Hi Folks,I accidentally stumbled on a new way to start FS2004 which I find very interesting and usefull.Here it is: 1. Go to /MY DOCUMENTS/FLIGHT SIMULATOR FILES (Note: I use WinME, not sure if /Flight Simulator Files are located in the same place in WinXP)2. Pick the flight you want to go to when FS2004 starts.3. Double click on the flight which has the extension .FLT (example: Hanks Trading Post.FLT) FS2004 should now start to load and you'll be in that flight.Hope this helps.

Thanks Howard, that is a good tip. It's a nice way to start FS without any dialogs, which is very convient if you are doing scenery design or any other task that takes a lot of restarts.

Yeah, I have a shortcut to this folder on my desktop.

Does this just associate .flt file types with FS9, i.e., Open With?

Hmmm... all it did for me was hose up my "previous flight.flt" file. I had to delete it and start from a default flight to get FS9 running again...

I would also recommend "fsAutostart" is helps and allows you to eliminate background services just while your running FS9 and then restores them after your done automaticly. I got a nice little boost in performance from this program.Capt.Mac

For max performance though, I always suggest simmers learn what FSAutostart is suspending. Some applets and programs steal a chunk of memory when they start and they don't return it for use in other apps. Start with just the essential...Back to the topic at hand--I'll also have to give this a try--it seems a better way of starting the sim vs. the same flight all the time... Thanks for the tip!-John

I'd been doing that for so long I didn't realise it was not generally known. It certainly is a time saver. Maybe, as a network administrator, opening apps form the relevant file has been a normal procedure for me for years even back in the days when we only had Acorn Archimedes A3000 computers. Yeah, I'm that old! LOLAlan

I wouldn't recommend this for a simple reason I've been aware of lately: there is a bug somewhere in FS about how it calls gauges initialization. When starting a flight from the create a flight folder all is right, when double-clicking the same flight from the explorer to auto start FS, gauges are not initialized the same (not respecting the FS SDK). This means that with complex gauges/panels, you may encounter problems...Hope this helps!

You beat me to it Jean-Luc :-). Some add-ons can react weird if you don't run fs9.exe first. After that you ca double-click on the flt file if you want.Alex