Downloaded Aircraft Won't Work

[Lizard_Jockey]

I've been downloading and installing airplanes for ages now and never had any problems. Recently I had to do a complete reinstall of CFS II because while trying to just find and install the Mission Builder from the disk because on an earlier install it didnt' take for what ever reason, the program desided all by itself to delete the whole sim.   Christ, I was mad. There went all my addons: planes, effects, sceanery, bases everything.  Thank you M$!  

After reinstalling the whole freakin thing I went to reload some of my favorite planes. The only ones I can get to work now are the 1% aircraft from AvHistory. Nothing from this site works.

Did the folks here change anything recently or maybe is there something I've missed?

My Winzip program hasn't changed so I don't think there's a problem there.  I just downloaded these planes recently (mostly P-40s). Is anyone else having difficulties with these?

One other thing, When viewed from Windows Explorer my CFS II reinstall shows all the planes I had on the system before it got deleted even all the planes from "Defense of Australia", everything.  I assume they were copied to my registery and reinstalled automatically but the problem is that they don't show from within the sim. All that shows there is the stock MS planes.  Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks, L.J. Over...

[Hagar]

Hi L.J. I suspect you uninstalled CFS2 rather than Reinstalling. Unfortunately, Uninstall deletes ALL CFG files making previously installed 3rd party aircraft completely useless. Unless I'm mistaken you will be better off dumping them & starting again. Please read my CFS2 FAQ page. http://www.simviation.com/lair/cfs2faq.htm

PS. Providing it was installed separately your addon scenery should be unaffected. It will need reactivating via the Scenery Library.

[Lizard_Jockey]

Hagar,
Thanks for the reply.  As I mentioned, It wasn't my choice to install or reinstall the sim. I was trying to browse the disk to install just the Mission Builder when the install programe deleted the sim right off my system.

Do you have any suggestions about why I'm having such difficulty installing the aircraft I recently downloaded from this site which were never on my last install to begin with?

One of the things I'm running into is readme files that are telling me to unzip the plane into the Aircraft Folder but when I do so, it enters with a path showing "MS Games. CFS II. Aircraft."  then finally the airplane in question. It looks to me like it's trying to install to the root (C drive).  It sure as hell can't be seen by the sim with all those folders in front of it while it resides in the Aircraft folder but when I just try to cut and paist the pertinent files to the Aircraft folder and delete the extranious path, the sim still doesn't see the plane.

Seriously baffled,  L.J.

[Hagar]

L.J. Please ignore all instructions to unzip/extract files direct to the sim. In my experience this is the biggest cause of installation problems. This tute describes the only method I recommend for extracting/installing files to any M$ sim. http://www.simviation.com/acinstall.htm
I dislike the drag & drop method for actually moving files & prefer Cut (or Copy) & Paste.

For jets or helos to work in CFS2 you will need the appropriate files for aliasing to. My Aliasing article should explain how to overcome this & other common problems.
http://www.simviation.com/lair/aliasing1.htm

I hope this helps.  ;)

[Lizard_Jockey]

OK Hagar,
I read both of your articles and it looks like I understood the aircraft file sturcture a little better then I thought.  I had deduced from experience the 4 essentials of a basic file.  The only thing I had no idea about was the "Aliasing" issue.

I'll bet the difficulty I've been having is that I didn't reload "In Defense of Austraia" with it's P-40s and all these other P-40s I've been downloading probably require them to work seeing how the two gentlemen who did that addon seem to be the master builders of MS P-40s.  

Thank you so much for your help.

The only other problem I've ever had was failing to get some weapons packages to work no matter where I put them but that's another issue for another post.

Thanks again, L.J. Out

BTW, are you an old Viking? I'm Norge myself.

[Hagar]

Hi L.J. I'm sure the aliasing issue explains most of your problems. Some of those P-40s might well be aliased to the DoA aircraft. They can be easily re-aliased to others if you wish.

For the weapons I suggest you download Martin Wright's weapons_plus package & read the included instructions. http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/index.htm
As with most things, it's usually a case of pasting the files into their correct locations.
BGL files to CFS2\SCENEDB\weapons\scenery
BMP textures to CFS2\SCENEDB\weapons\texture
DP files to CFS2\OBJECTS_DP

To the best of my knowledge I have no Viking ancestry. My screen name is taken from the popular cartoon character Hagar the Horrible.