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AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Essential flight simulator tools, by Martin Gossmann
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pslinger
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

I'll give this a try. I typically run this check every other week as a part of regular computer "maintenance" and updates. I'll let you know what I find out.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

Fair enough. You are better than most. I am just trying to eliminate possible causes at the moment.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

I ran chkdsk following your instructions. I then ran AIAE and the problem remained. I then re-tested deleting and installing the Osan JYAI aircraft and the problem remained. I am including a screen shot of AIAE to give you an idea of what I am seeing. I update my drivers and programs bi-weekly. I have heard various opinions about that strategy, some saying if it isn't broke don't fix it and others indicating the approach I use prevents problems. Just a little bit more information about my machine.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

Well at least we have ruled out an index issue.
The screenshot was much like I expected. Exactly the same errors as the log file.

Now at the moment I have one small idea but I can't really see why it could cause your issue. The reason is that I would expect all your aircraft to be the same. The other weird thing is that when you replaced the Great Lakes models it fixed the issue.

OK, so the next thing is to take what works and see if it is transferable.
Do zip up your DM models, which would be the same as the Great Lakes ones, and then just copy over the good ones from the GL folder to the DM folder.
Does this fix the issue?
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

I copied the Great Lakes A-10 to my desktop and removed all the texture files and aircraft.cfg file. I then copied the texture files and the aircraft.cfg file from DM 357th to the Great Lakes A-10 file on my desktop. I ran AIAE and tested the desktop A-10 file and the .mdl problem was gone. Next I deleted the DM 357th from the main FS9 Aircraft folder. I then renamed the desktop file and moved it to the Aircraft folder in FS9 replacing the deleted DM 357th file. I ran AIAE again and the .mdl problem was gone. I started FS9 and went to DM and the 357th aircraft appeared both on the ground and enroute. I can use this approach for the A-10's and need to determine if the same approach will work with other aircraft. I'm still struggling to find the root cause of the issue.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

Firstly, I am glad that the A-10s are sorted out but I confess that it doesn't make sense as to why that was fixed.

There is one thing I would like you to try. As we have worked out both times you installed the DM A-10s you have had problems with them.
I would like you to unzip the package to your desktop and run AIAE on those folders there and let me know the answer.
Now if you still get the error then to be sure re-download the DM package and unzip them to the desktop again and re-check.

My thinking here is that you may be falling foul of the Operating System character limit for files by installing directly to their final destination.

Let me know what happens.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

This is fascinating. I downloaded the DM package to my desktop. Normally I download files to the Downloads folder which resides under the Favorites folder. I then moved the DM aircraft files 357th, 354th, and 47th to the desktop and ran AIAE and no .mdl problem with any of the aircraft. I then deleted the DM aircraft from the FS9 Aircraft folder and moved the DM aircraft from the desktop to the FS9 Aircraft folder. Ran AIAE and no .mdl problem. So it would appear I need to download things to my desktop instead of the Downloads folder. I am getting the .mdl error with a couple of other aircraft, I'm going to try this approach with them to see what happens.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

OK maybe we are getting somewhere.
The OS has a limit for a path name+filename of 255 characters it is possible that the original place you unzip them has a longish path name and so with the folder structure in the zip when you unzip the package the files are not copied properly.
We had issues with this when one of the USN Seahawks packages was being put together (some filenames were cut short in the FSX versions).

When I started beta testing a decade ago I had a problem when a package would not unzip using the builtin windows zip functionality. The answer was that I had to use winrar to unzip them properly. There have been other examples over the years.

It is one of the reasons that I don't have my FS9 installation in the default location. When you start with a path name of :-
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\ you are already in a hole sometimes with some complicated package structures.
The other reason I don't use the default location is to avoid the builtin permissions problems that occur.

My solution was to have my installation at F:\Flight Simulator 9 and to unzip to my desktop or the F: drive root.

Obviously without testing a lot more I can't be sure but if the change in practice fixes it then great.


I would try one more folder to see if that fixes your issue. If it does then you have a lot of work ahead of you to remove all the issues. If it helps I have a list of all the mdls affected from your first error.log.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

I downloaded six different packages all to the desktop, tested them there with AIAE, no .mdl errors on the desktop. Then deleted the aircraft in the FS9 Aircraft folder and installed the desktop models in FS9 Aircraft folder, no .mdl problems. When you installed to F:\Flight Simulator 9 was that to an external drive, a hard drive partition, or something else? I was unaware of the 255 character limit, learned something new, thanks. Is there a tips and tricks forum that captures best practices for FS9 and FSX? Thanks for the offer of the error log, kept a working copy.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

Glad we have got to the bottom of the problem.

On my system I have 3 internal drives. One SSD for my C: drive for speed at boot time, one big HD which I partitioned into several drives. My F: FS drive is on there. I also had another small SSD, 120GB, which I used for my S: drive for FS Scenery.

I don't think that most people are aware that you can place your scenery anywhere. For example each entry in your scenery.cfg has a local parm such as this small segment of mine:-

[Area.037]
Title=Propeller Objects
Local=Scenery\props
Layer=37
Active=TRUE
Required=TRUE

[Area.038]
Title=Addon Scenery
Local=Addon Scenery
Layer=53
Active=TRUE
Required=FALSE

[Area.039]
Local=S:\FS9_Scenery\MAIW Afcads
Title=MAIW Afcads
Required=FALSE
Active=TRUE
Layer=122

Now if you look at the Addon Scenery entry you will see just Addon Scenery. This means that it is a sub directory of your FS9 folder.
The Propeller Objects has Scenery\Props which means that it resides in my F:\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\Props folder.
Now you will notice that with my MAIW Afcads folder I specify a full path name which means that it doesn't look under my FS9 folder but in the full location for the folder.

Now is there any benefit to this?
Yes there is. FIrstly for the most benefit your scenery folder MUST be on a separate drive to your FS9 partition NOT in a separate partition on the same drive.
Why?
Because the way that that HDs work is that there are spinning and have to retrieve the information from the heads as the disks pass underneath the heads. If you have two partitions on the same HD you are still using the same set of heads and the same disks. So if you are loading aircraft and scenery you still have the bottleneck of physically reading the data form the same hardware.
IF you have the partition on two separate HDs then different heads and disks are involved and therefore can physically read both simultaneously. So you load up time will be faster and you will get times during flying as your textures and scenery folders are on separate drives. The Result is reduction or elimination of stutters.

Now I happen to use a spare SSD for my S: drive to give slighter faster retrieve times but you will see a benefit from traditional HDs as well.

There is no specific tips forum but we have tended to have useful stuff under the Tech Talk forum. This particular tip is useful info but unless you have a multiple drive system most people can't benefit fully from it.
Steve
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Greg »

Firebird wrote: 18 Oct 2017, 07:58The OS has a limit for a path name+filename of 255 characters
We're going way off-topic here but... :wink:

It's actually 260 characters and a hard-coded limit in the Windows API which functions as intermediary between a programme and the OS. Windows itself is capable of much longer paths now, but Microsoft doesn't want to change its API because they promised long ago it would never change and risk breaking a lot of apps if they do.

You'll often see 256 (or 255) because the drive designator (e.g. C:\) and invisible NUL character at the end count for the total of 260.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

Yeah, when I read up on it there were various different articles stating between 255-260 including termination character but I thought that if I went for the 255 it would cover all eventualities safely for people that wanted to avoid situations like this.
You are 100% right though.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

Thanks for sharing your computer set-up. You obviously have a lot more knowledge about computers and how to best configure them than I do. This is something I'll have to learn more about before attempting. Concerning the 255 characters, would this apply to texture files and scenery files and could this cause similar problems with these files? The only reason I'm aware of the issue is the AIAE error message I was getting. I'm unaware of a similar method to test scenery.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

The answer is yes. As Greg specified earlier in greater detail than I there is a limit builtin to Windows that limits a path to 255 characters and there is also a filename length of, I believe 128 characters.

So basically any program running under Windows will have problems with files or full paths over these limits.
The first time I came upon this was with our early packages compiled using the WoAI installer. They would install perfectly fine but if you used the installer to uninstall certain packages it would fail.

Now with textures either one of two things will happen, one - the texture will fail to load or two - FS9 will crash on loading. This will depend on the texture type. Generally speaking you can ignore the second as it will happen only when loading ground textures.

With scenery the objects will just not load and so the only way you are likely to realise is if you see screenshots of people using the same scenery and it is different from yours. You can use procmon to investigate if you think something is missing but to be honest you wouldn't load it and check every base for failures.

To be honest I wouldn't worry about it too much as not all your mdls has this problem and the chances are that your addon scenery folders are likely to have a path shorter in length than some aircraft.

Just avoid being too verbose with your folder names for addon scenery, so or move it to a new drive like I demonstrated to shorten the path name.

As I suggested earlier, if you ever get into the situation that you have to reinstall FS9 then that maybe is the time to move it to reduced the impact from the long pathname of the default location.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by pslinger »

Steve,
Thanks for all your help and patience, much appreciated. I have a bit of work ahead of me to clean-up the aircraft with the .mdl issue. Then there are a couple of other issues that need to be addressed, but like you mentioned earlier, one at a time. Obviously there is a lot I need to learn.

Paul
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Firebird »

We all start somewhere, mate.
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by gsnde »

A belated Merry Christmas.

I took the opportunity of my first vacation in the new job to add P3Dv4 support to AIAE and fix about 20+ bugs reported by Dr. Dump Crash Report. Hope it turns out well. The update should be advertised when you start AIAE the next time.

I will also update the Owls Nest during the next days.

I wish you all a great time.

Kind regards
Martin
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Re: AI Aircraft Editor.NET Initial Release

Post by Victory103 »

Glad you had to time to party Martin! Looking forward to the bug fixes.
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