The recent 'Still love WAMA!' thread reminded me again why I own, but don't currently use WAMA.

I wish I could find a solution, but early on I discovered that WAMA's changing aircraft on the fly was incompatible with how I use most of my aircraft in SIMstarter.

For instance, some of my aircraft (exp: iFly 737) require that I first load a default FSX aircraft, then change over to the complex aircraft once I am sitting at the airport.

For others, I have custom dll.xml or exe.xml files that get loaded when I select a specific scenario.  These customs exclude loading of DLLs non-relevant to the aircraft I am flying, so as to save memory (still a FSX user), or load model specific HID macros.

So, any recommendations from fellow SIMstarter users, other than switch to P3DV4 (which ain't never gonna happen), would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ernie

 

 

WAMA has many features. Even if you don't use the "walk to your aircraft and enter it" feature:

• you can still use it to add aircraft (or other objects, even driving vehicles are possible) to certain positions on the airport.
• the automatic logbook, which saves your flights and offers to export them to KML files (for e.g. Google Earth) is nice
• it can keep your selected departure and arrival parking spot free of automatically inserted AI aircraft

 

Hello Ernie,

the requirement to have a default aircraft is easy, the invisible camera pod that is included in WAMA is as default as they come.

But if you turn off the custom aircraft logic with SimStarter (= the DLLs) then the aircraft that you enter will not work correctly, that is true. The question is, if that is really necessary - I have done it too in FSX, but I was never sure if disabling the DLLs brings any benefit apart from resolving cross reference issues (there were DLLs that didn't like some others being present at the same time). Did you by any chance check if the memory load is really less if you disable those DLLs that your current model isn't using anyway? Normally they shouldn't be in the memory until they are actually loaded with the cockpit gauges. But I don't really know. I always had the bad feeling that what I was doing was superfluous, that it didn't matter memory wise if the DLLs were active in the config files or not.

But generally speaking, if you know that you are going to fly a certain aircraft, and you start the corresponding profile with SimStarter, then selecting the aircraft from its last known parking position in WAMA should work too. Only if the model is very particular in the sense that you can't create saved flights with it, then it would fail.

Best regards

6 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Did you by any chance check if the memory load is really less if you disable those DLLs that your current model isn't using anyway?

Thanks for replying..

Honestly.. no.    I was doing it as a precaution, because frankly, I'm not sure how DLLs and objects affect memory.

However, given your examples I'll give it a go and see what happens. 

Perhaps I am doing more work than necessary..

Ernie

Oliver et al,

A quick question if I may presume upon your time.

I recognise that Ifly 737 requires a default aircraft (in my case, the Cessna 172) I complicate the hell out of this because I use 6 monitors in FS2004 and setting that up for each instance of flight would add an additional 10 minutes before I got into the VC cockpit.

So initially I set up the Cessna as required, select the Ifly737(BBJ3) and then set up my screens ie aft and fwd overhead on a 40 inch (portrait mode), 1 x left virtual cockpit to a 32inch (landscape), pan to a look left view. Note that this screen has to be reset for each flight as does the next screen which is a 32inch (landscape) set up in the same way for a right hand view. The next is my 60 inch main screen set up for a full width VC cockpit at 0.50 zoom. Again this screen has to be positioned manually for each flight. The next screen is a 22inch Monitor (landscape) which displays the FMS/Lower DU/FMS/throttle with the extended to the next monitor so that the 22 inch monitor only shows the FMSs and Lower DU and throttle is displayed on a 24inch (portrait) monitor and that is overlaid by the Aft Elec Pedestal..

I then set up YBBN as default airport, set weather, including wind at approx 010 degrees for RWY 01 and save that configuration as BBJ3 YBBN. By doing this, each time I wish to fly the BBj3 I simply select the flight, adjust the mainscreen VC and the two side view screens and I am good to go with the preflight etc. It just takes a couple of minutes.

Doing this, I have never noticed any side effects and I am actually wondering if there would be any benefits in taking the time to set up with the default aircraft each and every time.

What are your thoughts?

Regards to all

Tony Chilcott

4 hours ago, himmelhorse said:

if there would be any benefits in taking the time to set up with the default aircraft each and every time.

IMHO - no. If you can save and load flights with your complex aircraft, then there is no reason to load a "default" aircraft beforehand.

I don't think that anyone every specified what a "default aircraft" actually is. I always translated this as "an aircraft that doesn't have a lot of custom coded systems". This probably was recommended to reduce issues that may arise when the complex aircraft loads its own custom logic on top of other custom logic. In some cases it was as simple as the master avionics switch, which was missing in many complex aircraft, but not in the default 172 - and which had to be "on". Seen from that perspective, even in FSX there were aircraft that were a lot more "default" than others (for example the 172 vs the F18, the latter even had custom DLL based systems). 

A saved flight file usually contains all the aircraft systems' states, so there is little that can go wrong. A2A append their own bit of information to the simulators saved flight file, others save their custom "panel state" with it. So you should do fine.

Best regards 

Oliver,

Well that confirmed a lot for me and I thank you for that.  It was aways my impression that the reason for the default aircraft first was to "neutralize FS9 ort FSX and to bring it all back to a default state somewhat similar to a clean install. As I said I have never noted any negative side effects with what I am doing but this post actually made me question whether it was detrimental at all.  

Thank you so very mucyh matey, very much appreciated.

Regards

Tony