Hi all,Finally got my graphics card back into the world of faster-than-a-glacier and reinstalled everything I was playing with half a year's hiatus ago. I've found some matters I can't resolve without help though.How can I stop the scene below from happening? This shot is of a BJ flying circuits around Lake Tahoe and into the adjacent snowy mountainside. I suspect it may be possible to specify a min cruise alt for certain AI legs by altering values in aiplan.txt but is it possible to modify a circuit, or a flight to an unspecified waypoint such as a fictitious airport (Narita, Mexico City et c.)?All suggestions gratefully received (I'll take anything...).Regards,Dave

Hi Dave,AI planes are flying trough the mountains from time to time :-)You can try to modify aiplan.txt adding new way points X24, X25 ... or modify old ones.Once I draw a map for SanFran region to show all possible AI paths.For that I had first to convert all way points x01 to x23 into POI.txt format so they are visible on the flight map as poi together with the airports. ( the way points must be converted to UTM coordinate system first )Doing this for Seattle will help you to find the critical path that must be modified in altitude.Airports outside of the region are defined in the file EXT_PORT.TXTthis was my poi.txt for the job.70741 122877 X00138425 88380 X01134311 66131 X0269595 61847 X03127111 53095 X0481516 39727 X0581648 19388 X0690608 8357 X07131972 18016 X08112603 30742 X09111069 36274 X10122413 77082 X11108949 100979 X1295655 113802 X1385443 110024 X14111184 167585 X15103919 167512 X1695217 165584 X1779206 169162 X1855991 161647 X1951640 157934 X2096815 148952 X2188105 145182 X22110659 76954 X23and here is the SanFran region mapRegardsAndre

Hi Andre,What I was really wondering was whether it is possible to alter the traffic pattern altitude for circuits to prevent local traffic flying into the hillside when flying circuits in a narrow valley.Thanks for the suggestion for mapping- I hadn't thought of using the POI map in that way. I've been using a layered photoshop map I made for myself. I've moved, removed or added a complete new set of OT beacons for myself (and realigned ILS) and it would be nice to use the POI for that. I might do a text file for the default beacons too since the default map is pretty inaccurate. It shouldn't take me too long to work through them in Fled. If I pull my finger out I could even post it here in a week or so.I had another CTD last night. I really thought I'd solved that problem but I think I simply have a rubbish graphics card. It's time to go back to Nvidia; FU3 used to run flawlessly until I switched to ATI. The problem there is that the ATI card is very good with FS9. That's where I've been for the last six months...Kind regards,Dave

Hi Andre,Maybe you can help me with this and save me from trawling through all the documentation?I've just converted all the decimal geo coordinates for the OT VOR beacons into UTM using a script on the net but the coordinates returned by the site don't look much like what you have in your POI file above.The site gives UTM X and UTM Y coordinates, and a UTM zone. Thus SEA VOR at longitude -122.310, latitude +47.435 comes out as UTM X 447970, UTM Y 5253737 and UTM zone 10. These numbers seem much bigger than those in (your) POI file. How do I shrink them?Regards,Dave

Hi Dave,UTM is OK but they must be adapted to the base location of FU3 region seattle !0 / 0 is the bottom left corner of the region located at:reg_north 1.27409035reg_utm_zone 10 Tmag_deviation 18reg_utm_offset 480905.14 5177413.47 so this offset is 0/0 for FU3 and you will have to subtract this values from you UTM to get the FU3 internal coordinates.the values above are from the region.cfg filegood luckAndre

Hi Andre,I think I must still be failing to grasp something about the conversion. I couldn't get my points of interest to match up with the VORs at all.As an exercise I took a look at the default poi.txt and compared FU3's UTM co-ordinates with those I made from a geo reference in Fled (blue spots, and the centre of the lake). I used http://home.hiwaay.n...phy/geoutm.html and got the following results:POI FU3 X FU3 Y Fled long Fled lat UTM X UTM Y X offset Y offsetPortland 42655 -137111 -122.436 45.528 544041 5041784 501387 5178895LAX 450976 -1407486 -118.411 33.943 369605 3756707 -81371 5164193San Diego 564638 -1542261 -117.187 32.733 482749 3621740 -81889 5164001LAS 721838 -1153852 -115.151 36.075 666497 3993849 -55341 5147701Lake Tahoe 278975 -859108 -120.036 39.105 756301 4332638 477326 5191746The Y offsets are quite consistent and match the reg_utm_offset but you can see the X offsets are a mess. What am I doing wrong?Thanks for all your help so far.Kind regards,Dave I just noticed the data' spacing gets messed up when I submit the post. Now it's all a mess...! :(

Here is a method for POI calculation as made by Mike Matagatan Flight Unlimited II Tips & Tricks of 1998 Want to add a location as a "Point of Interest"? Get your calculator out cause here's how... Edit the Poi.txt file in the flight2\regions\sanfran directory. You will see two columns of numbers followed by the point of interest description: (e.g.. 147232.5 36398.328 Lick Observatory). Find the latitude and longitude of "YOUR" point of interest (e.g.. Old High School Located at N 38°30.5' W 122°48.8') Convert the location to decimal degrees by dividing each minute by 60: (e.g.. 30.5 / 60 = 0.5083 therefore, NORTH is 38 + 0.5083 = 38.5083 and 48.8 / 60 = 0.813 therefore, WEST is 122 + 0.813 = 122.813). The first number in the Poi.txt file is the "Easting" and the second number is the "Northing". To compute the Northing, multiply the NORTH degrees by 110542.44 and subtract 4090188.18: (e.g.. 38.5083 * 110542.44 = 4256801.442 and 4256801.442 - 4090188.18 = 166613.2623). To compute the Easting, multiply the WEST degrees by -87835.87 and add 10830501.85: (e.g.. 122.813 * -87835.87 = -10787386.7 and -10787386.7 + 10830501.85 = 43114.85). Your entry in the Poi.txt file would look like this: (e.g.. 166613.2623 43114.85 My Old High School). Now you can add it to your flight plan, fly over it or whatever!hope this will help, even this sample is for SanFran RegionAndre

Hi Andre,I've just read around a little about the UTM coordinate system and it doesn't look like a direct conversion from geo to utm is possible for the outher terrain. The OT covers two zones, 10 and 11, whereas the FU3 system bases the Seattle region's origin some way to the west of the central meridian in zone 10. I think this causes a misalignment of any poi in zone 11 to the east.Looks like I'll have to do mine by hand. :( At least the AI waypoints are in geo...Thanks for trying to help me.Regards,Dave

Dave I just remember a little utility that can convert marker files to text to be directly used for UTM or degrees.To make a marker create \Chalnges\Markers , a markers subfolder in the Challenge folder of the region.When you are in flight at a specified location make a pause so you stay with the plane there, then type : to get the command line in FU3 open and type the command saveorientation markers aaaxxx where aaaxxx can be any name 7 numer of waypoint just for your reference.After the flight you will find inside the markers subfolder the file markers.datWith my small utility MarkerView.exe you can converte the marker file to text like this:

Marker	IsPos	P1	P2	P3 Alt m	Alt ft	Tile Elev-Map	Lat	Long	AIPlan Pointairolo	1	483000	138716	30412	99751	aaad x:0 y:13	46.389602	5.917517	POINT 000 = (+46:23:23,+05:55:03)ch0001	1	488396	137980	47777	156709	aaad x:84 y:25	46.383902	5.987831	POINT 000 = (+46:23:02,+05:59:16)

then you will ind all needed values for POI and AIPLAN...Download the zip file here:Markerview.zipUnzip and place the exe inside the markers subfolder, run it, click on OK and select the marker file, result is the markerlist.txt as shown above.good luckAndre

AndreThats a grate littl tool you hav got there Andre, I allways wonted to know what was in them MARKER.DAT files, and nouw I know.You shood put it on your web sight.Iv never used MARKER.DAT files in creating a chalang bifor, I could never creat them, after bringing up the consol with the : key and typeingthe relevant comand, I would pres the Enter key, which dus apsolootly nuthing, its the L shaped retern key I should hav been useing.So nouw to get a MARKER.DAT file, I first creat a new folder, and renaim it john, then I put this folder in my chalange directory along side the other challanges, and then I go flying in anuther chalang, or flying as in Quik Flight, it dusant mater. I then Pause the game, ctrl_p or usethe zor mode, ctrl_z or any mode I like, it dusant mater, and then bring up the consol with the : key and type saveposition john aaaxxx and then pres the retern key.Nouw there is a MARKER.DAT file in my john folder.glidernut.

Hi.I had a bit of a revelation on Sunday morning. It's odd how things one saw years ago without noticing can suddenly become helpful, and stranger how they sometimes come to mind unbidden.I can't get proper OT map coordinates with any geo-to-UTM conversion tool so I'm certain that LGS did not use UTM. The OT map has a rectangular grid pasted on top of a map of unknown projection. Their geo coordinates are correct but the grid references are definitely not UTM and appear to be LGS custom. I think that UTM approximations only seem to work in the inner regions as those are relatively small areas so the errors also are small.But all is not lost. Back to the revelation. I had a sudden memory of seeing XYZ co-ordinates in the corner of Fled's main window and sure enough, if you left-click there you can find all sorts of information. Conversion is easier and more accurate- position Fled's top-down view over your location and left-click the small panel to find the grid reference.Now life's much easier!Here's the default OT VOR beacons, for Seattle POI.TXT It took me about an hour:1052456 -1229964 108.2 FLG1009399 -275771 108.4 JAC980291 -664523 108.4 PVU58900 44298 109.6 TCM1173045 -803558 109.8 CNY73092 130210 110.6 PAE875635 -1194522 112.0 PGS222811 -470292 112.0 LKV532907 -669170 112.2 BAM-101575 173506 112.2 TOU-4110 -855588 112.3 ENI166693 -113179 112.3 LTJ438825 -448883 112.5 REO864851 -382527 112.6 PIH287551 74957 112.6 EPH962199 -952819 112.8 BCE1197 -292161 112.9 EUG295727 -1095508 112.9 CZQ1000433 -1143370 113.1 GCN569429 -333573 113.3 BOI26563 24602 113.4 OLM25764 -474272 113.6 OED441289 -1413219 113.6 LAX847385 -426053 113.6 unknown858742 -41647 113.7 HIA-16723 220612 113.7 YYJ984122 -1287867 114.1 DRK334105 -109217 114.7 PDT450848 -898488 115.1 MVA893730 143561 115.1 GTF799368 -1297973 115.2 EED1046993 -1424120 115.6 PXR279452 -228326 115.6 IMB83452 -740831 115.7 RBL936874 -683667 115.7 EUR7701 259063 115.9 YVR123849 -509248 115.9 LMT210866 -16887 116.0 YKM1163828 -1561649 116.0 TUS924758 -774205 116.1 DTA395387 -726411 116.5 LLC50876 -111213 116.6 BTG71151 76366 116.8 SEA881742 -240233 116.9 DBS725668 -1156509 116.9 LAS889362 -451510 117.4 MLD20497 -155079 117.4 UBG-68174 22582 117.7 HQM560515 -1538181 117.8 SAN573149 104573 117.8 MLP305498 -797594 117.9 FMG Kind regards, and thanks for your help.Dave