3 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Hi Dan,

I found an exception to that rule.

I have moved my \Scenery\World folder outside of P3D and linked it back in as a scenery area using an add-on.xml - this does not work properly! In this case the "scenery" and "texture" subfolders have to be linked separately. I can only guess, but maybe there are textures in that folder that P3D is looking up independently of the scenery elements - and which it cannot see unless you provide the direct lookup path.

Best regards

You meant you actually moved your p3d \scenery\world folder out of the sim and use add-on.xml to bring it back, and that does not work? The fact that it does not work is kinda expected no?

17 minutes ago, Anxu00 said:

You meant you actually moved your p3d \scenery\world folder out of the sim and use add-on.xml to bring it back, and that does not work? The fact that it does not work is kinda expected no?

Yes, that is what I did, and it does work - why shouldn't it? The simulator does not "naturally" know where that folder is, the scenery.cfg tells it where to look for it. There is no reason why it can't be somewhere else.

The issue that I found was, that it can not be linked back in as a "Scenery Area" (which is odd), but both subfolders "scenery" and "texture" have to be separate components in the add-on.xml. If they are, then it works just fine.

In the old days (two weeks ago) I was running all kinds of content off RamDrives on my simulator machines due to the surplus of memory left over by the 4GByte barrier. The newer P3D versions made that more convenient to do with each version with more and more config files for everything (symlinks were no longer necessary) and V4 now being the best of them all.

Best regards

5 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

I found an exception to that rule.

I found one too.  FSDT installs a separate folder and add-on.xml file for each of their products, as well as linking both scenery and texture folders.  This aesthetically displeased me so I created one folder and one add-on.xml for all FSDT products and their support software.  Thus I learned that their KMEM will only work if the scenery and textures folders are linked separately.  I have a separate problem with their KMEM in that neither default nor addon aircraft will display light splashes on the ground and I a waiting for a response from Umbreto in their forum, but I don't think it is related to how folders are linked (the problem exists in either case).  FSDT says in their literature that they do something non-SDK with textures and shaders so not sure what games they are playing.

Hello @ll,

the Prepar3D V4 Addon Organizer has been updated to version 0.93. It is still freeware and still beta: please use the backup feature frequently.

New in this version are

• Direct editing of scenery area entries
• a Package view so you can see where your addons reside and change the loading sequence
• Importing an existing scenery.cfg as add-on.xml package
• Exporting the whole library to enable the user to run external scenery related tools that need to read all bgl's but have not been updated to V4 logic yet (flight planners, makerunways, EFB maybe)

http://lorby-si.weebly.com/downloads.html

Best regards

6 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Hello @ll,

the Prepar3D V4 Addon Organizer has been updated to version 0.93. It is still freeware and still beta: please use the backup feature frequently.

New in this version are

• Direct editing of scenery area entries
• a Package view so you can see where your addons reside and change the loading sequence
• Importing an existing scenery.cfg as add-on.xml package
• Exporting the whole library to enable the user to run external scenery related tools that need to read all bgl's but have not been updated to V4 logic yet (flight planners, makerunways, EFB maybe)

http://lorby-si.weebly.com/downloads.html

Best regards

I had a funny feeling you would come up with something. :) Many thanks Oliver.

9 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Hello @ll,

the Prepar3D V4 Addon Organizer has been updated to version 0.93. It is still freeware and still beta: please use the backup feature frequently.

New in this version are

• Direct editing of scenery area entries
• a Package view so you can see where your addons reside and change the loading sequence
• Importing an existing scenery.cfg as add-on.xml package
• Exporting the whole library to enable the user to run external scenery related tools that need to read all bgl's but have not been updated to V4 logic yet (flight planners, makerunways, EFB maybe)

http://lorby-si.weebly.com/downloads.html

Best regards

Thanks very much for this tool, Oliver. Very handy!

20 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

This doesn't sound right. Are you certain that your reference path in the XML is correct? Generally speaking, unless your file overwrites something in /Scenery/World/Scenery (!) it shouldn't matter if you load it at Layer 1 or 2 - or where the file actually is on your computer, as long as it is referenced correctly.

I'm pretty sure, yes.   I tried with the Airports of Norway freeware scenery from Flight Sim Norway.   It comes with several altitude-correction BGLs for a dozen or so airports.

I tried loading them using this XML fragment in my add-on.xml:

 

Quote

   <Addon.Component>
        <Name>Base Scenery</Name>
        <Layer>2</Layer>
        <Category>Scenery</Category>
        <Path>F:\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons\FS Norway\Airports of Norway\Base Scenery</Path>
   </Addon.Component>

However, upon loading, the correction did not seem to take effect, as all scenery objects were sunken into the ground by a foot or two.   I also tried using layer 1, and layer 0 (which caused the sim to not even start.)

The only way to get the corrections to work was to dump them into Scenery/World/Scenery.

3 hours ago, kaosfere said:

The only way to get the corrections to work was to dump them into Scenery/World/Scenery.

Hi Rob,

I did a few tests with this (see a few posts above), and a possible solution could be, to not link the top folder (=the scenery area) but the /Scenery/ subfolder itself as <Path>. I tried to move the whole /World/ outside of the sim, and it only worked properly when /Scenery/ and /Texture/ were separate components.

Best regards

It's something strange with the new version. They read the scenery.cfg in different ways or am I doing wrong? In version 0.91 i got my entire scenery.cfg with both typed of added scenery but in version 0.93 it ony show my four scenerys added by the addons-xml files in the addons folder.

 

/Thomas

29 minutes ago, Seat* said:

It's something strange with the new version. They read the scenery.cfg in different ways or am I doing wrong? In version 0.91 i got my entire scenery.cfg with both typed of added scenery but in version 0.93 it ony show my four scenerys added by the addons-xml files in the addons folder.

 

/Thomas

Hello Thomas,

v0.93 now expects your scenery.cfg to be in Unicode, as per specification. This sounds like something has happened to your scenery.cfg. I suspect that some installer may have changed the encoding of your scenery.cfg file - can you check that with Notepad++ (or send me the whole file?). If you still have the "scenery.cfg.orig" file, rename this back to "scenery.cfg", it should have retained the initial encoding.

If you want, send me a Message here in the forum with your email address or contact me through the "contact us" dialog on the Lorby site.

Best
Oliver

Hi Oliver,

just downloaded v93 and i have the same issue as Thomas, the program is only showing scenery added via the XML method. I've opened the scenery.cfg in notepad++ and as far as I can tell its encoded in UTF-8, is that correct?, Happy to send you my scenery.cfg file if it helps.

 

Thanks again 

 

Steve

53 minutes ago, egntpilot said:

Hi Oliver,

just downloaded v93 and i have the same issue as Thomas, the program is only showing scenery added via the XML method. I've opened the scenery.cfg in notepad++ and as far as I can tell its encoded in UTF-8, is that correct?, Happy to send you my scenery.cfg file if it helps.

 

Thanks again 

 

Steve

Hi Steve,

when in Notepad++, please change the encoding to "UCS-2 Little Endian". Make sure that there are no funny characters in the resulting file. Or revert back to the original, which has been saved as "scenery.cfg.orig".

I would like to get one of those files, yes. This didn't happen on my test system, strangely enough. But I feel that I have to stick with the specification, else the P4AO would at some point scramble the scenery.cfg beyond recognition.

Best regards

Hi Oliver,

 

thanks for that, converted and now full scenery.cfg listed in V93. I've kept a copy of the original cfg file in UTf 8, as I said happy to send it to you by email or however you want.

 

Thanks again for your help

 

Steve

On 6/10/2017 at 8:47 AM, Lorby_SI said:

The issue that I found was, that it can not be linked back in as a "Scenery Area" (which is odd), but both subfolders "scenery" and "texture" have to be separate components in the add-on.xml. If they are, then it works just fine.

Just to make sure I understand, can you post an example of this actual reference in the add-on.xml ?  And just also the example of the actual "linked back" that did not work?  e.g. "this works"  but "this does not work".

I want to move all of the 3rd party add-ons out of the sim install folder once and for all, make a backup of this folder, such that the next time I need to reinstall the sim (or change the system) I don't have to spend days reinstalling anything back.

Thanks

Hi Oliver

 

slight update to my above post, everything is showing in V93 bar DRZEWIECKI Washington X and New York City V2. They are shown in the scenery library in sim and do display correctly in sim also, however  they do not show up in either the sceney.cfg when in notepad++ or in V93 of your program. I have used their updated installers, 

Aagin, any ideas as to why not? If you want I'm happy to take this to your own sub forum, I realises this is a little off topic for this thread,

 

thanks for your time

Steve

 

Edit, 

restarted the sim and all is well, they are now listed correctly, not sure what the issue was but all good now,

thanks once again, Steve

Edited June 11, 20179 yr by egntpilot
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