I've got a few problems I could use some help with! One that I've actually had for some time now in FS2004 (I it's in FS2002 and FSX as well) is that all the default GA AI aircraft (but not airliners as I recall) fly around in pairs! In the air both are only a mile or so apart and about a 1,000 feet apart in altitude from each other. They taxi around airports in pairs (one behind the other and a few feed apart), too! It's like one is sort of a "ghost" image of the other. I"m using Ultimate Traffic with all three FS versions (UT2 with FSX) so this might have something to do with it. However, none of the UT AI aircraft exhibit this weird phenomenon, only FS default AI aircraft.I also need to know how to shut off the "flying tips", that pop up (like telling you that your engine is off and to hit CTRL E to start it). One in particular, reporting that the Altimeter is off and to hit B to reset it, is getting really annoying. It was constantly popping up while I was flying a Wilco 737 PIC Delta 737-300 from Ontario Intl Sacramento Intl this morning. Press B didn't seem to do any good and it kept popping up every few minutes through out the flight. I suppose it could be due to a bug in the Wilco 737 but I haven't flown one in quite some time and don't recall having this problem with a Wilco 737 before...Yet another problem I noticed while flying the Wilco 737PIC is that I could barely hear the ATC/Tower over the cockpit/engine noise! Is there a way to increase the volume on theATC/Tower announcements/commands so I can hear it better?Finally, this isn't a "problem", but I was curious about how to take a photo (i.e., screen capture) in FS2002/2004?

To turn of the "Flying Tips", select Aircraft / Realism Settings from the Menu bar at the top of your screen when you are in Fly Now mode. Remove the check mark by the Display Flying Tips line. Have you tried disabling the the default traffic file? It is named traffic030528.bgl and is found in your Scenery / World / scenery subfolder.

Try Screen Hunter from http://www.wisdom-soft.com/ very easy to use, and freeEchofox

As far as the sound volume is concerned, on the opening page of FS which is titled "Select a flight", click on 'Settings' then on the 'Sound' tab and you can adjust the sound level for different sounds in the sim. Or if already flying, ALT/OPTIONS/SETTINGS/SOUND.For tool tips, at the "Select a flight" page, click 'Settings' then 'General' and uncheck 'Show cockpit tool tips" as well as the suggestion from "OPA".Jim D.

I've got a few problems I could use some help with! One that I've actually had for some time now in FS2004 (I it's in FS2002 and FSX as well) is that all the default GA AI aircraft (but not airliners as I recall) fly around in pairs!

Does this happen all of the time? You must have duplicate traffic files (or file content) for that to happen.There is some kind of bug in FS2004 that causes the same flight to load twice, giving you results as you describe, but this only happens to odd flights in the flight plans occasionally. You would be unlikely to notice this more than once every six months.I would check your scenery/world/scenery folder to see if there is anything in there that looks suspect. This is the usual place for flight plans but they will work in any scenery folder.The default file is traffic030528.bgl. An unintentional copy of that ... Copy of traffic030528.bgl could cause the results you describe.Have you installed any add-on GA flight plans? Maybe you need to just remove the original file. (The original contains FS2004's GA and commercial flights, of course). I'm thinking of all sorts of permutations - really we need to know what your AI setup consists of before coming up with more ideas.John

Regarding duplicate AI. Have you downloaded any a/c files that "replace" the default airlines? Often they come with there own traffic files which are duplicates of the default. So disabling the default file will stop duplicates.

To turn of the "Flying Tips", select Aircraft / Realism Settings from the Menu bar at the top of your screen when you are in Fly Now mode. Remove the check mark by the Display Flying Tips line. Have you tried disabling the the default traffic file? It is named traffic030528.bgl and is found in your Scenery / World / scenery subfolder.

Thanks for the help! I didn't think of looking under Aircraft/Realism Settings! I gave up after looking under options and not finding any mention of the flying tips there...Wouldn't disabling (which I assume means renaming or deleting) traffic030528.bgl remove ALL default AI aircraft? Someone else has mentioned that I must have a duplicate traffic030528.bgl file causing the problem. This is a possibility. Last November I installed new hard drives in my system. I didn't want to have to reinstall all the addon aircraft and scenery from scratch so I backed up all my FS2004 files first. Then after installing the new hard drives I installed a fresh copy of FS2004 then restored all the addon aircraft and scenery files from the backup. This might have resulted in a duplicate traffic file though I don't see how (the restore should have simply overwritten the copy already there)...

Try Screen Hunter from http://www.wisdom-soft.com/ very easy to use, and freeEchofox

Thanks! I'll look into it....

As far as the sound volume is concerned, on the opening page of FS which is titled "Select a flight", click on 'Settings' then on the 'Sound' tab and you can adjust the sound level for different sounds in the sim. Or if already flying, ALT/OPTIONS/SETTINGS/SOUND.For tool tips, at the "Select a flight" page, click 'Settings' then 'General' and uncheck 'Show cockpit tool tips" as well as the suggestion from "OPA".Jim D.

Well, I looked at \options\settings\sound and I didn't see a separate sound level adjustment bar for the ATC/Tower communications. I'll look again, perhaps I missed something...Turning off "show cockpit tool tips" will only turn off the pop up instrument descriptions that come up when you put your mouse on a particular flight instrument. This is a separate thing from the "flying tips" that pop up in the window above the instrument panel...

Does this happen all of the time? You must have duplicate traffic files (or file content) for that to happen.There is some kind of bug in FS2004 that causes the same flight to load twice, giving you results as you describe, but this only happens to odd flights in the flight plans occasionally. You would be unlikely to notice this more than once every six months.I would check your scenery/world/scenery folder to see if there is anything in there that looks suspect. This is the usual place for flight plans but they will work in any scenery folder.The default file is traffic030528.bgl. An unintentional copy of that ... Copy of traffic030528.bgl could cause the results you describe.Have you installed any add-on GA flight plans? Maybe you need to just remove the original file. (The original contains FS2004's GA and commercial flights, of course). I'm thinking of all sorts of permutations - really we need to know what your AI setup consists of before coming up with more ideas.John

Thanks! That must be it because I get the problem everytime I fire up FS2004. Could it have happened when I installed a fresh copy of FS2004 on a new hard drive then restored all my addon aircraft files from a backup (at least I thought I'd only restored the aircraft folder. I might have restoring the whole works...)?The only add-on GA flight plans I've installed came with the Abacus Private Pilot package but this problem didn't appear immediately afterward, but sometime much later...

Thanks! That must be it because I get the problem everytime I fire up FS2004. Could it have happened when I installed a fresh copy of FS2004 on a new hard drive then restored all my addon aircraft files from a backup (at least I thought I'd only restored the aircraft folder. I might have restoring the whole works...)?The only add-on GA flight plans I've installed came with the Abacus Private Pilot package but this problem didn't appear immediately afterward, but sometime much later...

Let's hope it is this easy to solve.The scenery/world/scenery folder should contain the following:- lots of BGL files starting with the letter d, eg de06n00.bgl- a file named bvcf.bgl- a file named lak.bgl- a file named traffic030528.bglAny other files you may have in there will be from some kind of add-on.Do not touch any of the files mentioned above except traffic030528.bgl - they are not AI traffic files.The first thing I would suggest, just as a test, is to rename traffic030528.bgl to traffic030528.bgl.oou - then start FS and see what then happens. That may remove too much traffic, but let us know the results. (You can rename it back afterwards).Also, perhaps you could let us know the names of any other files in that folder which may help us recognise what they are.John

Thanks for the help! I didn't think of looking under Aircraft/Realism Settings! I gave up after looking under options and not finding any mention of the flying tips there...Wouldn't disabling (which I assume means renaming or deleting) traffic030528.bgl remove ALL default AI aircraft?

To disable, I rename the file with a BAK or ORIG extension so it can be restored later if needed (instead of a delete).That will remove all default traffic - but if you have a third party AI package installed, removing the default traffic is usually desireable.I and many others use the fine free packages from World of AI - for both airline traffic and replacement GA traffic. If you are not familar with WOAI, you can check them out here:http://www.world-of-ai.com/Good luck!

Let's hope it is this easy to solve.The scenery/world/scenery folder should contain the following:- lots of BGL files starting with the letter d, eg de06n00.bgl- a file named bvcf.bgl- a file named lak.bgl- a file named traffic030528.bglAny other files you may have in there will be from some kind of add-on.Do not touch any of the files mentioned above except traffic030528.bgl - they are not AI traffic files.The first thing I would suggest, just as a test, is to rename traffic030528.bgl to traffic030528.bgl.oou - then start FS and see what then happens. That may remove too much traffic, but let us know the results. (You can rename it back afterwards).Also, perhaps you could let us know the names of any other files in that folder which may help us recognise what they are.John

Hi, JohnTurns out, it was easy to solve. I found three "traffic030528" files in the scenery/world/scenery file! Ultimate Traffic did something weird when it was installed. It took the "traffic030528.bgl" file and made a copy of it naming the copy "traffic030528.ORIGINAL". Then it made third copy and named it "traffic030528.utb" and left all three files in the scenery/world/scenery folder. Just to be sure it wasn't causing the problem (even though I knew it couldn't), I moved the *.original copy to a backup folder I created in FS9's main folder to place original files in for safe keeping before they were overwritten or changed by addons. Then I renamed the *.bgl file *.bgx leaving the *utb untouched. This did the trick. The duplicate AI planes are now gone! Why the UT installation program did any of this is a mystery...but at least the problem is solved!Scott

To disable, I rename the file with a BAK or ORIG extension so it can be restored later if needed (instead of a delete).That will remove all default traffic - but if you have a third party AI package installed, removing the default traffic is usually desireable.I and many others use the fine free packages from World of AI - for both airline traffic and replacement GA traffic. If you are not familar with WOAI, you can check them out here:http://www.world-of-ai.com/Good luck!

That's pretty much what I did. For some inexplainable reason UT created a "traffic030528.utb" file and left traffic030528.bgl file in the same folder. Equally inexplainable, it also created a "traffic0305;28.original" file for no good reason that I can fathom. Renaming the "traffic030528.bgl" file to "traffic030528.bgx (*.bak or org, would, just as you said, have done just as well) did the trick...Scott

As far as the sound volume is concerned, on the opening page of FS which is titled "Select a flight", click on 'Settings' then on the 'Sound' tab and you can adjust the sound level for different sounds in the sim. Or if already flying, ALT/OPTIONS/SETTINGS/SOUND.For tool tips, at the "Select a flight" page, click 'Settings' then 'General' and uncheck 'Show cockpit tool tips" as well as the suggestion from "OPA".Jim D.

Actually, all I had to do to resolve the sound "problem" was to turn up the volume control on my speakers (Dah! Talk about being dense)! In my own defense I think I must have turned the volume turned down so that the loud jet engine noise would not wake up my wife at 3 o'clock in the morning (not a good thing when she has to get up at 6 to go to work)! What it boiled down to (which I had let slip my mind) was that it was a matter of self-preservation (G)!Still, I think separate volume controls (in FS itself) for voice and engine noise would be helpful....Scott

Turns out, it was easy to solve. I found three "traffic030528" files in the scenery/world/scenery file! Ultimate Traffic did something weird when it was installed. It took the "traffic030528.bgl" file and made a copy of it naming the copy "traffic030528.ORIGINAL". Then it made third copy and named it "traffic030528.utb" and left all three files in the scenery/world/scenery folder. Just to be sure it wasn't causing the problem (even though I knew it couldn't), I moved the *.original copy to a backup folder I created in FS9's main folder to place original files in for safe keeping before they were overwritten or changed by addons. Then I renamed the *.bgl file *.bgx leaving the *utb untouched. This did the trick. The duplicate AI planes are now gone! Why the UT installation program did any of this is a mystery...but at least the problem is solved!

Great news, Scott.I would guess the reason Ultimate Traffic makes a change is that it needs to cancel out the default commercial traffic and leave just the default GA to complement its own commercial traffic. So it would need to create a new file with the GA flights only and disable the original FS traffic file. It sounds as if something went a bit adrift with that process.Best wishes,John

Actually, all I had to do to resolve the sound "problem" was to turn up the volume control on my speakers (Dah! Talk about being dense)! In my own defense I think I must have turned the volume turned down so that the loud jet engine noise would not wake up my wife at 3 o'clock in the morning (not a good thing when she has to get up at 6 to go to work)! What it boiled down to (which I had let slip my mind) was that it was a matter of self-preservation (G)!

Why don't you make your sim experience more realistic and use headphones. Then you can have very realistic volumes and your wife won't be disturbed!!!Voliberista