About AI

I am not as up-to-date as I used to be, but I'm fairly sure WOAI is no longer "current". AIG ccreate plans, however I'm not sure whether FS9 is handled anymore because they went further than WOAI and automated everything, but their focus is no longer on FS9 but later sims. I may be doing them a disservice, but I don't think I am.

What I was doing up until 2019, when I froze my AI setup in that year, was to download flightplans packages from AIG - for 2019 they are here http://www.alpha-india.net/aigfiles/files…ns/Summer_2019/ and in the folder above there, they show plans through to 2021, when I guess their automation took over and hid the process from users.

Index of /aigfiles/files/Flightplans

Also there is a very active and friendly (to FS9) community at aitraffic.ch that I can't link you to a sample page there, since you need an account to view what's going on. AIG became quite "firm" about "standards" and disaffected people decided to move across to an old-style AI community (like Project AI, where I was active over 20 years ago) where contributions were encouraged and any faults dealt with in a slightly friendlier format. There are some prolific painters there, planners also. Those plans often showed up on Avsim, and I assume they still do.

The late Don Grovestine created software called AIFP (AI Flight Planner) that developed the ability to read in flightplan files and automatically source the required repaints for any particular airline installation. The flightplans files contained a configuration file that helped AIFP find the paints online. However links don't get maintained, websites like Flightsim have completely screwed up the links anyway, and so that part of the process no longer works well. However you can still manually find the files you will need and put them into AIFP's "repaints" folder, and it will pick the suitable paints for standard liveries and also special colors such as retro liveries as well. The configuration file is readable text and had the old links easily visible, and you can go out onto the web and hunt down those files.

The websites generally used are "the Usual Suspects", Flightsim.com and Avsim, but there may be other locations to use. One of the virtues of these sites (with some notable exceptions) is that they will cross-link to each other and give you clues to other places to find repaints. For example, going to https://kyles-ai-works.com/ will pull up very many fine repaints and also, on the right side of the page, eventually show you some links to other sites. Most are active, although kaese2002.de is now gone. Those other links will take you to other sites and some might link even more sites in, although Kyle's place has most of the current busy sites linked from there. Aitraffic.ch hosts some paints as well. I think they took on all of Christian Muenier's repaints, some of which are still quite current, with many Middle East carriers featured. I miss his presence in the sim community. He was on the wrong end of the clique mentality that can sometimes manifest itself, and just quietly went on improving his skills year by year making paints that others would not touch.

Given a set of airliner paints (Kyle for example does complete fleets for some carriers, for example Frontier, where all planes are different) you can either install them using Don's AIFP, or even manually compile the plans using the age-old Traffic Tools by Lee Swordy, in which case you would need to set up the aircraft manually and cross-reference them to the plans the hard way. Don's program is far simpler. Very few people now paint for FS9, so you'd be advised to use my texture converter (over on Flightsim) that runs a simple batch/command file which will spit out DDS textures in a variety of FS9-friendly formats (DXT1/3 and 32-bit, with or without MIPmaps). I don't use MIPs and have no problems, but other people swear by them and use them all over. You can then repackage these textures for AIFP to use (you may need to keep FSX-style filenames for AIFP to find the texture files) and you can then use AIFP to match up repaints to the aircraft in the plans and then press the compile button (after setting up the location for the plans to compile into - which in FS9 is scenery/world/scenery).

Sticking with the main airlines to begin with is a good plan, since you get a fairly quick "dopamine hit" from seeing airports come to life quite quickly. Maybe focus on the main airlines in each EU/UK country to begin with and then fly between a few airports. That normally looks quite encouraging quite quickly. Then you'll get hungry for niche European carriers to add spice to things. What I used to do before I froze everything, was to only do airlines when flying to a particular country. For some it is easy - a flight to Namibia will make me set up plans for there, and probably South Africa and Angola, and a visit to China probably requires more flightplanning than flying, since it is an extremely busy environment there. In fact it was places like China that slowed me down and made me freeze the AI in 2019. Many people want to keep up with the little changes in fleets from year to year, bringing in new types and phasing out the old types and liveries, which is a lot of work.

For Russian and surrounding countries operators there is Avsim.su as the only real source now that Unitedtrafficteam.net is a suspended domain.

I've barely scratched the surface. AI is supposed to be just a small part of the simulator, used simply to have moving aircraft to interact with (always useful to have to hold for a landing aircraft) but it has been taken to extremes by the fan-base!

While I am no longer updatig the airliners in my setup, I do occasionally add business and light GA operators, recently finally getting around to installing Netjets USA (needs some payware AI though for the Citation Sovereign - which I also used to create a fake Citation Latitude, which is quite a nice aircraft).

Personally I install all on my own.

I collect everything what I need, like flightplan, textures and in some cases models.

Then I install step by step on my own.

The good thing is that it gives full control and overview about what you have installed and makes trouble shooting easier.

One bad effect of WOAI installer is, and that is my experience, if you have two different versions of the airline packages (for example Emirates), they both get installed, and you will have double of aircraft amount.

Maybe it happens also, if you install the same package twice.

Hallo Joao,

entschuldige bitte, dass ich hier nun in meiner Muttersprache antworte, mein Englisch bei dem Thema wäre mir dann doch lückenhaft.

Ich bin im ersten Halbjahr 2017 dabeigegangen und habe sämtliche Länder der Erde durchgearbeitet, geschaut, welche Airlines dort fliegen, bzw. welche ich von denen gern in meinem Setup hättee. Zum Beispiel für Portugal war es natürlich die TAP und Portugalia. Dann habe ich geschaut welcher Flugplan im Netz verfügbar ist und habe in den meisten Fällen den aktuellsten genommen. Aber nicht immer, denn bei KLM oder Finnair wollte ich unbedingt noch MD-11 und MD 80 sehen und daher fliegen diese Fluggesellschaften halt bei mir nach Plänen von 2011 oder noch früher.

Dann habe ich die entsprechenden AI's in mein Setup integriert und zugeordnet. So habe ich z.B. fast 200 verschiedene B-737-800 in meinem Aircraft Ordner. Dabei kam mit zugute, dass ich relativ schnell kapiert habe, wie man ganz einfach mit Maik Voigt's FSX2FS9 Batch-Programm FSX dds Texturen in das FS9 bmp Format umwandeln und nutzen kann - lange bevor Richard (Ministry) mit seinem genialen Programm auf den Markt kam.

Nach ungefähr 6 Monaten war ich dann mit allen Ländern der Erde fertig und habe seit dem einen abwechlungsreichen und weltweit nach realen Plänen ablaufenden AI-Verkehr, an dem ich mich seit dem erfreue, egal wo in meiner virtuellen Welt ich mich gerade aufhalte. Auf vielen meiner Bilder könnt Ihr ihn bestaunen. Es ist zwar einmal viel Gebastel aber man hat dann all die Jahre große Freude dran. Ich würde es immer wieder so machen.

Mittlerweile habe ich etwas mehr wie 1200 ziviele Flugpläne aktiv. Möchte ich welche hinzufügen, ändern oder entfernen, so mache ich es ganz individuell nach meinen Wünschen, genau nach dem Motto von Pippi Langstrumpf: " Ich mach mir die Welt, wie sie mir gefällt".

In diesem Beitrag "Schöne neue AI-Welt - Konvertieren von FSX/P3D Bemalungen in das FS9-Format" findest Du sicherlich viele weitere Informationen an diversen Stellen, die Dich in Deinem Vorhaben begleiten können und aus denen Du hoffentlich viele Anregungen ziehen kannst. Ansonsten sind die Info's von Richard in Beitrag '2 allein schon Gold wert.

Lieben Gruß und gutes Gelingen

Dedl

It depends where you at.

If you are at Lisboa Airport, the Flightplan bgls will tell the FS9 which airlines are there at a certain time.

These bgls contain infos about the AI models.

In the AI aircraft folders there are aircraft.cfgs.

These contain infos about the model and textures which are also in the AI folder.

The folders often contain different models, for example winglets model/non winglets model.

These infos are in the aircraft.cfg.

Also which callsign, and model for atc.

The callsign needs to be installed with Editvoicepack.

Some AI aircrafts are visible in the Aircraft selection window.

But there is a way to edit the model file with a Hex-Editor so that you dont see them anymore in the selection menu.

I havent tried that, yet.

Keep in mind that WOAI doesnt offer VIP airlines and aircrafts. So that is another advantage if you install AI manually.

Same for military AI.

At MAIW you have packages which are similar to WOAI.

But like ve mentioned before, I like to do that manually.

Unfortunatly there are some AI aircraft types which are not availible for FS9.

For example:

A330-800N and A330-900N.

the A339 is beeing used at TAP Portugal.

Also no Embraer E2 jets and some others.

Hi Joao

I guarranty that from the day you have come over the first difficulties, a new world will open up for you in Flight Simulation. And you will think, how was I able to live without AI in my sim?

A main rescource I recommend is the Alpha India Group, AIG-forum. If you register there you will find almost everything you are looking for, at least the links to the stuff. This group got independent from Flightsim.com long before it was necessary. And we too have a lot of knowledge here in our forum and also two AI gurus, Richard and Greg Peters. I do not mention Mr. "Swag" - he is so seldom active unfortunately.

Beeing such an active FS2004-team member as you and with your fantastic balance between give and take I promise, you will not be left alone with your questions and problem. That surely will come.

Good luck and have a lot of fun in the AI world

Dedl

Zitat von 737 Lover

Some AI aircrafts are visible in the Aircraft selection window.

But there is a way to edit the model file with a Hex-Editor so that you dont see them anymore in the selection menu.

AIAE (AI-Aircraft Editor from Martin Gossmann) does it (and a lot of other tasks)