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Guest Captain Barfbag

AFCAD - I must be doing something wrong

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Guest cw1011

I am cross posting this to here because the TT forum seems kind of quiet lately. My problem:I had to reinstall FS over the weekend, and decided to take the opportunity to update my AI and install overlays at some of my favorite airports.I had real problems last night with LAX, and wonder if I'm missing something. Here's what I did:1. I installed all the PAI Gold install packages availabe in one fell swoop. 2. I used the UAL, Delta and a few other self-installers second. 3. I loaded up FS02 and checked a few airports. Lots of different airplanes in different colours. So far so good. 4. I downloaded an afcad with four overlays that divided the Airport into quarters and installed them using the AFCAD auto installer. I opened AFCAD and verified they were installed - and they were. 5. I de-compiled my flight plans and cut and pasted the text into Excel. 6. I then pulled out all the major airlines into Word individually (boy, that was fun), did a search and replace for KLAX to 1LAX, 2LAX etc. as appropriate and pasted them back into the flight plans notepad file. 7. After fixing a few bugs, I recompiled the data and opened FS and set the time for noon.8. Only UAL and SWA planes were visible, clustered around their terminals. No Delta, Continental or the Europeans getting ready for the trans atlantic push. Very, very quiet.9. Just to make sure I didn't screw up the flight plans, I uninstalled all the overlays, installed one big fat afcad with 70 gates and no overlays, and voila, lots of airplanes in different colours. Is there some trick to setting new airports in flight plans that I have forgotten?Is it possible I have conflicting AFCAD files? What happens if two airport files are active and put a gate in the same place - does the program not put a plane there?Many thanks for some thoughts. I spent several hours last night working on this (it takes f'in forevever to compile 19,000 flight plans) and ended up with only bags under my eyes to show for it.Colin

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Guest

Was thinking that maybe you hadn't added entries for the overlays to the airports.txt file - (like - 2PHX,N33* 25.9017',W112* 00.6203',1140.0 is one I have)but then realized that the compiler probably would have given a sort of unknown airport error when it came across the overlays and not compiled properly . . . hmmm . . .

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Not really sure what is wrong, could be many small details. All the work you did by cutting and pasting could have been done with the AITM utility from Thomas Molitor, it is great for assigning traffic to overlays, troubleshooting to see why aircraft don't show up, adding aircraft and airports to the TX doc, all kinds of things, I use it all the time when installing AI, lots of options.Regards, Michaelhttp://mysite.verizon.net/res052cd/mybannercva1.jpg


Best, Michael

KDFW

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Guest cw1011

Thanks for the tip. I may do a system restore to before all my futzing around and try again, using the utility.

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Guest cloudtops

You might want to check your various PAI aircraft.cfg files in the C:...FS2002aircraft folder. The "sim=" line for each individual plane at the ends of the respective PAI aircraft.cfg files must correspond exactly with the title of the .air file (e.g., sim=pai773v2). If they are at all different (this goes for every [fltsim.x] entry), FS will not display the unmatched textures in the selection screen or as AI.If this is not the case, you probably don't need to read any further, as you don't likely have the problem to which I am referring. You can be sure that you don't have this problem by confirming that when:"3. I loaded up FS02 and checked a few airports. Lots of different airplanes in different colours."and"9. Just to make sure I didn't screw up the flight plans, I uninstalled all the overlays, installed one big fat afcad with 70 gates and no overlays, and voila, lots of airplanes in different colours."those airlines represented did not include your self-installers otherwise absent (UAL, Delta). If they were there without the overlays, never mind. I'm swatting at air.If your "sim=" lines don't match and you didn't have your self-installers visible*, the likely reason this happened is that you installed the Gold plans (name for the new installer files, I believe) before the self-installers. I did this last week when I installed FS2002 on my new computer, and I had no self-installer airlines show up. When you install the Gold packages, they overwrite the aircraft.cfg files of each PAI aircraft after changing the "sim=" line for the textures it is installing as well as for all previously installed textures. The self-installers do not do this, resulting in different "sim=" lines in the same aircraft.cfg file (e.g., sim=pai773 and sim=pai773v2).If this is indeed the case, you likely have three (maybe more) options:1) Change all of the older "sim=" entries in each PAI xxxx folder to match the name of the renamed .air file to which they should refer,2) Wipe out all of the changes to your traffic.bgl file made by installing PAI plans and all PAI folders in your aircraft folder (DRASTIC - NOT RECOMMENDED) to then re-install the self-installers followed by the Gold packages, or3) Without uninstalling anything, re-install all your Gold packages (the new PAI installers), as they will not only overwrite your aircraft.cfg files so that all of the "sim=" entries will match. This will also delete any existing duplicate plans and aircraft entries in the flightplans.txt and aircraft.txt files and tack the Gold plans and aircraft entries to the end of these two files (cut and paste, in essence).WARNING: I used solution number one to fix my problem, as I'm used to tinkering with aircraft.cfg files. I didn't try #3 (cause I didn't think of it then), and am merely passing on what I've read the new installer says it will do.Hope this helps,Kevin* Possible hole in my theory: "8. Only UAL and SWA planes were visible, clustered around their terminals. No Delta, Continental or the Europeans getting ready for the trans atlantic push. Very, very quiet.

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Guest cw1011

Actually, both the gold and the self installers were represented. Tons of United and a few SWA fat alberts as well. Actually, reinstalling the gold packages is a good idea which I may try.

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Guest Captain Barfbag

A couple of things to check:Use AITM to generate a Timetable for each of the overlays. This will tell you if you have a problem with the flightplans file, independent of the AFCADs for KLAX. The latest version of AITM also has some error checking which will tell you if you have a mismatch between your aircraft.txt file and the ID's in your various aircraft.cfg files.Where did the AFCAD come from? You might be assigning those European heavies to an overlay with no Heavy gates. It's not common, but I've seen a few downloads with immense radius values for aircraft, larger that any of the standard parking sizes. Those planes never showed up until I brought the numbers down to a more reasonable size.If you move the United or SW planes to one of the empty overlays, what happens?

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