ai aircraft editor

[pslinger]

Steve, cleared everything out and re-installed. Found part of the problem, a .bgl file located inside one of the AI aircraft folders. Removed the.bgl file and AIAE runs a bit better but still hangs and takes two to three tries to get the program running. AIAE was installed D:\FS-Tools folder, avoided the C:\ drive. I also have some commercial aircraft installed and did notice with the FAIB AI aircraft that have the always on light textures stored in the main FSX texture folders, the aircraft don't display properly.The only way I can zoom in on the aircraft is by changing the view to Default View. i may have messed up the FAIB aircraft always on install. An example attached of what i see when attempting to view an FAIB AI model. Appreciate your patience.

Paul

[gsnde]

This is not an error. I noticed the same with most of all FAIB aircraft. Something extends from the models downward so that the aircraft is not centered in the viewer.

If you crosscheck the model in MCX directly you will see that it looks the same.


From mobile hence short

[Firebird]

I am not sure. Somebody with more knowledge on FSX would have to give the definitive answer there as to whether it was the fltsim entry or the folder itself being there.

I would have thought that if what you propose is correct why not just have a fltsim parm VISIBLE=YES or VISIBLE=NO. It would make life a lot simpler.

[gsnde]

It is like Steve says. It’s either the AI type or no panel folder present in the aircraft folder that determines visibility in the FS selection screen.

[pslinger]

When AIAE was hanging on start-up and only the yellow bottom portion of the screen was populated, the following is what I found in the log:

Starting reading d:\microsoft\microsoft flight simulator x\simobjects\airplanes\aia_737_max_8\Aircraft.cfg
Reading models from aircraft.cfg
Starting reading of file d:\microsoft\microsoft flight simulator x\simobjects\airplanes\aia_737_max_8\model.no_refl\aia_737_800_max_nodome.mdl
Unknown BGL opcode 1 at position 20092
Trying to continue after last jump, might be data block

I found a traffic .bgl file in one of the AI aircraft, don't have any idea how it got there. When I removed the file, the initial issue with the program hanging/crashing went away. However, there still appears to be an issue getting the aircraft tree to expand. Everything works great up to the point when I attempt to expand the > Airplanes, I receive a (Not Responding) message and I have to back out of the program and start over. Usually on the second or third try I can get it to work for a short period of time. I don't have the same issue with > Animals, > Boats, > GroundVehicles, etc. It is limited to Aircraft and I'm unsure what I should be looking for, any suggestions?

Paul

[Firebird]

I suppose the obvious question is how many Aircraft folders do you have?
The reason I ask is that I have two sets of folders on my FS9 system. One currently names Aircraft is the subset I use for testing, and has 220 folders. Yes maybe I should clear that out.
The second set currently called Aircraft_Full contains 1258 folders. I flip-flop between them by simple renaming.

The other useful piece of information I should give is that I am one of those people that combines aircraft folders into one where possible to reduce the number of folders.

Now when the proggy first loads it can take up to 30-40 secs to open a folder in the Aircraft tree. It takes 40-50 secs to open the Aircraft_Full tree subsequently. Once I have done this the expanding and contracting of the folders for either set is instantaneous.
What this tells me is that it reads your previous tree on initial loading but then keeps it in memory. If you have another set it will build that when you select it and then keep that in memory.

So it would seem certain things will affect your loading time. There are 3 obvious ones. One the CPU you have, two the memory you have on board and three speed of the drive you have the aircraft folders stored on.
Now I have to ignore these for the simple reasons that you can't do anything about these with the exception of spending money. Would you want to just to load things quicker into AIAE? In truth if your aircraft folders are on a traditional HD and you have an SSD on your system then moving them to the SSD will speed things up.

Now we come back to the final thing and it comes back to the information I gave earlier. The greater number of aircraft folders you have the longer the time to load will be. The reason is simply that it seems not to read the folders until you select one but it has to build the index so the number of folders is the critical thing here not the number of aircraft.
Does this sound like something that you could improve?

Now the one aspect that you mentioned that gives me pause is that you say that after 2 or 3 times it works for a short period. This would seem to indicate a memory issue where the system can't maintain the size of index in memory and therefore needs to rebuild itself. How much memory do you have and what is your virtual memory set to?

The only way that I can see that Martin could improve the loading time would be to store the index on the system each time it builds one. He would still have to compare a new build index against the stored one each time it loads and I don't know the overheads involved nor whether it would actually save any time.

[pslinger]

Thanks Steve, give me a couple of days to get back to you with answers to your questions. I have been having problems with my computer and had to reset Windows 10. I am in the process of putting things back in order. I will also test AIAE after the dust settles. The issues may be related to the issues that forced me to do a Windows reset.

Paul

[gsnde]

I have today released a version with a bug fixed concerning the sort fltsim section. Also included the newest MCX components.

In case you still only see parts of the model in the viewer please tell me.


From mobile hence short

[pslinger]

Steve, found the cause of the issue I was having with AIAE, apparently a corrupt Windows 10 file(s). Unfortunately not sure which file(s). I started receiving a lot of BSOD shutdowns and there were five different reasons that were showing up. Had to do a complete reinstall of Windows 10, none of the simpler solutions to correct the BSOD shutdowns worked. Have been slowly installing programs. After the Windows reinstall AIAE is working just like it should. The only issue I have yet to resolve is AIFP is telling me "unable to access aircraft folders", even though the aircraft are there. Obviously more work to do. Thanks for your help, always appreciated.

Paul

[Firebird]

AIFP is a portable app so therefore if the AIFP.ini is pointing to the correct places there shouldn't be an issue.

The one thing that it could be is that you haven't got all the .NET frameworks active yet AIFP needs at least 4.5 to work.