MS Flight has a great feature: it automatically remembers where your plane is and in what state it is when you leave MS Flight. However, even though that is very nice I usually rather have my default plane cold and dark at a parking spot with certain weather and a certain time and a... well, etc. etc. etc. I figured out a way to do it. It takes a few minutes of preparation but after doing that once, you can start MS Flight with one doubleclick and you will always be in the plane of your choice in the situation (cold and dark or not, weather, time of day, season, parking spot, the lot) of your choice.

 

Here is how to do it (and remember, you only have to do this all once! Using the tip itself takes no longer than starting MS Flight as you do now!):

 

1. Start MS Flight, start a flight and set everything up the way you want to (as you would do when you prepared your default flight in FSX!).

 

2. When you are done... simply quit MS Flight!

 

3. Go to your CurrentSituation folder which (in Windows 7) is here: Users\<your name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Flight\Players\<random number>\Career\CurrentSituation. You will see the following three files there:

CurrentSituation.FLT

CurrentSituation.FSSAVE

CurrentSituation.SPB

 

4. Copy those three files and simply paste them into the same folder. Rename the copies of the files as follows:

CurrentSituation.FLTbackup

CurrentSituation.FSSAVEbackup

CurrentSituation.SPBbackup

(I let you rename them in this step because the names will be different after copying depending on the language you use in Windows and that may prevent the following steps from working. So to make sure everyone around the world can use this trick, I let you rename them here.)

 

5. Now you will have six files:

CurrentSituation.FLT

CurrentSituation.FLTbackup

CurrentSituation.FSSAVE

CurrentSituation.FSSAVEbackup

CurrentSituation.SPB

CurrentSituation.SPBbackup

 

6. Create a text file (Notepad) in the same folder and open it to edit it. Copy and paste everything from the following box into that text file. MAKE SURE to enter YOUR actual path to Flight.exe between the quotationmarks!!!

 

copy CurrentSituation.FLTbackup CurrentSituation.FLT
copy CurrentSituation.FSSAVEbackup CurrentSituation.FSSAVE
copy CurrentSituation.SPBbackup CurrentSituation.SPB
start /d "D:\Microsoft Flight" Flight.exe

 

Example of another path:

If you have the MS Flight folder installed in a folder called Games on the C-drive the last line should read:

 

start /d "C:\Games\Microsoft Flight" Flight.exe

 

7. Save and close the text file and rename it to MS Flight.bat or whatever name you fancy, as long as you change the extension from .txt to .bat (press Yes when Windows asks you if you really want to change the extension).

 

8. Make a shortcut to the bat file (do NOT copy it!) on your desktop or wherever you want to start MS Flight from.

 

That's it. When you doubleclick on the shortcut of the .bat the backup files will be copied in a split second, overwriting the files that were created when you left MS Flight, and after that MS Flight will be started at once with your default plane in your default state in your default situation. Obviously after starting MS Flight and getting to the map, you can change the weather or time of day or the plane or the airport or whatever you want to, just like in FSX, before you jump into the airplane by pressing M (or however you like to get into the plane).

 

BONUS TIP: Starting a flight from a parking spot on any airport

 

My default flight (which I created using the steps above) has me standing cold and dark on a parking spot on PHKO. Of course I quite often, if not always, would like to start my flight on a parking spot of another airport...! You can't do this using the map (unfortunately) but I also got a trick for that. NOTE: The parking spot will be a random one on the airport of your choice and this will only work (or work best) when you have the Maule as your default plane (so don't change the plane after starting MS Flight with your default flight until you have done the following):

 

1. When you arrive on the the map, click on the airport you want to take off from, click on Job board, choose a random Job (no need to read anything, just doubleclick a random job) and start the mission by hitting Enter.

 

2. As soon as the mission has been loaded, immediately press Esc and Exit the mission.

 

3. Press M to start your actual flight.

 

If you want to use other conditions then there are in your default flight, you obviously have to change a few settings before pressing M in step 3. You can also change those settings before you move your plane to another airport, but in that case don't change the plane until you have done so. The Maule works best for this trick because only the Maule has jobs on every airport!

 

The bonus tip might take some time depending on your pc... On my pc it only takes about 10 to 15 seconds so that's not too bad. The default flight tip takes no extra time at ALL, apart from the preparation.

 

P.S. If a few things sound familiar: this topic is based on this one http://forum.avsim.n...howtopic=369010 Why I didn't think of using a bat file earlier, I don't know... It's a bit time saver compared to my previous method.

Jeroen, you're becoming a FLIGHT Expert!!!

 

Thanks for the Great Guide, one more adding to other you already made available, and for sharing your findings with us!!!!

You're very welcome.

 

Oh, and btw, of course if you do NOT want to load your default flight but want to proceed where you left the last time, simply use the original shortcut to start Flight instead of the .bat! As long as you don't use the bat, Flight will load the last (current) situation that was saved automatically when you left the game.

 

P.S. To make it all perfect you can also change the icon of the .bat chortcut to that of the Flight.exe... Looks a lot nicer than that default .bat icon.

I've been playing around with this. Rather than specify the individual files by filename, I just copied the CurrentSituations folder over to another location and copy the folder back with wildcards in the batch file:

 

@echo off
copy "d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\*.*" "c:\Users\Ray\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Flight\Players\BFDC92FEA2FD0DD4\Career\CurrentSituation\"
"g:\Steam\steamapps\common\microsoft flight\flight.exe"

 

I've got this batch file as secondary launcher for Flight on my desktop. I still use the standard launcher for when I want it to remember where I left off last time.

 

Oh, and here's my modified "Cold & Dark" icon, if anyone wants it...

 

 

http://dl.dropbox.co...Dark Flight.ico

 

It's just gray-scaled from the standard icon's red channel, if I remember correctly. That was quicker and easier than trying to recolorize it. :Whistle:

Whow!

 

Thx!

Talk about cold and dark!

 

Best regards.

Luis

You might want to quickly come up cold and dark at various different locations, depending on what you want to do. I don't remember enough about batch files to figure this out myself, but I remember you could have a numbered menu in a batch file:

 

1. Honolulu

2. Lihui

3. Hilo

Press the number of the airport you'd like to start from

 

The batch file would then branch to the code to copy the desired folder (corresponding to the number you pressed) of "currensituation" files to the c:\Users\... folder\

 

In RoboRay's example there would be several folders under d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\

 

example:

 

d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\Hilo

d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\Honolulu

d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\Bellows

 

This may seem like overkill, but it can be done, I just don't remember the batch file code to branch to different code based on a user selection. Been too long.

Talk about cold and dark!

 

Well, if that's too dreary for you, here's one in color with the blue channel subtracted...

 

 

http://dl.dropbox.co...light-green.ico

 

Just pretend you're off the apron and on the grass!

 

Maybe the "real" photoshoppers can do something better.

 

 

You might want to quickly come up cold and dark at various different locations, depending on what you want to do. I don't remember enough about batch files to figure this out myself, but I remember you could have a numbered menu in a batch file:

 

1. Honolulu

2. Lihui

3. Hilo

Press the number of the airport you'd like to start from

 

The batch file would then branch to the code to copy the desired folder (corresponding to the number you pressed) of "currensituation" files to the c:\Users\... folder\

 

In RoboRay's example there would be several folders under d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\

 

example:

 

d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\Hilo

d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\Honolulu

d:\Games Backups\MS Flight CurrentSituation\Bellows

 

This may seem like overkill, but it can be done, I just don't remember the batch file code to branch to different code based on a user selection. Been too long.

 

Yeah, I haven't done much batch-file scripting in almost 20 years, but it can be handled through setting and acting on environment variables, if I remember correctly.

 

It would probably be easier to just keep multiple batch files in a folder and run a different one depending on where you want to start up.

Talk about cold and dark!

 

Best regards.

Luis

 

:rofl:

You might want to quickly come up cold and dark at various different locations, depending on what you want to do. I don't remember enough about batch files to figure this out myself, but I remember you could have a numbered menu in a batch file:

 

This may seem like overkill, but it can be done, I just don't remember the batch file code to branch to different code based on a user selection. Been too long.

 

I also thought about this and it's all possible, but this will become cumbersome and complicated soon, specially when Alaska (and other regions) will be released. Saving a situation for EVERY airport is a bit too much and I am only interested in a method that can get me parked on EVERY airport. I am sure that if I save situations for 15 airports, I would want to fly from an airport I haven't saved yet... So for me using the 'job trick' is the easiest and fastest option. I usually park my plane on a parking spot this way when I am still figuring out which VORs I have to use or what approach plates I might need: that usually takes longer then the 10 to 15 seconds it takes to do the job trick.

BTW Instead of starting the job to get to a parking spot on a certain airport (as mentioned in my bonus tip), you can also of course simply fly the job! When I wrote my post I didn't do much jobs due to the destination marker. But now I have removed that one and I am doing a lot of jobs and so the procedure mentioned in this topic doesn't cost me any additional time at all. I start Flight with the bat (which makes sure my plane is cold and dark), I set up the desired weather and time on the map and then start a job, cold and dark, just like I want it.

 

It's rather obvious, but I thought I'd post it anyway...

Great tips in this thread, however do jobs not start cold and dark anyway when choosing to fly one?

They do for me - not sure if I did anything special for that to happen...

I've had jobs start with the engine already running, when selecting it while flying.

Great tips in this thread, however do jobs not start cold and dark anyway when choosing to fly one?

They do for me - not sure if I did anything special for that to happen...

 

LOL I also have seen the engines running at the start of jobs but that may well be when I start a job after flying around... I should check that. If simply starting a job after starting the game gives you a cold and dark cockpit, then er... my tips are utterly useless. I'll give it a try now!

 

Well, when I leave the game during a flight and restart it later, the engines are running and all when I start a job... So to make absolutely sure I will be starting cold and dark, my trick is the way to go...

Well, when I leave the game during a flight and restart it later, the engines are running and all when I start a job

 

Hmm every job starts for me cold and dark, however if I have started a flight I always finish it as I should! So when I start a job, it is not after quiting in middle of another flight - shame shame!!

 

But anyway, guess that explains why I was a little puzzled as mine does always start cold and dark when I start a job.