Missing AI

[mal998]

Hi All,
new to this Forum, but not to the hobby. Great job on KFLL, I was there 2 days ago and you did a great job on modelling the details.

I'm having trouble getting any AI to show up, although I think it might be an elevation issue. You can see the label move by but there is no sign of the aircraft.

Looks like it might be under the runway?

Is there an FSX AFCAD for this airport that has correct elevation...Yikes, FS9 was so much simpler when it came to AI...thanks MS...look forward to any thoughts on a fix.

Best Regards,
mal998

BTW, what are the new afcads named and where does FSX place them?

[JFKpilot]

Invisible ai are caused by a number of factors unrelated to the afcad and/or airport elevation. Legacy ai -- or basically every popular ai out there for fs9 like world of ai -- combined with legacy runway light commands (needed for fully custom ground appearance with good lighting) cause the ai to become invisible in fsx sp2. This is a common and well-known problem, present in many addon sceneries such as those published by Aerosoft.

There are a number of options to solve this "problem". One is turn off aircraft shadows -- then ai will 'magically reappear'. Another option is switch to fsx-native ai, which will also offer better fps: payware include Mytraffic 2010, Ultimate Traffic II, or Traffic X. The other option is for Fsdt to dump the legacy light commands in the scenery, but this will have other drawbacks, so it's not really viable.

BTW, the only other Fsdt scenery affected by invisible ai is LSZh Zurich; all other sceneries use default runway lighting so legacy ai will show with aircraft shadows enabled.    

[mal998]

Ah, most helpful JFKpilot!

As you can see I have little current experience with FSX AI...definately a different beast.

OK...did what you said and turned off the ground shadows and voila AI planes appear at KFLL!

Great help, thanks a million!

mal