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Found 23 results

  1. Here is a video made with both Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane footages. X-Plane - Hawker Siddeley Harrier - Airbus A340-500 Flight Simulator - Airbus A310 - Fouga CM170 Magister - Bell 407 - Guimbal Cabri G2 - DG AVIATION DG-1001E Neo - Cessna C172 Skyhawk - Jetpack JW1 SKYPIRAT Hope you enjoy !
  2. 94 downloads

    This scenery is for the Davis-Monthan AFB (KDMA). Davis-Monthan, often called the boneyard, is the home of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group. The 309th AMARG takes care of nearly 4,500 aircraft, which makes it the largest aircraft storage and preservation facility in the world. In this scenery there are over 900 aircraft placed in the boneyard, approximately 20% of the actual number of stored aircraft. Required libraries, web links, and instructions are in the enclosed Readme file. Davis-Monthan AFB KDMA V1 231224 Davis Monthan AFB KDMA.zip Scene created by PhrogPhlyer
  3. Version 1.0.0

    71 downloads

    I really can't find any Spirit Of Manila Airlines liveries for FSX, other than the CLS MD-80 Livery Pack in AVSIM Library, so I created my own. I might make the B737-300 livery (RP-C7701) soon, but not now. Aircraft, instructions, and contact is in the file.
  4. I built a few aircraft and scenery way back when for FS98 - the KC-135T in particular. Having been out of the loop for so long but now getting back into the new MSFS, I'd like to know if there is a way to build aircraft for MSFS (2020)? I work with Blender and have been looking at scenery development as well. I was in the USAF as a crew chief on KC-135 aircraft and I'm actually working on the KC-135R and T model again but for the new MSFS. Attached are a few images from my development from last year. I'm wondering if anyone would know a good workflow or at least point me in the direction for getting flight models in there? I know there are professional developers that are working fast and furious but for older and more casual designers like myself, it would be a good thread to start if not started already. You can see one of my very old builds, a KC-135T at the bottom of this page here on Flightsim.com - https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?searchid=80008911 Thanks Much! Dale W. Jackson (former USAF KC-135T and R model crew chief)
  5. Hi! i am sure there must be some way i can fix this - in CFS 1, i installed the Cold War Air Power addon, however a couple of the aircraft if i select them for anything will just CTD the game, no 3d spinning model shows up for them either. So if for example i go to free flight and select the B-36, the game will crash, however for a number of other aircraft in the addon they work fine. Unfortunately there are enough faulty aircraft that i cannot play any of the missions that came with the addon either. is there a way i can ascertain what is wrong with a particular aircraft in the game? or if i upload the aircraft folder fro teh B-36 whether someone here can take a look at it and determine what the problem could be?
  6. This is a really good page to check out addon aircraft. Hope it's ok I post it. It's from a different forum: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/list-all-payware-freeware-aircraft-7-21-21/423989
  7. HI everyone, I came across a very interesting and new airplane it is the CELERA 500L created by OTTO AVIATION. It has just finished 31 test flights and is not in service as of yet. It is a nice looking airplane I think. It looks like it would be a joy to fly in real life and in FSX. I will post the link below and maybe someone here who builds aircraft for FSX might take an interest and create one of these planes for FSX. Take a look at it and see what you think. In the real world the plane has a lot of possibilities as you will notice when you visit the website. The link is below. Dan Culver https://www.ottoaviation.com/celera-500l
  8. This last week I noticed many people saying I was showing up as a A320 but I was in fact flying a 737, same thing has happened this morning except I was flying a different aircraft, and showing up as something else, does anyone know why this happens?
  9. Hello there fellow aviators! I am excited to announce that a brand new SAAVirtual has launched and is now open for pilots to take to the African skies with us. We simulate the real world South African Airways and most of its codeshare partners ex. Mango, Airlink, Jetblue, GOL, Lufthansa and Virgin Australia just to name a few. The main focus remains on SAA and it's local partners. With us you get to fly from the small ERJ135 all the way to the Airbus A380. Just to name a few aircraft in our fleet is the E170, E190, B737, B777, B747, A320, A319, A330, A340 etc... Attached are a few screenshots of our website and modern crew center with our very own weather briefing room, dispatch center (using Simbrief) and thousands of routes! JOIN US TODAY! at https://saavirtual.com/
  10. Tweaking the Flight Dynamics of Aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator By Bob Chicilo WARNING: DO NOT MAKE CHANGES IN AIR OR AIRCRAFT.CFG FILES YOU HAVE NOT BACKED UP. To more fully understand each section of the aircraft.cfg file download the Aircraft Container SDK, from Microsoft. It goes line by line telling something of what each line is for. For FSX this is on the first DVD and has to be installed manually. It does not load with the simulator. First of all, some, maybe most, model makers do not complete the job they started before they upload it to a site for others to download and enjoy. Where some of them fall down is in putting the information in the [aircraft geometry] section that they have, or at least could have, by writing things down as they make the model. I refer to the wing apex and height, horizontal tail position and height, wing sweep (if any), etc. that they at least knew when making the model. This also applies to the engine section(s) and propeller section of the aircraft.cfg file that they have at least some of the information for, and don't always enter it accurately, if at all. This info is used every second by the flight engine of the flight sim to tell the simulator how the aircraft is flying. So not having this information as correct as possible is a mistake that at least some model makers have been making. That is, if they want the aircraft to fly the best it can in the sim. THE ABOVE IS NOT MEANT AS A PUT DOWN TO ANY PLANE MAKERS. AT LEAST SOME OF YOU, MAYBE MOST OF YOU, DIDN'T KNOW BEFORE YOU READ THIS THAT YOU WERE FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB. Because of the above, the first thing you need to do is find the specifications for the aircraft in question and see if the model maker at least tried to make the aircraft.cfg file match the aircraft it belongs to. The bad thing is that, if you look at three or four places on the Internet that has specifications for the aircraft, they won't all necessarily agree on every point, such as empty weight, or max gross weight, or on almost any other point. They usually do agree for the most part, but rarely on everything, even for the same model of the same aircraft. Therefore the best source for the info is a book by someone known for attempting to be accurate with such information, like Jane's various books on aircraft. Your library may have a copy of one or more editions of Jane's All The World's Aircraft. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane%27s_All_the_World%27s_Aircraft Something like this is the best source that I am presently aware of. You can use the info from the web, most of it is reasonably accurate, but it's just like anything else on the web, it is only as accurate as the person who entered the information. The next thing to do is put a new nav light into the lights section of the aircraft.cfg file. You do this so you can use it to find out the positions of the wing apex and height; wing root chord, (the distance from the front of the wing to the trailing edge, measured next to the fuselage) horizontal tail position, height, and span; vertical tail position, height, and span; (rarely is the span for the horizontal tail or vertical tail correct on an aircraft that is not flying well). If you think the engine or wheel positions are incorrect you can use the light to check on them as well. Note: This goes double for float points (if any) plus contact points that are otherwise invisible. For each position on the aircraft that you check with the light this way, you may have to move the light six or more times to accurately find the position you are attempting to establish, such as wing apex and height. Note: When you change something in the aircraft.cfg file, you must change planes and then go back to the one you are working on for the changes to show up. For FSX I use an aircraft on the same line of pictures, or on the line of pictures just below the one I am working on. A few things to know about using a nav light to find positions: There are only 19 lights possible at present in the lights section; from 0 to 18. Any other numbers will be ignored. In FSX this has changed to any number of lights you want to put in. You can skip numbers, but you cannot put them out of order, such as light 5 before light 3. The first number after the = sign is the type of light it is. The second number is the longitudinal (forward or back) position of the light, measured from the datum point. The third number after the = sign is the position left or right of center. The fourth number is the height above or below the datum point. After the fourth number is the type of light, or effect, it is: e.g. fx_navred. Each of these values is separated by a comma; and sometimes, in addition, by one or more spaces. If, as sometimes happens, all the lights are used, go to a light the color you want to use, remark it out with either ; or // in front of the line for the light. Then go to the beginning of the next line and hit enter two or three times. This will make a space for you to write a line for the light you will use. Write in a new light with the same number as the one you remarked out, or copy the line you remarked out (not including the //) paste it in the space, and change the position numbers to match where you wish to start. Note: If you have all the position numbers for the light at 0, the light will almost certainly be inside the aircraft fuselage. So you should start with it far enough left or right, and, or high enough so this won't happen. Sometimes just left or right leaves it inside the wing. Also if you have the sim start without the nav lights on by default, you will need to turn them on. The thing to remember once you have found, and written down, all the information you need, is to delete the new light you made, and maybe, remove the // or ; from in front of the light position you used. Something to know about engine locations: The position of the engine(s) is the point from which the thrust of the prop(s) or thrust of the jet(s) emanates from. So if you have some idea where the datum point is, front to back of the aircraft, you can have some idea whether the engine(s) seem to be where they should be. If you think they are not accurately positioned, you can check their position(s) with the light. Knowing the front to back location of the datum point can also let you know whether the center of lift for the wing should be at that point or offset forward or back from it. It should be at, or slightly in front of, the mid point of the wing on wings with little or no wing sweep. For wings with definite sweep it should be at or a bit in front of the mid point of a triangle formed by the wing apex and the wing tips. After you have all this data, you can enter it into the aircraft.cfg file in the proper places. Then open the AIR file and check that the data in the AIR file matches the data in the aircraft.cfg file, changing what needs to be changed. While the aircraft.cfg file overrides the data in the AIR file, to me, the aircraft seems to fly that tiny bit better, when the information in both match. The places in the AIR file where the matching data are, do not usually follow in the same order as the data in the aircraft.cfg file. In other words you will have to skip around in the aircraft.cfg file to enter the new data into the AIR file as you scroll through the AIR file records. To edit the AIR file you need an AIR editor like the one that comes with Airman (am2002ff.zip), an AIR editor written for FS2002. It works just as well with FS2004 and FSX. Another one is Aircraft Airfile Manager which now has an updated version that works with FSX (godaired.zip). It is version 1.52. Any version after that one is probably a bad version done by someone other than the original author and may not work correct. To have AirEd open any AIR file once you have it installed where you want it, is to open AirEd and click the special menu item, then click on the set AirEd for AIR files menu item. From then on you can just double click an AIR file to open it with AirEd. Once an AIR file is open, you can size the window so it takes up about a third to a half of the width of your screen so the records are easier to see and edit. Some of the records are easy to edit since you only have to click on them to change their value, those that say bool in the little box, others, clicking on them opens a window or box, which, when open, the info in the box can be edited. Others are graphs or tables that may or may not be correct for the aircraft. If you know it is wrong, say record 451's graph says there is dihedral, when you know there is none. What you need to do is find an AIR file for an aircraft like the F-22 that has no dihedral, and then right click on the 451 record in the F-22 AIR file and copy it to clipboard, then right click in the other AIR file on the record to be replaced, and use the bottom choice, replace from clipboard. Doing it this way leaves you at the record you replaced, and if you try to replace the wrong record it tells you, you are trying to replace the record with the wrong type of record. You then have corrected the wrong information to the correct information. If there is dihedral, the graph will resemble a W. No dihedral means the graph will be a straight line. If the maker of the model knows these things, I expect that at least the info in the aircraft.cfg file would all be there, and be correct. Don't remove records or change records unless you are positive that the record is wrong for the aircraft it is with. On one update I did for an aircraft with turbine engines I deleted all the unknowns in the 1500's. Then after running the aircraft, went back to find one of those unknowns back, record 1548. If this happens to you, leave the new unknown there. It had to have been generated by the information in the AIR and, or aircraft.cfg file so it was specifically generated for the aircraft. Something I often find wrong with jet aircraft is that aircraft with afterburners have the record 1521, 'engine reheat available'; reading, false. Once you have completed going through the AIR file and changing everything that you know is not correct, fly the aircraft, first to see if it still does fly, and also to see if it flies better than before. It may or may not fly noticeably better. If it does not fly, you changed something that you shouldn't have, or made an entry error. Or left something not changed that should have been changed, like the engine type in [general engine data] in the aircraft.cfg file when changing from jet or turboprop engine(s) to piston engines, like you have to do with some of Kazunori Ito's planes. Just before taking off you should go to the aircraft section of the menu and click on fuel and payload. If there is a warning about overweight and you know you have the proper empty and full weights entered in the aircraft.cfg file, you need to reduce payload and/or fuel load so you are at least 100 pounds under the maximum weight. Any aircraft without a load, only fuel on board, and has a gross weight over 20,000 pounds, I usually try to stay at least 1,000 pounds under full weight. If you don't bring the aircraft down to the maximum weight, or less, some of the following changes I will be covering will have to be redone, when you do notice that the aircraft is overweight. If you have ever taken off with a new airliner, then almost immediately turned around and tried to land it, but had it crash due to over stress, even though you touched down gently, being overweight was probably the problem. This is one reason to check this out for all new aircraft, even if they otherwise fly well. It seems some aircraft makers overload their aircraft, with fuel and or payload, even though most real world aircraft rarely take off as fully loaded as possible. Obviously the fuel section of the aircraft.cfg file contains the fuel load information, the weight_and_balance section is where to permanently change any payload information. Some, or all, station values can be reduced, or brought to 0, your choice. Just so you end up at, or below, maximum gross weight. IT IS POSSIBLE TO MESS UP THE BALANCE WHEN REDUCING THE STATION LOADS. SO IF YOU DON'T BRING THEM ALL TO 0, MAKE SURE LOADS TO THE LEFT = LOADS TO THE RIGHT. IF YOU DON'T, THE AIRCRAFT WILL HAVE A TURN BUILT IN, DUE TO AN IMBALANCE OF THE LOAD. After correcting, if necessary, the fuel and payload, here is where I usually set the autopilot for what the cruise altitude is supposed to be. If it is unknown pick one you think appropriate for the aircraft, and, if necessary, a climb rate of 1,800 to 2,000 feet per minute (depending on the aircraft). Set the cruise speed on the autopilot, if known, pick one if not known. Take off, and engage the autopilot, and the auto-throttle. Depending on how the aircraft is flying, I usually go to 16x time compression till nearing cruise altitude, or until the nose starts to bob up and down. If that happens go to 4x time compression until you reach cruise altitude. Sometimes the aircraft will make cruise altitude at 16x time compression without bobbing up and down, but starts to do so while leveling off. Same solution, go to 4x time compression. Once at altitude I check to see how close the aircraft comes to reaching the fastest it is supposed to go in level flight. This can be done in two ways. One is by mach number, which is usually on a gauge somewhere on the panel, and the other is to use ground speed. This is usually the speed given in miles per hour in the specifications for the aircraft. To use this, multiply it by 0.88. [This is the number you get when you divide 5,280 by 6,000.] So you have the speed in knots. Now that you have the speed in knots, you can read this speed in the lower left corner of the GPS. Sometimes the aircraft over-speeds, other times it is too slow. One warning, when reading this speed, whether mach, or over the ground speed, be sure there is no wind at the height you are at, or make sure the wind is at, or near, 90 degrees to the direction of flight. At the height most testing will be done, the wind will be above 20 knots, unless you have turned all winds off. This will make a noticeable difference in the over the ground speed, and maybe mach number as well. I have just checked out the difference it makes for mach number. On aircraft that fly below mach 1, it has little or no effect. It does have noticeable effect on aircraft that go above mach 2. To change the aircraft's top speed: If it is a jet, go into the aircraft.cfg file and change the value for the AIR intake in the turbine engine data. If it is slow make the AIR intake smaller. If too fast, make the AIR intake (inlet_area) larger. Then go fly the aircraft again and see if it reaches proper speed at altitude without going too much faster than it is supposed to. Note: this value is also in the AIR file inside record 1501, if the AIR file has a record 1501, but might as well be left whatever it is until you have decided what the inlet area should be; so you are not constantly changing it for nothing. Record 1501 also has the thrust, in pounds, for the engine. This should be changed to the correct value, if you know it, because you should not have to change it to have the aircraft fly fast enough. I have found that the best way to keeping most jet aircraft from going too fast, is to edit record 430 so there is enough drag at top speed so the aircraft does not go faster than it is supposed to. This plus changing the AIR intake size usually gives you what you want for a top speed. Some AIR files have both a record 600 as well as a 1501 for jet engines, I have found it best to delete the 600 record and possibly any other records numbered from 600 to 699; as long as there is a record 1501 along with the proper control records 1502-1507. This may not be true if you are editing a file for CFS2 or other sim made before FS2002. July 2007. I have recently found that in some cases you will still want the records in the 600 section. The parameters in record 600 can be set so it is less likely that the engine will over-speed when going over mach 3. If it is a turboprop aircraft you can go into the propeller section of the aircraft.cfg file and change the gear ratio, closer to 1 to 1 for aircraft that are too slow, and higher like 17 to 1 for aircraft that are too fast. To some extent you can also vary the intake area and pounds of thrust, to change the speed. Changing torque in the [turboprop_engine] section will also change how fast it will go. For piston engine aircraft, go to the [piston engine] section and try changing the cylinder displacement and, or the compression ratio of the engine. Another thing to check is the max_design_mp= line to see if it is correct for the aircraft. Correct or not, increasing the value after the = sign will increase the max speed of the aircraft. The same is true about changing the critical altitude value for aircraft with turbocharged engines. If too high, the min_design_mp can cause the aircraft to start to roll with the brakes off, and no throttle, when everything else is OK. Changing the first record in the drag section of Primary Aerodynamics will also change how fast the aircraft will fly; no matter what type of engine it has. You may want to look at this if you already have the AIR intake below 3 feet and still are not near fast enough. Changing the value by 1 up or down, will add, or take off about 1 knot of speed for aircraft that have a top speed of 300 knots or less. For faster aircraft the change will be greater than 1 for 1. You have to choose which you think will best serve the purpose of attaining the correct max level speed of the aircraft, while leaving everything possible match the correct information for the aircraft. This is where having an aptitude for doing flight dynamics comes in, and helps you decide what to change for best results. Practice making changes also helps. Something to remember, when setting a value for never exceed speed, either as a mach number or in knots: The never exceed speed, (over speed) should be at least a little above the max level speed of the aircraft (20 to 100 knots). So going slightly above the maximum level speed won't cause the aircraft to crash from over stressing it. The numbers for never exceed speed are normally in both the AIR and aircraft.cfg files. Once you have the aircraft reaching the speed it should at altitude, without going too far over it, it is time to check the moments of inertia values (MOI). They are in the weight and balance section of the aircraft.cfg file. If they are in the millions and the aircraft is normal jet fighter size or smaller, they are probably larger than necessary. If they are very large for the aircraft they are with they can effect, at least in a small way, how the aircraft rolls, turns, etc. There is a section in the AIR file called primary aerodynamics, once opened there are 8 sub-sections. In the roll, pitch, and yaw sections there are records, such as pitch stability in the pitch section, that work in co-ordination with the MOI section of the aircraft.cfg file. I am going to give you some values for these records, this does not mean you must stay with these values, particularly in pitch stability, to have the aircraft fly properly. If the aircraft seems unstable with these values, experiment by raising or lowering them to find what works best. Yes, sometimes less works better than more. Roll dampening: somewhere near 4000 Pitch stability: 35000 to 95000 Yaw dampening: 2000 to 5000 All these values have a minus sign in front of them, make sure it is still there when you edit the values. These values have a direct impact on how much pitch moment due to elevator, etc. you will need for the aircraft to have enough elevator force, aileron force (roll moment due to ailerons), and rudder force (yaw moment - rudder) for proper control of the aircraft. Large changes in pitch stability, and or roll and yaw dampening means you will have to increase or decrease these other values to keep the flight envelope, (roll rate, etc.) what you wish it to be. Besides the above roll, pitch, and yaw values in primary aerodynamics, I try to keep the corresponding MOI values in the aircraft.cfg file somewhere below the 1,000,000 units mark. This is not always possible for larger aircraft. Larger aircraft being, something larger and heavier than the average jet fighter. Something else to remember, most entries in the AIR and aircraft.cfg file don't use commas or other separators as I just did, no matter what units are used. The MOI values in the aircraft.cfg file, and the corresponding values in primary aerodynamics, together control whether the model shakes in any of the three planes of rotation. If the aircraft shakes while sitting on the runway or while in the air, one, or more, of these values is too low. If the value(s) in primary aerodynamics are within the above ranges, you should normally just add more MOI to the MOI value(s) in question, until you have the aircraft flying without shaking. Something I learned recently is that the first value in the Side Forces section of primary aerodynamics helps to dampen or eliminate shaking in the yaw axis. So if the yaw MOI values are more than a little higher than the other MOI values, increasing the Sideslip-angle value may be what you need. You can go too high on some aircraft, so be aware. This is where you must decide whether to just increase the MOI values or to also change the corresponding values in primary aerodynamics. If the MOI values are below the 1000000 unit mark, it is usually best to just add more MOI units to roll, pitch, or yaw as needed. It is normally a waste of time to try to adjust the forces for roll, pitch, and yaw in the primary aerodynamics section, until you have dealt with the MOI values and their corresponding 'primary aerodynamics' values, because those in primary aerodynamics directly affect how much force the elevator, ailerons, and rudder need to work properly. To be sure the aircraft doesn't have a stability problem, [MOI values], I set the autopilot for 5,000 feet and leave the throttle on full until the aircraft is at 5,000 feet and reaches full speed or overspeeds. If the aircraft remained stable, the values are at least high enough, whether they are so high as to be overkill, you must decide and act accordingly. 10 to 20 thousand units more than absolutely necessary is definitely not overkill. I have found since writing the above paragraph that going to 4x time compression is the place where any instability in flight will show up. So I recommend to go up to max speed at 5,000 feet using 4x time compression after take off, and do one or more turns. If the aircraft shows no instability it should be good at any speed, altitude, or time compression. Be careful, as most aircraft will over stress easily at full speed while maneuvering. Once you have taken care of all the above, it is time to check if there is too much or too little force acting on the elevator, ailerons, and rudder. I usually do this by taking off, usually in tower view, and trimming the aircraft so it is climbing slightly at 200 knots. Obviously you will have to use a different airspeed value for aircraft that won't reach this speed, or that will barely reach this speed. Then I make sharp turns, rolls, and other maneuvers to see if anything needs adjusting. It usually does. This is where you go to the primary aerodynamics section and change, as necessary, elevator force (pitch moment due to elevator), aileron force (roll moment due to ailerons), and rudder force (yaw moment - rudder). This is in part an art, since it is done by eye, and also by taking note of how much G forces are exerted when each axis is pushed to the limit. If you hit shift + Z three times you will have the G forces, and other info, at the top of your screen for easy reference. When adjusting the rudder, as well as making sure the rudder forces are not too strong or too weak, there is another section in primary aerodynamics called side forces which has an entry called side force - rudder. This value may or may not be correct. If correct, when flying with one wing down and nearly level, applying full rudder so the nose points more towards the ground will not have the aircraft gain much, if any altitude before starting down. If the aircraft, while basically flying on its side, gains a good amount of altitude when the rudder is applied, the 'side force - rudder' value is too high; and/or the yaw moment-rudder is too low. This, in particular, along with corrections to the rudder, elevators, and ailerons, is something at least partly subjective and therefore easier for some to see and correct than for other people. Once you have everything the way you think it should be, it is time to try a few landings to see that the aircraft can be trimmed properly for landing, and that it is not otherwise difficult to land the aircraft. If the panel the aircraft came with has poor forward visibility, here is where you may wish to change panels until you have checked out how easy or hard it still is to land the aircraft. If I am going to change panels I used to rename the original panel, panel.old, then copy the panel I was going to use into the aircraft folder. The way I do it now is, I have an F-15 panel and an F-35 panel whose folders are named panel.f15 and panel.f35. I use the panel.f35 for all single engine aircraft and the panel.f15 for all other aircraft. I copy the proper panel to the aircraft folder and then in the aircraft.cfg file I put f15 or f35 after the panel= line. This allows me to switch back to the original panel at any time by just deleting what is after the panel= line. For FSX I use the F-86 panel I updated for single engine aircraft. By now the aircraft usually is flying fairly well, and the most common problem is there may be too little trim for the aircraft to be trimmed correctly with the gear and full flaps down. In primary aerodynamics under pitch there is a record 'pitch moment - trim range'. This should never be less than 1.00, unless you are sure that 1.00 is too high. I have yet to find an aircraft where 1.00 is too high. By the way, this, like some other correct values, is a negative value and the minus sign should always be there. If there is not enough trim, increase the value, to 1.50 or 2.00 or higher, until you do have enough trim for a proper landing with the flaps and gear down, with at least some trim to spare. I find these things are much easier to figure out when the panel has a digital trim gauge as part of it. Another two things to check in the pitch section are pitch moment - flaps and pitch moment - gear. When positive these values tell the sim flight engine how much to pitch the nose down when the gear and, or the flaps are down. When positive, lowering the gear and/or the flaps will lower the nose; this is normal for any aircraft with the horizontal tail behind the wings. For correct, or near correct values of these records see what they are in a similar aircraft that is flying well. To find out if the range of the aircraft is correct, or nearly so, fly it between two airports that are one half, to the full range of the aircraft apart. This can be done at 16x time compression for most of the flight. If the range is short of what it should be, you have two choices: Add more fuel, though this is not always possible or desirable. Or go into the [generalenginedata] section of the aircraft.cfg file and change the fuel_flow_scalar= to less than 1.00, like 0.80. After each change you will have to go fly the same route to see if the range is somewhere near correct. There are other entries in all eight sections of primary aerodynamics that may or may not need changing, you will have to decide whether they need changing by seeing how the aircraft is flying. If in doubt about something, look at the values for these same entries in a similar aircraft that is flying the way it should. There is something in the lift section that is almost always not correct: 'lift due to elevator' and 'lift due to horizontal stabilizer'. First, lift due to elevator should nearly always be positive, the value will depend on the aircraft. Second, the record 'lift due to horizontal stabilizer', should be zero to -2048 for aircraft with the horizontal stabilizer behind the wings. This value helps say when the aircraft stalls when applying elevator, or when the aircraft is going slow enough to stall. Unless the elevator and horizontal stabilizer are one and the same, as on some aircraft, the horizontal stabilizer never supplies any lift. It just supplies stability if it is located behind the wings, nothing else. Any forces acting on it are not lift. The wings do the lifting, the horizontal tail, when behind the wings, helps the wings stay at whatever angle of attack they are flying at, at any given moment. The forces generated to do this are not lift that is holding the aircraft up, even though those forces may seem the same as positive or negative lift. Horizontal stabilizers in front of the wing do supply some lift. The amount will depend on their size, and, or position. Any of the records that I did not cover in this document, can be compared to an AIR file for a similar aircraft for bringing the figures into the ball park for further tweaking, if desired, or for what the graphs should look like. The easiest way to change graphs to what they should be is to replace it with one copied from an AIR file with the correct graph. With Aircraft Airfile Manager you can make changes directly to the graph. I think I should mention something about dihedral. First, what dihedral does, for those who don't know. When you bank an aircraft that has dihedral, and then you bring the controls back to neutral, the wings will tend to go back to level flight on their own because of the dihedral. This works for positive or negative dihedral. The first record under the roll section of primary aerodynamics is dihedral effect. If the wings don't have dihedral this should be zero, if the wings have dihedral, this should not have a value of zero. The value will depend on the size of the aircraft and the number of degrees of dihedral the wings have. One way to check what it should be is to again find a similar aircraft that is flying well with the same, or nearly the same, number of degrees of dihedral and try that value. The effect of this value is also affected by how much roll dampening there is. An aircraft with more roll dampening will need a higher dihedral effect value. The following is how to change square meters to square feet in case the only information you can find is in meters. The number of inches in a meter is 39.54 to two decimal places. I presently don't remember if there are more decimal places but this should be accurate enough. First multiply 39.54 times 39.54. This will give you the square inches in a square meter. Then multiply this figure (1563.4116 square inches) by the number of square meters, this will give you the number of square inches in the area; then divide by 144; which is the number of square inches in a square foot. If you did all that correct, you will have the number of square feet in the area. To change any metric linear measure into feet: Multiply 39.54 times the number of meters and then divide by 12. Pitch Moment Coeff at AoA=0. The first entry in the pitch section in primary aerodynamics controls how easy, or how hard, it is to raise the nose of the aircraft. The larger the negative (-) number the easier, and/or quicker the nose will raise while accelerating. The larger the positive (+) number, the harder it will be to raise the nose wheel off the tarmac at any speed. THIS VALUE IS CORRECT WHEN YOU ARE FLYING LEVEL AT CRUISE SPEED AND THE PITCH TRIM IS AT, OR NEAR, 0; OR NEAR CENTER FOR PITCH TRIM GAUGES THAT ARE NOT DIGITAL. To correct this for an aircraft flying at cruise speed and cruise altitude is to raise or lower the value of the first entry in the pitch section inside the primary aerodynamics record; until the pitch trim gauge is at or near 0 for digital trim gauges, and at or near the center of any other pitch trim gauges. Note to people using the flight dynamics workbook: Assuming you have done your best to enter the correct information in the proper places, one or all of the following must be true. The programming for the workbook is wrong or has errors in it The programming for FS2004 is wrong or has errors in it Both 1 and 2 above are correct The reason one or more of the above has to be correct, is that the aircraft I have downloaded that used the workbook for their flight dynamics all have not flown well in one respect or another. None of them really flew like the real thing. Before someone takes offence, I know the aircraft I have updated have been on the easy to fly side of, as real as it gets. To mention one thing, I usually have the aircraft able to stand more 'G' forces than the real one. Something about wheel positions. When you find where the wheels are, if they are actually too close to the datum point, you will have to pretend they are farther back, or farther forward, so the aircraft sits properly without the tail lifting for tail draggers, or falling for tricycle gear aircraft. Anything less than one foot from the datum point may not work properly, and it is better to be one and a half feet or farther from the datum point. You may be able to have the same effect by moving the empty_weight_CG_position, but this could cause other problems. If you move the empty_weight_CG_position more than 2 feet from the datum position it will be hard, to impossible, to have the flight envelope what you wish it to be. If a jet aircraft rolls with the brakes off at 0 throttle, or has trouble slowing down on approach, the problem is usually with record 1503. When you open it and see the table, the first number at the top left is usually over 60. This should be 55 or less. Depending on the aircraft, it may be a lot less. This is the percent of N1 that you get when the throttle is at 0. That some jets don't roll at 0 throttle, with the N1 set to over 60, tells me that something is wrong with the way the flight simulator is set up. What real jet aircraft will stand still with the brakes off and the N1 reading 60% or more? At the moment I don't know if it is actually a problem with the simulator, or more a problem with how different gauges for N1, have different readings, with the first number of record 1503 at the same setting. An example is the N1 gauge in the default 737-400 reading near 20% at idle with the 1503 first number set to 55; while that same number will give an N1 reading of 55% with the gauge that is part of the F-15 panel by Chuck Dome. Which gauge is closer to being correct? The way to fix the problem is to find a record 1503 with a smaller first number, and replace the bad record with a better one. Or if you have Aircraft Airfile Manager, you can change that first number to anything you wish, and save the file. I have found that anything below about 30 will make it hard to impossible to keep the engine running at idle. If the gauges for the simulator are correct, N1 at about 20% is where at least some jet engines are when idling. N1 represents the low pressure turbines, on a jet engine with two or more sets of turbines. Now to fix the rare problem of not slowing down enough on approach even though you have fixed the problem with record 1503. Inside the primary aerodynamics section of the AIR file is the drag section. There are seven entries in the section. The ones that matter most are the first three. Drag coefficient at 0 lift, Drag coefficient flaps, and Drag coefficient landing gear. The first one, Drag coefficient at 0 lift, will change the drag on the aircraft at any speed, and therefore affects the aircraft anytime it is moving. Increasing this value increases the drag on the aircraft anytime it is in motion; and decreasing it decreases the drag produced while the aircraft is in motion. It is usually best to have it somewhere in the 40's for most jet aircraft. As before, this is a starting point, not a hard and fast rule. The thing to remember is that changing the number up or down 5 or more, will definitely change the top speed of the aircraft if nothing else is changed. So it is best to check this drag setting before trying to adjust the top speed of the aircraft. This setting along with a correct setting of Record 1503, should have the aircraft able to slow to 120 knots or less at 0 throttle and in level, or near level, flight; if it will stay in the air, going that slow. The second, Drag coefficient flaps, as it states, deals with how much drag the flaps produce when down. The good thing is it only has an effect while the flaps are down. By experience, it should be set somewhere between 100 and 220. Again these are ball park figures, not an absolute. Very large, or vary small, aircraft might not work properly in this ball park. Too much drag and you will have to add more throttle than you should have to, to keep the aircraft flying while on approach with full flaps down. Too little drag, and the aircraft will speed up too easily. The third, Drag coefficient gear, deals with the drag the gear produces any time it is down. Along with flaps drag, it will determine how much the aircraft will be slowed down while on approach. The ball park for this entry is 50 to 125. Two other entries that are at least partially connected to the Drag coefficients for flaps and gear are: Pitch moment flaps, and Pitch moment gear. They are near the end of the pitch section of primary aerodynamics. What they do is tell how much the nose will pitch down when the gear, and/or flaps are lowered. I know of only one aircraft that has the nose pitch up when the gear or flaps are lowered. The XB-70 has flaps on the horizontal tail that is in front of the wings so when the flaps are down the nose will pitch up. There may be others. To have the nose pitch down, the numbers for both Pitch moment flaps and Pitch moment gear should be positive. The ball park for flaps is 0.020. The ball park for gear is 0.010. Having either, or both, of these too high, or too low, will make it more difficult to set the proper angle, or speed, of the aircraft during approach. Because of this, these two entries are connected to the entries for drag coefficient flaps and drag coefficient gear. They all work together and must be dynamically balanced for the aircraft to fly as it should when doing an approach. Record 1505 is where to change how fast a jet will spool up or down. It also seems to affect low end thrust to some extent, as well. Also it only takes a small change to the values to have a large effect. I have found that reducing the values does reduce the spool times. The thing to remember is the final value to the right of the screen should never be less than 100 or the engine won't reach 100% rpm. Scrape points (designated by the number 2). As with any other points on the aircraft you can use a light to find where the present points are. Just match the light co-ordinates to the co-ordinates for the scrape point. For points on the center line it might be best to first start with them two or more feet to the side so you can see them. They might otherwise be inside the aircraft. For points near the wing tips, it may be best to start one, or more, feet high, or low, so you can see them. To me, the proper place for a scrape point is just inside the skin of the aircraft. If the present co-ordinates don't match the skin of the aircraft, adjust the light position to where you think the scrape point should be, then apply the light's co-ordinates to the scrape point in question. For aircraft that have float points, any scrape points should be at least two feet above the level of the float points. Otherwise crashes might occur. Wheel adjustments. When the wheels are adjusted as to their proper co-ordinates, there are other things that may be wrong with them. Impact damage threshold: If it is 1500 or over, it is usually high enough as long as you don't come down faster than is wise. In some cases it can be lower. Brake Map: Front wheel(s), or tail wheel(s), is usually 0. Left wheel, or wheels, is 1. Right wheel, or wheels, is 2. Wheel Radius: This is measured from the center of the wheel to the tire tread. You can find this with a light. Place the light in the center of the wheel and 1 foot wider than the wheel position, so you can see it. Then move it forward, or back, until the center of the light is at the edge of the tire. The difference from where the center position was to the new position at the edge, is the wheel radius. If you start by moving the light the amount that the wheel radius has in the contact points, you will be able to tell if the person doing the flight dynamics knew to do this. If they did, it will match what you find the radius to actually be within 0.1 foot. (A model maker may enter the true radius for the wheel, but this may not be the size he actually made the wheel for the model. The model only matches the real aircraft perfectly if the maker is very careful while making it.) WHEN DOING THIS YOU MAY HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR VIEW POSITION A BIT, PARTICULARLY WITH THE NOSE WHEEL OR TAIL WHEEL. For the main wheels; using the 4 or 6 number pad key will usually give you the correct view, but you may have to hit the + key a few times for magnification, to have a better view of exactly where the light is. Steer Angle: Applies to the nose or tail wheel(s). This does have an effect on steering, but unless I know it is wrong, I leave it whatever it is. Static Compression: The value for this can be from 0.1 feet to a foot or more. If the nose wheel buries itself in the tarmac when the brakes are pressed, the numbers for the wheels are too high or the Damping Ratio (see below) is too low, or both. Sometimes only the front wheel has to be changed, most often all have to be changed at least a bit, if the nose wheel buries itself in the tarmac. Some aircraft don't have the nose or other oleos visually compress even if the real aircraft does have compressible oleos. This is at the choice of the model maker and his ability to animate this. CHANGING THIS VALUE WILL RAISE OR LOWER THE WHEEL HEIGHT, SO ONCE CORRECTED, YOU WILL HAVE TO ADJUST THE WHEEL HEIGHT. (See below) ALSO; THIS VALUE CAN BE TOO LOW, AS WELL AS TOO HIGH. WHEN TOO LOW THE NOSE WHEEL(S), and or THE MAIN WHEELS, BOUNCE ON LANDING. THE MAIN WHEELS AND THE NOSE WHEEL(S) DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME VALUE, BUT CAN HAVE THE SAME VALUE, WHATEVER WORKS. Max Static Compression Ratio: Leave at 2.5 or change to 2.5, unless you cannot get the wheels to brake, or function, properly by adjusting the Static Compression and the Damping Ratio. This value partly tells the simulator how strong, or weak, the wheels and oleos are. Damping Ratio: The values for this are from 0 to 1. As far as I know anything over 1 has no extra effect. This value, in effect, tells how efficient the shock absorbers are. The closer to 1 you get, the stiffer the shocks are, and the less travel up or down the wheels, or oleos, have. Together with Static Compression, this controls whether the aircraft bounces, or not, when doing a normal touch down. Adjusting wheel height: It is an easy thing to do. Go to the [contact points] section. The wheels are usually the first three contact points. In any case the first number after the = sign will be 1 if it is a wheel; sometimes with decimal places, no decimal places are necessary in the first number after the = sign. Note: Many of my updated aircraft have as many wheel entries as the model actually has wheels, so far this has been up to 18 wheel entries. The next three numbers are forward/back position; offset, if any; and height. To raise the wheels, increase the height number. Usually, only the decimal part of the height number will have to be increased to raise the wheels enough. The best way to tell if they are high enough without being too high, is to view the aircraft in early morning or evening, and see that the wheel is touching the shadow it is casting on the ground. If it doesn't, you will have to come back down a bit by subtracting. One thing to note about oleos with more than one wheel, with entries for all of them, you must add or subtract the same amount from all the wheels on that oleo, or they won't show any change, or not a truly corrected change. The above, with some trial and error will have the wheels just where you want them, visually at any rate. REMEMBER, CHANGING THE AIRCRAFT.CFG FILE MAKES IT NECESSARY TO CHANGE AIRCRAFT, BEFORE THE CHANGE CAN BE SEEN. Sometimes it is better to delete the record for the wheels in the AIR file. The best way to know is, if you have tried many changes to the wheels in the aircraft.cfg file and still cannot have them behave as you wish, then it is time to remove the record from the AIR file and try again. I now usually just remove the AIR file records for the wheels and scrape points. The rest of the entries for contact points are straight forward and should be understood by looking at the definitions that are at the beginning of the contact points for most, if not all, of the default aircraft. For anything other than the wheels, the values for most of these points, past Impact Damage Threshold, will be 0. Unless there is an entry with the contact points that limits the number of contact points, there is no limit to how many there can be. If there is such an entry, and you wish to add more points than the entry will allow, raise the number the entry allows, or delete that line. Note: FS2004 has the aircraft weather-vanning into the wind too easily to be realistic. It is as if all the aircraft are old Curtis Jennies. So it is best to do take off and landing tests with surface winds off. Also, if the aircraft has more than four engines, both the AIR and aircraft.cfg file only uses the first four, the others are ignored. So you have to adjust the thrust for aircraft with six and eight engines so the first four engines have the same total thrust as the six or eight engines do. They also must be equally spaced two to the left and two to the right or the aircraft will have a built in turn. Something about MOI values. If an aircraft is unstable while leveling off on autopilot, or unstable in a turn while using the autopilot, one or more of the MOI values are too high or too low. So you have some idea if the MOI values are too high or too low: For aircraft normal jet fighter size and smaller, start at under 100,000 units and only add to these values if necessary. This will give enough MOI for the aircraft to be stable, but not so much it interferes with the autopilot. This does not contradict what I wrote earlier in this tutorial about MOI. Each aircraft is unique and what works best for one will not work best for all. If in doubt, look at a similar aircraft that is flying as it should, to have a starting point. Pitch Moment Due to Pitch Rate-Damping, the second line of Primary Aerodynamics\Pitch section. Increasing the value on this line, reduces the bobbing up and down motion while using the autopilot, whether in a turn or leveling off. This is not dependent on pitch stability or pitch MOI, but the three do work together to some degree. This value is connected to the autopilot, and may be entirely connected to flight with the autopilot. For some aircraft less is better than more, at present I don't know why. Most of the tweaking is easier to do when you have watched various aircraft in flight for hours at a time and have a good knowledge of the forces keeping an aircraft in the air. It also helps to have flown a few real aircraft, so you know what it looks like when on approach for landing. Record 1545: This record can be edited so that an aircraft flying at cruise speed and level, that normally has the nose too high, will fly with the nose level. This may be able to be done some other way, but if there is such a way I am unaware of it at this time. Record 1548: This is the record to edit to have the engine(s), prop(s), for turbo-prop aircraft spool up or down more quickly. The thing to watch out for is that changing the spool up rate will change the thrust of the prop(s). So it is a balancing act of keeping the thrust high while making the spool up/down time shorter. This is true whether you edit the X or the Y axis, or both of them, in this record. A note on props: Beta_max should be between 30 and 65 degrees. Beta_min should be between 12 and 18 degrees. These are ball park figures and will work for most aircraft, but you may find the exception and have to go out of the park for the aircraft to work properly. To have the most thrust, without other considerations, 15 for min and 45 for max. This is an addition to the wheels section. To add the other wheels for aircraft that have more than three. Count the number of wheels the aircraft has, then add the extras to the mains and/or nose, or tail. The easiest way to do this is to copy the left main and then paste it under the one you copied, until you have as many left mains as there are on the model. Do the same for the right mains and nose wheels, or sometimes tail wheels; this way you keep all things like the brake map, the same as for all the other wheels on that side of the aircraft. Next start at the top of the contact points and change any point numbers necessary so they run from 0 to whatever is the last contact point, not just wheels, without any skipped numbers. This is one section where it matters if you skip point numbers or have them out of order. Starting with the left or right main wheel farthest back and farthest out, use a light to find its position, forward-back. Enter these co-ordinates to the first wheel in both the left and right sections of the main wheels. It helps if you have a space between the left wheels and right main wheels in the aircraft.cfg file. Then move the light far enough forward or back to be able to line it up with the center of the wheel left or right and still be able to see it. Enter these co-ordinates to the first line in both the left and right wheel sections. In most cases there will be another wheel at the same forward-back co-ordinate so for the second wheel you only need to find the offset co-ordinate to have its position. Use these co-ordinates for the second main wheels in both the left and right main wheel sections. You only have to have the co-ordinates for the left or right wheels because the other set will be at the same co-ordinates with only the off-set needing to be changed to a minus or plus value. Always enter the changed co-ordinates to both the left and right main wheels as a pair, or you may have a problem with how, or if, the aircraft still sits on the ground. Continue finding wheel positions until you have entered the unique position for each wheel that the model has. If the original wheels were behaving OK when landing, and were at the correct height, once you have all the wheels entered, you won't have to do anything else, unless you made a mistake in following the above instructions. If the wheels are not working as they should and you made no mistake entering their position, see the original section for wheels above, on how to adjust anything that needs to be adjusted. Besides position errors, if the copying was not done correctly, you may have wheels with incorrect brake maps on the left, and/or the right side of the aircraft. Wheels on the left have the offset as minus numbers. In the lift section of primary aerodynamics the first and third entries; lift due to angle of attack rate and lift due to pitch rate. I have found that making the first one that is usually positive, into a negative and deleting the minus sign from in front of the other one, usually helps with the stability of the aircraft at cruise speed and altitude. Making the values smaller often helps as well. Another thing that seems to help aircraft stability at cruise speed and altitude is to change the lines: max_pitch_velocity_lo_alt_breakpoint=20000.00 max_pitch_velocity_hi_alt_breakpoint=28000.00 in the autopilot section of the aircraft.cfg file to read: max_pitch_velocity_lo_alt_breakpoint=7000.00 max_pitch_velocity_hi_alt_breakpoint=24000.00 A note about eyepoint in the [views] section of the aircraft.cfg file: If the aircraft has no virtual cockpit, then you can use the illustrations in this document to help you in finding the eyepoint co-ordinates. If the aircraft has a virtual cockpit, don't change the eyepoint in the aircraft.cfg file unless the view from the virtual cockpit looks wrong. This document has been written to give you a starting point for learning how to edit flight dynamics in FS2004 or the other Microsoft flight simulators, including FSX. I am human, I don't claim that everything here is complete or accurate in every way, but it is as accurate as my present knowledge allows it to be. Don't be intimidated by the amount of information in this document. You, like me, don't need to learn it all in one day. Just start doing, and see what develops. Bob Chicilo Download Bob's files from the library
  11. How To...Install FS2004 Aircraft Textures By Andrew Herd If you have worked through the previous tutorials in this series, you should have a good understanding of how to download and install new aircraft and panels in FS2004. In this tutorial, we are going to take a look at how to install texture sets. What? Texture sets? I guess I had better explain. At one time new FS planes used to be so few and far between that folk were prepared to put up with any livery the designer supplied, but then groups like Project Open Sky came along and changed all that by releasing planes with multiple liveries. To begin with, there wasn't a problem, but as time passed and more and more repaints became available, users began to run into trouble. The first was that every time they downloaded a new livery, a complete plane had to be installed with it, and even if they used panel and sound aliases to keep things tight, hard disk space became something of an issue, not to mention the ever lengthening aircraft list that resulted. Fortunately FS2002 offered a way around this problem, by making it possible to add additional texture sets (aka liveries, or repaints) to each plane, so that a single aircraft could have several liveries tagged onto the same visual model and panel. FS2004 behaves much the same way - as you can see that in the screenshot here, where I have dropped down the 'variations' list for the default 737 to show that it has five alternative liveries available. FS2000 couldn't do this - you would have had to install five different 737s in five different folders because there wasn't a 'variations' drop down. Having learned so much about the power of aliases, you might think that FS2004 uses something them to deal with liveries and it would make sense if it did, bar the fact that while you usually only need one panel and sound set for a plane, you might want many repaints, so something a little more complicated is needed - and the solution is found in the aircraft.cfg. All this extra functionality in the aircraft.cfg has meant that texture sets have proved to be very popular and the CV580 you installed as part of working through the first tutorial has had dozens designed for it, but first of all, a word about texture sets in general. If you are very lucky, you will find a set that installs automatically, but these are relatively rare and usually come from major design groups - Flight1's Text-o-matic sets are a good example, though these are very specialised textures. Most textures aren't anywhere near as sophisticated and have to be manually installed, which requires you to have a working knowledge of how to edit air files. This expertise isn't that difficult to acquire and this tutorial will teach you what to do. It assumes that you have downloaded and installed the Convair 580 from the first tutorial in this series. Before doing anything else, I would like you to download CCV580LU.ZIP from the FlightSim.Com files area, because this is the texture set we are going to work with. I am not going to go through the process of how to find and download the file, because if you have worked through the previous tutorials, you should be familiar with the process already. Unpacking the zip into your junk folder should show something like the screenshot opposite, depending on what options you have set in your OS. Notice there is a folder called 'Texture.1' some graphics to show what you are getting and a readme. Not all texture sets are as neatly packaged as this one and we have Glen Hall to thank for it. Sometimes all you get is a collection of .bmp files, which need to be collected together into a folder before they can be installed. Glen makes life very easy for us, but if you install more textures for the CV580, beware the fact that you will have to give each new texture folder a different name - texture.2, texture.3, texture.4 and so on, because they may not be prepackaged like Glen's. At this stage, it is good practice to read the instructions, so open the readme. Yep, it really is that simple, all you have to do is to drag the texture folder into the main CV580 aircraft folder and paste some code into the aircraft.cfg, but stay with me, because it isn't always completely straight forward and if you understand why you are doing now, you won't get into trouble later on. The Convair 580 we installed was, as you will remember, in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Aircraft\cv580 folder, so find that and then drag the Texture.1 folder out of junk and put it in with the other CV580 files. What you end up with should look like this. Notice that the CV580 folder now has two texture sub folders, one called 'texture' and the other called 'Texture.1' (the uppercase doesn't matter, by the way). So we now have one plane with two texture sets, but we will have to tell FS2004 that the second one exists. Open the CV580 folder and take a look in there for a file called aircraft.cfg. If you set up your system as per the instructions in the first tutorial, you should be able to open the cfg file in notepad just by double clicking on it. What you should see is this. The file is split up into sections, the first one being called [flightsim.0], followed by [General], followed by [Weight_And_Balance] and so forth. The only part that concerns us is the flightsim section, because the text in here tells FS2004 how to show the plane in the selection box and what variations - or liveries - to list with it. As the Convair is currently setup, there is one variation, the Springbok Convair 580 listed under [flightsim.0]. Going through this line by line the most important sections are: title - this describes the textures sim - indicates which .air file is to be used (note that the .air extension isn't appended here) model, panel and sound - allow the use of alternative visual models, panels and sound linked to the texture set. This is effectively a different form of aliasing. texture - specifies which texture set to use; in this case it is left blank, which will load the files in the \texture folder by default. Setting this to texture=1 will load files from the \texture.1 folder, a value of texture=2 will load files from the \texture.2 folder and so on. ui_manufacturer - in this case 'Convair'. This text appears in the 'aircraft manufacturer' drop down in the aircraft selection dialog, making it easy to choose and load your plane. ui_type - this determines what text appears under 'aircraft model' in the aircraft selection dialog. ui_variation - this determines what text appears under 'variation' in the aircraft selection dialog. atc section - this tells FS2004 what ID to use, which airline the plane belongs to, whether it is a 'heavy' or not (a designation giving you all kinds of priveleges in real life) and what the flight number is. In many cases you may need to make up your own entries here and if an appropriate voice call isn't listed for the plane in the ATC airlines list, you may have to use a substitute. kb_checklists and kb_reference - tell the kneeboard which checklist and reference data to load; if blank, nothing will be loaded. description - text describing the plane. There isn't space to go into detail here, but if you sniff around your default FS2004 setup you should end up with a good idea of what can and cannot be done. OK. Go back to the CV580LU folder in Junk and open the readme, if you don't already have it open somewhere on the desktop. The next thing you need to do is to select and copy out the [flightsim.1] section in there. In the screenshot I have highlighted the relevant text. As you might expect, there is little difference between this and the Springbok plane we downloaded, but it is enough. title - identifies that the textures in the new folder are for a Lufthansa plane - I guess Glen must have done a couple of repaints, hence the 'Paint 1'. texture - set to '1' to point FS2004 at the \cv580\texture.1 folder ui_variation - set to Lufthansa to make it possible to select the repaint in the variation drop down. The atc entries have also changed, but this is mostly housekeeping stuff to keep ATC happy. OK. Copy this section, then go to the aircraft.cfg for the CV580, open it and paste the text in, following on from the [flightsim.0] section. Do not overwrite anything, just create a space there and so that it looks like the screenshot below when you are finished. If you have done everything right, [flightsim.1] should follow on from [flightsim.0]. Once again, note that many texture packages will leave you to construct your own [flightsim.x] section, the easiest way to do this being to copy the entire [flightsim.0] section and paste it in underneath the original, incrementing the flightsim number appropriately, and changing the 'title' value and the 'ui_variation' value to match the texture set that is being included. Everything else can be left the same, as long as you don't mind ATC giving you the wrong call sign, in which case you will have to change all those values too. Now save the aircraft.cfg, start up FS2004 and go find the Convair... Don't panic if the original Springbok livery doesn't appear there at the top of the variation list - the reason is that FS2004 keeps its house very tidy and all the entries appear alphabetically, regardless of their numbering in the aircraft.cfg. If you open the drop-down list, it will be there all right. If you want to be extremely clever, then download Richard Taylor's ACCALLS.ZIP, backup the original airlines.cfg in \Flight Simulator 9\Aircraft and extract Richard's airlines.cfg into the folder to replace it. Now, when you load your Lufthansa CV580, FS2004's ATC will get the airline name right. This piece of trickery works because Microsoft have recorded most of the real world airline names as part of the ATC engine, but have only included the FS2004 airline names (World Travel, Emerald Harbor Air, etc.) in the default aircraft.cfg Just load and fly - and happy texture hunting. Andrew Herd andrew@flightsim.com
  12. How To...Install FS2004 Aircraft By Andrew Herd Some years ago I wrote a series of "how to" guides on installing aircraft in FS2000. At the time I realised that there was a need, but I had no idea how great it was - nearly 5000 people worked their way through the series. Many of those people emailed me to tell me how much they had appreciated the tutorials, which were my way of repaying the countless freeware authors whose products I was teaching people to install. After the release of FS2002, it became clear that enough changes had been made to Flight Simulator that it was worth writing another series, customised for the new version. I kept some of the text from the old tutorials, updated it for FS2002 and redid most of the screen shots. I have extended the tutorial slightly to include common problems that people have installing aircraft in the new version of the sim. If you are reading this, I can imagine that you have flown everywhere and done everything you can do in the Microsoft default aircraft set. By now you will be intimately familiar with the Cessna, have flown the Mooney upside down under San Francisco bridge, and tried to land the 737 on a 400 foot dirt strip in North Dakota. The program has given up its secrets and you are looking for something else to try your hand at - and you have noticed that FlightSim.Com claims to have over sixty thousand of files there for download, but you just aren't quite sure how to go about it. Now is time to learn. First of all, before we even go looking for trouble, we need one essential utility, a shareware program called WinZip. Why WinZip? Well, many of the aircraft on this and other sites are in what are known as compressed files. You can imagine a compressed file as being like the suitcase you would like to take on holiday, with everything crushed into it, except with a compressed file you can get the kitchen sink in too. Aircraft creators use file compression to squeeze all the files that go together to make their planes into the smallest possible space - not only is it convenient to have everything collected together, it makes for faster downloads too. The universal format used around the net is what is called a 'zip' file, and the program you need to unpack a zip is called WinZip (there are others, such as PKZip, but this one is my favorite). The first thing you need to do to start this project is to create two directories on your hard disk: one called 'Downloads' and the other called 'Junk'. If you aren't sure how to do this, then I suggest going off and buying a book called Windows for Dummies (Windows XP For Dummies) (Windows ME For Dummies) (Windows 2000 For Dummies) and reading it thoroughly before coming back to try this, as your learning curve is going to be too steep otherwise. You will use these two directories to store the files you have downloaded and to unzip files before you install them in your Flight Simulator (henceforth known as FS) folder. To get WinZip, fire up your web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape) and click on this link. This should take you direct to the WinZip site and from there you can follow the link to downloading the evaluation version. When your browser pops up a dialog to ask you which folder to download the file to, make sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked and choose the download folder you just created to save it in. When you have finished getting WinZip, open up Windows Explorer, and take a look in the download folder. There should only be one file in there and it should be the install file for WinZip, so launch it by double-clicking on it and follow the instructions. Assuming you have a working FS setup you now have all the tools you need to build your own dream plane from the tens of thousands FlightSim.Com has to offer. OK, so now we have to decide which aircraft to get. You may have your own ideas, but I think we ought to have a Convair 580, this being the hundredth anniversary of powered, sustained, FAA approved flight. The first thing you need to do is to log in to FlightSim.Com, if you haven't already done so. Many people never get behind the news page, so if you have never seen the guts of FlightSim.Com, you need to follow the member login hyperlink up at the top of the home page, just under the ad banner, and register as a user on the way. I have circled the link you need in red. Just click on the image on the left to see a larger version. Incidentally, don't worry about giving away your family secrets on the Internet, FlightSim.Com only uses the login to keep track of the number of users online. You won't get deluged with junk emails. Once you are logged in, you will need to follow the links to the 'main menu' - there is a big bold hypertext link down the bottom of the home page, plus other small ones. The main menu page is the guts of FlightSim.Com and it is pretty daunting to look at, but it is well worth getting to know it, because it gives you access to all sorts of goodies and knowledge about FS. If you have got the time and the inclination, have a play around, clicking on the links to see what you get. Particularly useful ones include Product Reviews (which takes you to a long list of FS product reviews stretching back into the dim mists of time, when everything was in sepia) and the Forums, where you can post messages, discuss FS and aviation. About two-thirds the way down the right hand side is a bar saying 'File libraries (downloads)' and just below that is a link called 'search file libraries'. I have circled it in red and I want you to left click it. You should now have the Advanced File Search page up. This is right in under the hood of FlightSim.Com and if you understand how to use this page, the world of flight simulation is at your fingertips. The bit we want is sandwiched in between the two runway graphics. There are three selection boxes, two text boxes and a 'Start Search' button. Feel free to play around with this for a while, but once you are ready I would like you to left click on the button to the right of the top selection box, then grab the slider by left clicking, holding and dragging it until you see a line saying: 'FS2002 aircraft' (the sample plane we're using is for FS2002 but works with FS2004; it serves our purposes for now since at the time this is being written no FS2004 planes are available yet). Select it by left clicking on it and the line should highlight. Okay, now type 'Convair 580' (without the quotes) in the box called 'search for text' and click 'Start search'. After a pause, your screen should fill with a list of Convair 580 files. There are ten on the first page and if you scroll down to the bottom, you will see a link called 'next ten files.' Left clicking this will bring up files 11 through 20 and so on. When I did the search, there were 120 files found, which should be enough Convairs for anyone, but by the time you do this search, there are likely to be more, so don't be upset if none of the files in this illustration appear on the page you see. Greg Pepper and Tim Gibson's Convair 580 is a popular download and who knows how many repainters are sharpening their skills on it right now. The aircraft we want isn't shown in this screen shot - I chose a repaint by Andrè Vermeulen, largely because it looks great and comes equipped with a custom panel. It works well in FS2004 and makes a fine introduction to freeware add-ons. This might be a good moment to point out that not all FS add-on planes come with panels, so it may be that you download some that don't have one, but we'll deal with that in another tutorial. Normally, you wouldn't know exactly what the file name of the aircraft you wanted was and would have to scroll down the list, but because I have been sniffing around, we already have a file name and so we are going to go back to FlightSim.Com's Advanced File Search page, so that I can show you how to use it. You can get there either by using the 'back' button on your browser or by clicking the 'exit list files' links on the page. Back again at the Advanced File Search page, make sure that you still have the "search only file sections" dialog set to FS2002 aircraft and type 'cv580.zip' (no quotes again) but this time in the 'file name' box. Then hit 'start search'. Got the plane first time, huh? You should have one file in your list, titled 'FS2002 South African Airways CV-580' and right above it are two links, one saying 'download,' the other saying 'view.' Hold on, here. This is an FS2002 plane! Well, yeah, but it works in FS2004. Trust me, I have a propellor on every hat I possess. Left click 'download' and up comes the copyright page, boring I know, but a necessary evil, given the number of pirates out there. Take a deep breath and left click 'I accept, start download' button. Incidentally, if you click 'view' instead, all that happens is you get a look at the files contained within the zip. Sometimes this is interesting, sometimes not, but it can be a great way of taking a peek at what you are about to get. If the developer has been kind enough to put a text readme in there, you will be able to click on the filename and view it, and sometimes there are screenshots of the plane and even the owner's dog. Up should pop the file download dialog again, and making sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked if you are using Windoze 98 or ME, click OK, then use the 'Save as' dialog to select your download folder and click the OK button again. If you are using Windows XP the screen will look like the shot opposite and you should left click the save button and then select your download folder to receive the new file. Time will pass, depending on the speed of your modem and the quality of your Internet connection. When the download is finished, close the download dialog box, back up the menus on FlightSim.Com until you see the logout prompt, click that, wait until you are back at the site's main screen, close your browser and shut down your Internet connection. If you have broadband, do not take that last instruction literally, as it will involve yanking the cable out of the wall and I don't want to be held responsible for damage to property. Now fire up Windows Explorer. If you use XP you can just hit the 'folders' button on Internet Explorer and open up whatever folder you downloaded the file to. Being tiresomely logical I use a special folder called 'Download' in the 'My documents tree and create folders inside that for all the stuff I have er... downloaded. Call me Mr. Tidy or what? My halo is available for inspection elsewhere. If you have done everything right, there, sitting all on its lonesome should be cv580.zip, although depending on how Windows is set up on your machine, you may not be able to see the .zip bit. If you have WinZip installed on your machine, the file icon should be a yellow filing cabinet in a vice. Open the file in WinZip by double clicking on on the cv580.zip icon (my apologies to people who have Windows set up so that single clicks substitute for double clicks). In the colorful WinZip window that opens up, you should see a worryingly long list of files. Click on the 'extract' button up there in the middle of the WinZip toolbar and you will get a new dialog which is there to help you select which folder you want to extract the zipped files into. I hate to do this to you, but along with my addiction to having a special download folder, I have a special one for extracting files to, called 'Junk'. You can call yours whatever you like, but it might be worth creating one right now to extract your file into. Whatever you do, don't forget where it is. Why do I have such a folder? Well, if you download enough files, you will get left with all kinds of stuff you don't need to install and having it all in one place makes it real easy to clean out. Not such an issue in these days of two hundred gig drives, but it makes for an easier life. If you use the 'folders/drives' pane to find the 'Junk' folder on your hard disk, and left click on the folder name to select it, the 'Extract to' pane should change to show something like this. Make sure you have the 'all files' button checked and especially the 'Use folder names' button checked too. To unpack the files all you have to do is to left click the extract button at the top right of the 'Extract' dialog and there should be a flurry of disk activity as your aircraft files are unzipped into the junk folder. If you look in the Junk folder, you should see that it contains a single folder. Now this is a particularly well organised add-on plane and you may not always get something as near a result as this. Some freeware designers like to make it a little tougher for their users and you will get a clutch of ten or more files and folders when you decompress the zip. Inside that folder are all the files that make up our plane, but as I hinted above, you are not always going to get such a neat result. If that happens, don protective headgear and click here to see what you do. Okay! Now we have to find where your copy of FS2004 is lurking on your hard disk. Most probably it is in Program files, though this varies depending on which type of installation you have. Left click on the little + sign next to the Program files folder in the left hand pane of Windows Explorer. A huge list of sub-folders should appear - drag the scroll bar on the divider down until you can see a folder called Microsoft games. Click the + sign next to that. Again, you should get a list of sub-folders appearing, the length of which will depend on how many Microsoft games you own, but one of those folders will be called 'Flight Simulator 9'. Make sure that you don't accidentally drop the plane into the main Flight Simulator 9 folder - believe me, it is easily done. At risk of getting repetitive strain injury here, left click the little plus sign next to the Flight Simulator 9 folder. Even more sub-folders will appear - I bet you had no idea how many files there were on you hard disk Now one of these sub-folders should be called 'Aircraft,' find it but don't click on it, because that is where we are going to put our hard won Convair 580. Now go back and select the Junk folder - you may need to use the scroll bar to find it depending on how much software is installed on your machine. Left click on the Junk folder in the left hand pane of Explorer and then select the CV580 folder by moving your mouse to the right hand pane. Left click on the plane folder and the drag all the way down until it is level with the 'Aircraft' folder and then move it across until 'Aircraft' folder is highlighted and let the mouse button go. I'll have you know that all the screenshots here were created with SnagIt and to get that particular one, I had to hold down ctrl and shift with my left hand, drag the file with my right, and press the 'P' key with my nose. Now you know what we go through here at FlightSim.Com. It isn't all sitting in the penthouse suite swapping stories with Boeing executives. The CV580 folder should disappear from Junk and move to Aircraft - check it has really gone there by left clicking the + sign next to Aircraft and somewhere in there you should see it. If the CV580 folder doesn't appear in Aircraft there are two possibilities. The first is that Windows hasn't updated Explorer to show the move - you can check this by left clicking View on the Explorer menu bar, then selecting Refresh from the drop down menu. If CV580 doesn't appear in Aircraft after this, either it is still in Junk, or you have missed Aircraft and dropped it in some other nearby folder. Or it is in Flight Simulator 9. Or the network pixies have got it. The only good news if you lose it is that by now, you should know enough to go looking for it and move it back to its rightful place. Close Explorer and any other windows that happen to be open. We are going to see this bird fly. Take a deep breath and start up FS2004. Once the default plane is on the runway, go to the menu bar and click 'aircraft' and then 'select aircraft'. If you scroll down the list of aircraft manufacturers you should see "Convair" early on. Go to the line below, the one that says "Aircraft model" and left click on the arrow at the far right so that the list drops down. You should see "Convair CV580" a little way down there. Left click on that line and admire your brand new 580 spinning around in the show room. Want to take it for a spin? Select the OK button down at the bottom, wait for it to load and you have a new plane. Depending on your flying skills, it is possible to get this mother off the ground at Meigs. Make sure you wind on a fair amount of trim and drop some flap if you don't plan going waterskiing. Additionally, I would floor the throttles and let the fans build up a bit of power before you release the brakes. And good luck; because this baby isn't quite as manoeuvrable as the Cessna. Before we finish up here, a quick word on things that can go wrong with aircraft installations. This CV580 installs fine, but sometimes installations fail - the first sign that something has gone wrong being that the plane doesn't show up in the "select aircraft" dialog. There are a few things to check. First off, hunt down the list of manufacturers and peek into the "unspecified" section. Sometimes planes which weren't originally designed for FS2004 end up there. Next, check that you really did drop the plane's folder into \Flight Simulator 9\aircraft - it is easy to miss. If it isn't either of those two things, then it is very likely that the plane you chose isn't compatible with FS2004. The best way to check this out is by looking at the readme file which will almost certainly be included with the plane. Freeware readmes are often very basic, but they normally say which version of the sim the plane was designed for - and if that was FS98 or before, then the plane is not compatible with FS2004 and won't show when you try to select it (of course, the best time to check this out is before you do the install...) The other reasons for an apparently good installation failing to produce a plane in the menu is a corrupt or missing air file or a bad aircraft.cfg. Unless you are a developer yourself, that kind of thing is tough to fix. One last thing - if you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, some add-on planes will fail to load, sometimes triggering a dialog which says "Unable to load visual model". If this happens, you need to download Dave Parsons' excellent MDREPAIR.ZIP, which will fix the error and allow the planes to load normally. Andrew Herd andrew@flightsim.com
  13. How To Build Your Own Aircraft - A Step By Step Guide For Beginners Part 1: Finding And Installing FS2002 Aircraft By Andrew Herd Some years ago I wrote a series of "how to" guides on installing aircraft in FS2000. At the time I realised that there was a need, but I had no idea how great it was - nearly 5000 people worked their way through the series. Many of those people emailed me to tell me how much they had appreciated the tutorials, which were my way of repaying the countless freeware authors whose products I was teaching people to install. After the release of FS2002, it became clear that enough changes had been made to Flight Simulator that it was worth writing another series, customised for the new version. Here it is. I have kept some of the text from the old tutorials, but where it is necessary I have updated it for FS2002 and most of the screen shots have been redone. I have extended the tutorial slightly to include common problems that people have installing aircraft in the new version of the sim. If you are reading this, I can imagine that you have flown everywhere and done everything you can do in the Microsoft default aircraft set. By now you will be intimately familiar with the Cessna, have flown the Mooney upside down under San Francisco bridge, and tried to land the 737 on a 400 foot dirt strip in North Dakota. The program has given up its secrets and you are looking for something else to try your hand at - and you have noticed that FlightSim.Com claims to have thousands of files there for download, but you just aren't quite sure how to go about it. Now is time to learn. First of all, before we even go looking for trouble, we need one essential utility, a shareware program called WinZip. Why WinZip? Well, many of the aircraft on this and other sites are in what are known as compressed files. You can imagine a compressed file as being like the suitcase you would like to take on holiday, with everything crushed into it, except with a compressed file you can get the kitchen sink in too. Aircraft creators use file compression to squeeze all the files that go together to make their planes into the smallest possible space - not only is it convenient to have everything collected together, it makes for faster downloads too. The universal format used around the net is what is called a 'zip' file, and the program you need to unpack a zip is called Winzip (there are others, such as PKZip, but this one is my favorite). The first thing you need to do to start this project is to create two directories on your hard disk: one called 'Downloads' and the other called 'Junk'. If you aren't sure how to do this, then I suggest going off and buying a book called Windows for Dummies (Windows XP For Dummies) (Windows ME For Dummies) (Windows 2000 For Dummies) and reading it thoroughly before coming back to try this, as your learning curve is going to be too steep otherwise. You will use these two directories to store the files you have downloaded and to unzip files before you install them in your Flight Simulator (henceforth known as FS) folder. To get WinZip, fire up your web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape) and click on this link. This should take you direct to the WinZip site and from there you can follow the link to downloading the evaluation version. When your browser pops up a dialog to ask you which folder to download the file to, make sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked and choose the download folder you just created to save it in. When you have finished getting WinZip, open up Windows Explorer, and take a look in the download folder. There should only be one file in there and it should be the install file for WinZip, so launch it by double-clicking on it and follow the instructions. Assuming you have a working FS setup you now have all the tools you need to build your own dream plane from the tens of thousands FlightSim.Com has to offer. OK, so now we have to decide which aircraft to get. You may have your own ideas, but I think we ought to build a 757. In the default install of FS you get a 737, a 777 and a brand new 747, but there is no 757 and we are going to plug the gap. The first thing you need to do is to log in to FlightSim.Com, if you haven't already done so. Many people never get behind the news page, so if you have never seen the guts of FlightSim.Com, you need to follow the member login hyperlink up at the top of the home page, just under the ad banner, and register as a user on the way. I have circled the link you need in red. Just click on the image on the left to see a larger version. Incidentally, don't worry about giving away your family secrets on the Internet, FlightSim.Com only uses the login to keep track of the number of users online. You won't get deluged with junk emails. Once you are logged in, you will need to follow the links to the 'main menu' - there is a big bold hypertext link down the bottom of the home page. The main menu page is the guts of FlightSim.Com and it is pretty daunting to look at, but it is well worth getting to know it, because it gives you access to all sorts of goodies and knowledge about FS. If you have got the time and the inclination, have a play around, clicking on the links to see what you get. Particularly useful ones include Product Reviews (which takes you to a long list of FS product reviews stretching back into the dim mists of time, when everything was in sepia); the Forums, where you can post messages and discuss FS to your heart's content, and Hangar Talk, which takes you to a whole series of help and special interest areas. About two-thirds the way down the right hand side is a bar saying 'File libraries (downloads)' and just below that is a link called 'search file libraries'. I have circled it in red and I want you to left click it. You should now have the Advanced File Search page up. This is right in under the hood of FlightSim.Com and if you understand how to use this page, the world of flight simulation is at your fingertips. The bit we want is sandwiched in between the two runway graphics. There are three selection boxes, two text boxes and a 'Start Search' button. Feel free to play around with this for a while, but once you are ready I would like you to left click on the button to the right of the top selection box, then grab the slider by left clicking, holding and dragging it until you see a line saying: 'FS2002 aircraft'. Select it by left clicking on it and the line should highlight. Okay, now type '757' (without the quotes) in the box called 'search for text' and click 'Start search'. After a pause, your screen should fill with a list of Boeing 757 files. There are ten on the first page and if you scroll down to the bottom, you will see a link called 'next ten files.' Left clicking this will bring up files 11 through 20 and so on. When I did the search, there were 19 files found, which should be enough for anyone, but by the time you do this search, there are likely to be many more, so don't be upset if none of the files in this illustration appear on the page you see. The 757 is a popular aircraft and who knows how many designers are honing new ones out there right now. Who knows, Microsoft may even be working on a 757 as the new airliner for FS2004? The aircraft we want is second down in the screen shot (it most likely won't even be on the first page by the time you read this) and it is based on a popular design by David Randolph, repainted and upgraded by Brandon Williams. Because we can't rely on the 757 we want being on the first page, we are going to go back to FlightSim.Com's Advanced File Search page, so that I can show you how to use it. You can get there either by using the 'back' button on your browser or by clicking the 'exit list files' links on the page. Back again at the Advanced File Search page, make sure that you still have the "search only file sections" dialog set to FS2002 aircraft and type 'n604dl97.zip' (no quotes again) but this time in the 'file name' box. Then hit 'start search'. Got the plane first time, huh? You should have one file in your list, titled 'FS2002 Delta Air Lines Boeing 757-200' and right above it are two links, one saying 'download,' the other saying 'view.' Left click 'download' and up comes the copyright page, boring I know, but a necessary evil, given the number of pirates out there. Take a deep breath and left click 'I accept, start download' button. Up should pop the file download dialog again, and making sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked if you are using Windoze 98 or ME, click OK, then use the 'Save as' dialog to select your download folder and click the OK button again. If you are using Windows XP the screen will look like the shot opposite and you should left click the save button and then select your download folder to receive the new file. Time will pass, depending on the speed of your modem and the quality of your Internet connection. When the download is finished, close the download dialog box, back up the menus on FlightSim.Com until you see the logout prompt, click that, wait until you are back at the site's main screen, close your browser and shut down your Internet connection. Now fire up Windows Explorer (if you use XP you can just hit the 'folders' button on Internet Explorer and open up your Download folder). If you have done everything right, there, sitting all on its lonesome should be n604dl97.zip, although depending on how Windows is set up on your machine, you may not be able to see the .zip bit. If you have WinZip installed on your machine, the file icon should be a yellow filing cabinet in a vice. Open the file in WinZip by double clicking on on the n604dl97.zip icon (my apologies to people who have Windows set up so that single clicks substitute for double clicks). In the colorful WinZip window that opens up, you should see a worryingly long list of files. Click on the 'extract' button and you will get a new dialog which is there to help you select which folder you want to extract the zipped files into. If you use the 'folders/drives' pane to find the 'Junk' folder on your hard disk, and left click on the folder name to select it, the 'Extract to' pane should change to show something like 'C:\Junk.' Make sure you have the 'all files' button checked and especially the 'Use folder names' button checked too. To unpack the files all you have to do is to left click the extract button at the top right of the 'Extract' dialog and there should be a flurry of disk activity as your aircraft files are unzipped into the junk folder. Now if you look in the Junk folder, you should see that it contains a single folder. Now this is a particularly well organised add-on plane and you may not always get something as near a result as this. Some freeware designers like to make it a little tougher for their users and you will get a clutch of ten or more files and folders when you decompress the zip. Inside that folder are all the files that make up our plane, but as I hinted above, you are always going to get such a neat result. If that happens, click here to see what you do. Okay! Now we have to find where your copy of FS2002 is lurking on your hard disk. Most probably it is in Program files, though this varies depending on which type of installation you have. Left click on the little + sign next to the Program files folder in the left hand pane of Windows Explorer. A huge list of sub-folders should appear - drag the scroll bar on the divider down until you can see a folder called Microsoft games. Click the + sign next to that. Again, you should get a list of sub-folders appearing, the length of which will depend on how many Microsoft games you own, but one of those folders will be called FS2002. Make sure that you don't accidentally drop the plane into the FS2000 folder - believe me, it is easily done. At risk of getting repetitive strain injury here, left click the little plus sign next to the FS2002 folder. Even more sub-folders will appear - I bet you had no idea how many files there were on you hard disk Now one of these sub-folders should be called 'Aircraft,' find it but don't click on it, because that is where we are going to put our hard won 757. Now go back and select the Junk folder - you may need to use the scroll bar to find it depending on how much software is installed on your machine. Left click on the Junk folder in the left hand pane of Explorer and then select the Delta 757-200 folder by moving your mouse to the right hand pane. Left click on the plane folder and the drag all the way down until it is level with the 'Aircraft' folder and then move it across until 'Aircraft' folder is highlighted and let the mouse button go. The Delta 757-200 folder should disappear from Junk and move to Aircraft - check it has really gone there by left clicking the + sign next to Aircraft and somewhere in there you should see it. If the Delta 757-200 folder doesn't appear in Aircraft there are two possibilities. The first is that Windows hasn't updated Explorer to show the move - you can check this by left clicking View on the Explorer menu bar, then selecting Refresh from the drop down menu. If Delta 757-200 doesn't appear in Aircraft after this, either it is still in Junk, or you have missed Aircraft and dropped it in some other nearby folder. Or it is in FS2000. Or the network pixies have got it. The only good news if you lose it is that by now, you should know enough to go looking for it and move it to its rightful place. Close Explorer and any other windows that happen to be open. We are going to see this bird fly. Take a deep breath and start up FS2002. Once the default plane is on the runway, go to the menu bar and click 'aircraft' and then 'select aircraft'. If you scroll down the list of aircraft manufacturers you should see "Boeing" early on. Go to the line below, the one that says "Aircraft model" and left click on the arrow at the far right so that the list drops down. You should see "757-200" a little way down there. Left click on that line and admire your brand new 757 spinning around in the show room. Yeah, they haven't fitted any blades in the fans, but then I seem to remember you aren't paying for it either. Want to take it for a spin? Ok, select the OK button down the bottom, wait for it to load and you have a new plane. Depending on your flying skills, it is possible to get this mother off the ground at Meigs. Make sure you wind on a fair amount of trim and drop some flap if you don't plan going waterskiing. Additionally, I would floor the throttles and let the fans build up a bit of power before you release the brakes. And good luck; because this baby isn't quite as manoeuvrable as the Cessna. Before we finish up here, a quick word on things that can go wrong with aircraft installations. This 757 installs fine, but sometimes installations fail - the first sign that something has gone wrong being that the plane doesn't show up in the "select aircraft" dialog. There are a few things to check. First off, hunt down the list of manufacturers and peek into the "unspecified" section. Sometimes planes which weren't originally designed for FS2002 end up there. Next, check that you really did drop the plane's folder into \FS2002\aircraft - it is easy to miss. If it isn't either of those two things, then it is very likely that the plane you chose isn't compatible with FS2002. The best way to check this out is by looking at the readme file which will almost certainly be included with the plane. Freeware readmes are often very basic, but they normally say which version of the sim the plane was designed for - and if that was FS98 or before, then the plane is not compatible with FS2002 and won't show when you try to select it (of course, the best time to check this out is before you do the install...) The other reasons for an apparently good installation failing to produce a plane in the menu is a corrupt or missing air file or a bad aircraft.cfg. Unless you are a developer yourself, that kind of thing is tough to fix. One last thing - if you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, some add-on planes will fail to load, sometimes triggering a dialog which says "Unable to load visual model". If this happens, you need to download Dave Parsons' excellent MDREPAIR.ZIP, which will fix the error and allow the planes to load normally. The aircraft you have just installed uses a default Microsoft panel and sound set. If you want to make your plane more realistic, then please read the next article in this series, which will teach you the art of installing a different panel. Andrew Herd andrew@flightsim.com
  14. How To Build Your Own Aircraft Part 1: Finding And Installing FS2000 Aircraft By Andrew Herd If you are reading this, I can imagine that you have flown everywhere and done everything you can do in the Microsoft default aircraft set. By now you will be intimately familiar with the Cessna, have flown the Mooney upside down under Golden Gate Bridge, and tried to land the 737 on a 400 foot dirt strip in North Dakota. The program has given up its secrets and you are looking for something else to try your hand at - and you have noticed that FlightSim.Com claims to have thousands of files there for download, but you just aren't quite sure how to go about it. Now is time to learn. First of all, before we even go looking for trouble, we need one essential utility, a shareware program called WinZip. Why WinZip? Well, many of the aircraft on this and other sites are in what are known as compressed files. You can imagine a compressed file as being like the suitcase you would like to take on holiday, with everything crushed into it, except with a compressed file you can get the kitchen sink in too. Aircraft creators use file compression to squeeze all the files that go together to make their planes into the smallest possible space - not only is it convenient to have everything collected together, it makes for faster downloads too. The universal format used around the net is what is called a 'zip' file, and the program you need to unpack a zip is called WinZip (there are others, including the original zip file utility PKzip, but this one is my favorite). The first thing you need to do to start this project is to create two directories on your hard disk: one called 'Downloads' and the other called 'Junk'. If you aren't sure how to do this, then I suggest going off and buying a book called Windows for Dummies and reading it thoroughly before coming back to try this, as your learning curve is going to be too steep otherwise. You will use these two directories to store the files you have downloaded and to unzip files before you install them in your Flight Simulator (henceforth known as FS) folder. To get WinZip, fire up your web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape) and click on this link. This should take you direct to the WinZip site and from there you can follow the link to downloading the evaluation version. When your browser pops up a dialog to ask you which folder to download the file to, make sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked and choose the download folder you just created to save it in. When you have finished getting WinZip, open up Windows Explorer, and take a look in the download folder. There should only be one file in there and it should be the install file for WinZip, so launch it by double-clicking on it and follow the instructions. Assuming you have a working FS setup you now have all the tools you need to build your own dream plane from the tens of thousands FlightSim.Com has to offer. OK, so now we have to decide which aircraft to get. You may have your own ideas, but I think we ought to build a 747. For some reason Microsoft did not think of putting one in the default FS setup, and while this is a shame, there are hundreds to choose from on FlightSim.Com. The first thing you need to do is to log in to FlightSim.Com, if you haven't already done so. Many people never get beyond the news page, so if you have never seen the guts of FlightSim.Com, you need to follow the 'member login' hyperlink up at the top of the home page, just under the ad banner, and register as a user on the way. I have circled the link you need in red. Just click on the image on the left to see a larger version. Incidentally, don't worry about giving away your family secrets on the Internet, FlightSim.Com only uses the login to keep track of the number of users online. You won't get deluged with junk emails. I've been a member for many years and haven't received a single one. Once you are logged in, you will need to follow the links to the 'main menu' - there is a big bold hypertext link down the bottom of the home page. The main menu page is the guts of FlightSim.Com and it is pretty daunting to look at, but it is well worth getting to know it, because it gives you access to all sorts of goodies and knowledge about FS. If you have got the time and the inclination, have a play around, clicking on the links to see what you get. Particularly useful ones include Product Reviews (which takes you to a long list of FS product reviews stretching back into the dim mists of time) and the Forums, where you can post messages and discuss FS to your heart's content. About two-thirds the way down the right hand side is a bar saying 'File Libraries (Downloads)' and just below that is a link called 'Search File Libraries'. I have circled it in red and I want you to left click it. You should now have the Advanced File Search page up. This is right in under the hood of FlightSim.Com and if you understand how to use this page, the world of flight simulation is at your fingertips. The bit we want is sandwiched in between the two runway graphics. There are three selection boxes, two text boxes and a 'Start Search' button. Feel free to play around with this for a while, but once you are ready I would like you to left click on the button to the right of the top selection box, then grab the slider by left clicking, holding and dragging it until you see a line saying: 'FS2000 aircraft'. Select it by left clicking on it and the line should highlight. Okay, now type '747' (without the quotes) in the box called 'search for text' and click 'Start search'. After a pause, your screen should fill with a list of 747 files. There are ten on the first page and if you scroll down to the bottom, you will see a link called 'next ten files.' Left clicking this will bring up files 11 through 20 and so on. When I did the search, there were 65 files found, which should be enough for anyone, but by the time you do this search, there are likely to be many more, so don't be upset if none of the files in this illustration appear on the page you see. To keep this as simple as possible, I want to use a particular aircraft file and that means going back to the Advanced File Search page. You can get there either by using the 'back' button on your browser or by clicking the 'exit list files' links on the page. Back again at the Advanced File Search page, leave everything as it is and type 'b7473sab.zip' (no quotes again) but this time in the 'file name' box. Then hit 'start search'. You are a real pro now - got the plane first time, huh? You should have one file in your list, titled 'FS2000 Sabena Boeing 747-329SCD' and right above it are two links, one saying 'download,' the other saying 'view.' Left click download and up comes the copyright page, boring I know, but a necessary evil, given the number of pirates out there. Take a deep breath and left click 'I accept, start download' button. Up should pop the file download dialog again, and making sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked, click OK. Use the 'Save as' dialog to select your download folder and then click the OK button. Time will pass, depending on the speed of your modem and the quality of your Internet connection. When the download is finished, close the download dialog box, close your browser and shut down your Internet connection. Now fire up Windows Explorer and open up your Download folder. If you have done everything right, there, sitting all on its lonesome should be b7473sab.zip, although depending on how Windows is set up on your machine, you may not be able to see the .zip bit. If you have WinZip installed on your machine, the file icon should be a yellow filing cabinet in a vice. Open the file in WinZip by double clicking on on the b7473sab.zip icon (my apologies to people who have Windows set up so that single clicks substitute for double clicks). In the colorful WinZip window that opens up, you should see a worryingly long list of files. Click on the 'extract' button and you will get a new dialog which is there to help you select which folder you want to extract the zipped files into. If you use the 'folders/drives' pane to find the 'Junk' folder on your hard disk, and left click on the folder name to select it, the 'Extract to' pane should change to show something like 'C:\Junk.' Make sure you have the 'all files' button checked and especially the 'Use folder names' button checked too. To unpack the files all you have to do is to left click the extract button at the top right of the 'Extract' dialog and there should be a flurry of disk activity as your aircraft files are unzipped into the junk folder. Now if you look in the Junk folder, you should see that it contains ten files. Five of them are folders, and each of these contains more files. One of the remaining files is called Readme - if you double click on it, you can read why Vital Vanbeginne created this particular aircraft. We are that close to having a flyable plane here. Although Vital, the creator of the aircraft, has packaged the files which make up the plane pretty well, you can't install them into FS2000 just as they are, because they all need to be in one named aircraft folder. So make sure you still have the Junk directory selected in Windows Explorer, so that all the files and folders within it are visible, and then left click on the word 'File' on Windows Explorer's menu bar (that's at the very top left, just under where it says 'Exploring Junk'). When the file menu drops down, left click on the 'new' prompt, which should appear some way down the menu. Yet another sub-menu will spring out. Left click the word 'Folder' on this one, and the menu should disappear and a new folder should appear with the name highlighted under the icon. Type in 'B7473SAB' here, without the quotes. Now for a tricky bit. I want you to select every other file and folder in the Junk folder and drag it into the B7473SAB folder, until it is the only folder visible in the Junk folder. Okay! Now we have to find where your copy of FS2000 is lurking on your hard disk. Most probably it is in Program files, so left click on the little + sign next to the Program files folder in the left hand pane of Windows Explorer. A huge list of sub-folders should appear - drag the scroll bar on the divider down until you can see a folder called Microsoft games. Click the + sign next to that. Again, you should get a list of sub-folders appearing, the length of which will depend on how many Microsoft games you own, but one of those folders will be called FS2000. At risk of getting repetitive strain injury here, left click the little plus sign next to that! Even more sub-folders will appear - I bet you had no idea how many files there were on you hard disk Now one of these sub-folders should be called 'Aircraft,' find it but don't click on it, because that is where we are going to put our hard won 747 [graphic]. Now go back and select the Junk folder - you may need to use the scroll bar to find it depending on how much software is installed on your machine. Left click on the Junk folder in the left hand pane of Explorer and then select the B7473SAB folder by moving your mouse to the right hand pane. Left click on B747SAB3 and the drag all the way down until it is level with the 'Aircraft' folder and then move it across until 'Aircraft' folder is highlighted and let the mouse button go. The B7473SAB folder should disappear from Junk and move to Aircraft - check it has really gone there by left clicking the + sign next to Aircraft and somewhere in there you should see it. If the B7473SAB folder doesn't appear in Aircraft there are two possibilities. The first is that Windows hasn't updated Explorer to show the move - you can check this by left clicking View on the Explorer menu bar, then selecting Refresh from the drop down menu. If B7473SAB doesn't appear in Aircraft after this, either it is still in Junk, or you have missed Aircraft and dropped it in another nearby folder. By now, you should know enough to go looking for it and move it to its rightful place. Close Windows Explorer and any other windows that happen to be open. Take a deep breath and start up Flight Simulator. Once the default plane is on the runway, go to the menu bar and click 'aircraft' and then 'select aircraft'. If you scroll down the list you should see 'B747 329SCD Sabena' there. Left click on that line and admire your brand new 747 spinning around in the show room. Want to take it for a spin? Ok, select the green check mark, wait for it to load and you have a new plane - just don't expect it to get into the air at Meig's, that's all. If don't want to end up in the sea, I'd go to Denver or JFK of somewhere with the kind of real estate that a really big jet demands. And good luck; because this baby isn't quite as manoeuvrable as the Cessna. The aircraft you have just installed uses a default Microsoft panel and sound set. If you want to make your plane more realistic, then please read the next article in this series, which will teach you the art of installing a different panel. Andrew Herd andrew.herd@btinternet.com
  15. How To Build Your Own Aircraft Part 3: How To Install FS2000 Sound Files By Andrew Herd If you have read the first two articles in this series, hopefully you will have downloaded Yannic Cathalina's gracious Boeing 747, installed Freeware Works excellent panel and flown around admiring the result. If not, you will probably be rebuilding your hard disk and your relationship, but no-one said the best things in life should ever be easy. Now if you are a discerning flightsimmer, you will have noticed something is wrong... something that is hard to put your finger on, but which leaves this setup just less than perfect. Yeah, that's right, the sound. There is no way that 747s make the horrible tinny whine that you have gotten used to hearing. They produce a a proper roar. In this lesson, we are going to go looking for a roar. OK, so let's go to the FlightSim.Com search page and fix this whine but good. When you have got the page in view, I would like you to pull the slider in the top box down until you can select 'FS2000 sound' and type '747' in the box called 'Search for text,' before you hit the search key. You may wonder why we are being so selective and not searching for any 747 sound file, but in my experience sound sets from FS98 or before do not always work reliably with FS2000. Sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you don't; but since there is a good selection of FS2K 747 sounds around, we can afford to go for stuff we know is going to work. The first thing that will strike you about the results of the search is just how big the zips are. This is not good news if you have a slow modem, but sadly it can't be helped. Take my word for it, there is no such thing as a small sound set, not if you want something worth listening to. There are good reasons for sound sets being big: for a start, the 'wave' file format that FS2000 uses isn't very space efficient compared to more modern sound recording formats; second, the higher the quality of a sound sample the bigger it gets; third, the shorter a sample is, the more repetitive it is to listen to, which is an issue on any flight, not just long ones; and finally, the larger sound sets have greater numbers of different sounds in them, instead of cheating the way small sets do by modulating one base sound. The long and the short of it is that I don't think I have ever come across a good sound set that weighs in at less than 4 megs, although there must be some exceptions. The sound set we want to download is called 7472ksnd.zip. If you have worked through the previous two articles in the series, uou should know how to get it, so I am going to cut down on the hand-holding and assume that you are on your way to becoming a power user. Go back to the search page, delete anything you typed there before, and type '7472ksnd.zip' in the 'file name' box. Then hit the search button. You should come up with one file in the list, a sound set by Mike Hambly. I've chosen this one, not only because Mike recorded it, but also because it is the smallest high quality sound set I can find (and believe me, I tested a few). There are some smaller sets out there, and maybe if you look hard enough you will find a good one, but at the time of writing, this was the 'best buy' in terms of bangs for bucks - it combines a relatively short download with some impressive sound. So we'll go for it. Hit 'download' and go through the routine, making sure that you choose the download folder we created to save the file in. While we are waiting for it to download, I had better tell you that Mike is the king of the flight simulator sound recordists. If you see his name attached to a sound set, it is a winner; I can honestly say I haven't come across a dud Hambly sound set yet. Incidentally, if you think this is a big sound set, the set I use is Mike's 747*2ksn.zip (replace the star with 'a' 'b' 'c' and 'd' to get all four files) which is a massive 17 megs of sheer hi-octane delight - and all of this fun is freeware. It might cost you nothing to download, but it took Mike many hours to record it and massage it to set it up so that it gives the best possibly results in Flight Simulator. So when we are done, make sure you email him and tell him how much you appreciated all that hard work. All downloads have to end sooner or later, and eventually you will hear Windows beep at you and you can close down the download window, log off FlightSim.Com and shut down your web browser. It is always worth logging off FlightSim.Com, by the way, because if you just shut down your browser on the way out, the site will still think you are logged on, and if you need to access the web pages again you may come across a puzzling message saying that a user with your account name is still logged on, and you need to force him out. Well, that user is you! So remember to log off, if you can. After shutting down your browser, have a look at your download directory using Windows Explorer. If you haven't been downloading other stuff, you should have three files there, and one of them should be 7472ksnd.zip. Okay, so let's check out the contents of this zip file. Double click it and you should see something like this (see picture at right). If you scroll up and down the file list, you should see a file called 747readme.txt. However experienced you become at installing FS add-ons, it is always good practice to find any documentation included in zips and to read it. You won't always want to follow the instructions (sometimes there won't be any), but it pays to check out any special requests the author of the package may have before you leap in. So we are going to have a look here. One of the neat features on the WinZip interface is that you don't have to unzip files to look at them, and you can open 747readme just by double-clicking on it, unless you have one of those new-fangled single-click setups. The advantage of this is that it allows you to make sure you have everything you need to do an installation. If you don't, you can just shut down WinZip and get any missing files without having to remember where you are when you are half way through an installation. The text file should open in Notepad, and while I would like you to read it, don't spend too much time on it, because we are going to do this installation by the book, which means doing it slightly differently to the way Mike's instructions suggest. The quick way to install a sound set (it works for panels too) is just to unzip the whole lot into the sound folder of the aircraft you want, and as long as the set contains a valid sound.cfg, everything will work. The one problem with this method is that is you ever want to use the sound set for another 747, you will have to copy all the sound files into that aircraft's sound folder too, and with 20 Mb sound sets becoming more and more common, you had better have a lot of spare hard disk space if you plan to download more than a couple of different Jumbos. The solution is to install the sound set in its own directory in \FS2000\fsfsconv and make the aircraft use it by setting up an alias in its sound.cfg file which points to the sound set in fsfsconv - using exactly the same method we did to install the panel in the last lesson. Using an fsfsconv alias gives us the greatest possible flexibility in using the sound set. We can associate it with as many aircraft as we like - and if we find a better set, we can install that in its own fsfsconv directory and then install it in the aircraft just by doing a single line edit in their sound.cfg files. So go find the fsfsconv folder. As the illustration shows, the path is c:\program files\microsoft games\fs2000\aircraft\fsfsconv assuming you have used the default setup for FS2000. If you know enough to have used anything other than the default setup, you probably don't need to be reading this! If you take a look in fsfsconv, you should be able to see the folder we used to install our 747 panel - what we are going to do is to create a new folder to keep our sound set in. A few people seem to have trouble with creating new folders, so we will just go through it one more time here. With the \FS2000\fsfsconv folder hightlighted, left click on the file menu, wait for the drop-down menu to appear and left click on 'new,' then slide the mouse pointer and left click on 'folder.' A brand new folder will appear, which Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen for once to give a sensible name to. After racking their brains in countless meetings and spending several hundred thousand dollars on outside consultant expertise, they decided to call it 'new folder.' Neat idea, huh? Don't enjoy it for too long, because we are going to have to rename it. Immediately after you bring it into the world, the new folder should have its name surrounded in a rectangle, with the words 'new folder' highlighted in blue. If you see this, you can just type the new name in from the keyboad. We are going to call this folder: sound.7472ksnd Do not get this wrong. There are many things you can get wrong in life, and I have made my share of mistakes (some of them were more fun than others, but that is another story), but it is vital that you check this name is correct, because if the alias we are going to set up later doesn't match this folder name, things will not work out as planned and I might have to issue a demerit. The reason for giving this folder such a complicated name, with that dot in the middle of it and all, may not be immediately obvious, but one day you may find you have dozens of downloaded panels and sound sets in fsfsconv and if you don't adopt a naming convention early on, you may find it difficult to work out what you are looking at in years to come. You shouldn't have problems renaming the folder, but if you get called down for dinner at the wrong moment, or the phone goes, or the cat has a fit and you get distracted, the folder may not have a rectangle around the highlight and you won't be able to rename it just by typing. You can get the rectangle back by right-clicking on the folder icon, sliding the pointer down the drop-down menu that appears and left-clicking 'rename' and then typing in the new name. With the sound.7472ksnd folder safely created, we can go back to our download folder, check for any open WinZip windows and shut them down and then open 7472ksnd.zip in WinZip. Our next move is to hit the extract button and then use the 'folders/drive' box to select our new folder. The path is c:\program files\microsoft games\fs2000\aircraft\fsfsconv\sound.7472ksnd which will give your mouse some exercise as you expand the folders and pull the sliders so you can keep everything in view. As soon as you can see the sound.7472ksnd folder in the directory tree, left click it to select it and then hit the extract button so unpack the files into it. When the green light comes back on and WinZip is done, close it and go to the sound.7472ksnd folder using Windows Explorer, just to check that the files are all there. You should see something like this image. If the folder is empty, you extracted the sound set somewhere else and I wish you luck in finding it. The next step is a crucial one. Use Windows Explorer to collapse the fsfsconv folder hierarchy and open \FS2000\aircraft - then scroll down to our old friend the b7473sab folder and expand that so that you can see its sub-folders. You should see something like this image. Now go to the sound folder and open it. There should be one file in there, called sound.cfg. It should have a little notepad icon in a white rectangle, which means it is 'associated' with Notepad and you can launch it by double clicking it. What we are going to do is to edit this file to point at the sound file folder we put in \FS2000\fsfsconv. Open sound.cfg. The file should contain the following lines, which point at the default 737 sound file, which as I said earlier in this lesson when all of you were still awake, reminds me more of a vacuum cleaner than something you might fly thousands of miles in: [fltsim] alias=b737_400\sound PAY ATTENTION BROWN! PUT THAT WOMAN DOWN OR I WILL SEE YOU AFTER CLASS! Everyone awake? Good, because we do not want to get this bit wrong. I want you to change the lines in sound.cfg to read: [fltsim] alias=fsfsconv\sound.7472ksnd Do not forget the full stop after the word sound and be VERY CAREFUL about your typing here, because if the folder name in sound.cfg does not match the folder name in fsfsconv exactly, your aircraft will disappear like the will 'o the wisp and you will not be able to find it in the select aircraft menu ever again, unless you go back and edit sound.cfg. Quite why FS2K reacts this strongly to a typo is beyond me, but it does, so take extra care here and triple check. Then save the file. Now start up FS2K, switch to our Sabena 747 and get ready to send Mike Hambly [mhambly@flightsim.com] an email telling him what a wonderful guy he is for making this sound set available as freeware, because the noise you are hearing guys and gals, is a proper Boeing 747 sound, and if I wasn't Scots, it would make me feel proud to be an American. If you want to hear it even better, change to a spot plane view, but get ready to step back a little, as I don't want you getting sucked down those intakes. You can do this by going to the FS2000 menu and clicking 'Views' and then 'View Options,' making sure you have 'spot plane' checked and then altering the distance setting to about 600 feet. The default of 145 is fine for a Cessna, but too close to a seven forty seven for comfort. Now relax, turn the speakers up loud, and push those throttles wide open. Is that not a fine noise? Is the world a good place, or no? Andrew Herd andrew.herd@btinternet.com
  16. How To Build Your Own Aircraft Part 2: How To Find And Download An FS2000 Panel And Install It By Andrew Herd If you worked through Part 1 of this series, you should have a Sabena Boeing 747 installed in Flight Simulator 2000 (henceforth FS2K) in addition to the default aircraft. The Sabena 747 is a great aircraft, but like many freeware planes for FS2K, it uses a default instrument panel which looks nothing like the panel from a real 747. If you have been around FlightSim.Com for any length of time, you will have heard people going on endlessly about installing new panels, and you may have wondered what they were going on about. This article will make you a member of that group, because it will show you how to find a new panel for your new 747 and how to install it. The instructions here will not work unless you have already installed the aircraft in the first article. We are going to go a step further than we did last time, because we are going to look at the configuration files that are part of the guts of FS2K. FS2K uses config files to set up everything from the way the scenery looks to the way aircraft fly. If you know how to edit these files safely, then FS2K is defenceless before you. For now, I want you to start up Windows Explorer and take a look at the folder structure of the Sabena 747. If you remember (assuming you used the default setup for FS2K) the aircraft is installed in C:\Program files\Microsoft games\FS2000\aircraft\b7473sab. What a mouthful. You can go straight to it by left clicking on the plus sign next to - then the plus sign next to Program files - then the plus sign next to Microsoft games and so on until you finally click the plus sign next to b7473sab and expand that folder. If you look, you will see several sub-folders including model, panel, sound and texture. The sub folder called model contains information about the way the aircraft appears in FS2K; while texture contains the graphics which 'skin' the plane. The panel and sound sub folders are pretty self explanatory. Let's take a look in the panel sub folder by clicking on the word panel in the left hand pane of Windows explorer. You will see just one file, called panel, or panel.cfg, depending on which options you have turned on in Explorer. The panel file should open in Notepad and it should have just two lines in it, saying: [fltsim] alias=FSFSConv\panel.Jet.Heavy.4 Basically, all the panel.cfg file is doing is to point at one of the default instrument panels stored in FS2K. When you select the Sabena Boeing 747 aircraft in FS2K, it does a quick read of the panel.cfg file and loads whichever panel it is told to. The point of all this fiddling about is to point up the fact that the modular nature of Flight Simulator makes it possible for an aircraft to load with just about any panel you want - so if it pleases you to fly a 747 with the default Cessna 182 panel, you can, just by altering the panel.cfg to look like this: [fltsim] alias=c182\panel This sounds totally wacky, but there is method in Microsoft's madness, for once. While it is rare for aircraft files to get seriously big, panels can trespass over the 4 Mb mark these days (don't laugh if you are reading this in 2005 and panels are a minimum of 1.4 Gb, remember I was writing this a long time ago.) So if you are into 747s and you find one panel you really like or want to get familiar with, you can load up the panel once, install six different aircraft, point the alias in every aircraft's panel.cfg file at your favourite panel, and when you are flying no-one will know you are cheating (-: Makes sense now, huh? Incidentally, you can do the same thing with sound, but that will be the subject of the next article in this series. What we are going to do right now is to find a new panel for our 747 and make FS2K load it instead of the default one when we run the plane. If you aren't connected to the Internet already, fire up your connection and point your web browser at FlightSim.Com. I want you to log on, and then go to the 'search file libraries' page from the main menu, just like we did last time. Pull down the slider in the 'search only file section' drop down until you can select 'FS2000 panels' by left clicking it, then type '747' (without the quotes) in the 'search for text' box. Now left click the 'start search' button. You will get a list of panels to choose from, each with its own description and picture. Browse through the list using the right hand scroll bar and the 'next 10 files' link down at the bottom of the web page. We are after a particular file, so I want you to go back to the search page (use the back arrow, or the 'exit list files' link on the web page. Once you are at the search page again, make sure that the 'search for text' box is empty by deleting '747' and type 'tfw744.zip' in the file name box. Check that 'FS2000 panels' is still selected and then click the 'start search' button. You should get a one-file search result, showing an 880k panel for a 747-400. I want you to download this to the download folder you created in the last session, by clicking the download link above the file description, then clicking 'I accept, start download' on the download copyright page, and selecting your download folder as the destination. Once the download is complete, close your web browser and shut down your Internet link. If you take a look in your download folder now, you should have two files there. The first is your 747 (b7473sab.zip), the other is the file you just downloaded, tfw744.zip. If you can't see tfw744.zip there, you downloaded it to the wrong directory and you need to use the finder to locate it. Next I want you to go to your 'Junk' folder and delete everything in it (that's why we call it 'junk'). Then go back to tfw744.zip and double click on the icon. Winzip should show the contents of the file. There should be six files, as shown in the illustration. Three of them have winzip icons next to them, and these are actually zip files within the zip! Make sure you have 'use folder names' checked in Winzip or the files will decompress in an unholy mess which even I will not be able to sort out. Hit the 'extract' button and unzip everything into your junk folder. Now go check out Junk. All the files should be there. Depending on how you have set up Windows Explorer they may appear in a different order to the illustration. The first thing to do in these circumstances is to RTFM (this being a family web site I can only reveal what this means by private email, as long as you can guarantee to me that you are over the age of 35. In general, this means being familiar with the early works of groups like Fleetwood Mac) by double clicking the file labelled readme. This panel being a product of the Freeware Works, there is a really great set of instructions, but believe me, this is the exception and you won't always get so lucky. The majority of free panels come 'as is' and there are no guarantees. We are going to loosely follow the instructions here, the Junk folder being our temporary directory, but close the readme file for now and stop talking in the back there, you are ruining my concentration. First step, I want you to open the zip file called gauges.zip. Some of you may see this as a file called 'Gauges' with a little yellow filing cabinet held in a vise. Double click on it to open (apologies again to everyone with single click set-ups, it's my age, you know). You should see something like the illustration. Use the scroll bar on the right just to show how many files are in there, but be careful not to highlight any files inside the Winzip window or those are the only ones you will unpack. Now press the extract button and use the 'folders/drives' box in Winzip to find the folder where FS2000's gauges live. Assuming you have a standard setup, this means left clicking the little plus sign next to C:, then using the scrollbar to find program files and clicking the plus sign next to that, then scrolling down again to find Microsoft Games and clicking the plus sign next to that, then clicking the plus sign next to FS2000, and then left clicking on the folder you see called 'gauges,' - see the illustration. Resist the urge to click the plus sign next to gauges, or it will become a habit. OK, with gauges highlighted, go to the Winzip icon bar and click 'extract.' There will be a burst of activity. In all probability, Winzip will quietly extract all the files and then go about its business, but you may see a message like this, if you have installed any other panels besides the Microsoft default set. If you get asked about a file overwrite, you will have to weigh it up yourself. In general, I look at the dates and press no if the file I am overwriting is newer. In this case I would press 'yes' since the file I am overwriting is older. But as I say, hopefully this won't happen to you. When Winzip is done all the extract dialogs will disappear and the green light will come on again at the bottom right of the Winzip window. You can close Winzip and breath again. You may be wondering why we have installed the gauges first. Well, in my experience the most common problem people face when installing new panels is forgetting to put the gauges in the \FS2000\Gauges directory, with the result that when the panel loads for the first time they are faced with a bitmap with a series of black holes where the instruments should be. If you install the gauges first you won't forget them. Now the next step is to install the rest of the panel files. This is a little more complicated than installing the gauges as we are going to have to make a new folder to put them in, deep within the folder structure of FS2000 - but if you have already worked your way through the first article in this series, you should have done this once already. Just make sure you read this carefully, and keep double-checking. Find your FS2000 directory using Windows Explorer (it should still be open from when you last used it). I want you to click on the plus sign next to the 'aircraft' subfolder in FS2000 and then search through the folders inside 'aircraft' until you see one called 'fsfsconv.' When you click the plus sign - OK, I've had it with saying 'click the plus sign,' from now on I'm going to say 'open' or 'expand,' right? - next to the fsfsconv folder you should see something like this illustration. Fsfsconv is where all the panels lurk, and we are going to add ours to the list. What we need to do is to create a folder inside Fsfsconv called 'panel.747' excluding the quotes of course (and from now on, I'm not going to remind you about that anymore, either!) So let's go. With fsfsconv open, click on 'file' in Windows Explorer, then highlight 'new' and finally, slide the pointer over to 'folder' and click on that just like you did to create the 747 aircraft folder in the last article. A new folder will duly appear and I want you to rename it 'panel.747' as shown in the illustration. The new folder line-up should look like this. The next thing we need to do is to go back to the Junk folder, and double click 'panel.zip' so that it opens in Winzip. I want you to unzip the contents of this file to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2000\aircraft\fsfsconv\panel.747. I can hear some sharp intakes of breath out there, so I'd better do some explaining. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2000\aircraft\fsfsconv\panel.747 is simply the full 'path' name of the folder you just created, the one called panel.747. If you imagine that every single one of those backslashes represents a plus sign you have to click on in Windows Explorer, you can see that this is just a shorthand way of referring you to a particular folder, without saying 'click the little plus sign' six times. So hit the Winzip 'extract' button and go through the directory structure in the dialog that pops up just the way you did before We'll go through it one more time in detail, expand by left clicking the little plus sign next to C:, then using the scrollbar to find program files expand that, then scrolling down again to find Microsoft Games and expand that, then expand FS2000, then expand 'aircraft', then expand 'fsfsconv' and finally, left click on the folder called 'panel.747' so that it is highlighted and hit the extract button. You will almost certainly find that you need to use the horizontal slider to see what you are doing at some stage, because this is a deeply nested folder structure. We are very nearly there, except that our Sabena 747 is still blissfully unaware that we are going to all this trouble on its behalf and we need to edit its panel.cfg file to let it know which panel it is going to use. So use Windows Explorer to go to the b7473sab folder (which is in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2000\aircraft if you get lost.) If you created the association between files ending in .cfg and notepad, panel.cfg should have a little notepad icon, and you can just double click on it to open it automatically in Notepad. If you didn't, go to the back of the class. We are going to do a small hack to this file - because it points to the default Microsoft Panel and no-one wants to be seen dead flying with that. Instead we are going to point it at our new file. As we know already, the panel.cfg belonging to the Sabena 747 points to a default panel, so we are going to edit it to point to our new panel. Delete everything in the original panel.cfg and type this instead: [fltsim] alias=FSFSConv\Panel.747 Then click on file, then save and close down notepad. Okay, now the Sabena 747 knows which panel it is supposed to be flying with and we are set, but what about that 'sounds.zip' file we left in Junk. Oh oh, better go back and deal with that. Good job you were concentrating, huh? Fire up Windows Explorer, open up 'sounds' in Winzip by double clicking on it and you should see something like the illustration. I want you to unzip those files to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2000\sound and this time, you are on your own with Winzip, because you ought to know how to use it by now, but take a look at the graphic here if you get stuck. What this manoeuvre does is to stick a whole bunch of sounds which are associated with the panel in the right place. We should have the show on the road now, so start up FS2000, select the Sabena 747 and was it worth it? Well if you don't like the result, there are plenty of other panels out there. Be my guest and try 'em all! Trouble Shooting Still having problems? There are a couple of common mistakes that people make plus outside problems that may need to be resolved. For help with the most common difficulties read this additional information. Andrew Herd andrew.herd@btinternet.com
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