Newbie ESP 'user'

[idmorris]

Hello to all

Having owned and ‘played’ with FSX for a short (ish) time, I thought it would be of great benefit to the students I teach at an aircraft engineering technical college. As you are most probably aware, the EULA for FSX is constrained to the retail/personal use market and as the use of the ‘sim’ would be in a commercial environment, we (the college) were ‘forced’ down the ESP route.

After trialing the ‘demo’ version, seeing that it was very much like FSX and reading it was FSX disguised with a little/lot more, we (the college/company) acquired the license to use the software. At this juncture I will have to say that as I work for a ‘company’, the ‘company’ IT department holds the admin permissions for most of the system and it is ‘locked down’ to a certain degree. Anyhow, IT loaded/reloaded the software that was downloaded from MSDN and all was thought to be fine and dandy. That was until it got back into my hands.

Having noticed that the ESP user interface is primarily designed for students to access ‘missions’ via ‘ESP Launcher’ and when within the program a number of the menu items are ‘greyed’ out to stop them medaling, it kind of knocked me back a little as I was hoping for a FSX style user interface. After fathoming out ‘–dev’ in the command line would allow me access to the normal FSX ‘in play’ menus I was reasonably satisfied………...but now after trying to get used to it, I have a number of questions I hope someone can help me out with…..

Apologies for the above ramblings…………..and for the next couple of paragraphs, I am, what you could say, a ‘user’ with an interest of how it works with having limited tweaking experience…(textures/camera defs)

1. When opening ESP from esp(-dev).exe, do you always have to ‘fully’ load the default flight?

Is it possible to load an FSX style main menu? I have compared esp.cfg with my fsx.cfg and under the [User Interface] headings the situation line in ESP is directed to the default flight in my user folder. Whereas FSX states: SITUATION=FLIGHTS\OTHER\FLTSIM
The question therefore is: if I copy the FSX situation line into esp.cfg, will I get the FSX style menu?

Esp.cfg

[USERINTERFACE]
SHOW_MISSION_CAPTIONS=0
PAUSE_ON_LOST_FOCUS=1
PROMPT_ON_EXIT=1
SITUATION=c:\documents and settings\espuser\my documents\esp files\Cessna 172 NWI Rwy 27 Eng running.FLT
Map_Orientation=2
ShowAllACPaintSchemes=0
SelectAircraftManufacturer=All
SelectAircraftPublisher=All
SelectAircraftType=All

fsx.cfg

[USERINTERFACE]
PageID=1
OpenATCOnCreate=0
SHOW_MISSION_CAPTIONS=0
PAUSE_ON_LOST_FOCUS=1
PROMPT_ON_EXIT=1
SITUATION=FLIGHTS\OTHER\FLTSIM
Map_Orientation=2
ShowAllACPaintSchemes=1
SelectAircraftManufacturer=Airbus
SelectAircraftPublisher=All
SelectAircraftType=All
DisplayFuelAsWeight=1


2. When using the ‘in play’ menu to ‘Select aircraft’ I only get a limited aircraft choice as per ‘demo’ version. I have checked ‘\\simobject\airplanes’ and I have the ‘full’ range of aircraft as per FSX version. Within esp.cfg the [Main] section states:

[Main]
User Objects=Airplane, Helicopter
SimObjectPaths.0=SimObjects\Airplanes
SimObjectPaths.1=SimObjects\Rotorcraft
SimObjectPaths.2=SimObjects\GroundVehicles
SimObjectPaths.3=SimObjects\Boats
SimObjectPaths.4=SimObjects\Animals
SimObjectPaths.5=SimObjects\Misc
ProcSpeed=5195
PerfBucket=6
Location=124,102,1156,876,\\.\DISPLAY1
Maximized=1
HideMenuNormal=1
HideMenuFullscreen=1

my fsx.cfg.

[Main]
User Objects=Airplane, Helicopter
SimObjectPaths.0=SimObjects\Airplanes
SimObjectPaths.1=SimObjects\Rotorcraft
SimObjectPaths.2=SimObjects\GroundVehicles
SimObjectPaths.3=SimObjects\Boats
SimObjectPaths.4=SimObjects\Animals
SimObjectPaths.5=SimObjects\Misc
HideMenuNormal=0
HideMenuFullscreen=1
ProcSpeed=5512
PerfBucket=7
Maximized=1
Location=163,-24,1203,752,\\.\DISPLAY1


To the uninitiated they look very similar apart from a couple of lines.

The question is: How do I get to see all the aircraft that should be/are available in 'simobjects' ?

Can I also state at this time that after IT had talked to their MS man, it was stated that the demo version was the full version. Thats fair enough, but when they acquired the license there was no key/activation codes to enter. This makes me think that the software may still be in ‘demo’ mode and not showing all the ‘full’ version options.

Another factor bothering me in relation to the above is that ESP is loaded onto an additional seperate drive (E:\) and the ‘user’ folder is on the C:\ drive. Therefore, as esp.cfg is on C:\ when it is asking for ‘simobjectpath’, is it only looking for it on the C:\...or the E:\ ?

3. At some point, hopefully soon, we will be acquiring the license to run a decent aircraft add-on. I seem to remember that to run/view the weather radar (WXR) in FSX, I needed to download FSUIPC4. Therefore the question is: Will FSUIPC4 work with ESP?

Lastly, I will apologies for a bit of rambling, my naivety with respect to the config side of things and toooooo many questions, but I’ve got to ask as my Google search string never hits what I want!

Many thanks in advance.

 

[BASys]

Hi Folks

idmorris -
Personally not an ESP user,
but following should assist -

When opening ESP from esp(-dev).exe, do you always have to ‘fully’ load the default flight?

In both your fsx & esp .CFG files,
section titled [MAIN], add the following -

DisablePreload=1

I only get a limited aircraft choice as per ‘demo’ version.
<snip>
The question is: How do I get to see all the aircraft that should be/are available in 'simobjects' ?

In ESP,
AIUI,
there are only 12 flyable airplanes,
and 13 AI/non-flyable airplanes.

See - FSDev - Wiki - Aircraft - Listing - Default Types (FSX)



HTH
ATB
Paul

 

[TOWSIM]

Additional aircraft

Hi idmorris,
I had the same issue when I started with ESP. What I found out:

The additional aircraft are meant to be used for AI traffic only. Therefore you would probably run in license problems too if you tweak them to be flyable.

The main difference between AI aircraft and normal aircraft is that they do not have a cockpit file. If there is no cockpit file, they do not appear in the menu.

AI aircraft have probably a simplified parameter set which may cause an erratic behavior under normal conditions.

If you want to add aircraft to ESP under legal aspects you must buy it or you may construct aircraft by yourself. FSX aircraft are basically usable with ESP if they are not copy protected or otherwise internally bound to FSX . But even this is outside the legal scope.

I remains complicated

Regards
TOWSIM

 

[idmorris]

Thanks for the replies BASys and TOWsim

Will amend the .cfg file tomorrow.

As for the AI only aircraft models I feel a bit miffed as I was led to believe that the aircraft listings would be as per FSX. At this moment in time I feel I (we the company) have been mis-sold the product.

I will try and get in touch with 'our MS' man and see what can be done.

Many thanks again guys and hope you wont mind me tapping your knowledge at a later date

Ian M

 

[idmorris]

Right, have had a go of changing the .cfg [main] to include disablepreload but it didnt work. Tried changing the state of Hidemain menu and that didnt work either.

As ESP is for a student to use a pre-programmed 'mission' I 'assume' that gaining access to a FSX style main menu would not be part of the overall program.

 

[Simon853]

ESP does not include the front-end menus that FSX has. If you want to have any kind of selection system prior to loading the first flight you have no choice but to implement the mission selection front-end.

Si