I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that something is seriously broken in the FS2002 flight engine. That doesn

>I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that something is >seriously broken in the FS2002 flight engine. That doesn

But, is all the stuff in the air file really necessary? Certainly not for every aircraft. An all text file could be like the cfg files where the sections have headers so irrelevant one could be omitted.Here's an interesting experiment. Can anyone duplicate my results.1) Start up FS, shrink it to a window, and pause.2) Use Explorer to move the air file somewhere else.3) Go back to the sim. It continues on as if nothing had happened.4) Do the same thing with aircraft.cfg. The gauges instantly disappear but the plane keeps flying and responding.5) Move the aircraft.cfg back and the gauges will reappear as soon as you change the window size. I did this a couple times and FS eventually died as "Not Responding"It does not look as though the air file is referred to at all after the situation starts but the cfg file is read frequently.Computers now ought to chew through a 100 KB text file pretty quickly.

It is quite obvious that not every entry/section is required for every aircraft. Take for instance the helo section, or the turbo prop section. The problem arises when you design a one size fits all flight simulator the aerodynamics section is going to grow. A designer may not have to have all the sections for his particular aircraft. But what does the simulation software expect to find at this location to calculate a parameter i.e., 1, 0, infinity, pi, that is not needed for this particular aircraft.Its like the problem in electronics. They give you a box that you can't look into, it has an input and output, and you have to tell what the box is, input impedance, the output impedance. Microsoft didn't think it appropiate to provide the contents of the box, so guys like Ron have had to test the inputs and outputs. Trouble is, it is a very complicated box that has multiple inputs/outputs being worked on by Microsoft's flight simulation software, another unknown.It is really a shame Microsoft has chosen not to reveal the contents of the air file.

>Here's an interesting experiment. Can anyone duplicate my >results. >>1) Start up FS, shrink it to a window, and pause. >2) Use Explorer to move the air file somewhere else. >3) Go back to the sim. It continues on as if nothing had >happened. Heck, you can pull a floppy disk out of the drive you run a program from and it keeps running. Once the data in the AIR file is loaded, it's not needed any more.>4) Do the same thing with aircraft.cfg. The gauges >instantly disappear but the plane keeps flying and >responding. Very strange. Maybe some MS scewup. I edit aircraft.cfg and save it during flights. There is no effect untill I reload the AC.>Computers now ought to chew through a 100 KB text file >pretty quickly. But, people can't. Binary is much more compact, it only consists of records. Further, you never know what order the data in aircraft.cfg is. It can take a while to find. Ron