In case the title has bamboozled you all, what will I attempt to explain in this article is a question I, of all people, was asked innumerable times: my FS2002 Select Aircraft menus are all chock full of FS2000 aircraft. How do I categorize them?

Well, the solution is fairly simple. To relieve the tedium of an instructional article, let's do it in the form of ... let's see ... a recipe!

Ingredients

• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 (of which I am now a proud owner, by the way, so expect lots of reviews to bore you when you're too happy!)
• Lots of FS2000 aircraft that you wish to fly in FS2002
• Eyes (Recommended quantity: 2, for peripheral vision)
• A mouse (Muscardinus avellanarius)
• A keyboard

Method

1. Open the aircraft.cfg file of the FS2000 aircraft you want to categorize with respect to its manufacturer, model and livery.

This is located in the aircraft's main folder, the one which also contains the Fab Four: model, panel, sound and texture.

Aircraft.cfgs can be opened using Notepad. (Right-click, open Properties, and select Notepad in the 'Opens With' section.

(That of Sandro Bernardini's 737 is pictured)

The FS2000 737's aircraft.cfg:

2. Open the aircraft.cfg of any FS2002 default aircraft. (That of the Boeing 777 is pictured)

The FS2002 777's aircraft.cfg:

Now, the beginning two sections are what we're looking at. Note that the first section is largely identical. However, it's the second paragraph of the FS2002 777's aircraft.cfg that makes all the difference.

The text given is:

atc_airline=Soar
atc_flight_number=1123
atc_heavy=1

ui_manufacturer=Boeing
ui_type=777-300
ui_variation=Soar Airlines

visual_damage=1

description=On the outside, it may resemble the jetliners you've seen for
years. Inside, however, it's a whole new bird. The newest plane in the
long and proud Boeing family line is the 777, commonly referred to as the
"Triple Seven." This long-range, fuel-efficient twinjet was first
delivered in May 1995 to fill a gap in the market between the 747 and 767.
It is capable of seating 368 to 386 passengers.

What each section defines for FS2002 is as follows:

1. The UI Section

ui_manufacturer=Boeing
ui_type=777-300
ui_variation=Soar Airlines

This section is what this How To... revolves around!

"ui_manufacturer" tells FS - you guessed it! - who made the plane. (In this case, Boeing). What you enter here shows up in the topmost menu of the Select Aircraft screen. (Boeing, Cessna, etc.)

"ui_type" is the model, or make, of the plane. (Id est, 737-400, 172SP Skyhawk, etc.) What you enter in this section appears in the second menu on the Select Aircraft screen.

"ui_variation" is the livery of the aircraft. There is no list for this anywhere; you can enter what you want. It's pretty much the same as the "title" line in the FS2000 aircraft.cfg. You can enter "British Airways", "Blue Angels", or whatever. This will appear in the bottom-most menu on the Select Aircraft screen.

2. The ATC Section

atc_airline=Soar
atc_flight_number=1123
atc_heavy=1

"atc_airline" tells FS2002 what airline the aircraft belongs to. The entire list is contained within the airlines.cfg, found in the FS2002 Aircraft folder. While the default list contains only a few names ("Gaia", "Soar", etc.), more complete lists can be found at FlightSim.Com, such as this one (ACCALLS.ZIP). by Richard Taylor.

"atc_flight_number" and "atc_heavy" tell FS2002 the aircraft's flight number and whether it's a 'heavy' aircraft or not. ("Heavy" is ATC lingo for large aircraft such as the B767, A330, etc.)

Note that the ATC settings can be manipulated from within the FS2002 Select Aircraft screen itself.

3. The Rest

"enable_visual_damage" brings back the broken wings, scorched fuselage, and smoke that were seen in the FS2002 beta, but which went missing in the final release. '1' means, of course, 'yes', and '0' means 'no'.

In FS2002, the aircraft's description is now given in the aircraft.cfg, and not in the flight dynamics file, like in FS2000. (This is the same with other parameters as well; the aircraft.cfg is now pretty much the prima donna of your aircraft!) This text is what the "description" section defines.

To wrap up this Ph.D. thesis, all you really have to do to categorize your FS2000 aircraft is paste the following lines of text (theoretically anywhere) in its aircraft.cfg:

ui_manufacturer=
ui_type=
ui_variation=

Fill in the blanks as explained above. For any further questions, drop me a line or get in touch with the various flightsim for a around.

Happy landings

Aman Kumar
amankumar100@hotmail.com