Flight Music Switcher

[Orion 2]

Flight Music Switcher

By Orion Lyau

 

 

The Flight Music Switcher allows you to switch between the original RTM and Alaska Title Update UI music loops in Microsoft Flight.

 

However, the duration of the music loop remains the same as the duration of the Alaska Title Update music loop, at 2 minutes and 8 seconds.  This means that, with a duration of 3 minutes 54 seconds, only the beginning portion of the RTM music will play.

 

Although this tool has been tested for quality and compatibility, the author does not assume any responsibility should this program harm your computer, data, Microsoft Flight, or any other installed software, in any way. You are using this software at your own discretion.

 

This tool is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind.

 

The author is not affiliated with Microsoft.  Icon by Brandon Filer.  Music note designed by Dmitry Baranovskiy from The Noun Project.

 

Requirements

 

- .NET Framework 4.5 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653)

- Microsoft Flight

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Q: Can I add new music?

A: No.

 

Q: Is it possible to play the entire loop instead of the first 2 minutes 8 seconds?

A: Not to my knowledge.  I'm not sure what controls the loop duration, but it doesn't seem to be based on the FSB file the music is contained in.

 

Special Thanks & Acknowledgements

 

- Brandon Filer for creating the icon.

- Music note by Dmitry Baranovskiy from The Noun Project.

- DotNetZip Library, used for handling PAK files.

 

Download

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Very neat little tool! Glad to have helped with the icon.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Very nice! :good:  And particularly clever the way in which it elevates itself if blocked by UAC.

 

I hope that we will see more of this sort of thing from you and from some of the other guys who took part in the creation of this great sim.

 

Thanks. B)

 

Best regards.

Luis

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Finally! I've been waiting for this for a long time. Great job!

[DarkstarF16 72]

Whoop... will try this out in the am.

 

I echo Louis sentiments

[OMGBBQ32 12]

hehe...

[neonapple 0]

Does this only work if you downloaded from the GFWL Marketplace? I downloaded the Steam version of MS Flight and this program shuts down instantly without error or dialog.  I suspect it is looking for a particular path to the game which is different if it is installed to a different path.  Steam installs the game in a different place than does the GFWL marketplace client.

 

Can you make it so we can drop the application in the same directory as the game?

 

I am also using Win8 x64.

[Orion 2]

I determine the Flight root directory by looking at the value of InstallPath in the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Flight.  Is there a similar key for the Steam version of Flight?

 

In the meantime, I've modified it to allow you to choose the path if it can't detect it.  You can download the updated version from the original link in the first post of the thread.

[neonapple 0]

Hi Orion,

Thanks for the fast response and the update. I just checked my registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft

There is no "Microsoft Flight" node when installed using the Steam version.

 

These registry entries are made with the GFWL Marketplace game installer. Since Steam installs the game differently, these keys are not created.

 

I'll send you the reg file for the Steam version.

[stonelance 136]

There are no reg keys for the Steam version as far as I know.  There is a reg key for the location of Steam which is what I use in FlightToolkit to find the Flight.exe but it still doesn't work if they use a custom library location in steam.  It does appear as though the install locations are saved in some config files in Steam, but I haven't changed the installer yet to use that.

 

Edit: Nice work on the tool, Orion.  What did you use to edit the FSB file?

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Edit: Nice work on the tool, Orion.  What did you use to edit the FSB file?

 

Flight keeps a copy of the pak file from each previous update. I believe all he did was get the FSB out of that pak file. However, there is a tool that we used to successfully recompile an extended version of the music from the beta of Flight into an FSB again (the beta music just happens to be half the length of Alaska's music, so I just used Free Audio Editor to add in a repeat of the entire song after it ends). To extract the mp3 from an FSB, we've used FSB Extractor (http://aezay.site11.com/aezay/fsbextractor/). To recompile we used a version of FMOD Soundbank Generator from the time that Flight was in development (http://www.fmod.org/download/findEx.html).

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Flight keeps a copy of the pak file from each previous update. I believe all he did was get the FSB out of that pak file. However, there is a tool that we used to successfully recompile an extended version of the music from the beta of Flight into an FSB again (the beta music just happens to be half the length of Alaska's music, so I just used Free Audio Editor to add in a repeat of the entire song after it ends). To extract the mp3 from an FSB, we've used FSB Extractor (http://aezay.site11.com/aezay/fsbextractor/). To recompile we used a version of FMOD Soundbank Generator from the time that Flight was in development (http://www.fmod.org/download/findEx.html).

 

Wait, did you also get access to the main menu music that was during the beta? Or do you mean the RTM music?

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Wait, did you also get access to the main menu music that was during the beta? Or do you mean the RTM music?

 

I have the beta version of Flight on a flash drive just for the sake of having the content of it if ever needed, which includes the menu music. Orion's tool switches to the RTM music. My explanation for compiling an FSB was referring to the beta music.

[neonapple 0]

There are no reg keys for the Steam version as far as I know.  There is a reg key for the location of Steam which is what I use in FlightToolkit to find the Flight.exe but it still doesn't work if they use a custom library location in steam.  It does appear as though the install locations are saved in some config files in Steam, but I haven't changed the installer yet to use that.

 

Edit: Nice work on the tool, Orion.  What did you use to edit the FSB file?

 

Steam does create an uninstall key. MS Flight is App 203850 in Steam. Using that node, you can find the install path. I don't know if this ID is dynamic or static however here is the key below:

 

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Steam App 203850]

"DisplayIcon"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steam\\games\\0aa18fefd05b0550749dd13d316f544ca0ef247f.ico"

"DisplayName"="Microsoft Flight"

"HelpLink"="http://support.steampowered.com/"

"InstallLocation"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Microsoft Flight"

"Publisher"=""

 

"URLInfoAbout"=""

"NoRepair"=dword:00000001

"NoModify"=dword:00000001

[Orion 2]

There are no reg keys for the Steam version as far as I know.  There is a reg key for the location of Steam which is what I use in FlightToolkit to find the Flight.exe but it still doesn't work if they use a custom library location in steam.  It does appear as though the install locations are saved in some config files in Steam, but I haven't changed the installer yet to use that.

 

Edit: Nice work on the tool, Orion.  What did you use to edit the FSB file?

 

Which config files would that be?  I don't have Steam (and by extension, the Steam version of Flight), so I'm not sure where to look.

 

Brandon's correct -- I haven't edited the FSB file.  I read Microsoft Flight\Languages\CoreContent.en-US.pak\UI\Sound\UI_music.fsb into a MemoryStream and put it in a new zip file with no compression, then add a new MappingEntry pointing to the new zip in the Microsoft Flight\FileLocator.config.

 

Although, as Brandon also pointed out, we did manage to import the beta music.  There are two tools I found to extract music from FSB files: fsbext and FSB Extractor.  We had the FSB from the beta still handy, and extracted the music from there.  We used the FMOD Soundbank Generator to create an FSB again -- though it did require an older version to get Flight to read it.  After some tinkering, I found that matching the sample rate & bit rate to the RTM & Alaska music allowed Flight to play the music back normally, although the looping still didn't work properly.  Conveniently, Brandon thought to just loop the beta track twice, which leaves only a two second gap of no music -- not too bothersome.

 

 

Steam does create an uninstall key. MS Flight is App 203850 in Steam. Using that node, you can find the install path. I don't know if this ID is dynamic or static however here is the key below:

 

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Steam App 203850]

"DisplayIcon"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steam\\games\\0aa18fefd05b0550749dd13d316f544ca0ef247f.ico"

"DisplayName"="Microsoft Flight"

"HelpLink"="http://support.steampowered.com/"

"InstallLocation"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Microsoft Flight"

"Publisher"=""

 

"URLInfoAbout"=""

"NoRepair"=dword:00000001

"NoModify"=dword:00000001

 

 

Ah, thanks.  The registry key you copied into the PM got truncated after the HelpLink value.