Payware plane not appearing in FSX

[veeman]

I just purchased an non-Steam payware plane and downloaded it to my hard drive. I can see it in my program files in MS Games, but it does not appear in the aircraft selection screen of FSX.
Any help in correcting this problem will be apprectiated.

[JJ FSX]

Did you point the installer to the "yourinstallpath\FSX" folder or not?

Most 3rd party installers have to be pointed to start at the root of FSX. (Many older installers by default point to the old disc versions path, not correct for FSX-SE).

Once pointed to the root of FSX they install Aircraft under "yourinstallpath\FSX\SimObjects\Airplanes\"AIRCRAFTFOLDERNAME" and if they have effects they install those effects under "yourinstallpath\FSX\effects". And if they have gauges they install them in "yourinstallpath\FSX\gauges". Sometimes also create folders under ...FSX/Sound. And if they have any documentation they either put it in their aircraft folder or directly under the FSX folder in a subfolder named after the company or aircraft like ...FSX/"Eagle Rotocraft Simulations" and ...FSX/"A2A" does.

The exception is for STEAM DLC, they always create a numbered folder under the "yourinstallpath\FSX\DLC" folder, and I'm not sure if they create one for the actual aircraft under ...FSX/SimObjects or not, they may leave the aircraft under the numbered folder and then make an entry in fsx.cfg to make fsx look there for aircraft in addition to the standard SimObjects\... folders. I don't know because I've never purchased/owned a DLC aircraft.

Anyway that's where everything goes when we install many freeware aircraft by manually copying them (they come with instructions). And it's where installers should be placing things after being pointed to the root of FSX.

When we click on the Select Aircraft button, FSX searches and reads all aircraft configs (aircraft.cfg) from the subfolders under.....yourinstallpath\FSX\Simobjects\Airplanes\.. where it gets the aircraft information to populate the window with aircraft. That's why there can never be a duplicate name in any aircraft.cfg. Duplicates won't show.

[veeman]

I definately did not do all of that. I will work on it tomorrow. Thanks a million for your interest and help.

[shadowgravy]

I have FSX-SE installed to a second SSD where all my flight sims live, and my install path for non-Steam addons including aircraft purchased from the A2A Simulations web store, sceneries managed by ORBX Central, and weather injected by Active Sky 16 is:
S:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\FSX

If your FSX-SE is installed to the default Steam Library location on your "C" drive, the path will probably be:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX

[veeman]

Shadowgravy my FSX is installed on my C drive as you have described and I see a number of files under FSX. Now what do I do? Thank you for your help.

[veeman]

OK gentlemen. With your help and and some information here on Steam, I got it flying. Again, many thanks to you both.