Bangkok Traffic

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   Hi,have recently moved over to FSX from FS9 and of course Traffic x and Suvarnabhumi Airport vtbs,Bangkoks new airport  ..In FS9 I had Traffic 2005 and was able to use TT Tools to change all the traffic from VTBD to VTBS by changing all the flightplans in notepad and decompiling/compiling...I have tried doing this with X but am unable to find the flightplans and am not sure about decompiling and recompiling ...Anybody able to help me out ?

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John Colohan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Check-In Staff Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Points: 5	Post Options Post Reply Quote John Colohan Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Bangkok Traffic Posted: 18 Jan 2012 at 10:32pm
	Hi,have recently moved over to FSX from FS9 and of course Traffic x and Suvarnabhumi Airport vtbs,Bangkoks new airport ..In FS9 I had Traffic 2005 and was able to use TT Tools to change all the traffic from VTBD to VTBS by changing all the flightplans in notepad and decompiling/compiling...I have tried doing this with X but am unable to find the flightplans and am not sure about decompiling and recompiling ...Anybody able to help me out ?

freddy Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Chief Pilot Joined: 29 Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne, Aust Points: 1339	Post Options Post Reply Quote freddy Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 19 Jan 2012 at 9:37am
	You won't need to do any decompiling of the AI traffic .bgl file. The Traffic X flight plans are stored in individual .tcc files in the "C:\...\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\JustFlight\TrafficX\Presets\Data\Schedules\Flight Plans" folder. You can open and edit the .tcc files in Notepad. Of course you should take BACKUPS of the file(s) before working on them. The main issue might simply be finding all the different flight plan .tcc files which contain "VTBD" and "VTBS" in them. As for how to determine which .tcc files are for which airline (for example, which airline is the file "AAL.tcc" for?) ... open the Traffic X Traffic Control centre and go to the FLIGHT PLANS screen. Instead of clicking on the Airline/Carrier drop down box to open it up, right-click on it first ... a little sub-menu appears. Use the SORT function in that sub-menu and choose the option to sort by "Name". This will sort the drop down list in to alphabetical order. Once it is in alphabetical order, click on the drop-down to see the list of airlines/carriers. Looking at the list, you will see that "AAL" is for "American Airlines". So the "AAL.tcc" file is the "American Airlines" flight plans. (Of course you can also sort the drop-down list using the "Code" or "Country" options if you wish.) After making the changes, you just need to do a compile. If you are not sure about how to do that, read this link here: How do I re-compile the traffic database? TIP: A method that I occassionally use is to rename the respective file from a .tcc file to an .xls file and opening it using Excel (respond "Yes" to any alert or warning dialogue messages you may see when trying to open the file with Excel). Using Excel allows you to use Excel's tools to search, sort, or manipulate the file in any way you wish ... for example, you might choose to alphabetically SORT all the flight plans inside the file based on destination airport (usually column J), instead of departure airport (usually column I). (Remember that if you are doing "sorts" it is CRITICAL to select/highlight all the data in the whole spreadsheet before doing the sort, so that all the data gets sorted together, and not just the single column. The reason for this is clear ... if you're sorting based on the destination airports as per this example, the single column sort would cause all the flight plan's departure and destination airports to become shuffled and mixed up ... and that's going to be bad news when you save your file and do your compile.) I find that if the work requires something a bit more difficult than perhaps just a simple search and replace, Excel makes it far easier than Notepad. Save your changes and rename the file back to .tcc. Of course, again, you should take BACKUPS of the file(s) before working on them.

John Colohan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Check-In Staff Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Points: 5	Post Options Post Reply Quote John Colohan Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 19 Jan 2012 at 5:06pm
	Hi Freddy, Thank you for your help,it has brought me one step closer to having VTBS up and running...I have renamed all the flightplans from VTBD tp BS....Only one problem left...I need to add VTBS info to Airport file but when I open it with notepad it is all garbled!!!any ideas??? John

freddy Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Chief Pilot Joined: 29 Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne, Aust Points: 1339	Post Options Post Reply Quote freddy Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 19 Jan 2012 at 10:59pm
	I assume you are referring to the file "Airports.tcc". The file is encrypted, so, yes, it is garbled. Whilst you can edit flight plan .tcc files using Notepad (because they are not encrypted), you cannot edit the encrypted "Airports.tcc" file using Notepad. To add VTBS to Traffic X you will need to use the Traffic Control Centre. (Based on your post, it sounds like you know that VTBS doesn't already exist in Traffic X ... but I'll write complete instructions here anyway for the benefit of others who may be reading.) 1) Go to the AIRPORT INFORMATION screen and check first to see if VTBS already exists in Traffic X. To work out if the airport already exists, use the Airport Name drop-down box at the top of the screen to search for it in the list. Or, easier, just type the airport's ICAO details in to that drop-down box and then click the down arrow to open the list (which should go straight to the ICAO that you typed in, if it already exists). OK, typing VTBS and clicking the down arrow does NOT give any results meaning that VTBS is NOT already in Traffic X. But, obviously, typing VTBD and clicking the down arrow does show that VTBD exists already in Traffic X. 2) Based on whether the airport already exists in Traffic X or not, you now know whether you need to use the IMPORT NEW button or the UPDATE EXISTING button on the Airport Information screen. Because VTBS doesn't already exist in Traffic X, you will be using the IMPORT NEW button. (The UPDATE EXISTING button is used when you have a modified AFCAD file that you wish to use and want to update the Traffic X database so it is made aware of the changes that AFCAD has in it for that airport.) 3) To import the airport in to Traffic X, you will need an AFCAD file for VTBS, installed in to the correct FSX folder as per the AFCAD file's instructions, and also an airport .dat dump file. The airport .dat dump file is created using the Traffic Toolbox in the FSX SDK. The FSX SDK (Software Development Kit) is a set of development tools which allow you to develop, create or modify content for the simulation ... it is installed separately in to FSX. (Discussion on the SDK is definately beyond the scope of this post. If you already have it installed and know about it, then no problem. If not, and you want further information, start here: FSX SDK Installation.) (I don't work with the FSX SDK or with AFCADs and therefore, sorry, I have no idea about .dat dump files.) 4) Click the IMPORT NEW button. Navigate to your .dat file. Select the .dat file and complete the import in to Traffic X. 5) Close Traffic X. Re-run Traffic X. Check that Traffic X now has VTBS in its database. To do this, use the Airport Name drop-down box at the top of the AIRPORT INFORMATION screen to search for it in the list, as per the details outlined in step 1) above.

John Colohan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Check-In Staff Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Points: 5	Post Options Post Reply Quote John Colohan Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 3:54pm
	Hi Freddy,Thank you so much for all your very detailed help and suggestions...Everything was fine up until the moment I looked at SDK!!Its here I hit a brick wall...I got a lot of problems with it which I wont go into,but in the end I gave up...The reason I really needed (or desired)traffic at VTBS was because I fly for Thai VA..So in the end I tried a free traffic programme(very basic,just adds traffic with no bells and whistles) and lo and behold it added traffic automatically to VTBS and VTBD so I am sorted..What a pity X could nt do this as easy as Traffic 2005 used to do for me..Maybe its something for the developers to look at in the future with so many new airports coming on stream...I got years of fun out of traffic 2005 and will miss all this now with X gone from my pc.

freddy Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Chief Pilot Joined: 29 Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne, Aust Points: 1339	Post Options Post Reply Quote freddy Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 10:15pm
	At least, in the end, you got the restults you were aiming for ... traffic at VTBS. Traffic 2005 was a great program. Traffic 2005 does run with FSX, provided you install the "Traffic2005FSXupdate" patcher and are running the SP2 version of Traffic 2005. I ran Traffic 2005 with FSX for quite a while before Traffic X was released. Personally, I liked Traffic 2005 far better than Traffic X. The Traffic 2005 interface was much friendlier and easier to use. The Traffic X interface is too "dumbed down" for my liking and many of the very handy functions that Traffic 2005 had are gone. Night traffic density settings for each airport, GMT offset settings for each airport, the ability to set a cruise speed for each AI aircraft, the ability to set the desired altitude for each individual AI flight plan, nine different sort options available for sorting flight plans such as sorting by destination airport or sorting by departure times, etc. All of these extremely handy goodies, which enhance your AI editing immensely and in turn greatly add to the realism of FSX, are now all gone from Traffic X. As a simple example, I would love to be able to set the altitude for each of the Piper Cub aircraft I have in my Traffic X flight plans ... I could do that with Traffic 2005, but I can't with Traffic X ... and I am just sick and tired of hearing the FSX ATC telling Piper Cubs to expedite their climb to 10,000. If Just Flight had managed to keep a Traffic 2005 type of interface, with all of its handy options and functions, and also add the new liveries and other additions of Traffic X, then we would have been on a real winner. When I saw the first ads for Traffic X, that is exactly what I thought it would be. I was excited to buy the product, in expectation of new models and liveries, the same options and functions, and the addition of perhaps even more. But, alas, it wasn't that at all. Instead, it was a completely different product, rewritten, and extremely dumbed down and lacking functionality compared to what I was used to from Traffic 2005. I work in the IT industry and I'm with programmers every day ... we have a saying ... "never give candy to the baby and then later take it away". Sadly, in my opinion, that is exactly what Just Flight did with Traffic X when compared to Traffic 2005. Sure I could just go back and run Traffic 2005 with FSX. But there were a few issues with that running on the latest operating systems and some problems with the Paint Tool and a few other niggles because it was actually written for FS2004 and not FSX. So, no, despite all the goodies that Traffic 2005 offers, it is wiser to stick with using Traffic X for Windows 7 and FSX. Don't get me wrong ... I am happy with Traffic X, it's got more models, new liveries, and it adds flight plans for me and allows me to edit them etc ... it does the job ... but, heck, it could have been far far far better.