What is this blank AI aircraft?

[martinlest2 58]

I have spent hours and hours now on this and have had to admit defeat. Does anyone recognise the a/c from its shape?

 

 

 

Traffic Explorer (from Traffic Toolbox) tells me it is a Tu204 (yes, looks like one) and sure enough, when I choose 'view', the sim goes straight to the plane. I find the entry for the plane (tail number) in the aia Tu204 folder's aircraft.cfg.

 

BUT ... even if I remove that folder completely from the sim, the a/c is still there. I backed up my main traffic.bgl file and then used TTools to remove all Tu204s from my AI traffic (I replaced every mention in the aircraft txt file with an a/c I know appears OK). But even with the new bgl file the blank a/c is still there!

 

So, assuming Traffic Explorer has the right ID for this a/c, why can I not get rid of it? I have tried replacing the bmp file with one that is OK, but no joy. I checked the mdl and air files. They are as they are supposed to be. The wings look OK, which is odd, as there's only one bmp file for the whole a/c (aia_tu_204_ps90_t.bmp).... I tried the RR variant, just in case, but same result.

 

Finally I edited the air file in the folder to make the aircraft flyable. Then, all the textures show just fine when I load it as my user aircraft. But the Ai plane next to me (presumably the same one?) is still plain grey (wings apart).

 

Any ideas? I expected to solve this in 10 minutes (I usually manage to) but this one has me beat!

 

Thanks,

 

Martin

[N60JBravo 27]

Does it fly?

 

Maybe it's a static scenery object.

 

Turn off all AI and see if it disappears.

 

regards,

Joe

[martinlest2 58]

Yes, it flies. Not static ...

[flightwatch 68]

If you have deleted the TU-204 folder, but it's still there, chances are that you have another TU-204 lying around somewhere.  Have tried a folder search to see if it comes up with anything?  I hate ai problems.  99% of the time, they are a complete PITA to resolve.

[christiaan 4]

It is often a different aircraft than you think.

If you have just notice this and you go regularly to this airport check your last downloads.

I use TTools and when I install a new aircraft with flight plans I always go to the airline's main airport to check for this sort of issue.

When I have this issue  I check departure by altering the time of day. Then you can check to see if the flight number can be found in your flight plans.

 

Usually it a simple spelling mistake in the aircraft file.

I.e. texture.xxx where the (.) is missing, letter size is wrong ( ge instead of GE ),

 

Eventually you will find the answer

[martinlest2 58]

Will have another look at this soon and post back... Can't stand the idea that I can't fix this!!

[FSMuseum 39]

Tu-214 maybe?

[Dave Morgan 68]

Hi Martin.

 

Where does it fly from & to? You may be able to narrow your search down by comparing its departure and destination with the plans in flightplans.txt from your decompiled traffic bgl. Once you have a shortlistlist of suspects, check the AC# number for that plan with the AC# entry in aircraft.txt

 

Unless you have absurdly complex and extensive AI, in several bgl files, you ought to have no more than 20 or so planes to disable one by one.

 

When you think you've tracked it down, give it a horrible colour with something like dxtbmp and look at it again in FS to confirm that it is the culprit.

 

Cheers,

Dave

 

edit: if you believe you've already tracked it down, see if you can download a different livery for it and assign that livery to the troublesome flight to check whether that one shows up. It's not likely but it could be something as simple as a dodgy filename.

[martinlest2 58]

I will have another go at some stage soon, but as I say, I did spend literally hours on this! It was one of those very frustrating cases where I removed my AI traffic folders from FS9/Aircraft in batches until the blank plane disappeared (I concentrated on Tu204/214s, as this is at UUEE, Moscow). When I removed the Tu204 folder, the a/c vanished. Success, I thought. I replaced the folder - a/c back again. Removed the folder once more ... aircraft still there!! Incredible. as I said when I posted, I had expected to fix this very quickly, I usually find it takes less than 15 minutes. Not with this one..

 

I have a lot of traffic.bgl files, and I need to experiment, but I am sure this a/c is part of my default traffic.bgl file, not one of the small addons for individual airports.

 

I have already tried assigning a different livery to the a/c but it made no difference.. I replaced the faulty a/c with another in TTools and recompiled, but it's still there.. I haven't written down all the troubleshooting steps I took to be honest, there were many of them, but I will get back to it and post back when I have had another go.

 

Thanks!

 

Martin

[tgibson 11]

When you put it back did Windows create a folder called Copy of xxx?  If so, then that copy is probably still there.

[martinlest2 58]

No ...  :-)

[tgibson 11]

It actually doesn't look untextured, it just looks like a bare metal version.  Perhaps you have installed a "generic" livery of that plane?

[christiaan 4]

Do you also have installed FSX with SDK,and the same aircrafts (AI) as in FS9.

 

If so then you maybe you can use the SDK Traffic Toolbox to find the aircraft.

[martinlest2 58]

Solved !!!     :p0814: :Party:

 

I'm afraid the answer is so simple, it's disappointing. I have got another Tu204 in my AI traffic, and it was one of the first folders I removed to see if the a/c was still there... and it was, so I discounted it (I tried again, just to check)...

 

I now see that the blank plane is one where, in the aircraft.cfg, the texture= line refers to a folder that doesn't exist. The only difference this time is that in between removing and adding folders to test things, I shut down FS9 and restarted it. Before, I moved to a different airport and then back again: that works to reload the AI traffic, but only sometimes..

 

Well, now I have used a different texture folder for this plane, it shows up with the chosen livery. Simple.... No idea though why the wings were showing OK - there is only one bmp for the whole aircraft..

 

One lesson learned is that Traffic Explorer doesn't (as was mentioned above) necessarily choose the right aircraft when you view it! The problem was nothing to do with the plane it identified ...

 

One of the great advantages of FSX is how one can load new stuff without restarting the programme, of course!

Thanks for the input,

 

Martin

[tgibson 11]

Another way to reload AI aircraft is to save a flight and then load it.