Why do you want to delete the default planes anyway ? You will not earn ANYTHING from this manipulation. Maybe some miserable Megabytes on the harddrive, no worth the effort.
Thats an option that I never wanted to explore, not one bit. The makers of FS9 clearly ment for those things not to be removed, alter them for gods sake, thats what repaints and Air files are for. Just leave the default planes alone, you won't improve anything by removing them.
Sorry, but that is absolutely not true. Unless you specifically like the default planes - and the only ones with decent quality would be the Cessnas, Trimotors, DC-3, and the other historical aircraft, I would argue there is no point in keeping them. Certainly from an AI aircraft point of view, there's every reason to replace them.
There are tons of AI-specific planes that will give you AI environments from the late 40's through to the present. Combining the packages from Retroai.org and calclassics.com, you can completely replace the stock aircraft with appropriate ones from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's. Combine the excellent work from developers like HTAI, Aardvark AI, and others, you can have amazing AI coverage that is realistic, and most importantly easy on your system. In contrast to default planes, these aircraft are designed from the ground up as AI - multiple LOD (levels of detail) ensure only as much of the planes as is needed for viewing. Just go search on flightsim and you'll see literally thousands of repaints that are for AI planes from the packages I've mentioned (especially the tubeliners).
I kept the default Cessna, thinking it was necessary (now, I know better - thanks Feng!) - but other than that, the default planes have been gone for over 7 years. I have two FS installs - an MS1950, and an MS1970. Here's what I did for each - two simple steps (probably took 10 or so hours to do properly totally, and small tweaks along the way).
1) MS1950. First, I deleted all planes except for the C172. I assembled a series of 1950-era planes (+/- a few years) from CalClassics, and from Golden Wings. Using Ttools, opened the default traffic.bgl folder. In the aircraft.txt file, I mapped to appropriate planes. For example, I replaced the Cessnas with 50's era Wacos and and such from Golden wings; Dash-8s with Calclassic DC-3 (yes, I even tossed out the default DC-3 and replaced it with a proper AI DC-3 that has literally dozens of repaints), long range 747 types with Calclassic Constellations, Stratocruisers, etc.
That replaces the stock traffic, but then adding airline-specific traffic files (from retro ai), I could literally fill the sky with realistic routes, again using the medium and larger airliners. The beauty is that by now, all manner of 50's planes have been done, from C-46s to cover Asian and Latin American airlines, to Illushins for the Eastern Bloc. Easy, and free. Military is a whole other matter, but there is still enough out there to again fill in the gaps on a region/base basis.
2. MS1970. Same two steps as above, only I've changed some plane associations in the default trafffic aircraft file to appropriate planes. So, Dash-8s become F-27 (literally dozens of those), default late period 737 becomes Aardvark 737-200, MD-80 becomes AI Caravelles and early Aardvark DC-9s, 777s and 747's become the lovely AI DC-8s, 707s, and Convair 880s, 890's etc. Next, same deal with retroai airlines - every major imaginable and colourful airline from the 1970's period around the world is available, so now not only do I have GA and random airline traffic, but also dedicated traffic routes all around the earth.
The same is true for current airlines and aircraft - tons of AI routes and repaints of dedicated AI planes.
As I mentioned, this is free, and takes a few hours to do. Even if you don't want to do the second step (adding all the dedicated accurate flight routes (which takes very little time), spending the time to change the default aircraft plane list will radically improve the feel of your sim to whatever period you like. The only drawback is that the Orbit 747 may now be a Pan Am 707, or Air Canada Airbus A340, or what have you. Yeah, if you're in an airport in Johannesburg, seeing one of these might seem strange - but it's a whole lot more realistic than seeing those awful default Orbit B777 and MD80 and such. Bear in mind, FS allows you to toggle your GA and/or airline AI - so you can work around that feature in this manner also.
Yeah, it's absolutely worth it.
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