Slightly bad aircraft -- abnormal exit

[Hans_Petter 1]

Some time ago I mentioned that I had a slight problem with my standard FU3 installation. Every flight would start at San Jose and the plane would be a Piper, no matter where or what I'd been flying the last time. Well, the way the program exited was obviously to blame since the sim would CTD when exiting. Still, I could fly any aircraft out of any airport -- the CTD would only take place as I decided to close down.I found the reason. I'd been playing with Reiter's Baron. I liked the panel and decided to swap the aircraft model for Ansgar's new one. I also changed and edited some of the cockpit views. Everything looked honkey dory and it worked fine. Well, I just found that this aircraft was corrupt in some way. Once I moved it out of the plnpile folder the sim would exit gracefully again. This is a peculiarity to FU3 -- a bad aircraft may look and perform beatifully, yet it affects the performance of the entire sim. In other words, a small glitch in one department may not show at all, yet it affects other fundamental functions in mysterious ways x( best regards,Hans Petter

[agtim 0]

Hi Hans,One of the last action of FU3 before exit is write back last used plane and airport to the config file (flt3.cfg). After CTD you will have the old settings of last successful exit. If you want to keep the config file with a fixed good setting just marked it read only and every start of the game will be the same. :-wave agtim

[Guest effyouthree]

H-P,Now you know how frustrating it could be to build aircraft from scratch! With the L-13, every time you hit the spoilers, it would CTD :-grr After weeks of trying things, I joined them together as one and reduced their width - voila!The Saab340 does a CTD when you raise the gear... You can page-up with no problem - or drop the gear on approach. Just don't raise it!I know it's a 3D model problem and it will just take time to sort which polygons are causing the error (delete and replace one by one). When you get problems with cockpits it worse usually because the fault only appears randomly (or, like the Dash-8, when someone else tries to edit the cockpit). Anoth problem I had (with the DC3) was sound file compression types. FU3 allows one to mix files on-the-fly (engine, sound effects, radio etc) however, they MUST all be of the same sample rate AND compression type. I had some rogue pilot voices that would lock the entire PC when ATC used them.In hindsight, THAT one was probably obvious however, I had assumed that if they played in Resviewer, they would work in FU3...BTW, Like Andre, I recommend setting the cfg file as read-only. I've had to delete mine a few times when FU3 destroyed it during a shutdown crash :-( Certainly this is essential for scenery and aircraft developers ;):-waveRegards,**************Jonathan Point**************"I'd rather be down here wishing I was up there than up there wishing I was down here"

[Hans_Petter 1]

Jon wrote: BTW, Like Andre, I recommend setting the cfg file as read-only. I've had to delete mine a few times when FU3 destroyed it during a shutdown crash. Certainly this is essential for scenery and aircraft developers.Good idea Jon and Andr

[Guest glidernut]

Hi all,I do most of my flying in Steffens glider chalang which also lets youstart off from where you last left off.Its beter than the difalt way that FU3 dus it bicous it evan recordsyour last position when flying, and I think nomaly FU3 only records the last airport, I might be rong about that?Flying in this chalang is even mor usefal when flying in the UK-South cus of the glich that stops you from starting from a place that has no icon.In fact, Iv got 3 or 4 of the same chalange, just named a littl diferantwith diferant gliders in eech one.Its quiker this way than it is to change the glider in the chalange script.In fact its also quiker to get from the desk top to flying useing a chalang cus you dont hav to load the wether.But somtimes I forget to end the flight with (Esc + y) and use the(Alt + x) to cum out of FU3 as fast as posibl which dos not record mylast position.Not that this helps at all, I just thort Id chip in.glidernut

[Guest R_Driscoll]

That was one of the best features of Steffen's glider challenge. At the moment I use batch files to switch between scenery areas - so I run Seattle.BAT and I can fly from Seattle, UKS.BAT and I'm in UKS etc. But it seems there should be some way of writing a front-end configuration program which does the following:1) saves the current configuration into a region directory,2) sets the scenery area,13) puts only correct weather files for that region into the WEATHER directory,1) puts an appropriate flt3.cfg file (last flight in that region) into the main directory,6) sets the correct palette for the season (using the 4 seasonal palettes stored in four versions of the palette file)4) puts the correct package set into your PACKAGES directory,3) launches FU3.You would then start a 'challenge' related to your region that would recall your flight position as per Steffen's method. Since the 'MOVE' command in windows is almost instantaneous, the only apparent difference to the user would be a few simple questions:SELECT REGION:SELECT SEASON:I'm sure this could be done as a batch file (plus a challenges file of course), or it could be written as a complete program easily enough. Additional regions (eg Switzerland) could be added as necessary. Long distance flights to and from SanFran or outer terrain should still be possible.RobD.