Military AI Works

I wonder if anyone can help. I downloaded Victor aircraft Mk 1. It works fine, appears in the aircraft menu and flys fine. My problem is I cannot get it to appear as an AI aircraft. I have tried different airports, different Afcads, diffent flight schedulers, tried comparing the Aircraft cfg with ones that work ok as AI. None of these work. I hate to be beaten by FSX and I usually resolve any problems eventually but not this one.

W G Torode

Hi,
It can be quite simple to get a flyable aircraft to appear as an AI aircraft but it can also be a right pain.
When you say compared, do you mean just looked at or did you actually try one of them?

If you did try one of them, did you copy the aircraft.cfg over or the .air file or both? It would help us to understand exactly what it was you did.

Hi Steve
What I did was compare the Aircraft cfg with a know working AI aircraft and added certain things to the Victor cfg that were missing ie. atc Ident. I didn't understand the bit about the air file.

Bill T

If I am looking at the same aircraft that you are talking about, the aircraft.cfg file doesn't seem to have either atc_parking_codes or atc_parking_types entries.

This may or may not cause problems. I'm not sure.

OTOH, it couldn't hurt to duplicate one of the [fltsim.x] entries, and add lines for those to that. Then try to flightplan THAT aircraft/livery combo. For that aircraft, you can delete the keyboard, sound and panel entries.

The specific way I would do it is to create a specific atc_parking_code for this aircraft at some afcad/airport, then look for it at that location after double-checking the wingspan entry (aircraft.cfg) and the parking size entry (afcad).

Remember that in FSX, parking size radius in afcad reflects 1/2 the wingspan in feet (though it gets rounded and then converted to meters behind the scenes when FSX itself is running.... this has created problems for me when I didn't make the radius large enough). For starters, make it HUGE, then reduce the size after you get it to show up correctly.

Apologies if this seems obvious and you've already done these things... but that's where I would start.

Ford

Hi Bill,
I can't go into FSX specifics, I will have to leave that sort of thing to Ford, but simply put its quite often the case that you can't just tinker with the FDE you might need to make wholesale changes.

I don't know exactly how much you know about creating AI Traffic so apologies if I state the obvious.

The FDE is made up of two parts, the .air file and the aircraft.cfg file. They work together and the .cfg file can be used to mod parameters in the .air file.

Now I assume that you have created a traffic bgl that uses the Victor, so try what Ford says to get a parking slot big enough for the aircraft to appear.

If it doesn't it may be that the balance of the aircraft is all wrong for AI traffic and the aircraft just simply disappears through he floor on loading the sim. I have had that with B-52s before, but lets worry about that once you have tried the parking spot test.

I have just tried, as suggested by Ford, to create a very large parking spot with code VIC also set my victor parking code VIC. It didn't work so I am ready to kick this one into touch and get on with other things. Another FSX AI problem never to be solved. I do love FSX though by far the best sim Microsoft has produced.
Thanks everyone for all your help. It's nice that people take time out to help other simmers.

Bill T

Bill,
Well if you feel that you wish to tackle this one again, we shall to try to help you.

I hate for people/myself to give up flightplanning in FSX and say that it's "just different than FS9" when it's usually something we've done in error ourselves.

Just for grins, post the AC# line from the aircraft.txt file, a single line from the flightplans.txt file and the aircraft.cfg [fltsim.x] entry for this aircraft here so we can all see exactly what you have.

If you're REALLY into providing us information, toss in/post/link to a screenshot of the parking spot description from AFCAD or AFX or whatever you're using for the afcad.

I'm going to assume that your airports.txt file entries are correct.

Ford

Hi Ford
I can send the cfg but seem to be having problems sending the screen prints

Screen prints

Screen Print I just cannot send the screen print of the AFX Parking. I,m not sure why

Bill

Unfortunately, I can't troubleshoot from that program screen shot as I don't use that program and FSX uses what that program produces, not what is necessarily shown in the screenshot.

What I can troubleshoot from is either the txt files themselves or the traffic.bgl (which I would decompile to give me the txt files.

Why don't you send me a copy of the traffic.bgl --> ford_friendly at yahoo dot com? Note the underscore in the name.

Deleted -- see next post

Try this modification of your aircraft.cfg

It's "cleaned up"/reorganized a bit, and the extraneous "General" entries have been removed.

What program is that? Looks good.

As the title bar says its AI Flight Planner, normally shortened to AIFP. Incidentally one of its nice features is that it tells you when there is a new version and downloads it for you, in a safe mode.

John,
It is AI Flight Planner. It is found on avsim under the file name aifp_v16.zip. It says it is for FS9 and FSX.
Les

John
AI Flight planner free at fsdeveloper.com

Shaw
Your cfg certainly did the trick but i'm not sure why. Victors every where. The only thing is they look ok but then change to ghosts sometimes. Any ideas, maybe a fault with FX.

Bill

As noted above, the aircraft.cfg file had numerous extraneous [General] entries - the file can only use 1. Also, you misspelled the word "airplane", leaving out the "r". That's a showstopper in FSX as you were defining the "category" of the object.

Do a side by side compare of the cfg you posted and the modified one and you should see the changes.