're supposed to be seeing when you start ADE. Might be worth a try though?

Jim

[Adam24]

No, it didnt worked. I replaced fsx with fs9 in the global.ini, but it didnt do anything. Anyway, thanks for trying. I dont know what is happening. I have FS9 installed right, Ive done everything that the manual says, and still nothing. Why the program doesnt recognize FS9, just the demo of FSX? The ADE Environment Checker still says everything is ok. But when I run ADE, it loads the FSX version, just as if I didnt have FS9. I will reinstall ADE, but I doubt it will work.