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Hi all: I am trying to enhance my FS2000 and I downloaded Lago's FST from internet, but obviously, you can't register for the full version as Lago does not longer exist. (I know FS2000 is outdated, but I really enjoy doing this). I especially need it to edit the Tracks I'm going to make. (I can make them without registering but I'm sure I will need to edit them, so for that the full version is required. Do you know if there's a possibility of getting/buying the serial or some solution for editing tracks? Thanks and Regards. -
How To...Do FSTraffic Tracks Right By Cory Wirick FSTraffic flight tracks - shouldn't you do them right? With the release of Lago's free upgrade to all registered users of FSTraffic right around the corner, I've been impressed by all the efforts of simmers out there who have contributed their thoughts and talents and imagination. I'm of the belief that there is no "bad" freeware add-on. Without people contributing to our hobby, we wouldn't have one. My sincere tribute to all who have contributed, no matter how large or small. With that said, I'd like to inject my opinion on the subject of recording tracks for FSTraffic. Most of this information is intended for use with FS2000, but certainly this applies to FS98 as well. From some of the more well-known authors of tracks are people like Scott Hays with his high altitude en route tracks, Frank Wavra, with his multiple airport tracks, and Denny Payne, giving us his collection of aircraft. In keeping with the demand for simmers everywhere to increase the level of performance and realism in FS, I've developed a system that I use to create the most accurate and realistic tracks possible without actually being at that airport. Of course, you'll never get it just right if you don't visit the subject airport, but I'm confident that the majority of the flightsimmers out there won't give you too much grief! There is nothing like the thrill of visiting some of our nation's busiest airports. Many of you can relate to visiting such airports as Los Angeles, New York Kennedy, Las Vegas McCarran, Dallas-Fort Worth and the list goes on. The thrill of seeing 747 after 747 roar its engines and lift off into the skies. The awesome grace that a 777 brings with its six-wheel bogies and huge engines coming in for a landing. I visit Los Angeles (KLAX) often and every time I'm there, I try to memorize the feel of it all and often bring a video camera to help me remember. LAGO has given us the means to recreate that feeling any time we wish, right from our desktop. I'm a realism buff like most, and my system is rather tedious, but it's assured to give great results in making your next airport look just like it's real life counterpart. The first step is to choose an airport that you feel strongly about. Recording tracks is a monotonous business and it helps to record tracks at an airport that you have a personal connection with. Second, you'll need to have a layout of the airport to use as a template. There are a couple of ways to do this. If you have access to a printer that will help you a ton. I take my spot plane view and set the distance to the max it will go. I then position my aircraft in the center of the airport and look down on it. This will give you the above layout shot that you need. Using the Top-Down feature on FS2000 will work, but I find that more often than not it will cut a portion of the airport off as you zoom in and out. Using the spot view as I've described will allow you to adjust the area that you can see for your airport. After you have established your view, make a screen shot of it by hitting your [print screen] key. Paste [ctrl-v] that image into any paint or photo program. No need to adjust anything at all. If your printer gives you the option, print the image in black and white to save yourself some ink. The difference between color and b&w is minimal. To help with planning your tracks, I recommend zooming in on your terminal buildings and repeating the above process in taking a screen shot and printing it. This will help you to know in advance where your aircraft will park and where there might be conflicts in aircraft running into each other. With that all done, the planning stage has begun. There are many web sites out there that can give you the realistic airport information that you'll need to make your airport identical to real life. The first web site that I use is found at http://home.soneraplaza.nl/mw/prive/mdn/namp.html. This web site gives you a listing of all the official airport web sites in the world. This particular link is focused on North America only. From here you can find your subject international airport and information that is valuable to your project. I'm going to use Chicago O'Hare International Airport as my model. On the top of the web page you'll see drop down links for all the fifty states. Find the link IL for Illinois and click it. This will take you to the airports for this state and find and click Chicago O'Hare. This will bring a window up and you'll see the O'Hare web page http://www.chicagoairports.com/ohare/home.cfm. On the top you'll see a menu bar that lists the different menus available. Click on the link named Airlines. This gives you a listing of all the airlines that serve O'Hare. At the top is another menu bar that gives you listings of the different terminal buildings and what airline is assigned to them respectively. Or just click on the terminal layout image for each terminal you'd like to view. Let's start with Terminal 1. Clicking this will give you a detail of this terminal, all its gates and the airlines that serve it. Terminal 1 in this case serves United, United Express and Lufthansa. Save this image for reference later. Repeat these steps with all the other terminals and you now have a blueprint for where to park your airliners and commuters and which airlines go to which terminal. Your road to realism is progressing forward! Next, this new version of FSTraffic has included many new and very important features to aid us in creating consistent and simple realism for our airports. You can specify not only the correct class for your aircraft, but also assign it to the correct airline so that you'll only get Small, Medium and Large United aircraft instead of Small, Medium and Large United and Delta and whoever else you had included in those classes. And the beauty of it all is you only have to convert your aircraft ONCE! This enables you to create realistic aircraft and airline movements at O'Hare and then fly to Houston and have that airport's traffic realistic with Houston. This is a marvelous and much sought after feature that Mathijs Kok and LAGO have given us. So now armed with this great feature, you can plan on which aircraft you'd like at which terminal. I'm rather pathetic in my approach to realism and the advice I offer now is for those who would like it. This is not necessary by any means to create a realistic airport. I often not only wish to see the correct airlines at the correct terminals, but I also wish to see the correct aircraft at the airport in question. For example, you'll never see a regularly scheduled United 747 at Salt Lake City International. But you will see United 727 and 737 aircraft there. There is a way that I accomplish this. This way may seem tedious, but it's well worth the effort. Visit the particular airline's web site. On United's home page http://www.ual.com there is a section called Quick Fare Finder. This is nothing more than a flight schedule search and all the major airlines have them on their sites. If you have a knowledge of the normal hub airports for your airline that helps. United has main hubs at SFO, DEN, IAD and of course O'Hare. Start by searching for flights originating from one of these airports. We'll quickly choose SFO to ORD. Always select a day ahead of the day you are looking, so that you'll get the full listing. It lists Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft as well as Boeing 747, 757, 767 and 777 aircraft as flying this route. So now you know to include those planes in your tracks. Another way to check which aircraft an airline uses at that airport is a most well known site, Airliners.Net. This site is dedicated to being the largest aviation photography web site on the net. We know that Terminal 1 at O'Hare includes Lufthansa as sharing the gates. We could guess that it is probably a Boeing 747. But to make sure let's select Lufthansa for the airline. In the keywords section type in O'Hare 2000. This will narrow our search to O'Hare International and it'll only find pictures from the year 2000. I've found this eliminates the possibility of adding an aircraft that no longer flies there by looking at the previous year. From the search results it appears that Lufthansa brings both a Boeing 747 and an Airbus A340 to Chicago. If a particular aircraft looks like it is only a one-time visitor, notice the dates that each picture was taken and the photographer. In the A340's case, it was mostly shot by AirNikon on April 22. This would lead me to believe that it only came in that one time. But we see that on August 4, Darcy Stevens took another shot of a different A340 and so it's probably safe to assume that both aircraft are regulars there. As I said, this process is a bit tedious and perhaps overboard, but it will also help to increase the accuracy of your airport. Now we can use those printed layouts we discussed earlier. This next step can be very important. This is the stage where we will place the aircraft and hopefully figure out a way to avoid planes having to cross paths. Choose your terminal layout first and think about how you'd like your aircraft to arrive and depart the ramp. If you happen to see areas where you think a conflict could happen, place a static object at a gate. It will fill in a gap and avoid a problem. Decide now which gate will have departing aircraft and which one will have arrivals. To help you remember, place a symbol at each gate. I use a very simple T for a takeoff track, L for a landing track and S for a static object. Now move to your airport layout sheet and let's decide which taxiways you will use for outbound and inbound aircraft. Be watchful for possible crossovers on taxiways that could result in head on collisions. This can be a huge problem if it's not figured out now. It's next to impossible if you've never been to the airport you're modeling to know which taxiways are used and which aren't. This is a realism problem that I mentioned earlier the flightsim community would be gracious about and not give us too much grief! If you have access to approach plates, use them. You can visit your local airport or order some on-line if you so desire. It adds a touch of realism when you actually fly with the traffic you've created. If you can't find any, don't sweat it. Lastly in our quest for realistic traffic at our airport, FSTraffic Version 1.99 (which is the name for the new version) gives us a feature where we can edit and modify our tracks to fix any problems that we might have encountered. If you plan on posting your tracks onto FlightSim.Com or any of the other wonderful sites out there, take the time to observe your tracks and see if there may be conflicts. Examples could be aircraft landing on top of departing aircraft, aircraft that meet on some lonely taxiway and are forever locked together, or the dreaded encounters where two aircraft pass through one another. The feature on this new track editor gives you the power to obliterate a problem track, speed up or slow down a track to avoid conflicts, or just outright view the entire project and see if you like it or want to trim some fat off. One thing that a lot of people complain about is having airplanes appear and disappear at the gates. Some people prefer to have the aircraft all arrive at once, pull up to the gate and wait a designated amount of time and then push back and depart. This will alleviate the disappearing and appearing of aircraft. While it's true that there are pro's and con's to both sides of the story, I feel that when you are taxiing your United 747-400 around Chicago O'Hare, you'll be enthralled enough with the traffic bustling around you, that you won't even notice that aircraft disappearing to the gate beside you. However, it's your scenery and your tracks. Do as you wish. Before you know it, you'll have one of the most busy airports on your system and you'll be amazed at the amount of realism it gives to your flying adventures. And if you get lucky to visit the airport you created and see the real traffic flow, you'll be even more amazed and want to rush right home to see how close you came to getting it right. No matter how you record your tracks or design your aircraft or build your airports, remember that it's because of freeware designers like us who are willing to share our imaginations with others that this hobby of flight simming is among the most popular and most successful in the world. Everything we do helps to keep the fire burning and keeps us in the most realistic skies on our PC's. To the folks at LAGO, we give our thanks to your patience and open ears to our requests, making FSTraffic as great of a product as it can be. Cory Wirick corynan@juno.com -
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