Airport Chart Viewer Problem

[quincysw 0]

I have installed Airport Chart Gauge and everything seems to be working but when I try to build a database (running as administrator)the airports show as zero and I am unable to get any charts to show.. Using windows 8.1 pro 64bit and FS2004.
Any help would be much appreciated

regards

Brian

[Skywatcher 133]

If that's the gauge by Holger Maass it doesn't work on operating systems beyond XP. Real shame because it was a great addon for FS.

[WingZ 547]

I am an XP Luddite, have just installed this, and it works very nicely!

Amazing what you miss over the years; I gave DBS money for their Airport GPS which supposedly does much the same thing.

However, nothing I could do, would make it display the information.

Scoring a great big fat zero for Product Support, I am willing to uninstall it and give it away to the first bidder.

[Skywatcher 133]

I am an XP Luddite, have just installed this, and it works very nicely!

Amazing what you miss over the years; I gave DBS money for their Airport GPS which supposedly does much the same thing.

However, nothing I could do, would make it display the information.

Scoring a great big fat zero for Product Support, I am willing to uninstall it and give it away to the first bidder.

If you don't want it feel free to send it this direction!

Airport Chart Gauge is brilliant, I know I really liked it when I was using it. I'm closely following this same topic elsewhere in the hope someone does have a magical solution to get it going again.

 

[A32xx 129]

Working in Windows 7 x64:

 

 

Download Airport Chart Gauge V2 from the library here. It's for FSX and FS2004 but doesn't say so.

Right-click on the installer and set the compatibility mode to XP SP2 and Run As Administrator.

Install as per the on-screen instructions, you MUST install the gauge into at least one aircraft on the installer's list.

When installed, right-click on the Airport Chart DB Builder and set the compatibility mode to XP SP2 and Run As Administrator.

Launch FS2004 and click Fly Now.

Minimize FS2004 and launch Airport Chart DB Builder.

Select FS2k4 and click Build. Wait forever. When complete, click Off.

Quit FS2004 and re-launch it.

Select your APG equipped plane, choose an airport, click Fly Now.

Open the ACG gauge pop-up window - if your plane has 4 pop-ups, ACG will be no. 5.

[Skywatcher 133]

Working in Windows 7 x64:

 

Download Airport Chart Gauge V2 from the library here. It's for FSX and FS2004 but doesn't say so.

Right-click on the installer and set the compatibility mode to XP SP2 and Run As Administrator.

Install as per the on-screen instructions, you MUST install the gauge into at least one aircraft on the installer's list.

When installed, right-click on the Airport Chart DB Builder and set the compatibility mode to XP SP2 and Run As Administrator.

Launch FS2004 and click Fly Now.

Minimize FS2004 and launch Airport Chart DB Builder.

Select FS2k4 and click Build. Wait forever. When complete, click Off.

Quit FS2004 and re-launch it.

Select your APG equipped plane, choose an airport, click Fly Now.

Open the ACG gauge pop-up window - if your plane has 4 pop-ups, ACG will be no. 5.

In the middle of a 5 hour flight right now but will certainly test when flight is done.

You will be a life saver if it does work! I had a quick play with it after moving from XP to Win 7. Every post I read said it was broken. I tried a few quick steps but certainly didn't go through all the compatibility combos etc to test it properly. Assumed the posts saying it was broken were probably right.

Only FS addon I think I really missed moving to Win 7!

[Dave Morgan 68]

Brian,

 

Have you managed to get it to work? And if you have, can you make it show anything other than stock airports?

 

Best regards,

D

[Skywatcher 133]

Brian,

 

Have you managed to get it to work? And if you have, can you make it show anything other than stock airports?

 

Best regards,

D

Haven't had a chance yet, had things come up. I'll post back when I've tried. I know I likely hadn't specifically done exactly what A32xx posted in the past so fingers crossed. I would think if it works with default airports it should also work with custom airports as the data is all read from FS. Not exactly sure where the data is pulled from, maybe mentioned somewhere but imagine the data is included somewhere in the airport design. I know nothing about creating airport scenery but do know similar programs to Airport Chart do manage to pull the airport layout data from custom airports. I would think Airport Chart uses the identical data so expect it could pull the info from a custom airport as well.

[Skywatcher 133]

Ok, been a long time since I tried to install this on Win 7 but going through the process again I think this current install came up with the same issues from the installs years ago.

Where I'm at, it installed but running the data base builder comes up with zero airports. I've rebuilt multiple times with FS running and also with FS closed. Best the data base builder produced was 3 airports. I'll do some fiddling and a little research to see if there is anything that can be done. From posts I've read it appears the data base building is the primary issue on newer operating systems.

[tjrush 54]

I believe that some people got it working by creating the database in Windows Safe Mode. 

[A32xx 129]

 

 

From posts I've read it appears the data base building is the primary issue on newer operating systems.

 

I got it to work by setting the DB Builder compatibility mode to XP SP2 and run as adminstrator, then launching FS9 and starting a flight before launching the DB Builder. Try clicking on Update first, then clr when no updates are found, and then click on Build. Mine took about an hour to build so if your PC goes onto standby after 10 minutes like mine, reset the power saving to Never until Build is complete.

[Skywatcher 133]

Thanks guys, I have tried all the suggestions including booting up in safe mode with the same results. I can see it is sometimes working using different methods for different people. I'll try basically everything I can think of to see if I can spark something that works on my system. Still hope and I'll mess with it at some stage. If something works, I'll post back. Shame the developer has left. You tend to feel this would be a very quick and easy fix to make the database work perfectly again.

[Dave Morgan 68]

Hi.

 

I'm still worrying at this because it looks like a very useful application. If I can get it to work.

 

For all post-XP users, I have found this much this (not a lot, I admit). I use XP3 Pro and my database is created in C:\Documents and Settings\[my account name]\Application Data\DBAirport\ and is called data_9.db

 

Should you search for it on your PC, don't forget to uncheck 'Hide familiar extensions' and to uncheck 'Hide [critical/fragile/important/don't-mess-with-it/whatever] files' or your search probably won't show a result. My guess is that in post-XP OSs, the relevant path is called something else so possibly either the database is in the wrong folder or the application is looking in the wrong folder.

 

As far as my own experience goes, my Airport Chart Viewer shows stock afds in preference to any overlying addons. The only addons that do show are those which have no associated stock afd. What I need is something to open the .db file and edit its contents. Or at least examine its contents with a view to considering a manual edit. Of potentially 25000 records. Well, I can dream can't I?

 

The new desktop 'key' icon for Airport Chart DB Builder is reminiscent of MS Access. A Google trawl suggests that the original application for the *.db file was either dBase or Paradox. Or SQL Lite. Or MS Works. Or something completely different. There are free viewers available but my Windows 8.1 Mobile won't have anything to do with .exe downloads. I think the 8.1 security policy is simply to block anything that might do anything at all. I don't fancy visiting softwareinformer or similar from my work network because while my employer grants me unlimited internet access, I feel obliged to refrain from abusing that generosity.

 

MS Access may work. I have Office 2003 but left Access & Powerpoint out of the installation, thinking I'd never need them. Could be an entertaining weekend ahead.

 

Best regards,

Dave

[A32xx 129]

Hi Dave, thanks for the XP information, that's good to know. Regarding your own issue with apchart only showing stock afd's, this may depend on where your add-on afd's are located. Mine are all within my FS9 directory in Addon Scenery and in their own developer's folders such as Aerosoft, UK2000 etc. I don't have any scenery on other internal, external or networked drives.

One other thing which may help, I also use Scenery Config Editor which highlights scenery errors with a red triangle next to the faulty scenery. When I first ran it, it found a fault with one of my Canary Islands airports which I couldn't understand - there were no duplicate sceneries or AFCAD's, and the airport worked perfectly in sim. I eventually discovered a duplicate entry in the Scenery.cfg file! It may be worth running something like Scenery Config Editor as a check before running apchart DB Builder, one error like that may stop the whole build process at that point.

[Dave Morgan 68]

Thanks for that.

 

My addon afds are in all sorts of places - some within ../fs2004/scenery/[area]/scenery/, some in ../fs2004/addon scenery/scenery/ and others in their own folders. In the database, none seem to take precedence over the stock.

 

My autism gene insists on standardisaton so I use a scenery config editing tool whenever I add or remove scenery or make manual alterations to scenery.cfg, though being at work I have no idea what the d/l was called. It has no GUI, just produces a new scenery.cfg and a backup of the original. It identifies and corrects, among other things, non-sequential layer numbers and duplicates so that's not it. I suppose the problem may depend on the order of the lines within each layer section. Changing the order for each section is possible though with 400-odd layers it would surely take some time.

 

I'm still inclined to think the problem is most likely with the database compiler...

 

Cheers,

D