Adding a Flight "briefing" to saved flights

[J G Parker]

I recently had the delight of flighting a 23-leg tour of the appalachian mountains.  This was truly a challenge and visual candy.  These are out-of-way, small airports, nestled in valleys or high on mountaintops.  

Here's the question: I am in the process of compiling the entire set of flights, plans, and weather into a package so others can enjoy it.  (I obtained the originals from someone else, but I modified them for twin props--the Baron in particular--and the originals were poorly documented.)  I've added complete documentation (including pictures and facilities data for each of the airports, etc.) and have given the flights a folder structure (like the default flights in Pro) with complete descriptions.  However, in the default flights there is also a "briefing" that appears before the flight starts.  By snooping I find that it resides in a .brf file in the flight folder.  How does one make such a thing?  I wasn't intending to make full-fledged "adventures" but I'd be curious if there is some utility for this, or just some way to compile a breifing.  Couldn't find anything in any download archives anywhere and no information at the MS site either.

[MattNW]

That works. Anything that Wordpad or Notepad can read, it can save as. You just have to make sure you save it as XXX.brf or whatever the file extension was in the original. If you've just opened it and edited the file then usually you can just save without entering the file extension. Just don't use Save As or it'll be .txt or whatever. I use the same technique in Orbiter sim for scenario files.

Just be wary of the associations in Windows. Once you open a document in Wordpad or Notepad then Windows assumes that every other file with that extension is a Wordpad or Notepad document. If another program uses the same extension then it'll recieve the icon for a text document whether it is or not.

[J G Parker]

Thanks.  As I recall (not at the FS computer right now) the .brf are compiled files, not text.  I tried opening one and Wordpad couldn't read it.  I only DEDUCED that this file contained the breifing information from the extention and from the fact that this was the only other file type in the folder (besides .WX, .PLN, .FLT).

It is curious, tho, that MS would make this obscure.  You'd think they'd encourage folks to write and share flights.  The whole flight saving process is overly simplistic (you can only save them to MYFLIGHTS directory and can't edit the text descriptions later without using Wordpad, etc.

[MattNW]

Did you click on the file and then choose Wordpad or did you open Wordpad and go to the directory? If you did then you need to set the file type in Wordpad to "Any" to be able to see the .brf file types. They open OK in Wordpad for me. Of course I'm using Windows 98 SE. I haven't tried it on any other OS.

I just tried creating a flight and then a .brf document to go with it. I used the the same name for both and it worked OK. They are unformatted text files so it might be best to use Notepad instead of Wordpad. Just make sure you save as .bfr and it should work.

If you want to put all the add-on flights in their own folder then you'll have to create a folder in the "flights" folder instead of "myflts". You can call that "Add-On Flights" and put your .brf, .flt, .pln and .wx files in that. People could unzip the file and just drop the folder into their "flights" folder and they will have everything that the standard flights come with.

[J G Parker]

All of this makes complete sense.  I'll try it when I get home.  Maybe I was mistaken when I thought I couldn't open the .brf file.  I'm beginning to wonder if I inadvertently tried to open the .wx file instead of the .brf file.  It sure makes logical sense that it should work as you suggest, as the file is obviously just a text file.  Stay tuned anfd thanks!