Where are AI aircraft?

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KellyB

Charter Member
Where does FS9 store its AI aircraft?
Is it possible to create them without being a hard core, kernel level programmer.

It is relatively easy in CFS3, but I don't see the same configs in FS9.
 
AI are stored in the same folder as all aircraft but typically don't show up as flyable in the selection box. Having recently upgraded my computer, and fixed a related software problem, I now enjoy company flying with AI. There are lots of experienced folks here that know AI in and out but you can certainly do what I did which is easy as it gets. A great bunch is the World of AI people commonly known as WOAI. There you will download the WOAI Installer and be directed to also install TTools. Together they pretty much do all the hard work so you can just click a few icons and have AI. WOAI "packages" of airlines and GA are on Flightsim and Avsim and the WOAI website has the direct links for them for downloading. Once downloaded, Opening the Installer allows you to select the package folder, which it will automatically un-zip and install for you, aircraft, airports and flight plans. TTools can be used to decompile and compile those traffic.bgls for editing if wanted. You can have a look at the aircraft folder and see the WoA planes but they won't show up as flyable. Make sure you check at an airport where you expect to see the particular airline, WOAI helps with that too because you can search for airlines by ICAO code too. Try just 2 or 3 to see if things went right but be warned, AI fever is addictive :jump:
 
Lordy, Lordy, KellyB, looks like another simmer is fixing to step off the beach into the surf. :applause:

As Aeromed202 warned, AI is highly addictive...:running:

Romeo-Delta
 
KellyB, Take a look at my buddy, Nigel Richards' thread "Arms Twisted." It is located in the "sticky thread" section.

Romeo-Delta
 
rdaniell said:
Lordy, Lordy, KellyB, looks like another simmer is fixing to step off the beach into the surf. :applause:

As Aeromed202 warned, AI is highly addictive...:running:

Romeo-Delta
Click to expand...

Scary metaphor! Many, too many years ago my Dad decided to teach me to body surf at Asbury Park, NJ. I recall getting caught up in a "giant" wave ( I was probably 6 or 7) and being rolled and rolled and deposited on the beach much in the manner of a dead whale. Once Dad determined I was ok, he couldn't contain it, and burst out laughing... and then so did I.

(I did do it again, with more success, by the way)


Ok. So now I'm off to follow the leads and get wet all over. I'll be back either with more questions or perhaps a result or two.

Thanks, guys.
 
KellyB

After 3 years of using FS9, I finally decided it was time to address the AI portion of my sim. In the last few days, I have taken my AI from bone stock to WOW WOW WOW....and it did not cost me a penny, just time to download and install the packages.

The first package I got was WorldGA.zip over on flightsim.com. This will take your GA AI from fairly pathetic to pretty darn good. Still uses just the stock AI GA planes, but there are more of them, they fly much more dynamic patterns. Very easy to install...remove the stock Traffic.bgl and drop in the one from the worldga package.

Then I grabbed all of the GA AI packages from World of AI (and the WOAI installer), then a good number of the Cargo and Passenger packages from World of AI, then a good number of packages from Military AI Works.

Simply amazing what these packages have done for my AI experience.

World of AI site:

http://www.world-of-ai.com/

Military AI Works site:

http://militaryaiworks.com/

OBIO
 
If your more old school, check out CalClassics, 50/60 era AI.

If your even older school, I'm sure there's a couple of AI packages for WWII, a Bonus pack for GW3 for Hawkinge with spits and Hurris. Even beyond that? MAIW has a special WWI pack.

I don't have links handy, sorry. I grabbed them myself before my OS rebuild, lost my bookmarks.Googleor fellow members may shine a light?

Jamie
 
Like I told you KellyB, you done stepped in it now. It want be long before you will have all sorts of AI traffic. Then you will begin to made your own custom packages for the places you like to fly around. That's kinda what got me into AI some years back. I wanted the traffic to be as close as virturally possible to the actual traffic around here.

Just watch out for a fellow by the name of Willy. He his somewhat of a shady character who operates Merc Air. :icon_lol:

Romeo-Delta
 
If you only use stock AI, you may have noticed that most of the AI traffic is the same flyable planes supplied by the factory. The three extra planes are the Piper Cherokee, MD-83, and Dash-8. In addition to not having panels, these planes also have a unique entry in their *.air files. If you have an air file editor, you'll see that record 105 is set to Type 2. Type 0 (zero) is for normal flyable planes, and Type 1 is for helo's. Setting the type to 2 instantly removes the plane from the flyable aircraft menu.
 
I see that California Classics' 1950s AI packages have been mentioned (they have both civil and military packages, though I believe the military package is only MATS cargo planes.) If you like the really old stuff, there's Golden Wings, which includes period AI for the entire FS world.

For modern military AI there's the Military AI Works packages.

Cal Classics offers a split version of the FS9 traffic file that separated the airline and GA traffic into separate files. That's handy if you want to ditch the stock AI airline traffic and replace it with an add-on without losing your GA traffic.

There doesn't seem to be any limit to how many traffic files you can have, so you can create your own AI schemes and have it in separate files that you can activate, inactivate or change without affecting anything else.

To answer your questions, as has been mentioned, AI planes live in the Aircraft folder with the flyable planes. They don't show up on the select aircraft menu because they're coded as AI types in the AIR file (Aircraft type=2; you can open and edit AIR files with AirEd.)

Some (not all) AI planes can be made flyable by adding a panel and sounds, and changing the aircraft type code to zero. Most (not all) flyable planes can be used for AI. You can make an AI version by stripping out the panels and sounds (AI uses a separate, generic sound set from the main FS9 Sounds folder), or you can just use the flyable plane for AI.

You would create a new AI plane the same way you'd create a flyable plane, except that you wouldn't need a panel or sounds. The flight model might be different for some planes, but I don't understand that part in detail.

As has been mentioned, if you want to do more tan add packages (which generally only populate the larger airports, or at least only those that Microsoft has provided with AI parking - which is mainly the larger airports) you'll have to learn to use Traffic Tools and AFCAD. Both of those programs come with comprehensive instructions that will teach you all you need to know about using them and about AI. You'll probably also want a flight plan editor like yRoute or AI Flight Planner; manual writing and editing of flight plans is extremely tedious.

Have fun!
 
Something I like to do is decompile the traffic bgl using TTools and customize it to my tastes. Example: I have MAIW's Hurlburt Field which I really enjoy flying out of when I want to fly Capt Sim's C-130s. I simply added some T-28Ds, A-26s, and AC47s flying out of Hurlburt by adding those aircraft to the aircraft file and then replacing a few of original aircraft with the AC#s for them on the flight plan file. Recompile and they will be at Hurlburt.

Romeo-Delta
 
Terrific responses! Thanks to one and all.

Now I shall submerge into the ocean of info, and surface later when I've learned how some of the pieces work.

I don't seem to have a Dash-8 AI. Is that an fsX plane, or am I missing something in my install?

Again, I thank you all!:medals::icon29::icon29:
 
Just checked the default AC list and assume it is the dh_dash8_100, named the usual Airwave, Orbit and Pacific airlines. I've really got to change those someday. FS became much better when I finally got rid of those lavender and orange 747 abominations.
 
Simple enough. There are plenty of repaints for all those stock planes. If you just drop the repainted texture files into the stock texture folders without changing any folder names or UI sections in the aircraft.cfg file, the new paints will replace the old.

Of course, if you're into tubeliners (or want a Piper Cherokee) you can make the stock AI planes flyable by adding or aliasing panels and sounds, and changing the aircraft type in the IR file.

If you do that, you'll want to edit the variation= lines in the aircraft.cfg file so the repaints will be properly listed on the Select Aircraft menu. If you only change the variation= line, and leave the title= line alone, your AI won't be affected.
 
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