Aerosoft Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe Operating Guide
Add-on for Microsoft
ProFlight Emulator Deluxe
Compatible with FS2004
Manual
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
Copyright: © 2007 / Aerosoft GmbH
Airport Paderborn/Lippstadt
D-33142 Büren, Germany
Tel: +49 (0) 29 55 / 76 03-10
Fax: +49 (0) 29 55 / 76 03-33
E-Mail: info@aerosoft.de
Internet: www.aerosoft.de
All trademarks and brand names are trademarks or registered of their
respective owners. All rights reserved.
Aerosoft GmbH 2007
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Add-on for
Microsoft Flight Simulator X
ProFlight
Emulator
Deluxe
Manual
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
Credits
I would like to thank the following for their help and support during
the developement, testing and production of this product. If I‘ve
missed anyone it was not intentional.
Beta Testers:
Abraham Abyad, Hani Choucrallah, Allen Cremeen, Mike Dingley, Steve
Harris, David Hawley, Jame Hicks, Peter Kamper, Erich Kastelic, Ray
Lunning, Robert Mariani, Ken McNally, Stefano Murgia, Bruce Nicholson,
Paul Racines, Antti Saastamoinen, Gerard Salden, Rick Schaefer, Frank
Schneider, Udo Zander
PFE Program Design and Development:
Dave March, Copyright (c) 2007 OnCourse Software Ltd
PFE Icons, Installer, Website and Advertising Graphics:
Trevor Piggott of Web Media UK, www.webmediauk.net
Additional Work:
Rick Schaefer for the design and development of PFE‘s FS9/FSX runways
database and tools.
Ray Lunning for his tireless work in helping me to tweak PFE‘s approach
vectoring and for writing ‚A Guide to using PFE‘.
Almost Last:
My thanks to the creative genius and development talents of the original
authors of ProFlight 2000, Robert Mackay and Tom Main.
Thanks also to Tom Main, Robert Mackay and Marty Arant for their
kind permission for us to re-publish ProFlight 2000 with the PFE Delux
Edtion.
Last but not Least:
To my dear wife, Hazel, for all your help and support during this, my latest
journey. At the height of this project we became like passing ships in
the night but you knew how important it was for me to spend as much
time as possible in an attempt to get things just right. Never a complaint,
never negative, only your constant support and love as always.
Thank you darling. X
Aerosoft GmbH 2007
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Content
System Requirements ...............................................6
Installation .................................................................7
Deinstallation ....................................................................... 7
Overview ....................................................................8
What is it? ............................................................................ 8
What have we added to PFE that was not available in
ProFlight 2000 ...................................................................... 9
AI Traffic Detection ..................................................... 9
SIDs and STARs ......................................................... 10
Transition Altitudes by Region ................................... 10
Define Your Own Hotkeys ......................................... 11
What have we removed from PFE that was available in
ProFlight 2000 .................................................................... 11
What have we changed in PFE from the
in ProFlight 2000 ...................................................................12
Hotkeys ..................................................................... 12
What does not work that used to work in ProFlight ...... 13
Getting Started ........................................................14
First Steps... only steps... ................................................... 14
A Guide to using PFE by Ray Lunning (beta tester) ........ 17
Introduction .............................................................. 17
The Pilot .................................................................... 17
Flight Preparation ...................................................... 17
Flight Plans ................................................................ 18
PFE and WIND ........................................................... 21
PFE Options and Configuration ........................................ 22
ProFlight 2000 Options and Configuration ...................... 39
PF2K Commands ................................................................ 40
way it used to work
FAQ ............................................................................45
Support .....................................................................49
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
System Requirements
Microsoft Flight Simulator version FS2004 or FSX
•
10MB disk space required for the standard edition of PFE
•
300mb disk space required for the deluxe edition of PFE (which
•
includes ProFlight 2000)
Runs under Windows XP or VISTA
•
To use PFE Standard Editon you must have a working copy of
ProFlight 2000
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Installation
Compared to installing the standard edition of PFE this is a breeze.
Simply run the PFE Deluxe Setup.exe program and follow the onscreen prompts. The only decision you have to make is where you wish
to install PFE. Once complete you will have a fully installed version of
PFE and ProFlight 2000.... ready to run.
Total time for this installation is approximately 2 minutes, depending
on your system specifications, which includes installing all available
ProFlight 2000 voice sets.
Deinstallation
For Windows XP Users
From Control Panel select Add or Remove Programs.
Select PFE Deluxe Edition then select Change/Remove to remove PFE
Deluxe (including ProFlight 2000) from your system.
PFE Deluxe and ProFlight 2000 has now been removed from your
system, with the exception of certain log files, flight plans, etc, which
you will have to do manually.
For Windows VISTA Users
From Control Panel select Uninstall or change a program.
Select PFE Delux Edition then select Uninstall/Change to remove PFE
Deluxe (including ProFlight 2000) from your system.
PFE Delux Iincluding ProFlight 2000) has now been removed from your
system, with the exception of certain log files, flight plans, etc, which
you will have to do manually.
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
Overview
What is it?
ProFlight 2000 Emulator (PFE) provides you with the means to use one
of the all time favourite Flight Simulator ATC programs with FS2004 or
FSX. Namely ProFlight 2000.
Yes, that‘s right, despite the fact that neither of these versions of
Flight Simulator support Adventures PFE runs as a standalone program
alongside these newer editions of Flight Simulator to emulate the
adventure engine.
How does it achieve this?
Using our own bespoke APLC32 compiler PFE produces an almost
identical flight for you as you would have experienced using ProFlight
2000 in FS2000. We say almost identical because during the development of PFE we did discover (and fix) a few bugs in the way ProFlight
2000 handled various flight scenarios. We also added a lot of new and
exciting features plus devoted a lot of time on the approach vectoring
functionality... but more on these new features later.
Written in Visual Basic and VB.NET PFE does not actually produce flight
simulator adventures. It does, however, utilise the flight plan data produced by ProFlight and of course those much loved 40+ regional voice sets.
Going forward we hope to add even more new features to enhance
your enjoyment of ProFlight 2000 further.
PFE Deluxe includes everything you need to enjoy ProFlight 2000
including a full working copy of the original ProFlight 2000 program
(licensed to us for distribution with PFE by the original publisher and
developers of ProFlight).
As mentioned earlier PFE basically uses the flight plan data generated
by ProFlight 2000 and the original localised voice sets too. For you,
dear user, it will be just like running a ProFlight 2000 adventure but
alongside the latest Flight Simulator versions (FS9 and FSX).
Aerosoft GmbH 2007
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What have we added to PFE that was not available in ProFlight 2000
AI Traffic Detection
Probably the most exciting feature we‘ve added is AI Traffic detection.
Not quite as exciting as AI Traffic interaction which is basically not
fully possible and will not be so until Microsoft issue an AI Traffic SDK,
which is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, AI Traffic detection is without
doubt a must have for any ATC program.
So, what exactly have we achieved
At your departure airport, once you‘re on the taxiway approaching the
active runway PFE will start to check the taxiing aircraft around you
and any aircraft on approach to your designated runway. PFE will not
issue instructions for you to enter the active runway whilst there are
any aircraft close by and on final approach. The exact distance is set
by default to 6 miles for Jet aircraft and 3 miles for smaller, prop, type
aircraft. This, along with the many other PFE options, is user configurable.
When lining up behind other aircraft on the taxi way you will be told
something like this: „...expect clearance in ten“.
When next in line for takeoff you will be instructed to „Hold for traf-
fic“ if there are any aircraft actually on the runway on on finals.
When awaiting the arrival of another aircraft you will be instructed
to „taxi into position and hold“ as soon as it‘s safe to do so after the
other aircraft has landed.
Once all other aircraft have left the active runway you will receive takeoff clearance.
During the approach phase of your flight PFE will prevent any other
aircraft from taxiing onto the active runway and should therefore
prevent any annoying go-arounds caused by such things. PFE will also
attempt to handle traffic separation between you and AI aircraft on
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
route to the same airport and runway. However, due to interactive
limitations with AI traffic this feature is not very elegant so we basically
only deal with traffic behind you.
SIDs and STARs
Another exciting feature we‘ve added is the ability to fly a published
departure. ProFlight 2000 always did allow you to fly a published
approach, simply by using a hotkey to request a „Cleared to Finals“.
Now, thanks to PFE you can select to fly a SID (DP) of your choice. You
can even give it a name (Alpha-Two-Romeo for instance) which will be
included in the clearance and takeoff instructions you receive.
With no SID departures in place the standard ProFlight clearance
would be „Cleared for takeoff, runway nine, fly runway heading“.
Using the new SID feature you would hear „Cleared for takeoff,
runway nine, alpha-two-romeo at five thousand departure approved“.
You would then fly whatever published departure you want, with no
further ATC interaction, until you reach the altitude given in the takeoff clearence, at which point ATC would kick in again and give you
any altitude instructions accordingly. Please note, SID altitudes can be
set in the SID/STAR options display too, but should you choose to leave
this at zero for any configured SID then PFE will work one out for you.
Transition Altitudes by Region
Yes you can now set the correct transition altitude for up to 26 different (ProFlight) geographical regions, so flying from one country to
another could result in the TA changing on route.
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Define Your Own Hotkeys
ProFlight 2000 is installed with several preconfigured hotkeys, most of
which are supported in PFE.
However, using our Hotkey configurator feature you may choose the
actual keying sequence you prefer to use for any one of the supported
hotkeys. This ensures you can alleviate any possible contention issues
with other programs.
We‘ve also added a new hotkey - Ctrl+Shift+D - which can be used
to toggle PFE‘s AI ground detection on/off. This is useful in certain
circumstances where you may find yourself waiting for clearance to
takeoff with no other (AI) aircraft in front of you or supposedly on
finals. This is a rare occurrence but can sometimes happen dependant
on your position on the taxiway and the position of AI aircraft behind
you and relative to the active runway. Should you find yourself in this
situation simply use this new hotkey to deactivate ground traffic monitoring, at which point you should then be cleared for takeoff. Suffice
to say, you use this hotkey at your own risk.
Should you find there are some hotkeys you would never use you can
deactivate them completely. This frees up any unwanted hotkey slots
from the somewhat limited space available within FSUIPC for hotkey
configuration, an area which is shared should you be running other
addons that use an FSUIPC hotkey feature.
What have we removed from PFE that was available in ProFlight 2000
Closed Caption Mode
1.
Pushback
2.
CoPilot mode 4
3.
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
What have we changed in PFE from the way it used to work in ProFlight 2000
Hotkeys
The following default hotkeys are used to interact with PFE:
The original ProFlight 2000 program required you to use the Ctrl+Shift
key combination for all hotkeys (communication keys) and we have
retained this requirement with the exception of 0 thru 9 and the Roger
keys, where you only need to use a single keypress.
0 thru 9 has been used to replace ProFlight‘s Control+Shift+0 thru
Control+Shift+9.
We used these as they are normally used to interact with FS ATC, and
since you won‘t be using that we thought these keys would be best
suited to use in PFE without causing any contention issues with FS.
\ has been used to replace ProFlight‘s Ctrl+Shift+‘
So, to contact Clearance Delivery simply hit the 0 (ZERO key) whereas
to change the CP mode you would use Control+Shift+V
To Roger back to ATC just use the \ (backslash) key
All other keys are as described in the ProFlight documentation... a
listing of these keys is also provided in the file named ProFlight 2000
Commands.htm which can be found in the PFE\Help folder. These
details are also available in the ‘Getting Started‘ section of this manual
under the PFSK Commands section.
Aerosoft GmbH 2007
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What does not work that used to work in ProFlight
Obviously there some features of ProFlight 2000 that no longer function correctly with the later versions of Flight Simulator.
Namely:
Writing flight plan data to the FS GPS does not work.
•
Choosing to start your ADV Flight at a certain point does not
•
work.
Choosing to start the ADV Flight with engines running or not
•
running does not work.
Generating ProFlight weather does not work.
•
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
Getting Started
First Steps... only steps...
Here a very brief bulleted summary of how I use PFE/ProFlight/FS, followed by more detailed instructions on how to do so.
Start FS.
1.
Create a Flight Plan.
2.
Start PFE.
3.
Select Convert a Flight Plan to convert it ready for ProFlight
4.
2000.
Start ProFlight 2000, select the converted FS Flight Plan then
5.
Compile it.
From PFE select the ADV Flight File just created in step #5.
6.
From PFE select Connect to FS.
7.
Enjoy your flight.
8.
... and now with a little more detail thrown in
The very first step is to remember how you used to use ProFlight 2000
and then do so again in exactly the same way as you did in the past. If,
like me, your memory is not quite what it used to be, or perhaps you are
completely new to ProFLight, then please refer to the ProFlight 2000 user
manual. If you can‘t find the printed manual there will be an electronic
one available from the Start menu after the installation is completed.
Basically you need to create a flight plan. This obviously has to be in
FS2000 format so you will have to use a flight planner capable of producing such a flight plan (note: FS2004 and FSX can both read FS2000
flight plans).
Please Note: This restriction to use an FS2000 flight plan format is
obviously due to ProFlight 2000 itself, as this program has not be altered in any way - furthermore it was never our intention to do so nor
will we attempt to do so in the future.
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For those of you who prefer to use the FS flight planner we have
provided a utility as part of PFE to convert FS2004 or FSX flight plans
for use with ProFlight 2000. When you first select this feature you will
have to select the source (FS files) and target (PF files) folders for this
process. Obviously the source folder will be the folder into which Flight
Simulator saves its flight plans - normally C:\Documents and Settings\
Your Name\My Docucuments\Flight Simulator (or Flight Simulator FSX).
The target folder would be the folder that ProFlight defaults to when
you select a flight plan - normally PFE\FS2000\Pilots folder.
A very important point to remember here is your flight will only be
as good as your flight plan. Just as it is in real life good planning is
essentional!
A good flight plan = a great flight
A bad flight plan = ??????????
Once you have configured ProFlight 2000 to your own particular
requirements simply load your flight plan then hit the compile button.
Your flight plan data will now be generated for use by PFE, which
should only take a short time to complete and which you will notice is
very, very much quicker than it used to be (maximum 30 seconds). This
increase in compilation time is achieved by our own version of APLC32
which doesn‘t actually produce a compiled adventure but simply extracts the data required by PFE.
The original ProFlight 2000 ADVenture files were approximately 18 MB
in size whereas the PFE ADV Flight Files are less than 15 kb.
Once complete you may now close ProFlight 2000 and start PFE.
Then, from the PFE main menu use the Select New ADV button and
browse to the newly created ADV Flight Files. Choose the one you
require then click Load.
Pro Flight Emulator Deluxe
PFE will now be running, in much the same way as a ProFlight 2000
Adventure. However, PFE is written using both Visual Basic 6 and
VB.NET functionality so performance is much more fluid, stable and
responsive.
If you haven‘t already done so you should now start FS. Personally I
find it useful to load the flight plan used to create our selected ADV
Flight File into the FS flight planner... confirming Yes to the prompt
about moving to the departure airport. This allows me to use the FS
GPS to ensure I keep to the correct flight plan route expected by PFE.
Once you‘re ready to go you need to Connect PFE to FS, which you
can do using one of two methods. The first, and probably easiest method is to open the Addon menu in FS and select START PFE. You may
also use the Connect to FS button from PFE‘s main menu display.
You will see a message in the FS message window to indicate PFE is
now active and all you need to do now is use the appropriate PFE
hotkeys to contact Clearance Delivery... just as you did with ProFlight
2000.
The rest, as they say, should be history...
A Note about the FS Message Window
To get the best possible message display from PFE we recommend you
setup the message window as follows:-
From the Addons menu select FSUIPC and on the main display
page......
Select ‚FSUIPC Multiline Display Window‘.
1.
Deselect ‚Hide all Single line messages‘.
2.
I also select the Misc options tab and then select ‚Scrolling
3.
message to be in white‘ (but that‘s my own preference).
Aerosoft GmbH 2007
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