Aircraft folder

Keith Jones · Post by **Keith Jones** » 16 Sep 2008, 15:25

I'm hoping someone can put me sraight on this. Is it possible to have more than one aircraft folder in FS9? I would like to separate flyable from AI aircraft. I know it's possible in FSX so I'm hoping that it is in FS9; although I don't know how.

Also, if I bought a Mac computer (laptop, probably) would I be able to access sites like Avsim to download files for use on my FS9 PC?

Ford Friendly · Post by **Ford Friendly** » 16 Sep 2008, 15:32

I used to just rename my flyable aircraft folders to "_whatever" - that is, just stick an underscore character as the first character in the folder name for each aircraft. Then use the sort/alphabetize feature to display the directory - voila. All flyables are at the top of the list.

There's no technical reason that I can think of why you couldn't access avsim or any other website using a Mac - including to download files. Someone else might know of a reason, but I can't think of any.

KevinJarvis · Post by **KevinJarvis** » 16 Sep 2008, 15:46

But aren't you talking about multiple 'aircraft' folders withing FS9 itself?
As far as I know FS9 will only recognize 1 folder with that name. If you rename a 2nd folder those aircraft will not be available for use in the sim.

Whenever I add an AI specific a/c I rename it to 'AIxxx' and then I know which is which.

MIKE JG · Post by **MIKE JG** » 16 Sep 2008, 16:29

Keith, as far as I know, it is not possible in FS9. That sure would be nice but as Kevin and company are describing, your best bet is to come up with a naming convention that puts your flyables ahead of or at least partitions them from your AI aircrafts.

Ford Friendly · Post by **Ford Friendly** » 16 Sep 2008, 17:07

Yes Kevin...

I did that within the FS9/Aircraft folder for the flyable aircraft SUBfolders. The reason I chose the underscore character is it sorts alphabetically prior to both (upper and lowercase) letters AND numbers.

For me this was just as good as having separate flyable and non-flyable folders.

Keith Jones · Post by **Keith Jones** » 16 Sep 2008, 18:47

Thanks for the information, Guys. Although I already have a naming convention similar to Ford's, I felt it would be easier to have separate folders for the flyable and AI. That's out of the question so I'll stick with what I have now.
Thanks again.

KevinJarvis · Post by **KevinJarvis** » 16 Sep 2008, 23:41

Ford Friendly wrote:Yes Kevin...

I did that within the FS9/Aircraft folder for the flyable aircraft SUBfolders. The reason I chose the underscore character is it sorts alphabetically prior to both (upper and lowercase) letters AND numbers.

For me this was just as good as having separate flyable and non-flyable folders.

Roger that Ford. Good idea.

Col7777 · Post by **Col7777** » 12 Nov 2008, 08:29

Hi I'm a new member and this is my first post, I recently experimented with the above. Yes, FS9 only allows 1 'Aircraft' folder, but what I did was create another folder, in my original aircraft folder I had all classic aircraft, no modern jets etc.
Then in the second folder I had all the modern aircraft, but the only way I could do it was naming the folders, so in the default folder was classic aircraft, I then named the modern folder 'MAircraft' (or whatever you choose).

BEFORE I start the sim, I decide which era I want to fly, if I want the modern aircraft I go in the sim and rename the default 'Aircraft' folder to 'CAircraft' which contains the classics then rename the 'MAircraft' to 'Aircraft' then I start the sim.

Any ai flights for the classics don't show because the sim can't find them of visa versa if flying the classics.

ronniegj · Post by **ronniegj** » 12 Nov 2008, 15:36

Perhaps you can write a short script that offers choice 1)Retro or 2)Modern, and upon making a choice, fs9 is started after a short rename of the appropriate folder names, which would lead to faster and auto start of your choice. There is one or two programs for d/l at avsim which do essentially this, but just change out the splash screen, but I see no reason why you couldn't substitue the folder rename for the actions to change out the splash screen.

Ron

Col7777 · Post by **Col7777** » 12 Nov 2008, 16:54

Hello Ronnie,

I'm not too good with writing scripts and or doing macros if that is what you mean, but the idea is there if someone can do it.

aerogator · Post by **aerogator** » 12 Nov 2008, 17:46

I think that would be real useful. I like retro a lot and that would save having to have two separate versions of FS

In fact, you could probably have lots of different eras! Wow!

Hope it works, I'd have no idea how to do it.

In the meantime, I might try the idea of renaming separate folders

SMOC · Post by **SMOC** » 12 Nov 2008, 18:04

I've made a batch file that, depending on what you pick(retro or current), will rename your aircraft folder.

Should anyone have any interest in this drop a note her or PM me. It's just a small batch file that does nothing more than rename a couple of folders.

Ford Friendly · Post by **Ford Friendly** » 12 Nov 2008, 18:38

Actually I was just doing 2 batch files to do this as an exercise for myself.
I made 2 icon/shortcuts to the batch files named retro - current so that I just click on the one I want to use. I know it can be done in one batch file, but I tend to keep things like this really simple as my MS DOS batch file skills have atrophied through lack of recent use (probably something like 5-7 years since I've done any 'serious' batch file work).

Why don't you post the text of yours here and if I did anything different, I'll post mine.

Col7777 · Post by **Col7777** » 12 Nov 2008, 19:41

Well this idea does work but I've had another suggestion from a friend, I haven't tried it yet but he says instaed of renaming the 'Aircraft' folders, have the flightplans in seperate folders and rename them, so in other words have retro plans in one folder and modern in another or even mixed/military in another etc.

He was thinking the sim might be drained using the first idea but as yet it seems to work fine, I thought the sim only loaded the aircraft from the default 'Aircraft' folder so it should ignor the renamed folder, though I could be wrong.

Ford Friendly · Post by **Ford Friendly** » 12 Nov 2008, 20:37

Hmm. Thinking about it based on the previous post, there's actually a couple of considerations that may not be obvious at first.

1. Organization. Keeping the retro models separate from the current ones. This is "obvious" and the reason for renaming the aircraft folders.

2. FS startup/load time. With fewer aircraft model-n-texture sets to screen/build a database from during startup, FS should "start" quicker.

3. FS traffic.bgl related times. If aircraft model-n-texture sets defined in the traffic.bgls are not present in the aircraft folder, then that will likely increase the load time and may cause post-startup problems later (though I am not sure that I have actually directly observed the latter).

4. Which leads to renaming the "undesired" traffic.bgls as well as the keeping separate aircraft folders as probably being the most effective method to achieve FS program efficiency. That is, keeping retro aircraft separate from current ones AND renaming retro-traffic.bgls to retro-traffic.bgo (or somethign like that) when appropriate is, I think, the best bet.

Simple to do once - but any batch file or procedure to do so would need to be maintianed and updated as new traffic.bgls and aircraft-model-texture sets are added to one's setup.

----
As I was about to hit submit, it struck me that renaming traffic bgls might not be the most foolproof or efficient way to manage this. What might be more efficient, especially in terms of maintenance/updating, is this - add a folder inside my retro folder named "retro traffic bgls" and copy those files into/out of the .....\world\scenery\world directory as required (and do the same in reverse for the "current" traffic bgls that I didn't want to run/see at the same time). This added folder in the "aircraft" folder would be scanned at startup, found to have no mdl or texture files and thence ignored, thus having minimal impact on the FS startup time due to initial AI traffic database creation.

*****What appears to be a simple configuration issue obviously has multiple considerations and ways to accomplish the goal, depending upon what is considered important.

aerogator · Post by **aerogator** » 13 Nov 2008, 18:06

I love it!

You guys keep working on this

I'll bet someone can come up with something even us dummies can use

Col7777 · Post by **Col7777** » 14 Nov 2008, 19:40

I found a slight problem using this method, it works fine having 2 aircraft folders and doing the rename thingy before starting the sim, but the problem I got was in the scenery.
I have some old (era) scenery installed and it cancels out some modern airports, renders them closed, so installing any modern flightplans caused a problem as they couldn't land at certain airports.

IF you haven't got any old world airports installed then there is no problem.

Ford Friendly · Post by **Ford Friendly** » 14 Nov 2008, 20:14

Edited...

The only solution there is to have 2 different sets of traffic files - 1 per area with the appropriate ICAOs/destinations. I had to modify traffic going to Bangkok just like this when VTBS opened up and regular international flights were rerouted to there. Ah, the magic of cut, paste and global replace in Notepad. Of course, I did have to do this manually - decompile and recompile each traffic.bgl using ttools, that is.

Col7777 · Post by **Col7777** » 14 Nov 2008, 21:32

Yeah, I figured that but I didn't feel in the mood for editing the traffic files, I know I will have to do it if I keep this method.

It probably needs a good sorting anyway.

Post by **Firebird** » 14 Nov 2008, 21:50

Ford,
I know what you mean so before it got too badly out of control I implemented a scheme where I keep all the decompiled files and raw files in their own directory.
Yes it can take up some space but it make it a lot easier to update and search, plus you are only amending the original text files and you can cut down on errors introduced by decompile/recompile operation.