FSEDIT and Aircraft.cfg Files

[mgh 89]

Has anyone else noticed this?Sometimes, having made a change in the aircraft.cfg file it doesn't seem to take effect until I use FSEdit on the corresponding .air file. Typically, I'll make a change to some descriptive text in FSEdit, cancel it, then save it. After this, the change seems to take effect.

[Guest iholrf]

Yes. To the point that FSEdit hit the trashbin. There are some variables that do not have any effect other than as a pointer for fsedit to make the changes it deems necessary.... whether you want them or not.The things that seem to have no effect in the AC config are variables like wing geometry. The other minor edits for radios and flaps etc should all have an noticible effect in the cfg.The wisest advice one can give any person contimplating using FSEDIT is .. don't.Use airED or ACManager to tweak airfiles. CheersShad

[Guest Mathias]

I slightly disagree there...For the first time in modern FS history the FS2004 version of FSEdit appears to be working as expected. Only if you manage to find exactly WHAT FSEdit does to what parts of the air file when changing certain parameters will you be able to propperly align aircraft.cfg and air file manually using the specific air file editors mentioned above.The earlier FSEdit versions were a pain in the you-know-where, but this has changed according to my observations.

[mgh 89]

I've heard these comments about FSEdit too but I've never had any problems with it.

[Guest iholrf]

Well, like anything in life, YMMV. It so trashed my airfile the AC was unusable afterwards. Most design forums I participate seem to support the notion that FSEdit is a disaster waiting to happen. You asked if anybody had seen your problem... I said I had and I said why. It is your choice to believe me or not.CheersShad

[n4gix 4,947]

>The earlier FSEdit versions were a pain in the you-know-where,>but this has changed according to my observations.A quick search of the archives of this forum might prove educational. I found no less than 79 threads dealing with the FS9 version of FSEdit.Without exception, every well-known and respected FDE artist has been uniform in their condemnation of FSEdit's propensity to break more than it "fixes," mostly by trashing TBL 404 and adding several spurious and unecessary tables. :)

[Guest Mathias]

It may all depend on what you start from - an already tweaked 3rd party airfile and aircraft.cfg or a default one.I started from a default one though it cost me immense work to tweak it to fit my plane (using the very graphic oriented Aircraft Airfile Manager at first and then switched to FSEdit for some of the more basic stuff) but have found FSEDit did certainly not destroy anything I did before nor did it add or delete anything that I didn't want it to. Of course I made a backup of my pre-FSEdit files just in case...Stay away from FSEdit if you deeply mistrust it and feel free to use another editor, because most likely FSEdit will fulfill your nightmares. I decided to give the FS9 version another try and so far it hasn't misbehaved, but this may be a different story for someone else...What REALLY bugs me is how come MS let FSEdit get into the extremely bad reputation it has built up over the years and FS versions that it has. FS is so much thrid party oriented that this is an unforgivable faux-pas in my eyes. Particularly because the air file remains the closest kept core secret of FS and has thus spawned the largest reverse engineering campeign in FS history, and all of that unchallenged by MS except for the feeble and largly buggy FSEdit attempts.

[Guest Skymed]

I fly and programme exclusively helicopters in FS9, and I admit I tried FSEDIT with the FS9 version, hoping it had matured from its earlier bug-filled version. Alas it has not, to the point where, if used, it makes the aircraft almost unflyable.I trashed it a week after I installed FS9, never to return to my HD. As noted, it could be a powerful tool, but the way it is presently implemented, it is a horrific mangler of airfiles.Just my opinion.Steve

[mgh 89]

To clarify my original post, I've only used FSEdit on copies of the .air and .cfg files to tweak them to give me the flight characteristics I want for my own aircraft. I've never used any other airfile editor.

[Guest iholrf]

One of the difficulties most of us have with SDK stuff is the lack of effective documentation. FSEdit may be a decent program, but the docs on it are so poor as to render it dangerous. The problem here is not your particular success (using it on only a few AC is a rather small statistical sample size) but the fact that so many have had horrific failures.What might be helpful, if you have had nothing but success, is a detailed tutorial about what it is you do differently than the rest of us to make it work. I for one would be most greatful to have clear usage instructions and a list of "gotchas" to avoid.I would also be prepared to give you may cfg and airfile to test. When I use it, it trashes the flight model. Perhaps there is a method that you use that would allow me to make the needed changes and avoid the problems introduced by its usage. CheersShad

[mgh 89]

This thread is getting off-track.My original post was to ask if anyone else found it necessary to open, modify, and then unmodify the file in FSEdit in order for a change in aircraft.cfg to become effective. I made no other changes using FSEdit.

[Guest JeanLuc_]

You got me wonder about something in this dicussion. In fact, many things:1) what can't you do with FSEDIT that absolutly makes you use other tools?2) aren't files edited with other tools broken by FSEDIT just because these tools are editing parameters in files, that are not correctly supported by FS2004, and that FSEDIT is especially designed to avoid this?3) related to 1) and 2) isn't FSEDIT actually a very powerfull tool when starting from a default aircraft flight model, and then changing the necessary parameters to suit your flight model, withour intervening whatsoever directly in the .AIR file?I remember the time we needed to poke bytes diretly in gauge files to change a bitmap, a behavior (say a slider movement limit) etc.. then we have had an API to deal with and have been able to directly compile gauges. Isn't editing air files a kind of obsolete way of designing flight models, and FSEDIT is our compiler for flight models?(this is not a flame, I really wonder about all this and the best practices in the flight model field)

[Guest Mathias]

Schad, to be honest, yes, I have only worked on one single plane with FSEdit - my upcoming "unfinished" FS9 version of the Dornier 128-6 "D-IBUF". But as stated before I only worked directly from a new default air file and aircraft.cfg.One of the things that causes a lot of FS tools and utilites to misbehave is when - like is default with German versions of Windows - the default decimal sign not . but ,I am not sure if FSEdit has a problem with that too, but particularly AF99 had that problem. So since those days I have made my decimal sign a . not a ,But sorry to say, Shad, I have no secrets to share about FSEdit, just used it step by step. It may be FSEdit simply is an esotheric kind of tool that senses your antipathy and reacts likewise, and v.v. :D

[Guest Mathias]

>This thread is getting off-track.>>My original post was to ask if anyone else found it necessary>to open, modify, and then unmodify the file in FSEdit in order>for a change in aircraft.cfg to become effective. I made no>other changes using FSEdit.When I manually changed a setting in aircraft.cfg and noticed it had no effect in the simulator I loaded it in FSEdit, changed some textbox (just a space will do), undid it and saved the whole thing. Checking the associated air file then showed it had been changed by FSEdit, and voil

[Guest Charlie Hall]

On more than one occasion I have had the need to modify air files from third party add ons for my own use. After not getting the required result with AAM (I find AirED not so easy to work with especially where graphs need alteration) I have used FS Edit to create a new airfile and cfg, simply by plugging in all the existing or modified parameters that I wanted to keep. The result every time has been a marked improvement over what I had tried previously. The only thing I will say is that some of the new A of A related curves look a bit simplistic and strange but can be easily straightened out with AAM, my preferred airfile editor.