You should not experience problems with your new Australian Scenery & Aussie ATC
package, however should there be something you feel that you are having trouble with, we
have included many of these ‘possibilities’ below.
NB: We’d like you to take maximum advantage of the comprehensive information
included in the manual & scenery guide, while saving you money at the same time. In
order also to keep the price of future products as low as possible for our customers,
technical support sought for items already covered in the manual, or of a general computer
system nature, may incur a charge.
INSTALLATION:
* Please carefully follow the installation instructions found in this manual, carefully
taking note of the variations available, including the installation of patches. If you do
not have ‘Australia Scenery Vol.1’ already, but purchase it later, before
installation make sure that you refer back to the appropriate installation section at the
start of the manual (to ensure the correct updating of files).
* With the installation of 'Australia Vol.2' or 'Special Edition 98', you may encounter an
error message stating that the Flight Shop™ converter was not found, when in fact you
know it has already been installed on your system. This is most likely due to an
inaccurate selection of the correct path to your Flight Simulator™, during the
Australia Scenery installation. If you are attempting to install for use with the Flight
Simulator™ 'Classic' version, please refer to the special section
on this. Although the default path will be correct in most cases, you must take extra care
if changing this path. If you do change the path, ensure that you indicate the correct
path to your appropriate Flight Simulator™ directory only (use the suggested
path as an example). By default in the path browser, either \Flight Simulator or \Fltsim5 will
be automatically added to the end of your new path selection. You may need to delete
or backspace this duplication. Be sure that you do not end up attempting to install to the
path ...\Flight Simulator\Flight Simulator or ...\Fltsim5\Fltsim5. You may of course
manually amend this by typing, deleting or backspacing, a different path.
MISCELLANEOUS:
* Important: You must have your Microsoft® Flight Simulator™ CD in the drive prior
to & during operation of your Flight Simulator™. If you have deactivated the
‘Oceania’ scenery area via the scenery library, you must reactivate it. With
FS98 only, you must complete the installation of the Australian scenery by making an
adjustment to the ‘Oceania’ scenery area in the scenery library. Carefully
follow the directions for this in the installation section at the beginning of the manual.
* Scenery blank areas, missing navigation aids & missing runways at Sydney, Melbourne,
Perth, Darwin, Alice Springs & Brisbane, & towns & cities appear as islands -
Either you are not operating with Flight Simulator™ on CDROM (to avoid scenery
conflictions, Australia Scenery is designed to integrate with the world database which is
utilised on the CDROM version), or if you already have Flight Simulator™ on CDROM
then you probably don't have the Flight Simulator™ CDROM in the drive during start-up
& running during each Flight Simulator™ session. Ensure that the Flight
Simulator™ CDROM is in the drive prior to executing operation of your Flight
Simulator™. If you still get a message stating that a performance booster was not
found, then it is possible that you do not have the CDROM driver correctly installed. If
you have V5.1 only on 3 1/2 inch floppy disks, then a 'Media Swap' is available at a
nominal charge through Microsoft®. If you are running FS98 & have followed these
instructions, but still have scenery areas missing or conflicting, then you have probably
not made the required change to the FS98 Scenery Library. For details please refer to the
FS98 installation section at the beginning of this manual.
* Sparse scenery (or missing scenery / runways etc) - Ensure that you have 'Very Dense'
selected in your World / Scenery Complexity menu, so as to be able to see all the
available scenery objects & features included in this package. Some airports will not
show unless you have ‘Dense’ or Very Dense’ selected.
* A small number of non-capital city navaids missing - It is assumed that most enthusiasts
will eventually purchase Australia Scenery Vol.1 & Vol.2. Some navaids may not be
available without Vol.1, due to the prevention of any ‘overlapping’ errors that
would occur with both scenery volumes installed. The navaids listing in the back of this
scenery guide is a complete list of all navaids applicable to Vol.1, Vol.2 & the
Microsoft® Flight Simulator™ world database for Australia, as is the enclosed
special map.
* Scenery fully installed, but the Australian airports are not available from menu - You
have most likely installed the Australian Scenery to a different directory path to the one
into which you have installed the actual Flight Simulator™. Uninstall the Australia
Scenery & locate the exact path name (with exact spelling) of where your Flight
Simulator™ directory is located. Re-install the Australia Scenery to this path. NB:
If you initially choose the default path for both Flight Simulator™ & Australia
Scenery, then this problem should not arise.
* Rough taxiways - Some taxiways are in fact rougher than others, & you may need to
reduce your speed accordingly. On earlier versions of Flight Simulator™ calling up
'map view' (added to top right hand corner will suffice & then adjusting the zoom),
may smoothen the taxiing. Jet aircraft & most third party aircraft do not noticeably
react to rougher taxiways. Also, gravel or grass runways will feel rougher than the sealed
runways.
* Apron or tarmac appears to obscure aircraft when in spot view - Select a closer spot
distance & altitude, then zoom back if required, to see all of your aircraft. If the
spot or tower view is such that a building or other scenery object is in the ‘line of
sight’, then the view of the aircraft will naturally be obscured.
* With 3D hardware acceleration enabled, some buildings appear to have no roof or back
walls - disable ‘8 bit image textures’ in your Flight Simulator™
‘Hardware Acceleration’ options screen.
* ILS marker beacons sound when not tuned in - This will occur if you fly directly over an
ILS marker beacon whether it is tuned in or not & is a feature of Flight
Simulator™. Once you have passed over the very small reception ‘cone’, the
beeping will cease.
* Deactivation of Australia Scenery - Source code files & / or descriptions of each
individual file (.BGL or other) are not available. If you wish to deactivate any of the
‘Australia Vol.2 (or Vol.1 as applicable) PII’ scenery files, in order to cancel
any undesired conflictions with another product that covers the same scenery area, you
will need to do the following: Either deactivate the scenery area from the conflicting
product, or within your ‘Flight Simulator’ root directory, create a new
folder/directory called ‘Temp_Aus’. Then, from within the 'Scenery' root
directory, highlight the .BGL ‘PII Australia Scenery’ file/s that you wish to
de-activate (these will be in the format of Aus*.BGL or Aust*.BGL). Simply
‘move’ them (you must move them, not copy them) from the ‘Scenery’
directory to your newly created ‘Temp_Aus’ directory. If you wish to re-activate
these files at a later stage, simply move the desired .BGL scenery files from the
‘Temp_Aus’ directory back to the ‘Scenery’ root directory. Scenery
data of some geographical areas are covered in more than one .BGL scenery file.
* Difficulty in viewing or printing the pre-compiled flight plans - These have been saved
as bitmap (.BMP) images in the FLT_PLNS directory on the Australia Scenery CDROM. You will
need to use a word processor to import the flight plan file that you want. Most word
processors will automatically re-size the image for you so that you can print it, if
re-sizing does not occur you may end up with a flight plan much larger than it is intended
to be. You may need to refer to your word processor documentation if you are having
trouble with this. Carefully follow the procedure outlined in the ‘Air Traffic
Control Adventure’ section, located earlier in this manual.
* Database Error - This is a very rare occurrence. In nearly all cases you should be able
to just press 'Enter' (may require pressing several times), & continue with your
flight. If this occurs often, due to the setup of your directories, try re-naming all the
Aust*.BGL files to Zust*.BGL, so that they appear at the end of the list of scenery files
in the scenery directory, though this is not recommended. If you do re-name any files, do
not do this until all your scenery has been installed. If you subsequently install any
Australia Scenery patches, or more PII Australia scenery, ensure that you have renamed any
changed file names back to their original name (to ensure correct updating of files). This
error can also occur as a result of an older version of VBDB300.DLL in your
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\ directory, in which case the supplier of your system hardware may be able
to assist.
* In general, if all else fails, try uninstalling the Australia Scenery (use the supplied
uninstall routine), then uninstall the Flight Shop™ converter (use the add/remove
programs utility from your control panel) & then uninstall Flight Simulator™
(using either the uninstall routine if supplied, or via the add/remove programs utility
from your control panel). We’ve seen a number of ‘unexplainable glitches’
in various commercial packages suddenly corrected with a re-install!
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL ADVENTURES:
* For Flight Simulator™ V6.0 for Windows 95 & FS98 users, a Flight Shop™
converter patch has been included on this CDROM. Providing that you have followed the
installation instructions correctly (therefore installing the Flight Shop™ converter,
then the scenery), you will have installed the patch into the Flight Simulator root
directory (as 'Aafconv.exe - Application' for V6.0 or ‘Aafconv98.exe -
Application’ for FS98). All the updated .WAV files have also been installed for you,
which are required for V6.0 & FS98.
* V6.0 & FS98 - ATC Adventure voice instructions out of sync. or incomplete - Run the
'Fsconv.exe' (or ‘Fsconv98.exe’ for FS98) patch installation (Flight Shop™
converter), found in the root directory of this CDROM. You do not need to convert any
files, however the patch must be installed.
* Some selection options greyed out (V6.0 & FS98) - Always select your aircraft first,
then use the ‘Go to airport’ menu to select the starting position (choose
domestic terminal if a choice is available), then finally select your chosen adventure.
* Basic ‘Flight Shop™ ATC Adventure’ instructions are available on screen
at the beginning of each adventure & in this manual. Whenever you change frequency (in
an interactive adventure), or are instructed to contact the next air traffic control
sector (even if the frequency remains unchanged) you must always press 'CTRL K' which
alerts the controller that you are ‘on frequency’, otherwise you will not
receive any further instructions. The Microsoft® Flight Simulator™ menu requests for
‘take-off clearance’ etc, are not relative to the Australian
adventures, & should not be used.
* Aircraft crashes occasionally at the start of some ATC Adventures - Temporarily select
crash detection off prior to selection of adventure.
* Delay between keypress & acknowledgment - An occasional delay is normal & is
part of the adventure design.
* Audio of inferior quality in V5.1 - Unfortunately, it is due partly to the way V5.1
handles audio in MSDOS®. To suit your own preferences, you may like to make adjustments
to your FSFS CONFIG (FSFS.INI) file in your \FLTSIM5\ root directory. Always backup the
original file first, you might then like to try the following settings; engine_only_volume
= 100, wave_volume = 55, engine_with_wave_volume = 25.
* Some ATC radio difficult to understand - Some audio may take a little while to get used
to, we’re afraid this is just real life. In aviation it does take a trained ear to
clearly understand everything over the air, just ask any passenger who has had the
privilege of sitting in the cockpit & who has listened in on ‘air-ground’
transmissions. This will improve however with experience, it tends to come with knowing
what you expect a pilot or controller to say.
* ‘Fast’ or ‘slow’ voice - In an interactive ATC adventure if the COM
frequency is changed too fast, the voice may appear to be too fast or too slow for the
next transmission. This is due to different sampling rates in certain categories of sound
files (to reduce the size of the .WAV files), & can be minimised by not changing
frequencies too rapidly.
* COM radio frequency not xxx.00 or xxx.50 - Manually set the COM frequency via the
Aircraft /
Communications menu.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Providing that you select ‘set Radio Frequency to New Location’ (not
available in FS98), the appropriate navaid frequencies are set for you when you select a
new airport. The OBS (VOR course selector) on each VOR indicator will also be set to
either the ILS route, or a common outbound route, just as if the previous pilot had set
them when completing their last flight. The frequency set on COM 1, will generally be that
of the ATIS of the nearest appropriate major airport.
The enclosed map is current at the time of software development & has been specially
produced to include the information from Vol.1 & Vol.2 on the one chart. A list of the
included Australian navigation beacons, is also provided in the back of this manual.
We recommend that you select ‘Very Dense’ from the ‘Scenery
Complexity’ menu, in order to show all the scenery objects available from this
scenery enhancement package.
Try flying at dawn or dusk, you’ll be able to see some suburb lighting effects, while
still being able to see the horizon & general landscape (helpful for visual flying).
Keep an eye out for lighthouses, ships, & other special scenery enhancements.
Rivers are best seen at lower altitudes. This is especially the case in V5.1 & V6.0
where an altitude as low as 1500’ above ground level may be necessary.
In certain locations, the highrise skyline of city & regional areas, some bridges
& other selected structures have been made more elaborate, to enhance the visual
effects of your flights.
INSTALLATION OF AUSTRALIA SCENERY WITH FUTURE EDITIONS OF FLIGHT Simulator™ (later
than FS98):
The Australia Scenery installation routines firstly make a search for specific file names
to check the existence of the appropriate Flight Shop™ converter (if Flight
Simulator™ is later than V5.1), & also to determine which version of Flight
Simulator you have. If you have any problems (in later versions of Flight Simulator™)
with the Australia Scenery installation routine commencing, you may need to create the
following ‘dummy’ files. You can do this with any word processor by opening a
new document (text only) & immediately saving it using the ‘Save as’
command, adding the correct filename & extension as listed here. They should be saved
to the main root directory of your Flight Simulator™. If you are warned that the file
already exists, do not over-write it! The Australian Scenery installation routine looks
for aafconv98.exe (for the ‘98 Flight Shop™ converter) & looks for
fltsim98.exe (for FS98). These two files are the ones that you may need to create
‘dummies’ of. Please refer to the Flight Simulator 2000
notes above, regarding compatability & new product issues.
We'd like you to take maximum advantage of the comprehensive information provided here & in your manual, while saving you money at the same time. In order also to keep the price of future products as low as possible for you, technical support sought for items already covered here or in your manual, or of a general computer system nature, may incur a charge.
Once you have double checked our answer technical support section above, for a quick solution to your problem, please visit our 'submit a question' area. A technician will endeavour to provide you with an answer, following a thorough investigation of your query.