MadSci

Hi Terry,Preliminary testing (consisting of testing the FMC with a bunch of different airports in the DEP and ARR fields, but not actually flying any routes) seems to indicate that the procedures are working fine. When I have some more time for flying - probably this weekend, but there's no guarantee of that - I'll let you know whether the aircraft is interpreting the procedures correctly. In the meantime, thank you so much for all your hard work on the problem!

Thanks so much for the temporary fix - it seems to be working fine on my machine. If it helps, the cycle from Septmeber 2008 does not have the problem..

Terry,Thanks for replying; I certainly understand any problems with getting the iFly to work correctly in the first place, as it took me a while to get it working when I first installed it. Anyway, thanks for looking into the matter!

To Everyone:Well, there's already a topic on this over in the unofficial iFly support forum, but as I've done the majority of the posting in it and there isn't much activity at all over there, I thought I'd post this here as well. Basically, after updating my terminal procedures to the 0908 cycle from Terry's website, my entire FS began to freeze whenever I clicked the DEP/ARR button in the iFly 747. To exit the sim required the use of the CTRL-ALT-DELETE method. After some serious seaching, I found an installer for the 0809 cycle on my hard drive, and reinstalled these procedures. It worked fine with these older procedures for a few weeks, and I figured it might just have been something about the 0908 files that was causing the iFly to freeze. However, after downloading and installing the 0909 cycle, the same problem began to occur again. For now, I have rolled back my procedures to the 0809 cycle and it's working, but I would certainly like to have the latest procedures, if possible.I am about 99.99% sure that it's the procedures, and not some external factor, that's causing the problem, because, with either 0908 or 0909 installed, if I click on the DER/ARR button prior to selecting either a departure or arrival airport, the sim does not freeze. The FMC simply shows a blank DEP/ARR screen, with only the page title at the top. However, as soon as either a departure or arrival airport has been selected - it doesn't matter what airport is selected; anything from KEGE to EGLL will do it - the sim freezes upon clicking the DEP/ARR button. This would seem to indicate that the iFly 747 is having trouble loading the procedures because they're either in the wrong format or just plain corrupt. Unfortunately, however, as I know almost nothing about writing terminal procedures, I can't determine what the cause is from just looking at the files in the SID and STAR folders in the iFly's navdata folder.Any assistance is, of course, much appreciated!

Well, the forums won't let me edit my post because it's already a few weeks old, but here's a quick update for anyone who's reading the thread. I found an old procedures installer hidden in the bowels of my hard drive - one from the 0809 cycle, which confirmed my supsicions that my last update prior to 0908 was 0809. I reinstalled the old procedures, and everything worked fine, except, of course, that several of the procedures were not up to spec with the latest charts. Today, when the 0909 cycle came out, I downloaded and installed it. This one took the freezing to a new level - the game froze when I tried to confirm my aircraft selection by clicking the OK button on the Select an Aircraft window. Reinstalling the 0809 cycle fixed the problem and the whole thing works as it did before.I'm not sure whether to post something in the Terminal Procedures forum here at AVSIM and see if Terry responds, or to try to contact him directly. I'd rather post something in the Terminal Procedures forum - I'm likely to get other helpful response that way, as well - but I'm afraid it will be frowned upon to post essentially the same thing twice on one forums system.

Andrew,I'm certainly not an expert in the field, but I'm going to tell you what I would do. If anyone with more knowledge than I knows a better way to go about this, or knows that this is the wrong way to do it, by all means, let me know.I would go through the textures in the ifLY 747's texture folders and look for one that has that pattern on it (it should be in all of the texture folders, because the texture is on every model). Then, either make your own replacement texture or download one off of the internet, resize it so that it's the same size as the original, rename it so that the name matches that of the original, and then copy-paste it into all of the texture folders; click "yes" when it prompts you about whether or not to replace the files. Of course, back up your old textures first in case it doesn't work or you don't like the new one!EDIT: It appears that the texture file for the carpet is rather well-labeled, being called iFly747-400_Carpet_T.bmp. It's in DXT3 format, which means that you'll need a program called DXTBmp to open it. However, you shouldn't need to either open the old file to make a new one, or convert your new texture from standard BMP format to DXT3 format to use it in FS - your performance might suffer a little because DXT3 is an easier format for FS to read, but other than that, you should be fine - so you don't really need the program, unless you already have it. I should add that the texture is a 128x128 pixel image. The night texture is the same size, and upon opening it in DXTBmp, it seems to be just a darkened version of the same texture; it's called iFly747-400_Carpet_L.bmp. You should do the same thing with your new carpet texture that the developers did with this one - darken the texture with a darken mask or something and then call it iFly747-400_Carpet_L.bmp before placing it in the texture folder. I hope this helps!

Mike (I'm assuming that's your name, based on your display name),I've been having the same issue as you since I updated my procedures to the 0908 AIRAC cycle from Terry's website. I'm waiting for the 0909 cycle to see if it's just a bug for this month before I contact Terry about it. I honestly can't remember what cycle I had before I updated the data, so I can't point to a possible date when the issue may have started. I am about 99.9% sure that it's the data from Terry's website and not some other bug with the iFly 747 or FS, because if I click on the DEP/ARR button before I load departure and destination airports into the F-PLAN page, the sim doesn't freeze; as to be expected, the page is just blank except for the heading at the top. The moment I've entered my start and end airports, however, and click on the DEP/ARR button, the entire simulator freezes and only with the help of CTRL-ALT-DELETE am I able to exit. I should mention that this looks like a cross-simulator issue, because I have FS9 and Mike has FSX.Any ideas are much appreciated. :( EDIT: Upon closer inspection, I've found that, although the vast majority of files in the SIDS and STARS folders of the iFly's navdata folder are dated 7/30/2009, indicating that they were compiled just at the start of the 0908 cycle, there are a few from 8/28/2008, indicating that they are from the 0809 cycle, so it would appear that the 0809 cycle was the last time I updated before this month. (yikes; that was a year ago!) I hope that information helps find at least a more specific cause than "Terry's NavData" for this problem.

Just a quick update. I just flew into Zurich, and all normal ILS approaches are listed. There are no planes with their wheel half embedded into the ground, which is certainly a good thing.

Everyone,Thank you so much for all the help with this issue. In particular, I would like to thank Mark and John, because after replacing the probably-corrupted AP950150.BGL file with the original one from Microsoft, my Create a Flight screen now works perfectly again. In addition, thank you to jvile (sorry; I don't know your real name, and you didn't your post with it) for the technical explanation behind what was going on. I've yet to try a flight to Zurich to see if the approaches work, but it's my best guess that they will. The default Zurich airport is now listed in ghostly test in the Open Airport window in AFCAD, so I'm pretty sure that everything's cleared up. Now, I only hope I don't have planes sinking into the ground at Zurich or something, but if I do, I think I can live with it, because I'd rather have that than a dysfunctional FS.By the way, after posting in the FreeZ support forum, I recieved this in response: "About Approaches: Perhaps they get "overwritten" by our AFCAD or removed by our excludes. But we're not changing any standard flight simulator files" Clearly, this is not entirely true, because the AP950150.BGL's date of modification after the FreeZ installation was in 2008 - well after all development of FS9 had ceased - and this is the first add-on scenery I've installed for this part of the world. This, of course, means that by process of elimination, it can be deduced that the only thing that could have modified it was the FreeZ installation. On another note, I'm not sure whether to contact the developers regarding the issue with modification of default MS files, as I don't have a full technical understanding of how the process works and what exactly it screws up, and I don't really feel comfortable pointing to this thread and saying, "Well, Member X over AVSIM says this," in any sort of official correspondence.

Hmm...I just realized that FreeZ had a support forum on their own website. A few other people have reported issues with FS crashing to desktop, but most of them were related to add-on ground texture sets and were easily resolved. There is one unanswered post from July 7 with an issue on the Create a Flight screen. I'm curious to see whether they resolved the issue or not, and if they haven't tried anything further, I want to see if I can persuade them to try using the Select a Flight screen to load FS and see if they have the same issues as I do. But that's going to have wait until tomorrow eveing, I think, because I have rehearsals for a show I'm in all day tomorrow and won't be home until after 10:00 pm. But I'm determined to get to the bottom of this.P.S. Mark, I will download those files and run the programs tomorrow evening. If I do it now, I will undoubtedly botch something in my bleary-eyed stupor, and the last thing I need is another FS issue to deal with. :(

Mark,I just tried renaming all of the new traffic BGLs to Traffic_xxx.ORIGINAL files to invalidate them, and the Create a Flight screen stilll freezes up. I should clarify, I guess; the simulator itself is not freezing, nor does it have any texture issues. Only the Create a Flight screen, the one where you set up the flight, is freezing up and refusing to display the textures on the rotating aircraft image. Once I enter the simulator itself, usually through the Select a Flight screen (the one that has all of the default "historical" flights and any flights that have been saved in the past on it), everything is as normal. I can select any aircraft I wish by pressing ALT, clicking on the Aircraft menu, and then scrolling down to the Select Aircraft option. I can use the Go To Airport feature of the World menu without any issues. I can even set up full IFR flights using the Flight menu's Flight Planner option. Every one of these screens, once entered, behaves perfectly normally, as does the actual simulator itself - with the exception of the missing approaches at Zurich. The only thing that doesn't function correctly is the Create a Flight screen, the one where just about every simmer sets up their flight before clicking on that magical Fly Now button and being swept away in their dream cockpit. The main problem, other than the inability to set flights up before I actually enter the simulator, is that, when I go to land at Zurich, ATC vectors me on a visual approach path the gives very little time to line up with the runway. Of course, I still dial in the ILS frequency to the NAV1 radio, hit the approach hold button, and use the Flight Director's guide bars to get to the ground safely - I have to hand fly it because I don't trust the autopilot the line up properly with under six miles left at the point of localizer intercept, particularly when the glideslope and localizer are both being intercepted at the same time. FS's autopilot just isn't that good. But I'm more worried about the Create a Flight screen and the possible damage in places other than that one BGL file that I might not have yet discovered than strange approaches at Zurich.EDIT: John, I just saw your post now; as you can see I've been composing a rather lengthy reply. FreeZ does indeed use an auto-installer, although with the number of downloads on their website, one would think that this sort of thing would have been brought up elsewhere. Like I said, the strange thing is that FS ATC did an ILS approach on my first flight, indicating that the original BGL file was still in use, and the Create a Flight screen only began to freeze up after my second flight to Zurich, the one where ATC used visual approaches. The only thing I can think of is that by removing the false province information and changing parking codes in FreeZ's AFCAD file, I somehow managed to remove data that was, instead of being stored in the default BGL file, as is standard, was somehow stored in the new AFCAD file.

First off, thanks for your quick reply John!I gets stranger as I go on. I just checked my Scenery\Eurw\scenery folder, and the AP950150.BGL file is there. However, although all of the other BGL files in that folder with the prefix AP - AP948180.BGL and AP949150.BGL, for example - were modified at 2:27 am on May 31, 2003, about the time FS was in development (looks like someone was working late at ACES that night), AP950150.BGL was last modified on November 12, 2008, at 9:50 pm. I can only surmise that the installation of FreeZ's Zurich included this new file, which seems to be corrupt. But that doesn't explain at all why everything worked flawlessly the first time I tried a flight using the scenery, and the Create a Flight screen didn't start misbehaving until immediately after my second flight. It's as if the automatic installer had some impossible timer in it, to install this file after a certain amount of time. I should probably also say that the AP950150.BGL file on my computer is 159 KB in size, so if anyone wants to bother checking theirs to see how large it should be, I can compare the two.P.S. What exactly is Microsoft's BGL naming code (I only want to know so that if something like this happens again, I can immediately tell which files are missing and/or damaged)?

First, let me apologize. I'm sorry to have my first post here be a plea for help. I did several searches and couldn't find anything that seemed to relate to my problem, so here goes.A few days ago, I installed the Zurich scenery, version 0.7, from FreeZ, after discovering a previous version in the AVSIM Library (I checked their website out and it transpired that a newer version was available only through their download page). After installing it, I activated it in the FS9 Scenery Library, just like I'd done with other sceneries in the past, and just like the instructions in the readme file said to do. Following this, I went and activated the airport in AES - just in sponsor mode, as I don't have the funds readily available to purchase any credits - as per the instructions. Next, I removed the Project AI AFCAD I had for Zurich airport from the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\scenery directory, as I am aware that having multiple non-stock AFCAD files for an airport is an inefficient use of computer space. I entered the simulator to check the airport out, and after finding that I had neglected to install very many European airlines into my AI library, went out and downloaded and installed a number of World of AI packages, including SWISS, which obviously had the greatest impact at Zurich. I then went and flew a flight from Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport to Zurich, using the default FS ATC, and experienced no problems. They vectored me in to a runway 16 ILS approach; originally, they had wanted me to use 14, but not knowing the airport and the weather being foggy, I asked for the longer runway, which they approved. Following the flight, I exited FS as normal and shut the computer down for the night. The next day, I turned the computer on and opened up the AFCAD file for the FreeZ scenery, just to see what it looked like, and spent some time fiddling with parking statistics and the like, just to make sure that every airline taking off and landing at the airport had at least one spot with its code first in the list, so that they could have priority parking at at least one gate. I also removed the line in the airport properties saying that the airport was in the province of Zurich; there is no such province, and besides, I'd read that having different things typed in the properties of stock and add-on versions of the same airport can cause haywire, and non-US airports do not have provinces entered into their info in FS9. I then opened FS to fly another flight to Zurich, and upon approaching the airport, the ATC gave me a visual approach to runway 14. Thinking, "That can't be right; FS ATC always does ILS approaches," I opened up the list of approaches for Zurich and found only visual approaches listed, which of course was unusual, considering that just the day before I had been given an ILS approach to 16. I landed the plane and exited the flight. The next thing I know, the Create a Flight screen in FS9 has frozen the program and I've had to exit using CTRL-ALT-DELETE. I immediately went into AFCAD to check that the Zurich AFCAD was still there, and found that, in the Open Airport dialogue box, there was no stock airport displayed in grey text, just the mod one from FreeZ, as seen in the attached image. I don't know how or why, but it appears that for some unbeknownst reason, FS has simply lost the data on the Zurich airport - probably its BGL file - and all of the approaches associated with it, and for some reason, this lost data is casuing extreme instability on the Create a Flight screen. Every time I've tried to open Create a Flight from another screen in the UI interface, it locks up and I have to resort to CTRL-ALT-DELETE. When the program starts and displays the Create a Flight screen, it's extremely sluggish, with a framerate of around one per second, and it won't load the textures on the default Cessna's revolving image, but it at least doesn't cause the program to stop responding. I can still fly flights using the Select a Flight screen, and then the Go To Airport feature in the World menu in the simulator itself, and it should be noted that all other airports besides Zurich are working as normally and I am experiencing no less FPS than I usually would, even at Zurich.I know that all default airport BGLs are stored in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery directory, and I presume Zurich's would be in Eurw (which I take to mean Europe West), but I have no idea what Microsoft's strange naming code for their BGL files is, so I can't really figure out if Zurich's is missing. Even if I could determine which it was, I don't have even the faintest idea of which .cab folder the file would be located in on the FS CDs, so I would have to spend weeks, perhaps, looking for the correct file, and all this without knowing for sure if it would solve my all of my problems - I'm fairly certain that it would solve the Zurich approach issue, but not so much that it would do the same with the Create a Flight screen. As much as I think the two are related, I can't be one-hundred percent sure, so solving one may not solve the other.Any feedback and/or help is much appreciated, although, I must admit, it feels rather good to at least have my thoughts on the problem typed up, almost like getting something huge off of my chest. Thanks in advance!