New to Fly!

[victoryliu 0]

Couple of days ago I stumbled across a used copy of the original Fly! in a local game store for only 3 bucks. Since it came with a nice thick manual I picked it up and loaded it on my laptop. I must say I am very impressed with the panels and systems modeling! Being an avid MSFS simmer for years, I couldn't believe I totally over looked this series ten years ago! I do have some questions however:1. What exactly is the difference between Fly! and Fly!2k? I patched my copy to 1.01.88, does this bring it up to the Fly!2k level?2. Is there a guide to editing the fly.ini, render.ini, and VCF files? I have some graphic flickering and texture blurriness problems, and I guess I need to do some optimizations?3. The mixture and prop levers on my CH yoke is inversely mapped to the game. Any way to fix this?Seems like the community has all moved on to Fly!II a while ago, so the answers to these questions are very hard to find. I will likely try to find a copy of Fly!II soon.Victor

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Victor,Welcome to the best kept secret in flightsims for computers :-)The original Fly!, on release, was VERY buggy but over the following months patches were released on almost what seemed a monthly basis to overcome most of the problems. Once the problems were finally fixed TRI released Fly!2K and those with the original Fly! cd could return the cd to Gathering of Developers ( I did ) and receive the updated Fly!2K program CD disc for a minimal payment of about $10. So if you have a fully patched installation of Fly! then you basically have Fly!2K on your machine.Check if you have these Fly!2k features on your installation.1. Roger Wilco support.2. Sky! Environment exciter ( by How in the World )3. Infometar Weather generator.4. Expanded global elevation database5. Improved avionics documentation.From memory the 1.01.88 revision does bring you up to Fly!2K. It diffinitely has the updated flight dynamics by Rob Young (now of PMDG fame)Unfortunately all the original Fly! forum messages were lost in one of Avsims hardware updates but there are still some very knowledgable people active on the forum so if you post back your hardware specs (video card CPU and onboard memory ) i'm sure you'll get help.The achilles heel of Fly! - Fly!2K was the external graphics of the aircraft and scenery graphics. TRI quickly realised this and completley revamped the sim and relased Fly! II. Most people then switched over to Fly! II. Fly! II was also pretty buggy to begin with but after several patches it is now pretty good. From memory I think if you go to OPTIONS/SET UP AXIS I think you can reverse the direction of the control inputs. I'm not 100% sure as I haven't used Fly! for years.Enjoy simming with Fly!Cheers,Roger

[victoryliu 0]

Hi Roger,Thanks for your helpful reply! I installed Fly! on my old Dell laptop that has an ATI X300 with 128mb video ram. It seems I have fixed most of my problems. Although there's no inverse settings in-game, in the fly.ini there's a "swapaxisXX" line for every axis of the game. It's just a matter of finding the right axis and set that to "1". For graphics I changed the renderer from "trid3d" to "tridx6" and the graphic problems disappeared, although there is a slight drop in frame rate.Now the only problems I have are blur textures on some aircraft (especially the Navajo) and terrain. For terrain, the ground textures seems to randomly flicker between the high resolution and low resolution versions as I get close to a high resolution area.Looks like I just have to get a copy of Fly!II after seeing all the quality addons available for it. Its a shame that I didn't discover all this sooner... Looking forward to it!Victor

[KenWood 5]

Hi Victor, Welcome to the Fly! Family... :-)Still a few of us around that check the forum, so answers - though sometimes have to wait a few days - most likely will show up. Finding a copy of Fly! II may be a tad difficult, as I've only seen a random smattering of offers on E-Bay here and there. Of course, I don't get to a good computer store with bargain bins much (live in small town and its 80 plus miles round trip to get to one). Should you find a copy of Fly! II, then be sure to check out the ROTW website at the follow web address: http://fly.simvol.org/indexus.php They offer two volumes DVD set that brings Fly! II original to latest version with a lot of the good stuff they have created, as well as some of the best 3rd party add-ons that cold be found in the AVSIM library. Price is modest - mainly to cover the material and shipping cost. Well worth the cost. I'll dig around my back up CDs and see if I have any info from the original fly! stuff as I had copied a lot of the tips and tricks way back then. For terrain issues, there was a utility program for calculating the memory settings that could then be input in the VCF files for tweaking. Check the library - believe it was called (of all things) MemCalc. What had got me with the original Fly! sim was going through the clouds. Even without a motion simulator - it was as near to feeling vertigo as I'd come without being in a real plane! If you have a good computer and lots of HDD space, you might also try creating some of the scenery terrain generated by TerraScene (by Todd Klaus). Only hitch is about the only way to do this now is via a DVD set holding virtually all the USGS data files. I have the set, but no DVD burner... but if Randall Rocke is available and has time, and if you are interested, he might be willing to burn a set. Or hopefully someone else. The data is old, but can be updated with Tiger Census data. A few of Randall's project files (such as his South or North Carolina scenery area projects) have notes on how to add in the extra data sets. Taxiway is a cool program by Peter Jacobson for adding taxiways and aprons to airports. Wayne Roberts did many airports around the world with this and the TerraModels Scenery Development System by Allen Kriesman. The majority of the above were for Fly! II, not Fly!2K.Cheers,Ken Wood :-sun1Still using my trusty old Gateway 700X; Intel P4 2.4GHz; 512MB RAM; NVIDIA Ti4200 4X AGP 128MB; SB Audigy; Thrustmaster TopGun Fox 2 Pro Shock

[RandallR 444]

Victor,I've kept some of my old Fly!2K data around and will post it on the coming weekend. It includes customizing your VCF to match your VC and a number of other items to really get the most out of this great sim. My work schedule has made it difficult to gather it all together right now - I shall return. :-)

[RandallR 444]

OK Victor,Sorry this took so long. Here are some of my old notes from the Fly!2K days. You have already learned some of this information, but here's a good list to kind of square things away. I'll give you VCF optimization in another message.=========================Fly! comes with some of the patches and updates built-in. With that in mind, remember that you are at the ver 1.01.87 level.Included with Fly! 2K are the following items: Sky! and Infometar. Load these programs - they are excellent! Both Sky! and Infometar have new versions out - you'll find them right here at Avsim.com. When you install Sky!, you also add new textures to all the runways and taxiways in Fly!, so one thing you definitely won't need is the update: Runways.Next I would download the following:--Ground Control. Replaces the Fly! generic scenery with far better generic scenery.--Sky! updates and additions - check the File Library--Patch (VERY IMPORTANT) - the SDK 1.01.88 (User) or (Developer) upgrade. Without this patch, you won't be able to enjoy many of the latest and greatest add-ons for Fly!, including the following:--ALL of Rob Young's fantastic flight models and updates to the default Fly! aircraft. Want your flying to feel and perform like the real thing? Get all of these, and make certain they're the latest versions.--Flyscripts! This scripting program opens up all kinds of possibilities for adventuring, ATC, you name it - in fact, it spawned:--C4TO (Cleared 4 Take Off). This great program has changed the rather bad ATC of Fly! (at least it had one) to a very liveable one. In order to have the latest combo do the following: Install the first versions of Flyscripts! and C4TO. Then install the update for Flyscripts! followed by the update for C4TO and you'll be in business!--Download all of the great scenery (geographic and some airports). The majority of these are on Avsim. Great stuff here, whether satellite or Terrascene.--Check out some of the other aircraft! Because of the complexity (and accuracy) of Fly!, aircraft are not easy to make. I would give special mention to: the Embraer 120, Rob's Learjet, a fantastic Mooney Ovation and Citabria, etc.Even with Fly II being the current standard of Fly!ers, there's great stuff for the original Fly!. Check out the library!

[RandallR 444]

Victor,Following are my old notes on setting up the VCF (Video Card File). This is one of the most important things you will do to optimize Fly! for your graphics card. At the time we prepared these instructions, computers, memory, the OS, and video cards were different, so if you see instructions that wouldn't apply, such as AGP Aperture, ignore them and go on.====================================Here are step-by-step procedures for setting up a custom video card file with a GeForce card and Fly! There is more you can do for optimizing textures, but these steps should help you start enjoying your card's capabilities within this great sim.1) Make sure that Fly! is recognizing your card as AGP - if it is, it will be using an AGP compatible selection, such as DirectX 6 (AGP). If not, you have a problem. Go to your BIOS and make certain that the AGP Aperture gate is set to 1/2 your RAM - 128MB RAM would be 64MB on the AGP Aperture, etc. Then, go to the Windows system information, Direct X and make sure Windows is using AGP. If it isn't, you need new drivers - go get the latest drivers, or at least updated drivers that are stable.2) Once Fly! offers an AGP compatible card selection, you're on your way! Run a video card test: Go to the Options - Graphics menu. Hold down the Shift key while clicking on the Auto Detect button. This will generate a video card report. Close Fly!3) Go to the Fly! root directory and open this file: Video Card Report.txt. Look under the heading DirectX6 - Card #1. Find the Vendor ID and the Device ID. These are the numbers you will need to place in your VCF for FLY! to properly identify it - write them down.4) Go to Fly's SystemVCF directory and find the VCF you are using now (such as DX6AGP.vcf). If you're not certain, open the fly.ini file and check under the UI section for the videoCardSetup= statement. Right-click the VCF file and turn off the Read Only attribute. Copy this file to a new file - maybe Geforce2.vcf. Then reset Read Only on the original.5) Go to your new VCF file and open it for editing. Check Properties to make sure Read-only is off. Open the file for editing in Notepad: select the file by right-clicking to get the context menu. Choose Open with... Select Notepad. Change the name at the top to identify it as your card, such as My Geforce or GeForce2 (AGP). Place the Vendor ID # in place of 0 for Video Card ID #1 - place the Device ID # in place of 0 for Video Card ID#2. Your numbers will be different, but notice how I've placed the IDs in my VCF:---------------------------------------nVidia GeForce (AGP)tridx6.dll4318 // Video Card ID #1336 // Video Card ID #22 // AGP Flag (0=no AGP, 1=High Detail, 2=High Detail+Triple Buffer)1 // AGP Must Exist (if AGP is non-zero on previous line)0 // Mip mapping0 // Allow AutoMipMapping (Mip Mapping must be off)----------------------------------------Save the new file and reset the Read Only attribute. Start Fly! and see if it shows up as a choice in the graphics menu. If it does, you've got a good start! Select that card.

[victoryliu 0]

Thanks for the info! I will take a look at those tweaks as soon as I can. I also ordered Fly!II on Ebay, and it should arrive in a couple of days.Victor