AI and user aircrafts

Hi :)

 

So it is known not to fly AI aircrafts as user. How come some of the default aircrafts are both flyable and AI? :confused: I would like to add some flight plans for some default ones, I'm just wondering if those aircrafts are different and fine than the common AI ones like AIA, AIG, FSP, TFS, DJC, FAIB, etc...?

 

Thank you.

Regards.

The FS9 default aircraft are very basic and do not impact frame rates in any noticable manner but only when sparingly used as AI. However, the more modern flyable addon aircraft, which have far more complex external textures, panels, sounds, etc. will most certainly cause frame rate issues when used as AI. Moreover, other unpredictable issues can then arise as well, e.g. aircraft specific gear which does not retract.

 

Aircraft specifically designed for AI use use far more simple models, have ditto external textures and do not need frame rate killing panels and/or animations/sounds/effects, which are steered by programed panel gauges, etc.

 

In my FS9 I have even created separate AI versions of all my default aircraft, i.e. without panels or other unneccessary balast and with simplified external textures. It's also important that AI aircraft textures all have mipmaps, something which is not necessary for flyable aircraft

.

Hope this helps.

Hans

Thanks for the info. Just few questions again please.

What do you mean by simplified external textures and whatever else there is. You duplicate the default folder of an aircraft then you removed the panel and sound folders, and what else precisely? I don't know what's necessary or not for AI but for sure sound and panel should be excluded.

For mipmaps, I have noticed the textures become blurry when added for AI.

 

I just want to add flight plans for some DC-3, Beech Baron 58, Beech King Air 350, the Cessnas, Learjet 45 and a few others.

I took a lot of flyable aircraft that have or might have had been associated to Area-51 (KXTA) and turned them into AI. Mostly due to those planes not being AI from the begin with. I had UFOs of all types, the Valkyrie, A-12, UAV, U2, F-16's you name it fly in and out of my Area-51 project. I even had Janet 737-200's for nostalgia and the upgraded (China bought) current 737-600 Janets too. I even had the Beechcraft 1900/C fly in and out to Nut Tree, California. As you can imagine I followed real-life flight plans.

 

Those default aircraft should be fine to use as AI. I have hundreds of AI and many fly around me all the time with no noticeable frame hit. But these are meant to be AI. Though, I do have my AI scale set to 50%. I did have it at 100% but it got ridicules with ATC and the sheer amount of AI clutter on my TCAS that I had to drop my AI levels to a more reasonable level. At 50% I have a good amount of AI that fly around and fill up the airports. Plus, I have GA AI plans made with a tool here in the library (can't remember its name now) that will have GA only fly to airports that are more meant for GA and not big airports like KLAX, KDEN, KORD, etc. I thought that was so unrealistic to see a Cessna in the pattern as a 747, 737, etc. So I fixed that right quick.

 

With that, you may want to use that tool to make GA flight plans. I can't remember its name, but maybe someone else knows. I also can't remember if it's for FSX only or not. I now fly in FSX. Still got the massive FS2004 backup on multiple HDDs though.

A couple of good GA generating programs by Markus Brunner here that I've used forever.

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?searchid=65197939

Ital,

 

From what I remember from more than ten years ago, I firstly did what you have also already said namely, duplicating all stock plane folders and giving them new names, e.g. "AI Boeing 737-400". In these new duplicated folders I then removed panels, sound folders, any textures which were related to their crashed/damaged versions and all internal views, leaving only the bare minimum external paints (with mipmaps).

The titles in their duplicated aircraft.cfg files were changed as well in order to prevent title duplications, e.g. into "AI Boeing 737-400 Orbit" and the "ui_manufacturer=Boeing" into "ui_manufacturer=AI Boeing".

All scrape points were removed from the [contact_points] sections in their aircraft.cfg files because these are not necessary when crash detection is (permanently) switched off. This is also true for flyable planes.

After that I used the TTools program to edit the existing stock aircraft titles (but leaving their sequential numbering as is) into the exact new AI titles in the file "Aircraft030528". After re-compiling I now had separate and active AI versions of all my stock planes.

Lastly I edited all their AIR files so that the new AI planes were no longer selectable in the "Select Aircraft" drop down menu. I changed "Aircraft Type" from zeros (0) into twos (2).

 

However, this story goes on a lot further because since then I became bored stiff with seeing the same AI stock planes appearing all over the world, instead of locally painted ones, so I even replaced my AI stock planes by very many new and far better AI planes/paints of all sorts and sizes. I now have a total of 1200 locally painted AI planes/paints flying around all over the world and in my 986 active scenery layers.

 

Regards

Hans

Thank you so much Hans. I think now I know what to do for the default aircrafts for AI.

 

xtc, thanks for that link but seems it's invalid.

 

CRJ_simpilot, thanks for that GA flight plans airport tool, I will try to look for it.

 

Just a final quick question please so I don't start another topic.

In either AFCAD or ADE, is it possible to align all parking spots in a same line? I know how to select multiple ones and rotate them but to put them aligned, could it be done?

A couple of good GA generating programs by Markus Brunner here that I've used forever.

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?searchid=65197939

 

 

 

You need to post the file name. Links don't work. That really should be changed.

Just a final quick question please so I don't start another topic.

In either AFCAD or ADE, is it possible to align all parking spots in a same line? I know how to select multiple ones and rotate them but to put them aligned, could it be done?

 

How do you mean align in a straight line? You can rotate parking spots and do what ever you want though. Make sure your apron route is at least 50' wide because when you go to park using ATC it won't register as being in the parking spot. So if you save your flight and continue onward like I do, you'll won't be able to call up ATC clearance because you're not parked.

Any suggestions for best programs people use for all things mipmaps?

I am flying FSX and I got the GA flight generator, it said it was an upgraded version that works in FSX, but when I generated the plans nothing happened, I thought they had gone somewhere but a thorough search found nothing, plus they didn't show lol.

 

I know AI FS9 plans will kill FSX AI plans and at first I thought if they generated I could convert them but as I said nothing! Any Ideas?

CRJ_simpilot, I mean if either programs can align all parking spots to be on the same level or lined up correctly next to each other, to be all aligned straight next to each other from that side to another side. Like in the screenshots I included, each spot is placed differently, one further than the other. They are all facing the same degrees yes but are not lined up straight ahead, you can tell by the looks of the B777-300 tails. That's what I'm trying to do if it can be done so I don't have to do it one by one and I guess having distortions of each spot.

 

 

Skywatcher12, it depends what do you want to do. Do you want to add or remove mipmaps? I use DXTbmp program to convert FSX liveries to FS9 without mipmaps as I have noticed they are being blurry. Majority of the paints available don't seem to have mipmaps as you can tell by the size of the textures. A 1MB texture means no mipmap is included, a 1.25MB means there are.

You can align the parking spot anyway you like. But as you said it can only be done one at a time. I have yet to find a way to do it to multiple parking spots at once. I use AFX though and not ADE. And I did use AFCAD back in the day. When I last tried ADE it spat out an error about my BGLComp. Yet I got that from the SDK on the FSX disk. Since then I have reformatted and reinstalled Win 7 and FSX and I've been meaning to give it another shot and if it doesn't work ask the FS Developer community. I really like to get ADE to work because I'd like to edit my FSDreamTeam KLAS Vegas airport for the 19L and maybe right start positions and the Janet parking designators. I was able to do that back in FS2004 with AFCAD I think it was.

I am flying FSX and I got the GA flight generator, it said it was an upgraded version that works in FSX, but when I generated the plans nothing happened, I thought they had gone somewhere but a thorough search found nothing, plus they didn't show lol.

 

I know AI FS9 plans will kill FSX AI plans and at first I thought if they generated I could convert them but as I said nothing! Any Ideas?

 

Help to know what the flight generator is called you used. I can take a look at it.

 

For a really great search program, try Everything.exe. I use this exclusively and turn off the indexing service.

 

https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/

It's GA-Traffic by Markus Brunner. To fill the airfields which GA-Traffic misses, I also use Gunnar Daehling's Airport AI Enhancer.

Any suggestions for best programs people use for all things mipmaps?

 

Have you tried Texture Manager by Don Grovestine? http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=TM&Docs=TextureManager.pdf

Skywatcher12, it depends what do you want to do. Do you want to add or remove mipmaps?

Have you tried Texture Manager by Don Grovestine? http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=TM&Docs=TextureManager.pdf

 

Thanks gents. I was looking for any general purpose mipmap programs. I use DXTbmp but just wanted to see if there were programs I was unaware of especially for batch processing files.

xtc, Texture Manager looks good, I've had a quick play with it in the past. From the same site there is also: http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=Mipmaps

Thank you again. I might have the fix for ADE when compiling the BGL. When that happens, just open the parking spot list window or similar, whatever it is somewhere or something in the drop down menus then compile again and it should work. That's what I do when I get some kinda error, however I'm unsure if they are always the same ones and would always work after that. So far so good with that fix. If the issue still exists then there's something missing for when compiling the BGL as I remember a few other files needed to be installed for the BGL compile.

 

tiger1962, thank you, I guess I found it, it's gatraffi.zip

This is the one I downloaded, it says it is by Markus Brunner for FSX:

 

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/1671/fsx-ga-traffic/

 

@CRJ, yes I already have that search program that's what I used.

This is the one I downloaded, it says it is by Markus Brunner for FSX:

 

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/1671/fsx-ga-traffic/

 

@CRJ, yes I already have that search program that's what I used.

 

Okay, I installed and tried this program again. I didn't have it before since I reinstalled Windows.

 

The file name will be Traffic-GA.BGL under scenery/World/scenery.

 

When you install make sure you are using setup.exe and install for all users. Or in fact run it as admin and don't install to the programs folder.

 

Now click the Collect data tab and collect airports. Now generate your GA flight plans.

 

Note: You may want to temp cut and paste all your other planes out of the Sim including that flying glider plane thing otherwise it will be used as AI. So just keep all of the GA traffic in your flight sim folder you want to use, and then when your done add back your planes. Also note that there is a default traffic file by FSX called trafficAircraft.bgl. You'll want to rename that to something like trafficAircraft.bgl.old so that default flight plans are not used.

GA Traffic is great. You just need to deselect anything you don't want as GA aircraft and the program won't use those planes for GA traffic. No need to remove folders from the FS aircraft folder.

Will GA Traffic work in FS2004, as it says it's an FSX add-on?

Will GA Traffic work in FS2004, as it says it's an FSX add-on?

 

Yes, here in the file library for FS2004: gatraffi.zip

Been using it for years in FS9.

We can always generate GA fps using Ttools right?

GA Traffic is great. You just need to deselect anything you don't want as GA aircraft and the program won't use those planes for GA traffic. No need to remove folders from the FS aircraft folder.

 

I never could get that to work right so I just temp remove the planes I don't want used.