Dave Morgan

Me too. November... That's good. Waiting will make the summer last for ever.

🙄

Can't think why. Kickstarter campaigns generally need some exposure so that people can subscribe. In case you misunderstood my English, Ron: "Will you be letting us know here once you've launched the campaign?" D

Hi Chris. You've mentioned the throttle kickstarter a couple of times. Will you be letting us know here when you launch the campaign? D

Hi Chris. My yoke... Gosh! What a lovely piece of engineering, from design and material selection, through build and even to packaging. Put me down for a throttle quadrant. And pedals. And a trim wheel... And a tiller... And are you going to make any panels? 😄 Merry Christmas mate. I love it! D

Yep, I recall 1024 × 768 was hard-coded and is the maximum possible. After running a single-partition XP VM I never got around to completing the job. Two small hurdles to get over -- my FU3 was so heavily modded I want just to dump a backup straight into the VM so will need 2 logical discs in there, and the VM won't access USB ports in the host hardware so I have to set up a host/VM remote desktop. Neither hurdle is difficult; I'm just lacking enthusiasm. I might just try KingLobo's suggested mod as the easier option... D

Hi Richard. I've just downloaded Jens' HP Hastings so I'll have a play once I'm home this evening (UK). Which airport have you been using? Come to that, does the problem occur at every airport? Or on every type of surface? Having never tried, I'm not sure if installation would have been possible (thinking becomes increasingly difficult as Friday wears on) but you didn't download the FSX version by mistake did you? Best regards, D

Hi Richard. I suppose you're conversant with FS9's folder structure, and with messing about with files... Try narrowing the scope of your search for the culprit. It may be best to check first whether it's the model, the air file or the config file that is suffering the problem. Disable one of them by altering the suffix and substitute a copy of the corresponding file from a working aircraft's folder. Do them one at a time and for each substitution perform a test by taxiing and braking. If the problem persists, make a substitution of all three. If the problem still persists, it's likely to be something other than the aircraft (that's why I wrote 'suffering the problem' rather than 'causes the problem'). Let us know how you get on. Regards, D

Well, Access couldn't open it. It probably would have but the database is password protected, a bit of a joke as that doesn't protect the developer's work, just prevents me accessing a list of what's on my PC. Removing the Remote= lines in scenery.cfg had no discernible effect, but then I don't cache scenery from a disc or a server so it wouldn't. Rewriting the Local= lines with full paths left me with a database of zero airports. I have no idea why that should be the case as it works ok for you. FS9 worked fine. Moreover, the old CollectAirports.exe then also found zero airports. Deleting SceneryStatus.dat and all Scenery.dat and rebuilding them had no effect. So I uninstalled Airport Chart Viewer. On cleaning what was left and reinstalling backups, I noticed that Super Flight Planner also fails to find any airports in layers where the full path is shown. This - [Area.228] Title=VFRPS airports Local=G:\Program Files\Playsims\VFRPS\VFRPS airports Active=TRUE Required=FALSE Layer=228 - left me with none of the unique Playsims airports in my flight planner. It's not an entry I've edited for myself but I can't recall whether or not Playsims' installer created it. I think it must have as all the Horizon/Playsims layers had full paths. Working within FS9, I deleted the scenery layer, shut down & restarted FS9, then re-added the same layer and ended up with this in the scenery.cfg: [Area.228] Title=VFRPS airports Local=..\..\Playsims\VFRPS\VFRPS airports Remote= Active=TRUE Required=FALSE Layer=228 Now, when rebuilding SFP's database, the unique airports show up. I may at some point rebuild all my scenery layers and reinstall Apchart for another go but for now I've had enough... Cheers, D

Hi. Mine's a standalone PC (hence never upgrading XP when support ran out). Aside from Noautorun (for my memory stick), it has no anti-virus software. The only protection it has comes through only downloading via my work network (utterly paranoid firewall & malware hunter-killers). So I guess it's not that either. I think I'll install MS Access when I'm not laying loft insulation this weekend and if that won't open the database then I'll start looking for a copy of Paradox or dBase. Enjoy your weekend. D

Hi again. I notice you mentioned above that your database 'took an hour to build'. Mine took two and a half minutes, which initially had me thinking that the builder failed to find any addons. That can't be right, though, as it does show addons for which there aren't any corresponding stock afds. My afd files begin variously with AP (the stock bgls), F1UT_, AF1_, ADE_ and other random developer formats. At least one of the addons that do show begins with ADE_ so I suppose that's not it either. Maybe the OS thing is a red herring, as you implied, and the failure really is down to scenery.cfg or whatever else tells the builder where to look. I can't think of anywhere else it could get the folder information from. So in scenery.cfg, the row order I'm using is below. [Area.172] Title=VHHH Hong Kong Local=..\avsim scenery\vhhh2005b Remote= Active=TRUE Required=FALSE Layer=172 flatten.0=0,N22 19.92,E113 52.64,N22 19.92,E113 57.27,N22 17.37,E113 57.27,N22 17.37,E113 52.64 flatten.1=19,N22 18.59,E113 53.56,N22 19.64,E113 56.79,N22 17.36,E113 56.29,N22 17.66,E113 53.68 flatten.2=0,N22 18.44,E113 53.09,N22 18.44,E113 53.73,N22 17.91,E113 53.73,N22 17.91,E113 53.09 My scenery.cfg sorter is FSTscenery.exe by Steve Greenwood. it does a pretty good job but doesn't after all remove duplicate layers. There were none in any case. What I have noticed is some variation in the structure of the 'Local=' rows... Local=G:\Program Files\Playsims\VFRPS\Volume10\10-5mp1 Local=..\..\Scotflight\ScotFlight scenery Local=sbuilder trial ... and occasional use of an ampersand and a colon, at least one of which could be some sort of special character. When I consider that the aircraft utility, ACA2005, doesn't like characters with grave or acute accents and replaces them with a 'missing character' rectangle, I suppose apchart may have a similar problem. Best regards, D

Thanks for that. My addon afds are in all sorts of places - some within ../fs2004/scenery/[area]/scenery/, some in ../fs2004/addon scenery/scenery/ and others in their own folders. In the database, none seem to take precedence over the stock. My autism gene insists on standardisaton so I use a scenery config editing tool whenever I add or remove scenery or make manual alterations to scenery.cfg, though being at work I have no idea what the d/l was called. It has no GUI, just produces a new scenery.cfg and a backup of the original. It identifies and corrects, among other things, non-sequential layer numbers and duplicates so that's not it. I suppose the problem may depend on the order of the lines within each layer section. Changing the order for each section is possible though with 400-odd layers it would surely take some time. I'm still inclined to think the problem is most likely with the database compiler... Cheers, D

Hi. I'm still worrying at this because it looks like a very useful application. If I can get it to work. For all post-XP users, I have found this much this (not a lot, I admit). I use XP3 Pro and my database is created in C:\Documents and Settings\[my account name]\Application Data\DBAirport\ and is called data_9.db Should you search for it on your PC, don't forget to uncheck 'Hide familiar extensions' and to uncheck 'Hide [critical/fragile/important/don't-mess-with-it/whatever] files' or your search probably won't show a result. My guess is that in post-XP OSs, the relevant path is called something else so possibly either the database is in the wrong folder or the application is looking in the wrong folder. As far as my own experience goes, my Airport Chart Viewer shows stock afds in preference to any overlying addons. The only addons that do show are those which have no associated stock afd. What I need is something to open the .db file and edit its contents. Or at least examine its contents with a view to considering a manual edit. Of potentially 25000 records. Well, I can dream can't I? The new desktop 'key' icon for Airport Chart DB Builder is reminiscent of MS Access. A Google trawl suggests that the original application for the *.db file was either dBase or Paradox. Or SQL Lite. Or MS Works. Or something completely different. There are free viewers available but my Windows 8.1 Mobile won't have anything to do with .exe downloads. I think the 8.1 security policy is simply to block anything that might do anything at all. I don't fancy visiting softwareinformer or similar from my work network because while my employer grants me unlimited internet access, I feel obliged to refrain from abusing that generosity. MS Access may work. I have Office 2003 but left Access & Powerpoint out of the installation, thinking I'd never need them. Could be an entertaining weekend ahead. Best regards, Dave

Hmm... 1999, the year Flight Unlimited 3 was released. With photoreal scenery (though it was hand-coloured because only b&w aerial photos were available), accurate flight dynamics, and... volumetric clouds (though it's not obvious in the screenie). And the option of using some bizarre atmospheric configurations: But no multi-player and no real-time and a fixed atmospheric pressure. On the other hand, the moon did show the correct phase for the chosen date... Best regards, D

Brian, Have you managed to get it to work? And if you have, can you make it show anything other than stock airports? Best regards, D