Date Name Comment - NO URLS Your comment:
2009-06-24 13:00:24 Christoph @all: If you have any problems, please try contacting me by mail. As you see I'm only rarely checking back here by now. If you want to praise autower, go ahead though! :-D 2009-06-24 12:59:01 Christoph @Hans: I honestly don't know what's going on there. I'm inclined to think that it's FSUIPC crashing, though (but I have no idea why). 2009-06-24 12:55:16 Christoph @Paul: Have you tried rebuilding the datafile? Do you have write access to the directory where autower.dat should be? Have you tried using the command-line version? 2009-06-24 12:53:47 Christoph @benny: Nope. FSX has this functionality built-in. 2009-04-18 17:29:12 Hans Hi there. 2009-02-14 21:36:57 Paul Southan Hi John, 2009-02-05 18:29:50 benny Do YOU have an autotower for FSX? 2008-10-06 03:01:11 Tom Clayton Nearly two years and I'm just now finding this? Somebody slap me! Thanks for the hard work creating this! 2008-07-07 12:50:41 Christoph Hey John, thanks for doing the helpdesk! :-) 2008-06-13 16:29:15 John OPA Change this line in the .ini file to -1000 it should do the trick 2008-06-09 14:34:29 Opa I also would like to know if it is possible to disable the green bar which displays the tower which is being accessed. I see several options for length of display in the ini file but nothing to completely disable it. I too find it distracting when flying. An e-mail about this has come back as undeliverable. Fantastic program! 2008-03-22 16:53:45 Steve. Thanks John. 2008-03-22 16:11:59 John Steve Open the autower.ini file with Notepad it will give you all the info you need to make the changes you want. You may have to restart FS to see them. 2008-03-22 14:15:10 Steve. Hi, 2008-03-10 00:26:22 Joe Lorenc One issue that can cause the Invalid File Handle is using some of the utilities that close services, programs, etc. Choosing to close close or stop the SERVER service in XP will create the issue for me. (ALCLARITY - a new util on AVSIM seems to have it set to STOP and the restart, for instance). Also - if a bgl has a zero size I get errors as well. 2008-02-29 23:27:59 Martin Afonso I was tried to deleted and create a new .dat. The results as same. The positions are corrected. Exist any form to EDIT the autower.dat file? 2008-01-13 22:09:47 Christoph Hi Martin, you can try two things: If you have installed the sceneries after you installed autower, try deleting the autower.dat file and let autower rebuild it. This will result in the tower positions being scanned from the current scenery. If after this the tower positions are still wrong, then the sceneries themselves do not provide (correct) tower locations, and in this case you're only left with the option to manually adjust the tower positions using an AFCAD program. Well, you could also try to convince the scenery publisher to inlcude correct ones, but I'm not sure how fruitful such a request is :-) 2008-01-04 12:40:53 Martin Afonso Great product. But i've sceneries of TropicalSim (www.tropicalsim.com) and world sceneries (www.worldsceneries.com) of Brazil and Caribbean. But When autower loads, the correct position of the tower of this sceneries has scramble. Whow can I force the correct position of tower in this cases? 2007-09-10 23:54:24 Christoph Hi Chris, please get in touch with me by mail on this issue... I'm pretty sure we'll find a solution :-) 2007-08-27 11:47:10 Chris Eve Chris, a great product that I've used for many months with total success, but now, on my new (faster) computer, I've got a larger (excessive?) number of ai aircraft installed, hence FS takes longer to initialise, and Autower seems to "time out" with the error message "FSUIPC connection failed: IPC sendmessage failed all retries" followed by "A configuration error occurred. Cannot continue". This is totally repeatable with over 400 aircraft installed (yes, I know, it's a lot, but I like variety ;-), when I reduce the number of aircraft to around 350, no problem at all. I have very few "flyable" aircraft permanently installed, so it's purely an issue with the amount of ai I've got. I'll be spending some time picking and choosing exactly which ai aircraft I really do want and retiring the rest, so it's not too much of a problem (I really couldn't live without Autower now I'm used to it :-) but I thought you might be interested in case someone else has a similar issue. 2007-06-23 02:46:12 Dennis I like it the DLL works perfect but I cant get the exe to work. Am I missing something.I want to lower the control tower position,but the DLL only seems to use the preset locations 2007-02-23 03:02:30 Hugh A fabulous and exciting utility that greatly enhances my enjoyment of FS2004. I recommend it! 2007-02-18 07:05:18 Kino I knew your excellent tool autower on magazine. Have got and installed. It's wonderful ! I get the great fun when replay my touchdown. (from Japan) 2006-12-20 15:47:50 Christoph Holy shit... this thing has been online for just over two weeks, and already there have been posts with spam links and others trying to insert arbitrary html tags - I deleted them, but wow... the bad guys are really fast nowadays... :-O Anyway, concerning the invalid file handle thing: The one thing I don't understand is why only autower would experience this -- I'm using plain old Windows API (CreateFile) in the most normal way. So I don't have a clue why this gives errors for some of you. The only somewhat relevant page I can find is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304101/EN-US/ . You might just try to restart Windows and see if the error goes away. I'll compile a different version which will show the filename it's trying to access, just to make sure that this is not causing the problem (but I doubt it anyway)... 2006-12-17 12:07:35 Mark I also get the "Invalid file handle" error. It did not start till I installed a Dreamfleet aircraft and uninstalled it. With the plane was Realityxp gauges and the Garmin trainer program that shipped with the plane, all uninstalled also. I hope this helps because I would like to keep using your utility, it is a fine one. 2006-12-10 13:05:16 Christoph Hi Pete, I just double-checked it: autower is correctly using the specified tower altitude, if there is one in the AFCAD, and only calculating it if there is none. You can verify this by starting the *EXE* with a loglevel of DETAIL, then going for instance to YSSY and LFSB and noting the differences in behaviour. Just in case: make sure that your "custom" airport has a higher priority than possibly conflicting ones, and that autower.dat is up-to-date (rebuild it if needed). Should you need further assistance, please contact me by mail. 2006-12-10 12:33:17 Pete Hi Chris, just like to add my thanks to the growing list for your great utility. I seem to have one problem though, while Autower correctly reads the Lat/Lon co-ordinates I set in the AFCADs the altitudes are overidden by the settings in the autower.ini file. is this behaviour correct or am I doing something wrong? Many thanks. 2006-12-09 21:31:36 Marco Chris: I have tried the DLL and executable 1.04. I still get the same error. The only difference is that it's not "error was 0x46a" anymore but "Not enough server resources for this command" (as you wrote in you reply). And with about 80 GB there is more than enough free available space (and it's running on the local hard drive too). If there is I will try a later version. Thank you anyway for your replay. 2006-12-09 20:32:58 Christoph Roy: Sorry, both of the errors you describe are not reproducible. However from the Server logs, I can see that your computer is infected with at least one Spyware program (SpamBlockerUtility). Since chances are very high that this is not the only infection, your computer most definitely doesn't behave as it should anymore. I recommend you reinstall your operating system, because your computer has been taken over anyway. 2006-12-09 20:27:00 Christoph Marco: Please download version 1.04 above - it should also give you the error, but at least it will show it in a human-readable way, instead of throwing hex numbers at you ;-) I don't really have a clue here, because the error seems to be quite cryptic: "Not enough server resources for this command". The only hint I can try to give you, but it's really just guessing: make sure you're running autower on the local hard drive, and check available space (needs roughly 3 MB) and file permissions. You might also want to try to use the executable instead of the DLL and see if that works. 2006-12-09 09:51:56 Marco Hi Chris, I get these error messages: "Invalid file handle while opening database file, error was 0x46a" and "No airports in database - exiting!". Do you have any clue? Thanks. 2006-12-08 22:20:05 Roy Ryland SEE Previous message.. Also I've downloaded the two files you have here and my Winzip says it won't unload them, because they're not sure they are a fix file??? 2006-12-08 22:17:23 Roy Ryland I like this program. A great improvement over the default tower view. 2006-12-08 11:10:58 Paul Southan HI Chris, 2006-12-07 12:05:13 Christoph You can fiddle around with the ZoomLevel and set it to a smaller value; however, when the plane is "far away", FS seems to automatically use binoculars anyway :-) 2006-12-07 07:37:47 Paul Southan Hi Chris, Can I alter the config file so that the distance between the tower and the plane, is more than its current setting when flying at cruise altitude? For example, to me, the distance when flying at altitude sometimes seems to close to the tower. Don't get me wrong I am certainly not complaining ...grea litle program and thank you again. 2006-12-06 11:55:00 Brian Franklin Finally! I've been annoyed bt FS9's inability to reposition the tower for SOOOO long; Thank you Chris - great work! 2006-12-06 11:36:31 DanKH Nice to see that your work is being appreciated...Happy Coding. 2006-12-06 10:55:52 Christoph Hi Paul, I'm not entirely sure I got your question right, so I'll just post what I guess could be the answer... The tower will always be set to the airport which is currently closest to your aircraft. So if you're flying from A to B, and C,D, and E are on your way, then the tower view will be at A, then at C, then D, E, and finally B. The view is switched whenever the "new" airport is closer than the one you're currently "locked" to. Just try it out! :-) There is no way to have multiple tower views at the same time, if that's what your question was about. 2006-12-06 10:49:11 Mohammad Omar Great and fantastic addon for our FS simming exhilaration. Thanks for the great job. Now it is my essential FS9 addons! 2006-12-06 09:18:38 Paul Southan Hi Chris and thanks for your program. I m a bit dumb when it comes to pcs and not sure if I am suing it correctly but is it possible to the plane you are flying from the control twrs of all airports on a route within a certain radius? 2006-12-06 05:37:07 Dean Paulauskas A simple addon for FS9 with great effects. Nice to watch landings now with tower view. Excellent. 2006-12-06 01:52:52 Alexander Alonso Fantastic addon. I've wanted this type of tower view since first booting up FS9. Thanks again! 2006-12-06 00:15:14 Mike 'Cruachan' Campbell Many, many thanks! Just what was needed and it does make such an important difference to the way I am enjoying the sim. 2006-12-05 23:34:58 Rob "Holland&Holland" de Vries Simply a great tool. Fire and forget! Thanks for inventing and giving your talent to the FS community. Where's the paypal donate button? 2006-12-05 23:11:15 Your1st Customer Hi Chris, I am persuaded that every effort is valuable. You might set up one of those "Honor system" pay channels (I think there is one at Amazon?). No one has to ID themselves and you never know who sent what. If you set up one, I'd be happy to slip you a couple 'o bucks! You'll never get rich, but it gives those of us the opportunity to compensate your efforts. 2006-12-05 21:27:21 John McKeon Yes! Thank you indeed for this simple but elegant utility. Also congratulations on your equally simple but elegant web page. It is a joy to behold and a model to others. 2006-12-05 16:05:37 pat I'm really enjoying this ! Thanks 2006-12-05 15:23:00 Paul Johnson GREAT little app, Chris. Yes - it needs the little blue "doing something" bar moving slowly to the right as the db is being constructed. . I'll look for it in 1.03! 2006-12-05 14:27:18 Ghiom Viguie Congratulations I would say the best little add-on recently. 2006-12-05 13:34:29 Earl Buice Wow, this is what the tower view should have been all along! I can now have an idea where I am in relation to the ground due to the "messages". And when landing, I can watch the plane land from the tower if I want. Thanks for this fantastic little program. I highly recommend it! 2006-12-05 12:34:32 Richard Åsberg Congratulations on having one of the headlines over at AVSIM today telling the community about your great program :-) 2006-12-05 12:14:19 Ismail Hakki Güzel Great Work! thank you very much. 2006-12-05 11:35:33 Jay Kae You are the man! Wonderful and creative, thank you ever so much for this 2006-12-05 09:29:34 Russell Blagg Hi, 2006-12-04 03:21:10 Cliffp GREAT! Have wondered for years why MS did not do this from the beginning. Good to see your fix here. I had this problem regarding error connect to FSUIPC. 2006-12-02 00:34:51 Bill Thank you for this great utility. I left a thank-you on the Avsim FS9 forum also. 2006-11-30 22:11:42 Christoph I have just set up something like a mini-guestbook -- feel free to leave your comments!