Flight Sim 2004

[Enginebill]

I've been upgrading flight sim 2004 using Surclaro.com,Simviation.com and MAIW, I now have it up to 42gigs and it looks really good.Is there a way to put AI aircraft in a folder by themselves to help unclutter the aircraft directory?

[Firebird]

The simple answer for FS9 is no. You can in FSX.
What you can do, as I do, is colour code the AI aircraft folders using a freeware folder icon lib. It can be a pain to set up to start with but it helps me find a folder quicker.

[RKE]

I feel your pain, I've pretty much given up all hope of keeping my Aircraft folder clean. I have 10 UI aircraft folders - and 437 AI aircraft folders!

[Firebird]

I currently have 614 folders, the vast majority AI. Thank god I combine all folders when i can.

[RKE]

Likewise, even if some of them can be a bit mystifying.

For instance, I'm not sure I have Jake Burrus' P-3 set up properly, I have 3 model files in the normal model folder alone, with 7 sub folders (AEW, B, clean, empty, harpoon, no weapon pylons, & USN), and I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of those warrant its own folder

[Stewart Pearson]

I've got 873 folders, colour coded for flyable, MAIW, other AI.

I try to keep a seperate folder for each unit/Air Force, it makes life easier for future edits etc.

[RKE]

FSRenum and a liberal use of subfolders work for me

An example would be:
HT F-16C (Henry's F16 non-drag chute folder)
-> Texture.USAF (overall branch)
--> IA (Tail code where applicable
---> 124 (for the particular squadron when more than one share it)
-----> Individual folders for each registration

[MIKE JG]

Wow! I thought I was bad with 337 aircraft folders.....

[Firebird]

FSRenum and a liberal use of subfolders work for me

An example would be:
HT F-16C (Henry's F16 non-drag chute folder)
-> Texture.USAF (overall branch)
--> IA (Tail code where applicable
---> 124 (for the particular squadron when more than one share it)
-----> Individual folders for each registration

That is something that I was thinking of but I read somewhere that with texture sub folders it takes longer to load. I don't know of any scientific grounds for this but my feeling is that if it is true the more aircraft you get in your system the worse the effect will be so I have avoided this. The same theory was put forward on Alpha India the other day.

It would definitely make things tidier though.

[delbydoo]

FSRenum and a liberal use of subfolders work for me

An example would be:
HT F-16C (Henry's F16 non-drag chute folder)
-> Texture.USAF (overall branch)
--> IA (Tail code where applicable
---> 124 (for the particular squadron when more than one share it)
-----> Individual folders for each registration

That is something that I was thinking of but I read somewhere that with texture sub folders it takes longer to load. I don't know of any scientific grounds for this but my feeling is that if it is true the more aircraft you get in your system the worse the effect will be so I have avoided this. The same theory was put forward on Alpha India the other day.

It would definitely make things tidier though.

The other thing I found with this system is that if you use acs2005 that program won't find the sub folders and will return a missing texture folder

[RKE]

I use the old MRAI installer to check for missing texture/model folders and fltsim numbers gone missing. ACA is only used to check for aircrafts not assigned to flightplans as well as aircrafts missing from installed traffic files. And I'm dearly missing a function where it will only check aircrafts which are not shown in the aircraft selection in case of the latter.

[Graham King]

My JAI P-3's look like this. Do not ask for models you have not got as some might not be published.

JAI P3C
..model
..model.aurora
..model.harpoon
..model.no_weapon_pylons

JAI EP3E
..model

JAI P3B AEW
..model

JAI P3B Customs
..model

JAI P3C (CP-140A)
..model

JAI P3C Firebomber
..model

JAI WP3D
..model

[swp53]

Hi All,
I use AI before each aircraft manufacturer and type like "AI Boeing EA-18G Growler", "AI Dassault Rafale M", "AI Lockheed C-130J-30 Hercules C4", "AI McDonnell-Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle", "AI Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29UB" etc.
It adds more work to the manual installation in adding these changes to the aircraft cfg and flightplans but I find it easier in the long term when updating changes. In the case of the Mig 29 I have seperate folders for Mig-29A, B, G, GT, SMT, UB and in the case of the Herc I have 46 different folders.
Steve

[RKE]

I try and use the modellers / release group initials where possible, ie. AIA for AI Aardvark, AIG for Alpha India, NBAI for Nick Black, HTAI for Henry T (I can't spell his last name, so I won't even try ), and so forth. This is then followed by a shorthand for the particular model type.

For stuff where the lineage is a bit dodgy, I revert to using AI in place of the modellers name.

[yuku]

in light of this discussion I was wondering what methods you guys use to manual install.
I've only recently started on installing MAIW-packages.
Before that I was concentrating on installing the AIG flightplans primarily.

My normal procedures are:
0 - rename the aircraft folder to _AI_aircraft-model_creator (e.g. _AI_B737-800W_AIA or _AI_B757-200_AIG) grouping them together in my aircraft folder
1 - replacing the .air files with improved ones by Jan Martin and adding Shockwave lights where possible
2 - rename the entries in Aircraft.txt to airline-name_aircraft-model_variation
3 - rename the texture folders to texture.airline-name_variation (no sub folders)
4 - checking every texture within ImageTool to make sure they are DXT3 with Mips and have an Alpha layer (see discussions on the AIG forums)
5 - compile the (adjusted) flightplans using AIFP2
6 - adding the package to my list of installed packages and possible comments about missing repaints (google docs / excel)

Now that I've started with installing MAIW packages, I've started at package #1 and installed all up to #27 or #28 now.
Since the first packages were all WOAI packages, I could simply extract the package for a manual install.
I change the aircraft.txt to replace the entry WOAI_HTAI_C-130_variation to MAIW_001_C-130_variation
Also I change the texture folders from texture.variation to texture.MAIW_001_variation
Then I change the flstim.x entries accordingly and install the entries and next check all textures for DXT3 with Mips and Alpha

However as of package #029 you don't supply the package as WOAI package but as an autoinstaller.
I'm very interested to know what ways you use to manually install these?

[campbeme]

in light of this discussion I was wondering what methods you guys use to manual install.
I've only recently started on installing MAIW-packages.
Before that I was concentrating on installing the AIG flightplans primarily.

My normal procedures are:
0 - rename the aircraft folder to _AI_aircraft-model_creator (e.g. _AI_B737-800W_AIA or _AI_B757-200_AIG) grouping them together in my aircraft folder
1 - replacing the .air files with improved ones by Jan Martin and adding Shockwave lights where possible
2 - rename the entries in Aircraft.txt to airline-name_aircraft-model_variation
3 - rename the texture folders to texture.airline-name_variation (no sub folders)
4 - checking every texture within ImageTool to make sure they are DXT3 with Mips and have an Alpha layer (see discussions on the AIG forums)
5 - compile the (adjusted) flightplans using AIFP2
6 - adding the package to my list of installed packages and possible comments about missing repaints (google docs / excel)

Now that I've started with installing MAIW packages, I've started at package #1 and installed all up to #27 or #28 now.
Since the first packages were all WOAI packages, I could simply extract the package for a manual install.
I change the aircraft.txt to replace the entry WOAI_HTAI_C-130_variation to MAIW_001_C-130_variation
Also I change the texture folders from texture.variation to texture.MAIW_001_variation
Then I change the flstim.x entries accordingly and install the entries and next check all textures for DXT3 with Mips and Alpha

However as of package #029 you don't supply the package as WOAI package but as an autoinstaller.
I'm very interested to know what ways you use to manually install these?

Just change the path of the installer from your FS location to a location / folder of your choice.

Mark

[RKE]

Yup, I have c:\temp set up for that (and other stuff that people insist on using installers for). Heck, I've even thrown in a copy of fs9.exe in the folder, for those installers who refuse to install outside the FS9 folder.

[yuku]

ok did that now, but there are no flightplan txt files in there only the already compiled bgl file.
do you just de-compile the bgl?
and if so what tool do you use for that?

[Firebird]

All our packages have the raw text files supplied they are in the Military AI Works folder in each package, with the readme and the voicepack mods.