Still cannot get AI flights to show up

[Guest]

I have done everything by the book! Still cannot get my AI flights to show up at Hartsfield in the ATL. For instance, I have been trying to get my Air Lingus A320-200 to show up for flights to Belguim. The stock planes show up and do their thing, but the downloaded planes absolutely will not show up! I am starting to get really fustrated!!!!!HELP!!!!!!!!!!:-mad

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

Gotta have a little more info, my Jovian friend. "It doesn't work" doesn't give us much to go on...Common problems - Is the A320 in the aircraft.txt file, and does it match the "title=" line in the plane's aircraft.cfg file EXACTLY?Are you looking in the right place at the right time? Remember, it's GMT. You can use AITM (the AI Traffic Mover utility) to generate a list of all arrivals and departures from any airport. It may help to look for your entries there.Try putting in a flight plan which both takes off and arrives from KATL, with a 2HR repeat and the planes leaving at 00:00 and 01:00. Then you will always have a plane taking off every hour on the hour. This makes it a lot easier to debug. Start your own flight at xx:59, tune to Ground and wait for the call.The call sign for Aer Lingus is "Shamrock." If you installed the plane manually, you may not be recognizing the plane. The "atc_airline=" line in aircraft.cfg should say "Shamrock" and that's what ATC should call it. If you did a cut-and-paste from, for example, a United Airbus, then Ground is going to call this plane "United."Can you see the plane if you try to fly it yourself? If not, you may have a bad entry in aircraft.cfg (model, texture, etc.)

[Guest]

Well captain, simply put, I did everything you said, twice, still no results. Hopefully, I gave you a little more to go on!

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

Try replacing the Aer Lingus A320 with a different plane, like a Global Freightways 747. That will tell you if the problem is flightplan related or aircraft related.Can you select this plane as "your" aircraft when you start up FS2002? If you can see it there and get it into the game that eliminates most of the potential aircraft.cfg problems.Where is the AI plane from? If it's a repaint, can you see other aircraft based on the same model? Both the Mike Stone A320 and the PAI A320 should be visible as "your" aircraft, although the PAI plane will not have panels or interior views.

[Guest Ideas]

I found out why some of my aircraft did not show up. Only the first 3 "paints" of an aircraft (In one Folder) can be used as AI. (Do not ask me why). As soon as I broke down the folder to groups of 3 my Aircraft started showing up.

[Guest]

Hi:I suggest that the number of paints is not the problem (I have had 50 plus in one folder), rather the problem may be the numbering sequence in the aircraft.cfg file.If the fltsim.# information in the square brackets at the start of each group is not in ascending numerical order, the flight will not appear.Note that the square brackets are not showing up on this message - let's pretend they are there ;>)For example, if you have records as follows:fltsim.30fltsim.30fltsim.32The 'middle' aircraft will not appear. As soon as you change this record to read fltsim.31 all should be OK and that aircraft will appear. Usually when I have an aircraft disappear, this turns out to be the problem.YYZ

[Guest]

you appear to be the master at this, I am new to this and dont understand how to get the planes to show up.Could you recommend files to download for delta at atlantaCould you also walk me through setting up the planes in the correct file ?Thanks:-beerchug

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

Well, "master" is a rather strong word. There are a number of tutorials around. See the thread "Starting to work with AI Traffic" a few entries down in the TTOOLs forum for an example by Josh.I think I got most of my Delta planes from Project AI (www.projectai.com) which is a site dedicated to producing efficient AI aircraft that don't take much computer resources, so you can put a lot of them at an airport and still have acceptable frame rates. They also have schedules you can paste into your flightplans.txt file for a lot of airlines.KATL is a busy airport, but Microsoft didn't really put in enough parking to accomodate the level of traffic you would expect there. Go out and find an AFCAD file for KATL.While you're at it, check out the Radius information at Project AI. They are setting things up so that each airline can be directed to the right set of gates.

[Guest]

but master,The grasshopper needs to know how to insert the planes into the aircraft (ai) file. I dont get the numbering, etc....

[Misha_K 0]

Project AI has an autoinstaller for Delta. Nothing that you need to do manually except get an AFCAD file for KATL. As to AFCAD, the AFCAD manual is actually very good and will tell you everything you need to know to import AFCAD files. If you download other earlier autoinstaller releases from Project AI make sure to run the Autoinstaller first then Olympic, otherwise you may have problems. Misha

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

In a word, TTools.This utility program package will de-compile the original traffic file into an editable text file. After you add new aircraft, it will re-compile into a new binary for FS2002. The process is all very simple and straightforward. You can get TTools (by Lee Swordy) from AVSIM, along with his AFCAD program. The TTools documentation is absolutely first-rate and will walk you through everything you need to do when you manually add aircraft and flightplans.