Q. What is this software all about?
A. Our software products have been created as expansion packs (add-ons) for use with Microsoft® Flight Simulator 2004, and as such you must have a version of the Flight Simulator product previously installed on your PC. We also recommend that you have Microsoft® Windows XP as your PC operating system. Some items contained in our products have been optimized for 32 bit applications and older Windows operating systems such as 98/2000/ME may experience difficulty managing these codes.
Q. Is there a trial or demo version I can look
at before I decide if I want to buy it?
A. Yes. There is a trial version in the
‘Airports’ section available at our website www.imaginesim.com. The demo has several
objects impeding the runway and some of the main buildings disappear
intermittently.
Q. How can I purchase it?
A. By credit card. Currently there are two purchase options. You download the software file from the ‘Airports’ section of this website. Once you have the file on your hard drive double-click it and the easy to follow purchase process provided by Flight 1 will guide you through. Alternatively, you can visit www.simmarket.com and look for the ‘Authors & Publishers’ drop-down menu. Scroll down until you see the Imagine Simulation option and click it. You will then be automatically directed to our purchase page from which you can make your purchase.
Q. Can I get it on
A. Not at this time. All purchases must be made online through the Flight 1 credit card system. Please contact sales@imaginesim.com for further information.
Q. How do I install it into Flight Simulator?
A. Once you have finished the purchasing process during which you will have downloaded the entire package, there will be an executable (EXE) file that will need to be activated. The installation process is automatic when you double-click the EXE file and will install the airport (after verification of your
unique registration key issued to you at purchase) into your main Flight Simulator program.
See the “readme.htm” file that comes with your download for full installation instructions.
Q. What if I want to uninstall it later?
A. Before beginning the un-installation process please make sure you have closed as many Windows applications as possible. Click your ‘Start’ button on
the bottom left corner of your Windows desktop. From there choose the option ‘All Programs’ and go to the Imagine Simulation section. Then onto
the relevant airport section and choose the ‘Uninstall’ option. The process is automatic and once finished the entire airport will have been removed
from Flight Simulator.
Q. I have started Flight Simulator. What now?
A. You can take a look at your new airport before flying there through the Flight Simulator interface. Follow the easy steps below -
● Navigate through the World/Go to Airport tabs. On the ‘Go to Airport’ page and look at the bottom right-hand corner for the ‘Search Add-on scenery’ button.
● Scroll through the ‘Scenery Areas’ section until you see the Imagine Simulation airport you want to go to and highlight the line of text.
● On the left side of the page in the ‘Search Results’ section you will see several starting positions available for the chosen airport.
● Once you have found the desired position from which you would like to start your flight just highlight it and choose ‘OK’.
● You might also choose to access the airport from the familiar ‘Go to Airport’ front page by typing the airport ICAO code into the ‘AirportID’ box or it’s full name into the ‘Airport Name’ box.
Because of the incredible amount of detail and 3D objects at Imagine Simulation airports you may find that the scenery takes longer to load than default Flight Simulator airports. The length of time varies widely according to differing PC system configurations.
Q. I am at the airport and want to have a good look around. What’s the best way?
A. Simply press ‘Y’ and get into ‘slew’ mode. Then use the arrow keys, numeric keypad or joystick to investigate the airport thoroughly.
Q. Flight Simulator seems quite sluggish when slewing around the airport. What’s happening?
A. The 2D and 3D objects at the airports have been optimized for viewing from approach angles and from ground level, as you would see the airport in real-life from a commercial airliner. You will get reduced frame rate refreshing if certain parts of the airport are viewed during 'slew mode' from a low height while the view angle is pointing down. This is unavoidable due to the increased field of vision and the unnatural amount of items in view which the Flight Simulator display engine must try to create. Go back down to ground level and the frames will be refreshed at much higher rates, just as you need them to be during taxi.
Q. It’s quite jerky when near the terminal buildings or other built-up areas. Why is this and what can I do to make everything run a little smoother?
A. You can optimize your system from within the Flight Simulator environment. By decreasing the demands made on the CPU and graphics card you can increase simulator performance. By navigating through the Flight Simulator Options/Settings/Display tabs you will find several check-boxes and sliders
that offer choices for display properties. Remember that the more items you uncheck and sliders you move towards the far left the less detail will be rendered for your simulator session.
One major factor influencing simulator performance are scenery shadows. By unchecking scenery shadows in the Display tab you can increase your performance by up to 25%. You will also notice that unchecking the autogen feature significantly enhances the frame refreshment rate (frames per second, or fps) in the densely built-up areas of the airport.
It pays to experiment with these settings to find the configuration that best suits your individual preferences. Further performance optimizing suggestions can be found in the manual accompanying the software.
Q. The textures on the buildings look terrible. I was expecting a little more detail and resolution than this. Why do they look so bad?
A. Imagine Simulation airports have textures rendered to very high resolutions. If you are experiencing low resolution or odd looking textures on buildings then it is almost certainly because of your ‘Global Texture’ setting in Flight Simulator. Navigate through the Options/Settings/Display/Hardware tabs and move the ‘Global max texture size’ slider all the way to the right (massive). This ensures that textures are displayed to their maximum resolution.
If this doesn’t solve the texturing problem please refer to your graphics card documentation. There may be unresolved technical issues with your
system-wide PC graphics settings.
Q. Hey - Where are all the jetways, vehicles and ground staff? I can't see them at all
A. More than likely you don't have your scenery complexity settings set correctly. In FS, navigate to Options\Settings\Display and crank up the 'Scenery Complexity' slider to 'Extremely Dense'.
Q. OK, I am at the gate and want to see the animated jetway docking with my aircraft. It looks fine from one of the cockpit views but
when I go to the exterior views nothing happens. Why?
A. We have limited for performance reasons the viewing range of the animation process to 500 feet. If you can’t see the jetway moving when looking
with an exterior view then you might have the viewing distance set too far away, so to ensure you are comfortably in range to see the animation try a setting of 400 feet.
Q. I am watching the jetway but it’s going crazy, jumping between positions almost faster than the eye can see. What’s this?
A. We have experienced during testing that some add-on aircraft cause this effect and seem to interfere with the jetway animation. We will endeavour to refine the jetway animation process with each new airport expansion pack release, but for now these anomalies are beyond our control and we offer
our apologies if it happens with your favourite aircraft.
Q. The ground vehicles and airport staff are not really my kind of thing and I would rather not have them there. Is there a way of getting rid of them?
A. If you are at all familiar with the Windows ‘My Computer’ or ‘Explorer’ features then customizing your airport couldn’t be easier. Just navigate to the Imagine Simulation folder found in the main ‘Flight Simulator/Scenery’ folder, locate the airport that you would like to alter and navigate into its ‘Scenery’ folder. Here you will see listed in plain language all the files that are associated with the airport with filename extensions of BGL. If, for example, you don’t want to see the ground staff at the airport the next time you start Flight Simulator then simply move the ‘ground_staff_01.bgl’ file to a location outside of
the current folder. Alternatively, if you would rather keep all the files in the same folder then you could just rename the BGL portion of the file to something else and Flight Simulator will ignore it next time you start.
But some words of caution - Imagine Simulation cannot be held responsible for loss or damage that may result from moving or renaming any files from the original installed locations. You manipulate these files at your own risk.
Q. Another thing - The whole airport is completely dark at night, no lighting at all. What's going on?
A. In FS, navigate to Options\Settings\Display and click the 'Aircraft' tab. Make sure the 'Landing lights' box is checked, this is the option that turns all lights on at night.
Q. I have seen in the ‘Scenery’ folder some files that have the extension ZZZ. I didn’t change these. What are they?
A. These files are installed ‘sleeping’. They contain large amounts of objects that might cause average or low specification PC systems to operate sluggishly when used with Flight Simulator. However, if you have a new and up to the minute super machine then rename the ZZZ extension to BGL and the next time you start Flight Simulator there will be extra detail to see at your airport.
Q. When I’m on approach, about 12 to 15 miles out, my whole Flight Simulator freezes. It only happens at Imagine Simulation and other large airports. What’s happening?
A. With airports created by Imagine Simulation and other major developers there are literally thousands of objects that Flight Simulator has to load and get ready to display once you get in range. If Flight Simulator freezes it’s a temporary condition that may take 20 seconds or more before continuing
depending
on system specifications. It’s a ‘trade-off’ that we continually monitor during
development and we hope to strike a good balance.
Q. I have an add-on AI aircraft package installed and the parked aircraft that came with the airport are parked in their ramps. How do
I remove them?
A. Have a look in the airport’s scenery folder. You will see files that begin “parked_aircraft…..”, just move them out of this Scenery folder (or delete
them but make a backup) and the next time you start FS the parked aircraft will be gone. In addition, see the readme file that comes with this airport
download for an explanation of how to alter AI
parameters.
Q. Will my Artificial Intelligent (AI) aircraft still land, park and take-off from the right places with this airport?
A. Yes. New AI airport mapping is installed along with the other airport files and the process is automatic. This map by default will leave spaces for
the parked aircraft that come with this expansion pack. Should you choose to remove these parked aircraft you will find an alternative AI file with
full parking slots available in an alternative set of files available from the airport pages of our website. Look for the AI/AFCAD download link.
Please make sure you are familiar with the various systems within Flight Simulator that need altering before attempting these switches. If in doubt,
leave things as they are. AI and AFCAD topics
can be further discussed via email with our AI designer, Tony Piasecki, at tony@imaginesim.com
Q. I cannot even load
the scenery. My system hangs and eventually I get an 'out of memory' or 'not
enough memory' error report.
A. NON WINDOWS XP USERS
– PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.
This is a most tricky
situation which has caused problems with only a handful of customers in the
past. Latest research seems to suggest that it is a Windows OS issue and not
strictly an FS issue and it rather depends on which operating system you use.
So far we have only ever heard of memory errors from customers using Windows
98, 2000 or ME. It may be further compounded when using additional third party
programs that access DLL files contained in the FS MODULES folder. If you
experience problems with initial loading then please try removing the
LIGHT_BEAMS_01.BGL from the main airport Scenery folder. The code contained
within this file has been optimized for 32 bit applications and some Windows
98/2000/ME OS setups may experience difficulty managing these codes. Once this
file has been removed you will notice that night lighting around the terminal
and cargo aircraft parking areas has gone.
We will continue to look into these issues and will release news of updates and patches as and when they become available. Until such a time
we strongly recommend that this product should only be used on systems that use Windows® XP as the operating system (OS). Support
concerning these issues cannot be given to
customers who use a non-XP OS.
Q. Do airports developed by Imagine Simulation work with earlier versions of Microsoft® Flight Simulator?
A. No, sorry. Our airport expansion packs have been developed for use with Flight Simulator 2004 only.
Q. Will there be more airport expansion packs available from Imagine Simulation in the future?
A. Yes. We are currently running at an approximate production rate of a new airport every 1100 hours (2 to 3 months). We will be developing
more airports for the
Q. I can’t see the airport vehicles, jetways, and a whole load of other stuff?
A. Make sure you have your scenery complexity setting set to maximum. The slider contained in the Options-Settings-Display-Scenery Complexity
tab should be set all the way to the right.