PAI Auto Installers - ATC Virtual Cheese?

[Guest jase439]

If you haven't installed it...I would definitely tell you YES. There's a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between the v1 and v2 FDE's.

[rpowers 5]

I don't know what paifdev1 or v2 does.If v1 is in the base installer I have it.When I install paifdev2 do I have to reinstall the base and all the airlines I have already installed?I installed base first then auto installed Air France,Olympic then several others in that order.Thanks,Ron

[Guest jase439]

>However, the base install should overwrite the default AI. >If I didn't I certainly suggest that a reinstall is in >order. *lol* no way! It took me the better part of 2 evenings to get my AI up and running correctly. I think I'll go the AITM route and just remove these aircraft manually and recompile.

[Guest jase439]

Except for some of the more recent models, the base installer presently installs v1 FDE's. You don't need to reinstall anything, but you will likely have to do a little work depending on the liveries you have installed. paifdev2 was published before some of the newer auto-installers were made available, so you end up having to tweak the {fltsim.x} sections for those liveries.The way I did this was renamed all my v1 aircraft.cfg files to something else (i.e. aircraft_a320v1.cfg). I extracted the new v2 .AIR file and the new .CFG file from paifdev2.zip. In this example, I renamed aircraft_a320v2.cfg to aircraft.cfg. I then opened this file to see which liveries (if any) were missing. In my case...I discovered that my Delta and Southwest liveries were either missing or wrong in the v2 CFG files. I opened up the old v1 CFG files, extracted out the relevant {fltsim.x} sections for those liveries and pasted them into the new aircraft.cfg. Make sure you keep the {fltsim.x} ordering sequential. Update the line "sim=" for these v1 entries you carried over so that they point at the new v2 .AIR file and then save the CFG file.You have to do this for every PAI craft. I'm not aware of any other way to do this presently. I ran AITM's Aircraft Analyzer at the end of all this as a sanity check to make sure I did it right.It's tedious, but very necessary. The v1 FDE's are no good.J

[Guest WorkingStiff]

LOL...ok....I understand because I had to do a complete reinstall of FS2002 two months ago and it took me an entire week to get it all up and running properly.The reason I suggest a manual reinstall is that I don't trust some of the AITM functions....especially the Shuffle command.

[Guest WorkingStiff]

FDE 2 is an upgrade for the flight dynamics...this affects the AIR and CONFIG files for each flight model.I strongly suggest you install it since it solves many problems with the behavior of AI aircraft...unfortunately, you will then have to edit all your .CFG files by hand to point to the correct air files.

[rpowers 5]

Thanks for the info.I read the readme and it looks pretty basic.I just replace the aircraft.cfg files with the new ones and rename them aircraft.cfg and add the air files to each PAI aircraft.Right?This only pertains to the PAI aircraft right?Also,I don't see a folder for PAI GA aircraft which I included in the base install.Where are they and do I need to upgrade them with fdev2?Thanks,Ron

[Guest jase439]

See my above remarks in Post 18 about missing textures/liveries in the v2 aircraft.cfg file.

[rpowers 5]

OK,bear with me a little longer here please,I think I am finally understanding.Can I not just copy all my PAI AC folders to a temp,then delete the aircraft.cfg and replace it with the v2 one in the original folder, add the v2*.air file and save for each ac. I really don't need to rename the v1 aircraft.cfg and leave it in the v2 folder if I have backups in the temp folder,right?Then I go to the v1 folders in the temp folder and compare to see if I am missing any liveries?If so copy and paste to v2?Also,when you say update the line"sim=" what do I actually change here?I don't have fs on this computer so I can't refer to it.Thanks for all the help.Ron

[Guest jase439]

You can NOT use the v2 aircraft.cfg files wholesale except in a few cases. It all depends on the airlines you have installed on your system. The v2 aircraft.cfg files are dated August 2002. There have been releases and changes to the auto installers since that time - none of which are reflected in the v2 CFG file. As such, you will need to hang on to your v1 CFG files long enough to extract any {fltsim.x} sections that might be missing in the v2 files. You will have to copy these over by hand and update the "sim=" line.The reason for this last step is that you are copying v1 information into a v2 CFG file. It is essential that every entry in the v2 CFG file points to the v2 .AIR file, and not the v1 .AIR file.For example, consider 'PAI B762":The v1 airfile is pai762.air. The v2 airfile is pai762v2.air. On my system, I have 4 liveries of the 762. They are:dal_mcdal_ncUALUSANow, if you open the v2 AIRCRAFT.CFG file, you will find that there are entries for UAL and USA, but NO entries for dal_mc and dal_nc. That's because the mc and nc liveries were created AFTER v2 was released. You need to open up your v1 AIRCRAFT.CFG file and COPY these two sections over (not the whole file...JUST the aircraft descriptor sections labeled {fltsim.x} that correspond to dal_mc and dal_nc. In my case these happened to be {fltsim.0} and {fltsim.1} respectively.So now I've pasted these 2 sections to the end of my v2 CFG file. The last aircraft entry in the v2 CFG file was {fltsim.3} "PAI B767 VRG". The first thing I do is update the numbering of the two sections I just pasted in so that they are consecutive. For instance:{fltsim.0} ---> {fltsim.4}{fltsim.1} ---> {fltsim.5}Second, I need to update the sim= lines for these two sections because they will still be referencing the old FDE - namely pai762.air. You must change this manually to point to pai762v2.air.{fltsim.4}title=PAI B762 DAL MCsim=pai762 <--- change me to pai762v2{fltsim.5}title=PAI B762 DAL NCsim=pai762 <--- change me to pai762v2That's it. Pour yourself some coffee and repeat for each of your aircraft ;-) Not all of them will require you to manually port aircraft across from one version to the other. It all depends on the liveries you have installed.Once you are satisfied you have ported everything correctly, you can blow the old v1 stuff away - but I would be loathe to do so, unless I knew I had everything moved over correctly. You can later use AI Traffic Mover and run Analyze to make sure you're not missing any aircraft.It may be that you don't have any liveries which need porting. They may already be present in the v2 CFG file - in which case, you simply rename the v2 file to aircraft.cfg and you're done.Make sense? That's about the best that I can explain it. Maybe someone else can do better ;-)J

[rpowers 5]

Thanks,I think I can handle that,except I just read a post at Project AI that a new installer is due out to update all these.He also said unless I am having sinking aircraft there is really no reason to do all the manual work,just wait for the new installer.I value your opinion on this before I spend the night changing everything.Thanks,Ron

[Guest jase439]

The problem goes beyond sinking aircraft - the v1 aircraft are completely out of control. They gyrate and bobble and fly like drunken demons - practically falling from the sky like hailstones ;-)

[Guest H_Kev55]

jase,While we try to make PAI as realistic as possible it will never be perfect.Even MS states, 'As real as it gets' and we all know how poorly they did in some areas.The new fde's will not contain all the texture inserts for the very reason that not everyone has the same file. Alot of us have installed unofficial repaints also.AITM is used by many of or members. Thomas Molitor, the author of AITM and the Head of Project Airport is affiliated with ProjectAI.We are currently working on such things as making the link to the base installer easier to see.You state that AITM has found errors in flight plans. That may be true, but AITM is fallible also and Thomas is constantly working on upgrades to get rid of such errors.With everything that goes on, there are bound to be errors here and there. We appreciate your thoughts and we're glad you like things so far. With what we're working on now, it's only going to get better.KJ