Hi all,I RESPECTIVELY submit the following:We are all greatly appreciative of freeware developers who provide us with wonderful aircraft. Having said that, I'd like to suggest that the install notes assume the end-user is BUBBA and knows nothing.Some developers use Installshield, the opposite is brief criptic "read-me's" that offer little success of installing.On Steven Grant's product, the line is ..."To install this aircraft into FS2002, simply unzip the files into your main FS2002 aircraft directory."OK, which files? There are many in the un-zipped file. Do the GUAGES unzip go into the AIRCRAFT folder?Please, no flames, I'm just trying to suggest that these wonderful folks spend a bit more time explaining in detail what is involved to install their product.Greg

I agree. I went through that in the beginning. Then discovered (the hard way) that AIRCRAFT is not aircraft, Scenery is not scenery nor SCENERY, etc etc. A simple "go to where you see all your aircarft manila folders, and dump this maila folder in there, then..." is a lot easier for the beginner.

Hear! Hear!I think all of us have been through that at some point.I do, however, have to take some minor offense at the "Bubba" comment in the initial post. People been calling me Bubba for years, and it's got nothing to do with how bright I am.I hope.

<<<<<>>>>>>GregI, for one, am befuddled by your post. The instruction above is exactly what you should do. If you have 'folders' enabled, which you should always have when you unzip, everything will go into the right place. So what is the problem?That said, there are a few developers who make mistakes in packaging their uploads. I always download to a temporary folder first, and then move the files across to the right places - but this method, clearly, requires a basic knowledge of the FS2002 file structure.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitak.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitakv3.jpg

That's how I do it too, Dark. Maybe there's something in there I don't really want/need.

><<<<<<On Steven Grant's product, the line is ... >>"To install this aircraft into FS2002, simply unzip the >files into your main FS2002 aircraft directory.">>>>>>> >>Greg >>I, for one, am befuddled by your post. The instruction >above is exactly what you should do. If you have 'folders' >enabled, which you should always have when you unzip, >everything will go into the right place. So what is the >problem? ***************This is one I can answer, being a newbie myself. The "problem" is that by the time the new person is reading the ReadMe, he's already unzipped. So now he has a folder (for the aircraft name) with various other folders inside it (panels, texture, gauges, etc.) and a ReadMe that says to "unzip ......into your main FS2002 aircraft director...." This could be the very first addon he's attempting and now may not be sure how to proceed. From this new user's point of view, he's already unzipped the file and is probably thinking "so what else am I supposed to unzip?" Please understand, I'm not criticizing that particular set of instructions. I agree with you -- they are perfectly understandable, for someone who has made a few installations.I was lucky in that the first couple of addons I tried had explicit directions about what to do AFTER everything was unzipped. After a little experience with addons, you kinda get a feel for what goes where. But for that first or second time, it helps to have some hand holding going on. I too appreciate very much all the wonderful, amazing addons available for us to populate our virtual worlds, no matter where we are. For the most part though, I think the majority of the 3rd party developers do a pretty good job of letting the end user know where everything is supposed to go. If you unzip something and the instructions aren't clear enough for you to figure out where things are supposed to go, you can always e-mail the developer and ask -- I had to do that just recently. -Lindy :-wave

One way to handle this, is to view the readme from within WinZip itself. When you double click on a *.zip file, the first page you're presented with is a list of the files contained within the zip.Find the Read.me, highlight it, then click on "View" on the top menu bar. This will offer a choice of viewer programs, one of which can be changed to your favourite Text file viewer (Notepad or similar).More often than not, this will tell you what you need to know.Whaen you become familiar with the directory structure of Aircraft & Scenery, you can first unzip to a temporary dir., as suggested elsewhere.

Here's what I do.I try to avoid the "unzip into" process as I find this tends to confuse people. I build my zip files so that when you unzip them (doesn't matter where) you get a "readme" file and a single folder containing all of the aircraft files. The readme file instructions are short, and simple. Copy the entire folder directly to the /fs2002/aircraft folder as is. I figure most people should know how to copy a folder. If not, its time to buy a Windows "How to" book. If gauges or other special files are required I place them in their own folder (or zip depending on source) and inlude specific instructions on where to place the contents. The only real problem that can happen here is if you already happen to have a folder by the same name in your aircraft folder. In this case I once again assume that you know how to rename a folder. Installation instructions can be a tough thing to deal with. I believe in the KIS principal (Keep It Simple). If instructions become long and tedious than I find that it gets confusing and causes more problems than it cures. I try to keep the process and the instructions as simple as possible while providing the information necessary to get the job done.Mike Stone