AI FLIGHT PLANNER
… a comprehensive, fully integrated AI flight planning tool for both FS9
and FSX
INDEX
1. GENERAL
1.1 Airports
1.2 Aircraft
1.3 Flight Plans
1.4 Traffic File Issues
1.5 Conversion - FS9->FSX
2. INSTALLING/UNINSTALLING AI FLIGHT
PLANNER
3. THE AI FLIGHT PLANNER MAIN WINDOW
4. MAIN MENU FUNCTIONS
4.1 Creating a New Flight Plan Files
4.2 Loading Flight Plans and Associated Files
4.3 Flight Plan Validation
4.4 Flight Plan Subsets
4.5 Saving/Compiling Flight Plans and
Associated Files
4.6 Conversion of FS9 Flight Plans for use
with FSX
4.7 Managing the Aircraft List
4.8 Managing Airports
5. BUTTONS AND INDICATORS
5.1 Flight Plan List
5.2 Moving Items to and From the Flight Plan
List
5.3 Leg List
5.4 Airport List
5.5 Aircraft List
6. USING THE FLIGHT PLAN EDITOR
6.1 Arrival and Departure Times
6.2
6.3 Loading Flight Plans
6.4 Built-In text Editor
6.5 Flight Plan Editor
6.6 New Flight Plans from “Scratch”
7. MANAGING AIRCRAFT DATA
7.1 Loading and
Saving Aircraft Data
7.2 Adding an Aircraft to the Aircraft List
7.3 Editing an Aircraft Already in the
Aircraft List
7.4 Deleting Aircraft
8. COLLECTING AND EDITING AIRPORT DATA
8.1 Collecting Airport Data
8.2 Customizing the Airport List
8.3 Editing and Manually Adding New Airports
8.4 Airport Data Bulk Update
9. SUPPORT
10. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
11. END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
AI Flight Planner provides all the facilities necessary
to create, develop, edit and maintain AI traffic flight plans for both the FS9
and FSX versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS). It includes an embedded
compiler/decompiler. Hence, AI Flight
Planner can use either TTools-format .txt
files or compiled MSFS traffic .bgl files
as “source code” for flight plans and associated aircraft data – or you may
create one or both “from scratch”. AI
Flight Planner provides its own airport data.
In addition
to the features expected in any flight planning tool, AI Flight Planner:
Thus, it is possible with AI Flight Planner to generate
efficient AI traffic files pertaining to only a region or single airport from
multiple, airline-system-wide flight plan files.
AI Flight Planner manages the three main components of
MSFS AI traffic as follows.
1.1 Airports – All the airport
information required for MSFS traffic files is derived from an internal airport
list named AirportList.dat. AirportList.dat. includes every stock
airport in FS9 and FSX and recognises when an airport exists in only one or the
other. To address new or modified airports included in scenery add-ons, AI
Flight Planner includes:
·
an editor to add/update individual
airports,
·
a bulk update facility which adds/updates
airports based on a TTools-format airport file, and
·
an airport collection facility that
regenerates AirportList.dat with or
without add-on airports.
For those with state-of-the-art
computer systems, the size of AirportList.dat
should not present a problem. However,
users with older computers or with limited RAM may experience unacceptable
delays when accessing airport data. So,
AI Flight Planner allows you to specify a subset of the available airports for
inclusion in a custom airport list and use it instead.
As well, using a “tree-view”
style window, you can easily find the ICAO code and other details of any
airport “known” to the system.
1.2 Aircraft – AI Flight Planner accepts
aircraft information from TTools-format aircraft .txt files and compiled traffic .bgl
files. Data from both types of files may
be used simultaneously. That information
can be supplemented by “pointing” to a MSFS aircraft folder and then selecting
from the available AI aircraft variants stored in that folder. AI Flight Planner will extract from the
associated aircraft.cfg file all the
information required to use the selected aircraft. Indeed,
all required aircraft information may be obtained by the latter method and
saved to a TTools-format file for later use.
Aircraft data may be edited
using either AI Flight Planner’s custom editor or in TTools format using the
default text editor on the host system.
1.3 Flight Plans – As with aircraft
data, AI Flight Planner will use data from multiple flight plan files. As well:
·
the airports involved in the loaded
flight plans are shown in a separate list;
·
flight plans may be edited either
singly, with:
§
the leg-oriented editor, or
§
the built-in plain-text editor, or
singly or collectively using the Find/Replace feature;
·
the length of the flight plan leg
currently in the editor is shown, both in distance and predicted duration, along
with the predicted arrival time;
·
“reasonableness” error checking is
performed at several stages
·
when a flight plan file is saved,
“companion” aircraft data and airport files are also saved, maintaining full
compatibility with other TTools-format-based tools;
·
flight plans for only a selected
subset of the included airports may be saved in a separate file, in which case
the companion aircraft file will include only the aircraft used by those flight
plans.
1.4 Traffic File Issues – There are three
different AI flight plan compilers in widespread use:
·
TTools, a compiler/decompiler for
FS9 and earlier versions of MSFS,
·
AIFPC, a TTools-compatible
compiler/decompiler for FS9 and FSX (AI Flight Planner includes the AIFPC
compiler/decompiler), and
·
Traffic DataBase Builder (TDBB),
Microsoft’s AI traffic generation utility for FS9 and FSX.
The source data formats used
by TDBB are very different from those used by TTools and AIFPC.
There is a common
misconception that flight plans for FS9 must be in TTools format and those for
FSX must be developed using TDBB. And,
often, you will hear “FS9 flight plans can’t be used with FSX”. But,
the reality is, TTools flight plans are compatible with FSX. And TDBB, to the surprise of many, was
available in FS9 as well as FSX.
But, there are several significant issues to be aware
of when using TTools-format flight plan files for FSX:
·
FSX accepts traffic files compiled for FS9. However, if you attempt to mix TTools-format traffic
files (compiled for FS9) with traffic files compiled for FSX, the
compiled-for-FSX traffic may be suppressed.
This has nothing to do with the day-of-week encoding scheme discussed
below. It pertains solely to the respective formats of the traffic files. So long as the original FS9 flight plan file
is (re)compiled for FSX (using AIFPC, since TTools is not FSX-compatible and
the TDBB source format is different) there's no such problem. (AI Flight Planner requires you specify the
target system (FS9/FSX) at compile time and, if you wish, has the compiler add
a "_FS9" or _FSX" suffix to the traffic file name to help avoid
confusion.)
·
In FS9, the day-of-week encoding
scheme for weekly flight plans uses 0 for Sunday, 1 for Monday and so on to 6
for Saturday. In FSX, Microsoft changed
the day-encoding to 0 for Monday and 6 for Sunday. Thus, if a flight plan file developed
initially for FS9 is compiled and used in FSX without taking this difference
into account, the AI appear a day late (AI
Flight Planner handles the day-of-week encoding automatically and hides most of
the related detail.)
·
TTools flight plan source format permits user-specification of
arrival time for a flight plan leg by prefixing the time with the “@” symbol. This is a feature for which there is no
parallel in TDBB. With TDBB, arrival
time is always based on the user-specified departure time, the cruising speed
of the aircraft used to fly the flight plan and the distance between the
departure and destination airports. But,
because the “@’ symbol is not “understood” by the simulator’s “AI engine”, its
use in TTools involves some “trickery”.
And, it almost works!
Unfortunately, if an arrival time specified with “@” is more than about
37 minutes later than the time calculated by the “AI engine”, the AI for that leg
of the flight time never materializes for landing. Instead, it spawns in a
parking spot at the destination airport some time later in preparation for the
next leg. This is most likely to occur
when simulating scheduled airline long-haul operations where the scheduled arrival
time is often substantially later than the simply-calculated (distance/speed)
arrival time.
To
address the latter issue, AI Flight Planner has two compile modes:
·
normal, where measures are taken to avoid this “37-minute issue”; and
·
“raw”, where AI Flight Planner passes the user input directly to
the compiler.
The two modes are necessary because there is one
situation that cannot be handled in the normal mode. That is, an AI departing from some distance
away (> 75-100 miles) that is specified to do touch ‘n gos upon arrival
prior to landing. When the normal
compile mode is used for such a flight plan, the AI will arrive late, how late
depending on the distance between the originating and destination airports. Should the flight plan file being compiler be
susceptible to either of these situation, the user will be warned. Of course, if the potential for both
situations exist, the user must either change the offending flight plan(s) or
choose between the two situations.
Users who decompile AI Flight Planner generated
traffic files compiled in the normal mode will find an unusually-named airport
as the first entry in the airports.txt file.
This is a flag used by AI Flight Planner to indicate that it has taken
special measures to address the “37-minute problem.
1.5 Conversion
- FS9->FSX - AI Flight Planner will convert your FS9 flight plan and
traffic files for use with FSX. This
conversion addresses two main attributes:
·
Airports – The ICAO code of many FS9 airports changed between FS9
and FSX. AI Flight Planner will update
those airports for both flight plan and traffic file conversion. As well, there is no equivalent in FSX for
some FS9 airports.
·
Day-Encoding – please refer to the discussion in the previous
section.
Flight plan files may be converted for use with
FSX in either of two ways. If a FS9
flight plan file is to continue to be used for FS9 and well as FSX, it’s
probably easiest to leave the source (flightplans…txt) file in FS9 format and have
AI Flight Planner to do the conversion each the file is compiled for use with
FSX. Simply select the target MSFS
version in the compile dialog. However,
if the flight plan file is to be used only with FSX, you may wish (but do not
need) to convert the source file. This
is accomplished with the Convert FS9 FP
to FSX menu item.
For FS9 traffic file conversion, AI Flight
Planner provides a bulk-conversion function, allowing you to select any
combination of folders and files for conversion using a ”treeview” structure. For simplicity, only compiled-for-FS9 traffic
files are shown in the structure.
Folders known not to contain FS9 traffic files, while still shown, are
dimmed. The selected folders may contain a mix of FSX
and FS9 traffic files; only the FS9 files will be affected. Following conversion, any missing airports or
other problems encountered will be noted in a conversion report.
Two “convert” buttons are provided in the
conversion dialog; one to convert airports only, the other to convert both
airports and day-encoding. If some
traffic files have already had their day-encoding adjusted and others not, they
should be separated and each set converted separately.
But, in many cases, you will not know the extent
to which a traffic file has already been converted for use with FSX, and you may
be concerned about “re-conversion”. You
need not be. AIFP will scan each file
looking for FS9-only airports. If the
airports have already been updated for FSX, AIFP will find none that need
updating. Day-encoding is more
problematic. If the traffic file was
originally compiled with AIFPC and AIFPC did the day-encoding conversion, this
will have been noted in the traffic file.
Unfortunately, if the day-encoding conversion was done manually or not
at all, AIFP has no automatic way of knowing how to handle day-encoding during
conversion. However, should a file for
which the day-encoding has already been converted for use with FSX be
re-converted, it’s “not the end of the world”.
The only effect is that the AI will operate on incorrect days. Should that occur, simply decompile the
errant traffic file (AI Flight Planner’s
Open Traffic .bgl function), step
the days forward or back as necessary using the day-encoding radio buttons and
the Change Day Code button and re-compile the file.
2. INSTALLING
/ UNINSTALLING AI FLIGHT PLANNER
AI Flight
Planner is installed simply by copying the files from the downloaded archive to
the desired destination folder. The
complete set of files includes:
and several information files.
However, if
you are upgrading AI Flight Planner from an earlier release and have added or
changed any airport or updated the time zone information, you should not load AirportList.dat or Timezone.dat included in the archive since they would overwrite
your changes.
AI Flight Planner does not affect the system registry.
AI Flight Planner is a VB NET.Framework 2.0
application.
If NET.Framework 2.0 is
not already installed on your computer, the “redistributable” can be downloaded
from the Microsoft website at no charge.
Vista users
will need full administrative privileges to use some of the features of AI
Flight Planner, in particular
To uninstall AI Flight Planner, simply delete the
folder in which it is installed.
3. THE
AI FLIGHT PLANNER MAIN WINDOW
AI Flight
Planner’s main window is partitioned as follows.
Whenever a change is made to the Flight Plan List, the Aircraft
List or the Leg List, a red ### indicator will appear to the right of the list
name to remind the user to save the list.
As a general rule, only those menu items, buttons and
data entry fields valid for use in the current context of AI Flight Planner are
enabled. In particular, all the fields
of the editor are disabled unless a flight plan is being edited. All the fields of the Flight Plan Base Data must be completed before the fields and
buttons applicable to the Leg List Editor
are enabled. All leg fields except Override ETA (which may be left blank)
must be completed before the buttons involved in placing the edited leg data (back)
into the Leg List are enabled. Buttons pertaining to the insertion of data
into or deletion of data from any list are enabled only when an item in the
relevant list is selected. And, finally,
the buttons for moving a completed flight plan from the editor (back) into the Flight Plan List are enabled only when
there has been a change to the leg data and there are at least two legs in the Leg List – the minimum for a valid
flight plan – unless touch-‘n-go operation is specified.
So, at any time, if a button, menu item or field
data-entry field disabled, it is because that button, menu item or field is not
useable in the current context of AI Flight Planner – probably because some
required data is missing.
Many buttons and menu items have keyboard shortcuts. If you don’t see the shortcuts, it is because
Windows is preventing them from being displayed until you press the <Alt>
key. You may override this feature of Windows
using Control Panel. In Windows XP, the
control to do so is found at Display – Appearance – Effects. In other versions of Windows it may be
elsewhere.
4.1 Creating a New Flight Plan File –
The main menu item Flight Plans/Start New
File Set will clear the Flight Plans
List, the Airport List and the Aircraft List in preparation for the
creation of new flight plans and the specification of new aircraft as described
below.
4.2 Loading Flight Plans and Associated
Files – The loading of flight plan and aircraft data is initiated from the main
menu. The available functions are:
·
Flight
Plans / Open File Set clears the Flight Plan List and Aircraft
List and displays a dialog box to specify the name of a TTools flight plan
file.
·
Flight
Plans / Append File Set is identical to Open File Set except that the Flight Plan List and Aircraft List are not cleared.
·
Flight
Plans / Open Traffic .bgl operates like Open File Set except that the flight plan and aircraft data will be
derived from the designated MSFS traffic file.
·
Flight
Plans / Append Traffic .bgl is identical to Open Traffic .bgl except that the Flight Plan List and Aircraft
List are not cleared.
·
Flight
Plans / Reload Last File (Set) reloads the last flight plan
file opened (before any appends), whether a TTools file or a traffic file. The Aircraft List is also reloaded if a
companion aircraft file existed.
·
Aircraft
/ Load New Aircraft File clears the Aircraft List, displays a dialog box to specify the name of a TTools-format
aircraft file to be loaded.
·
Aircraft
/ Append Aircraft File is identical to Load New Aircraft File except that the Aircraft List is not cleared.
Please be aware that the
times in the flight plan information returned by the Flight Plans / Open Traffic .bgl function may not match exactly the
times originally specified by the user.
This is because of the way times are stored in the traffic file. The “consolidated” mode of operation of the
Leg List may be affected (even though AI Flight Planner allows a 2-minute
“window”). As well, the returned
aircraft speed may be in error by 1 knot.
4.3 Flight Plan Validation – The
flight plans in the Flight Plan List
may be validated using the Flight Plans /
Validate Flight Plan List menu item.
If there is more than a single error, the error list is presented in
Notepad format and may be printed.
Please note that the leg
reference numbers in the error report refer to the leg order based on UTC/GMT
time. These reference numbers may not
be applicable to the legs when displayed in the Leg List. Should this be the
case and it is not readily apparent from the Leg List display which leg is at fault, you can identify the leg by
reference number using the flight plan plain text editor.
4.4
Flight Plan Subsets – AI
Flight Planner allows the creation of subsets of the current flight plans based
on airports selected in the Airport List. Subsets may be either inclusive or
exclusive. An inclusive subset includes each
flight plan that references any airport selected in the Airport List. An exclusive
subset includes every flight plan that does not reference those airports. Among other things, this feature allows the
generation of regional flight plan lists and the exclusion of designated
airports from the default traffic files.
There are two associated menu items:
·
Flight
Plans / Create Subset (Inclusive)
·
Flight
Plans / Create Subset Exclusive)
For both items, the user will be given an opportunity
to specify whether or not a subset of the Aircraft
List also is to be generated.
4.5 Saving/Compiling Flight Plans and
Associated Files – The following main menu items control the saving and
compiling of flight plan and aircraft data.
·
Flight
Plans / Save File Set saves the Flight Plans List and the Aircraft
List in TTools format under the name of the last flight plan file loaded. This
menu item remains disabled until changes to either the Flight Plan List to the Aircraft
List are made. This menu item is also disabled when a flight plan file is
appended.
·
Flight
Plans / Save As . . . displays a dialog box to specify a
file name under which the Flight Plan
List and Aircraft List will be
saved. The data will be saved in TTools
format.
·
Flight
Plans / Compile Traffic .bgl operates similar to Flight Plans / Save As . . . except that
after the files are saved temporarily, a dialog box is opened and the data is
compiled into a MSFS traffic file (.bgl)
under user control. In this mode, the
compiled file is pre-processed by AI Flight Planner to address certain
idiosyncrasies of the simulator’s AI engine (discussed in Section 1.4).
·
Flight
Plans / Compile Raw also compiles the user files but
without the pre-processing of the normal compile mode.
·
Flight
Plans / Compile Again recompiles without user intervention
the current file set using the same mode, target file name, MSFS version, etc.
as the last compile.
·
Aircraft
/ Save Aircraft File operates similar to the Flight Plans / Save File Set item except
that only the Aircraft List is saved.
·
Aircraft
/ Save As operates similar to the Flight Plans / Save As . . . except that only the Aircraft List is saved.
There are no restrictions on
the naming of traffic files to be decompiled by AI Flight Planner. However, each traffic file compiled by AIFP
will be named “Traffic … .bgl”.
4.6 Conversion of FS9 Flight Plans for use
with FSX – The Flight Plans / Convert
FS9 FP to FSX menu item examines the destination airports of each flight
plan in the Flight Plan List and,
where the corresponding airport in FSX has a different ICAO code, updates the
destination airports accordingly. This
function also flags FS9 destination airports for which there is no FSX
equivalent. The conversion report is presented in Notepad format and may be
printed.
Like flight plan validation,
the leg reference numbers in the conversion report refer to the leg order based
on UTC/GMT time. These reference
numbers may not be applicable to the legs when displayed in the Leg List. Should this be the case and it is not readily
apparent from the Leg List display
which leg is at fault, you can identify the leg by reference number using the
flight plan plain text editor.
A second function, Convert FS9 traffic Files to FSX,
applies similar conversion to one or more traffic (.bgl) files designated by
the user as noted in Section 1.5.
4.7 Managing the Aircraft List –
Changes to the Aircraft List are
initiated from the Aircraft menu.
·
Add
New Aircraft opens a dialog box that allows aircraft to be
added to the Aircraft List.
·
Modify
Selected Aircraft opens a dialog that facilitates
modification of the parameters of the aircraft selected in the Aircraft List.
·
Send
Aircraft List to Text Editor opens the entire Aircraft List in the user’s default text
editor in TTools format. The edited file
will be reloaded automatically into the Aircraft
List when the text editor is closed.
If the reference number of the aircraft selected when the editor was
opened still exists upon closing, that aircraft will be re-selected.
·
Delete
Selected Aircraft deletes the selected aircraft from
the Aircraft List
·
Delete
Unused Aircraft deletes from the Aircraft List any aircraft not used by the flight plans in the Flight Plan List
4.8 Managing Airports – All
airport-related functions are initiated from Airports menu. Most of these functions open a context specific
dialog box.
·
Get
Airport Information displays a “tree-view” from which
you can find the ICAO identifier of any airport known to the system and see
other information about the airports.
·
Arrivals
& Departures allows you to view all the arrivals and
departures scheduled in the flight plans then in the Flight Plan List for any airport.
The arrivals and departures for any airport may be “dumped” to Notepad.
·
Change
Local Time Offset allows AI Flight Planner’s time
zone database to be updated.
·
Edit/Add
Airport permits editing of the parameters of an existing airport
or adding new airports to AirportList.dat.
·
Bulk
Airport Update reads data from a TTools- format aircraft file
and uses this data to update the internal airport list.
·
Collect
Airports controls the collection of airport data for both
stock and add-on airports.
·
Customize
Airport List displays a “tree-view” display similar to that
for Get Airport Information but which
includes checkboxes to allow you to specify the airports to be included in a
custom airport list. This specification
may be on a country, region, city or individual airport basis or any combination. Following selection, on user command, a new
airport list named AirportList-Custom.dat
will be created that will be used in place of AirportList.dat until you direct otherwise. For more information, please refer to MANAGING AIRPORT DATA – Customizing the
Airport List.
·
Use
Master Airport List forces AI Flight Planner to use AirportList.dat instead of AirportList-Custom.dat for airport data
purposes.
·
Save
Selected Airport List saves a list of the airports
selected in the Airport List to a
designated file.
·
Select
Airports from List selects the airports in the Airport List that are contained in the
designated file.
While the use of AI Flight Planner should be largely
intuitive, the following descriptions may be help you appreciate its full
capabilities.
5.1 Flight Plan List – The following
buttons initiate Flight Plan List
functions:
·
Start
New File clears the Flight
Plan List. This is similar to the main
menu item Flight Plans / New except
that the Aircraft List is preserved.
·
Delete
Item deletes the selected item from the Flight Plan List.
·
Open
Text Editor opens a dialog box containing a multi-line text
box together with Replace, Insert, Add and Exit buttons (If an item in the
Flight Plan List is selected, that item will be copied to the text box. Both flight plans and comments may be
created/edited.
·
Change
Day Code changes day encoding of the flight plans in the Flight Plan List from FS9 to FSX or vice
versa depending on the state of the day-encoding radio buttons.
Immediately below the Flight Plan List are two radio buttons
which indicate the day-encoding scheme used in the flight plans (see USING THE FLIGHT PLAN EDITOR, Loading Flight
Plans). These radio buttons also
allow the user to indicate the correct scheme should AI Flight Planner not be
able to determine it automatically.
However, the Change Day Code
button must be used to actually change the day-encoding in the flight plans.
To the upper right of the Flight Plan List are several controls which
allow you to search the flight plans in the Flight
Plan File. Select the field to be
searched in the Field combo box,
specify whether the match parameter is to be less than (<), equal to (=) or
greater than (>), enter the value
you wish to find in the Find text box
and click one of the “find” buttons. The
Find button selects (highlights) the
first flight plan in the Flight Plan List
matching the criteria. Use the Next button to search for the second and
subsequent occurrences of the desired field.
The All button selects all the
flight plans in which the criteria are matched.
Immediately below the “find”
buttons is the Replace text box and the Replace and Replace All buttons. The
former replaces all occurrences of the match criteria in a single flight plan
with the contents of the Replace text
box (The Replace button is disabled if there is no flight plan selected or
if more than one is selected.) As the
name suggests, the Replace All button
replaces every occurrence of the “find” criteria in the Flight Plan List.
5.2 Moving Items To and From the Flight
Plan List – Items are copied from the Flight
Plan List into the Leg List and editor
by double-clicking on the item. The movements
of items from the editor (back) into the Flight
Plan List are controlled by the following buttons.
·
Update
FP in List copies the edited flight plan to the Flight Plan List, replacing the item
that was selected when the flight plan was loaded into the editor
·
Add
FP to List adds the edited flight plan at the bottom of the
Flight Plan List
·
Insert
FP into List inserts the edited flight plan into the Flight Plan List immediately above the
selected item.
These buttons are not enabled unless there are a sufficient number of
legs in the Leg List for the flight
plan to be valid and further, in the case of Insert FP, an item in the Flight
Plan List is selected.
5.3 Leg List – Items are copied from
the Leg List into the leg editor by
double-clicking on the item. The
movement of items from the leg editor into the Leg List and other Leg List
manipulations are controlled by the following buttons:
·
Save
Edits copies the leg data from the editor back to the Leg List, replacing the item in the list
that was selected when the leg was loaded into the editor.
·
Add
Leg clears the leg editor and creates a new blank leg at
the bottom of the Leg List (where the
new leg data will be saved when Save Edited
Leg Data is later clicked).
·
Insert
Leg clears the leg editor and creates a new blank leg immediately
above the selected item in the Leg List
(where the new leg data will be saved when Save
Edited Leg Data is later clicked).
·
Delete
Leg deletes the selected leg from the Leg List after user confirmation.
·
Start
New FP clears the Leg
List, creates a new blank entry in it and initializes other editor data.
The Delete Leg and Insert Leg
buttons are not enabled unless a leg is selected in the Leg List. The Add Leg and Insert Leg buttons are both disabled after either is used and
remain disabled until the associated blank line in the Leg List is either updated with the edited data or deleted.
Finally, the Leg
List has two modes of operation when the selected repeat period is Week:
·
“Individual”, which displays each
leg in the flight plan individually, and
·
“Consolidated”, which consolidates
legs that operate on more than one day of the week into a single list item
followed by a day-of-week indicator.
You can select the desired
mode using the Consolidate Weekly FPs
checkbox located in the bottom right-hand
corner of the window. Daily flight plans
are always displayed in the “individual” mode.
5.4 Airport List – As the name
implies, the Select All button
selects all the items in the Airport List. Items may be selected individually in the
traditional manner using the keyboard <Ctrl>
key.
5.5 Aircraft List – The items in the Aircraft List may be sequenced
numerically by aircraft reference number or alphabetically by aircraft title
using the applicable radio button.
6. USING
THE FLIGHT PLAN EDITOR
6.1 Arrival and Departure Times – MSFS
requires flight plan data in a traffic file to be based on UTC/GMT time and the
Flight Plan List reflects this
requirement. However, AI Flight Planner
allows arrival and departure times of flight plans in the editor and in
arrival/departure summaries to be entered and displayed either in either local time
(at the originating and destination airports) or based on a specific time zone.
Subsequent conversion to UTC/GMT time for
use by MSFS is automatically.
Local time may reflect either
winter or summer time, as specified by the user. However, flight plans are not date-specific,
so arrivals and departures in the transition periods to and from daylight
savings time (where applicable), may be in error by an hour.
When using local time, the
user should appreciate that AI Flight Planner’s time zone database reflects
real-world time zones – which may not match in all cases the time zone calculated
by MSFS. MSFS uses a geographic
approximation technique to determine the time zone in the area where the user
aircraft is located. Hence, the two may
disagree at airports close to the edge of time zones. Since MSFS’ calculation of time zones can be
affected by add-ons, such discrepancies cannot always be resolved by AI Flight
Planner. As well, while significant
efforts were expended in making AI Flight Planner’s time zone data base
complete and accurate, time zone data for smaller airports, especially in
developing countries, sometimes is not readily available and, hence, may be in
error.
When local time is in use, AI
Flight Planner displays the UTC/GMT offset it uses for each airport in the Airport List. If an offset is not correct, it is easily
changed (permanently) using AI Flight Planner’s time zone database editor.
Unlike TTools, AI Flight
Planner does not accept “@” and “TNG” as prefixes for arrival times. Touch ‘n
go operation is specified using a checkbox.
The function performed by the “@” symbol is automatic with AI Flight
Planner. (Any arrival time that differs
by more than two minutes from the system-calculated arrival time is assumed to
have been specified by the user. This
buffer is necessary to accommodate “jitter” introduced by de-compilation.)
AI Flight Planner determines
whether the specified arrival time is for the day (repeat period) of departure
or the following day (repeat period) and, when not the day (repeat period) of
departure, applies an appropriate suffix. If arrival time in 24 hour format is
earlier than departure time, arrival is assumed to be the following day (repreat
period) and the arrival time field will be suffixed with “+1” – a notation used
in many airline schedules. Where the
flight crosses the International Date Line, the suffix may also be “-1”
(eastbound flights leaving Asia just after midnight) or “+2” (westbound flight leaving
When a sub-daily repeat
period is selected, the hour value of the arrival and departure time entries
must be less than the repeat period. For
example, for a repeat period of 4 hours, the maximum acceptable arrival or
departure time is 03:59. When the repeat
period is changed to a smaller value such that previously-entered arrival and
departure times in the editor are invalid, the arrival time and predicted ETA
suffixes may become what appears to be a nonsensical number.
In weekly consolidate mode,
the departure times displayed in the Leg
List are in “day-time” configuration, i.e., d/HH:MM. This is to maintain proper sequencing of the
entries. Departure time entries in the
editor are always in HH:MM with day-of-week information being derived from the
day-of-week checkboxes in the Base Data
area.
6.2.
Otherwise, AI Flight Planner
uses the departure airport (solely) to calculate the distance and duration of
the flight specified in the leg and to predict the arrival time. When a flight plan leg is moved into the
editor, AI Flight Planner attempts to determine the airport from which that leg
departs. For a daily (or more frequent) flight plan, this is a simple task – it
is the destination of the leg immediately previous in the Leg List to the leg of interest.
However, when in the consolidated display mode, the previous leg (in a
weekly flight plan) is not necessarily the leg immediately previous in the Leg List.)
Consider, for example, the simple case of a flight plan that operates between
airports A and B from Monday to Friday but makes an intermediate stop at
airport C on Wednesday. Such a situation
requires three legs to be specified; A to B on M/T/T/F and A to C and then C to
B on Wednesday. In the Leg List, the sequence of the legs will
be A to B, A to C and then C to B. So,
there will be two intervening legs between the A to B leg and the ongoing leg
from B. To accommodate such situations,
AI Flight Planner looks back up the Leg
List to find an earlier flight plan scheduled for the same day of the week
and assumes that to be the departure airport.
However, depending on the
complexity of the flight plan, AI Flight Planner may not correctly identify the
departure airport. (This is a trade-off
for being able to specify a leg only once irrespective of how many days of the
week it operates, and is of little consequence, since the departure airport is
only used to calculate the distance and duration and to predict the ETA of the
flight.) Should AI Flight Planner not
determine the correct departure airport, you may override its selection to
allow the calculation of distance, duration and ETA for the leg. This action will have no effect on the
saved/compiled flight plan, which will always reflect the leg sequence.
6.3 Loading Flight Plans – Flight
plans may be loaded from two sources:
·
TTools-format .txt files - click Flight
Plans / Open File Set and specify the desired flight plan file; if there is
a companion aircraft file, it also will be loaded; and
·
compiled MSFS traffic .bgl files - click Flight Plans / Open Traffic .bgl and specify the traffic file of
interest; the traffic file will be decompiled and both flight plans and
aircraft data will be loaded.
The flight plans are saved to the Flight Plan List after the associated aircraft data (if any) has
been loaded into the Aircraft List. Error/warning messages will be generated if:
·
either file is not in the expected
format; or
·
a flight plan refers either to:
§
an airport not included in AircraftList.dat (or the custom version),
or
§
an aircraft not in the Aircraft List (these error messages are
suppressed if the Aircraft List is
empty).
At the completion of the file
loading activity, summaries of any missing airports and/or aircraft are
provided. In the case of airports, at
the users direction, the
FS9 and FSX flight plans in
TTools format are identical save for day-of week encoding. In FS9, Sunday is encoded as 0, while FSX
uses 0 for Monday. So, AI Flight Planner
needs to know which day-encoding scheme is in use so that, for weekly flight
plans, the editor reflects the proper day of the week and the AI operates on
the correct days. Where the flight plan
data comes from compiled traffic files, the decompiler tells AI Flight Planner
which encoding scheme is used. However, there
is no way for AI Flight Planner to determine automatically the day-encoding
scheme used in TTools-format flight plan files.
AI Flight Planner defaults to FS9 day encoding after opening a
TTools-format flight plan file.
(Day-encoding is left unchanged when appending files.) If the FSX day-encoding scheme is used in the
loaded flight plans, it is left to the user to so indicate using the radio-buttons
located below the Flight Plan List.
Previously-loaded flight plan
and aircraft data may be supplemented at any time by appending data from additional
files. Appended data may be derived from
either TTools-format files or compiled traffic files, irrespective of the
source of the previously loaded data. Before
appending TTools-format flight plan files, AI Flight Planner will ask for
confirmation that the current day-encoding is appropriate for the file to be
appended. Before appending flight plans
from a decompiled traffic file, AI Flight Planner will check that the day
encoding is the same and, if not, announce the issue. Where necessary, day-encoding in the
already-loaded data may be changed using the Change Day Code button.
6.4 Built-In Text Editor – TTools
formatting supports embedded comments. AI
Flight Planner provides a simple text editor to allow insertion of comments
into, and editing of comments already in, the Flight Plan List.
To open the text editor,
double click on a comment line in the Flight
Plan List. Alternately, select an item
in the Flight Plan List and click the
Open Text Editor button. The text editor supports both single-line and
multi-line comments. Each line in a
multi-line comment should be terminated using the keyboard <Enter> key and the succeeding line
commence with either “;” or “//”.
For simple changes to flight
plans, it may be more convenient to use the text editor rather than the flight
plan editor. To edit a flight plan in
the text editor, select it in the Flight
Plan List and click the Open Text
Editor button. The data is formatted
to make each leg readily identifiable. Should edits destroy this clarity, it
may be restored with the Format
button.
In addition to replacing the Flight Plan List item selected when the
text editor was opened, the contents of the text editor may be added at the end
if the Flight Plan List or inserted immediately above the
selected item.
6.5 Flight Plan Editor – Flight plans
are moved into the flight plan editor by double clicking on the flight plan in
the Flight Plan File. The Aircraft
List combo box will highlight the aircraft used by the flight plan (if it
is in the Aircraft List), the other
base data of the flight plan will be displayed in the base data area across the
top of the main window, the flight plan legs will be inserted into the Leg List and, lastly, the top item in
the Leg List is selected, parsed and
displayed in the editor.
Each leg of the flight plan is displayed in the Leg List, time sequenced. As noted earlier, for weekly flight plans, a
leg which is flown on two or more days may be shown in either of two ways:
·
“individual”, i.e., each leg in the
flight plan shown individually, or
·
“consolidated”, i.e., legs that
operate on more than one day of the week but are otherwise identical
consolidated into a single list item.
The Consolidate Weekly FPs checkbox located in the bottom right-and
corner of the window control this mode.
In “individual” mode, the
legs must be entered in operational sequence.
This is not a requirement in the consolidated mode, however. In the latter mode, the position in the Leg List at which a new leg is entered
determines the departure airport for that leg - for the purpose of calculating
distance, duration and ETA. When the
data for a new leg is entered into the Leg List or when edited data is saved,
AI Flight Planner will automatically place the edited leg based on departure
time.
The times displayed in the Leg List and in the editor reflect the
time zone selected by the user with the Time
Zone Selector. (The Flight Plan List
always displays UTC/GMT time.) When the time zone is changed, the flight plan
currently in the editor is reloaded from the Flight Plan List. So, time
zone changes should be made before any edits are applied to the flight plan in
the editor. However, if the time zone is
changed after edits have been made, the user is given an opportunity to save
the edits before the new time zone takes effect.
Flight plan editing is
straightforward. (Nonetheless, if you
are not familiar with the individual flight plan fields, it is strongly
recommended that you download Lee Swordy’s TTools and refer to its user
documentation.) The base data for the
flight plan (i.e., the data that applies to all legs, such as selected aircraft
and activity level) is entered into the editor at the time the flight plan is
moved from the Flight Plan List.
An individual leg is moved
into the editor by double-clicking on it in the Leg List. Leg data in the editor is displayed in a combination of text
boxes, check boxes and radio buttons. In
general, error checking, where applicable, is performed when you move the
cursor away from an edited text box.
Error checking of the whole leg is performed when the edited data is
saved.
When a leg is loaded into the
editor, AI Flight Planner will (attempt to) identify the departure airport and
calculate the distance between it and the destination airports as well as the
expected duration of the flight (based on the cruising speed of the selected
aircraft) and anticipated arrival time.
Of course, if AI Flight Planner picks the wrong departure airport in a
complex weekly flight plan, these calculations will be of little use. Should that be the case, however, you may
enter the proper destination airport.
When you enter or change an airport ICAO code, the newly-entered
code is validated as soon as you move the cursor to another field. If the code is valid, the airport entered
into the Airport List if it is not
already there and the name of the city will be shown. If invalid, an error message will be issued
and the user given an opportunity to enter the airport into the system. If unsure of the ICAO code for the intended
airport you may enter “?” optionally preceded by a character string. If:
·
no character string is entered,
i.e., just “?”, the Get Airport
Information dialog box will be opened; locate the ICAO code of interest, select
(click on) it and close the dialog box;
·
the character string contains
“>”, a list of ICAO codes where the city name or airport name contains the
entered string will pop up; or
·
otherwise, a list of ICAO codes
which start with the entered string will pop-up.
In all cases, the selected
ICAO code will be placed in the relevant field and validated. When editing an existing flight plan file,
should the ICAO code of an airport that is not known to the system be entered
but the airport is contained in the companion TTools-format airports file, you
may direct AI Flight Planner to use the data from the airports file. You will also be given the opportunity to add
the airport to AirportList.dat using
the Airport Editor which will be initialized for the airport of interest.
An AI aircraft is known to MSFS
Air Traffic Control (ATC) by either its flight number or its registration
number. If the ATC Callsign FN button is
selected, a flight number must be entered for the leg. If the Reg
button is selected, the aircraft associated with the flight plan must have a
tail (registration) number.
When all edits have been
applied to the leg, use the Save Edited
Leg Data button to update the item in the Leg List to which the edits
apply. The original copy of the leg in
the Leg List is updated, irrespective
of which leg is then selected in the list when the Save Edited Leg Data button is clicked.
New legs may be inserted into
or added to the Leg List as necessary.
To insert a new leg, select the leg in
the Leg List above which the
new leg is to be inserted and click on the Insert
Leg button. A blank leg will be
inserted into the Leg List at that
point as a ”place-holder”. To add a new
leg at the bottom of the Leg List,
click on the Add Leg button. Similar to
Insert Leg, a blank leg will be appended to the leg list and the departure
airport set. Please note that the Save Edited Leg Data button will not be
enabled until all fields except arrival time have been entered.
When a new leg is added
to/inserted in a weekly flight plan, there is no day of the week
information. So initially, AI Flight
Planner will assume that the leg originates at the destination of the leg
immediately above it in the Leg List. However, once the days of operation are
specified, AI Flight Planner attempts to refine its earlier choice by selecting
a departure airport from an earlier leg that operates on the same day(s). But, as noted earlier, if you enter a
departure airport for the initial leg, AI Flight Planner will continue to use
it instead.
When all edits have been made
to a flight plan, the edited flight plan may update the original copy of the
flight plan in the Flight Plan List
or be added to the bottom of, or inserted immediately above the selected flight
plan in, the list using the Update FP in
List, Insert FP in List or Add FP to List button, as applicable.
6.6 New Flight Plans from “Scratch” –
To start a new flight plan “from scratch”, click on the Start New FP button. This
will clear the Leg List if there is
any data in it, place a blank entry in the Leg
List and clear the editor fields. Initially,
only the fields for the base data will be enabled. Once all the base data for the flight plan has
been entered and the aircraft selected, the Leg
List Editor fields/controls will be enabled. This sequence ensures that all required data
is available when needed. In the Leg List editor, all fields must be
completed except for arrival time, which may be left blank. (When the flight plan is saved, AI Flight
Planner will calculate arrival time if not specified based on the selected
aircraft cruising speed.) When the required
data for the first leg has been entered, save it to the Leg List using the Save
Edited Leg Data button. Create
additional legs as necessary using either the Add Leg or Insert Leg
buttons. (In all cases, please note that
the Save Edited Leg Data button will
not be enabled until all fields except arrival time have been entered.)
Before attempting to enter
flight plan leg data, it is recommended that the associated aircraft exist in
the Aircraft List. (The leg editor will
not be enabled until an aircraft has been selected.) This data may be derived
from one or more TTools-format aircraft files and/or created or supplemented
using the Aircraft / Add New Aircraft
capabilities of the system initiated from the main menu.
Once all the legs of the new
flight plan have been entered, save the flight plan to the Flight Plan List using the Add
to FP List or Insert in FP List buttons
as appropriate. These buttons are not
enabled unless there are sufficient legs in the Leg List, i.e., two for all but TNG operation.
AI Flight Planner does not restrict you to using
aircraft data associated-by-name with the flight plan data (“companion” file). When a TTools-format flight plan file or a
compiled traffic file is loaded into AI Flight Planner, “companion” aircraft data
(if it exists) will also be loaded.
However, the user is free to replace this data or supplement it with
data from other sources.
7.1 Loading and Saving Aircraft Data -
The items in the Aircraft main menu
item:
·
Load
New Aircraft File
·
Append
Aircraft File
·
Save
Aircraft File
·
Save
As …
perform the functions noted
in MAIN MENU FUNCTIONS section.
7.2 Adding New Aircraft to the Aircraft
List – Aircraft may be added to the Aircraft
List by clicking on the Aircraft /
Add Aircraft menu item. This will open the Aircraft Editor dialog
box, which allows specification of new aircraft in either of two modes.
·
Specify a FS9 or FSX aircraft folder
using Aircraft Folder Select, which
will list in the Aircraft Title combo
box all the AI aircraft available in that folder. Select the desired aircraft in the combo
box. The Cruise Speed text box will be filled in automatically with the
cruising speed specified in the relevant aircraft.cfg
file, but it may be edited. If Cruise Speed is edited at this time, the
cruising speed in the aircraft.cfg
file will be updated and, hence, affect the performance of the aircraft in the
simulator; or
·
Enter the title for of the new
aircraft (which must be unique in the Aircraft
List) into the Aircraft Title text/combo
box and a cruising speed into the Cruise
Speed text box.
AI Flight Planner
automatically displays the next highest aircraft reference number in the AC# text box. However, the user is free to assign any other
unused reference number. Once all three fields have been entered, the Add button will be enabled. Click it to add the new aircraft to the
Aircraft List. The dialog box remains
open until closed by the user.
7.3 Editing an Aircraft Already in the Aircraft List – To edit an aircraft
in the Aircraft List, select the
aircraft and click on the Aircraft /
Modify Selected Aircraft menu item.
This action also opens the Aircraft Editor dialog box.
Edit the Aircraft Name, AC# and Cruise Speed fields as necessary,
bearing in mind that if either the title or reference number is changed, the
new value must be unique in the Aircraft
List. When ready, click on the Replace button. Please note that, in this case, a change to Cruise Speed will not be reflected in
the aircraft.cfg file (since all
association with the aircraft folder from which the aircraft may have been
added has been lost). The dialog box is automatically closed when the replacement
is accepted. If you change the AC#, AI
Flight Planner will offer to update all references to the old number.
7.4
Deleting Aircraft – To delete
an aircraft from the Aircraft List,
simply select the aircraft and click on the Aircraft
/ Delete Selected Aircraft menu item.
All aircraft not used by the flight plans in the Flight Plan List
may be deleted using the Aircraft /
Delete Unused Aircraft menu item.
8 COLLECTING
AND EDITING AIRPORT DATA
AI Flight Planner uses its own internal airport
information – even if there is companion airport data for the flight plan
file(s) loaded. Generally, if the user
has created a custom internal airport list, AI Flight Planner will use this
custom list as its source of airport information. But, the user may revert to the master AircraftList.dat at any time using the Airports / Use Master Airport List menu
item.
8.1 Collecting Airport Data - AI
Flight Planner includes an airport data collector which collects data for FS9
and or FSX stock airports as well as for add-on airports for both. For add-on airports, the user is given the
opportunity to select the add-on folders of interest. The collected airport data is displayed to
the user in a standard list box. The
data is saved to AirportList.dat
under user control.
The airport data collection function
first attempts to locate the FS9 and FSX top folders using registry
entries. If it is successful, the
path(s) will be displayed at the top of the form and the associated stock and add-on
airport checkboxes enabled. If either
top-level folder is not found, the associated checkboxes will remain
disabled. If FS9 or FSX exists on the
user’s computer and is not located automatically, the user may indicate the
relevant top folder using the Select
buttons.
As noted below, collection of
airport data takes a while.
Consequently, AI Flight Planner “ships” with the data for both FS9 and
FSX stock airports already collected.
Data for the individual versions are in AirportList_Base_FS9.dat and AirportList_Base_FSX.dat. AirportList.dat
holds the consolidated data.
The scope of the collection
process is controlled by the four checkboxes located beneath the top-level
folder path displays. Data may be
collected for FS9 stock airports, FSX stock airports, add-on airports for
either version or any combination of the four.
Should you wish to re-build AirportList.dat, for example to include both
stock data as well as your own collection of add-on airports, AI Flight Planner
gives you the opportunity to re-use the existing stock data rather than
re-collect it.
Each time airport data is
collected, any updates previously applied by the user and saved in the file AirportList – Updates.dat are
re-applied. Also, if you want the data
(latitude, longitude and elevation) in any add-on files found to replace that
of the corresponding stock airports, check the Update from Add-on checkbox.
Once collected, the selected
data is displayed in the list box which occupies most of the area of the
form.
Because of the extent of
control over the collection process, this feature may find other uses. For example, if you wish to know which
airports are installed in a given add-on folder, the airport collector will
answer the question. Hence, airport data
for purposes other than updating AirportList.dat
may be explored. Data is not copied to AirportList.dat
until the user clicks on the Save
“AirportList.dat” button, so you may safely experiment.
Airport data collection requires
several minutes, much longer than the airport scanning mechanism in most
airport editors. This is because those
editors have a specialized, built-in decompiler while, for the moment, AI
Flight Planner uses a generic decompiler, bglAnalyze9
and its FSX counterpart bglAnalyzeX. AI Flight Planner must wait for bglAnalyze to fully decompile a file
before being able to determine whether or not the file is of interest. This is particularly problematic when
collecting data for add-on airports, since every .bgl file in the \scenery
folders must be examined even though only one may contain airport data. Future versions of AI Flight Planner may
offer a significant improvement in this regard.
Since AI Flight Planner ships with the data for the FS9 and FSX stock
airports already collected and will use this data unless you direct otherwise,
you shouldn’t have to endure these delays very often.
Should you wish to terminate
the airport data collection process, click on the Abort button.
In addition to a progress
bar, for amusement while scanning, the number of airports for which data has
been collected to that point and the country for which airports are currently
being examined are shown.
8.2 Customizing the Airport List – The
airport data included with AI Flight Planner includes every stock airport FSX –
which number about 25,000. Thus, the
file AirportList.dat is huge – nearly
2mb. For those with state-of-the-art
computer systems, this will not present a problem. However, if you have an older computers or
limited RAM, you may wish to work with only a subset of the available airports.
To generate a custom airport list - which will be
selected automatically on subsequent start-ups of AI Flight Planner:
·
click on the Airport / Customize Airport List menu item,
·
select the airports/cities/regions/countries
of interest in the “tree-view” display, and
·
click on the Generate Subset button.
The newly generated airport
data file will be named AirportList-Custom.dat. If custom airport data already exists, the
user will be warned before overwriting it.
8.3 Editing and Manually Adding New
Airports – Errors have been noted in MSFS airport data. As well, the original airport data may not
match that contained in add-on scenery loaded into the user’s system. While small changes are unlikely to have any
noticeable effect on AI operation, the user may wish to have AirportList.dat reflect the corrected
data. As well, since AI Flight Planner
will not compile a flight plan file containing an airport for which it does
have positional information, any new airport created in add-on scenery must be
added to AirportList.dat (and its
custom counterpart, if used) before AI can be programmed for that airport.
To modify the data for any airport or add a new
airport, click on the Airports / Edit/Add
Airport menu item, which will open the Airport Editor dialog box with the
controls pertaining to bulk-update (see next section) disabled. Then, proceed
as follows:
·
if custom airport list exists,
designate whether the update is to be applied to the custom or the original
data;
·
enter the airport ICAO code and
click the Open button to edit an
airport or click the New button and
then enter the new ICAO code for a new airport
·
enter/update the remaining data as
necessary, and
·
click the Apply Update button.
To avoid potentially lengthy
delays between successive edits due to the size of AirportList.dat, the airport data file is read into memory when the
editor is opened and any changes you make are entered only into the
memory-resident version of the file. The
file on disk is not updated until the Save
File and Exit button is clicked. If
you wish to exit without saving, click the Exit
button.
Where both custom and
original data is to be updated, the change must be entered twice or the custom
file re-created.
Whenever an airport is
entered or updated manually, a record is saved in a file named AirportList – Updates.dat. If AirportList.dat ever needs to be
regenerated, these updates will be applied automatically
8.4 Airport Data Bulk Update – Despite
the large number of stock airports included in FSX, some small local airports,
grass strips and water airports are missing.
Scenery developers often model these missing airports. Where flight plans for such airports have
previously been prepared, AI Flight Planner is able to update AirportList.dat based on the data in the
corresponding TTools-format airport file.
To update AI Flight Planners airport data from a TTools-format
airport file:
·
click on the Airports / Bulk Update menu item
·
check the Update Existing checkbox if you wish airports already in the AirportList.dat to be updated based on
the data in the TTools file; and
·
if custom airport data exists,
designate whether the update is to be applied to the custom or the original
data; and
·
specify the TTools-format airport
file using TTools Airport File for Update
Select.
The first airport in the
file, or the first one not already in AirportList.dat,
as applicable, will be loaded into the editor.
If the airport was previously in AirportList.dat,
the full record as updated by the TTools-format file data will be shown. Make whatever further changes are necessary
and then click on the Apply Update
button. Scroll forwards or backwards
through the airports in the file meeting the Update Existing criteria using the Next Airport and
As with Edit/Add Airport, when finished click on the Save File and Exit button.
To exit without saving, click the Exit
button.
Whenever an airport is
entered or updated using the bulk update feature, a record of the change is
saved in a file named AirportList –
Updates.dat. If AirportList.dat
ever needs to be regenerated, these updates will be applied automatically
AI Flight Planner’s support forum is located in the
“Tools support” area at http://fsdeveloper.com. Please direct your problem reports,
suggestions for improvement and other comments there. When you report problems, please include
relevant details. In particular, the
version number, the exact error message and a summary of what you were doing at
the time are likely to be particularly helpful
I have also creating a support website at http://members.shaw.ca/aifp. The most
recent release of AI Flight Planner will be available from that site.
While I can’t promise to resolve every issue you
report or include every feature addition you propose, I will undertake to support
and enhance AI Flight Planner in a manner consistent with it becoming and
remaining the AI Flight Planning tool of choice for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
I wish to
thank the following people whose prior efforts or contributions made AI Flight
Planner possible:
11 END
USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
You are
granted a free, non-exclusive right solely to install and use AI Flight Planner
on your computer system(s) for your own personal enjoyment and, subject to what
follows and the rights of others, to use and distribute flight plan and
aircraft data in TTools text or MSFS compiled format files created or modified
with AI Flight Planner (“derivative files”).
You may not:
without the
express written permission of me, the author.
Use for commercial purposes may be subject to a license fee.
In this end
user license agreement, any reference to AI Flight Planner includes the files AirportList.dat, Timezone.dat, all other files included in the downloaded archive (.zip) file and any derivates thereof.
Your use of
AI Flight Planner is entirely at your own risk.
I accept no liability whatsoever for any damage arising from its use no
matter how caused.
By installing
this software, you are deemed to have agreed to the foregoing.
AI Flight Planner - © 2008 - Don
Grovestine