Is there a proper way to install Add On sceneries??

[Guest Lindy]

I'm a newbie when it comes to adding sceneries (including mesh files and/or landclass files) into FS2K2. Mostly I just let them pile up in the Scenery Library as they install, unless there are specific instructions in the ReadMe to do otherwise.However recently my FS2K2 has refused to play. I don't KNOW for a fact but I suspect it must be related to either the number of sceneries I have installed or how the sceneries are installed. So I'm turning to you........ the users who have been adding sceneries (and planes) to the various versions of FS for a long time. Is there some trick to adding sceneries/mesh/landclass files to the program? Unless instructed otherwise, I put my sceneries in the Add On folder. Thanks for any tips. -Lindy :-wave

[Donmo 6]

I keep mine outside of FS. I keep them in my C drive in a folder called FSSCENERY. Reason being, if I ever have to do a reinstall, I have all the sceneries still in one place. I also put like sceneries in the same folder. Example: ALL my ABC scenety is in 1 folder inside FSSCENERY. As I add to it, I add the textures in the texture folder and the scenery and adf bgl's in the scenery folder. They are automatically installed by doing that. Same for BFU sceneries. They are all in 1 folder. just keep adding to it. Landclass bgl's go into the main FS SCENERY folder. I do make a backup of them OUTSIDE FS incase I have to reinstall. By doing it directly into FS, they are also automatically installed. Mesh. Again, I have a backup outside of FS. My mesh goes into my FS SCENERY folder. I also set it to HIGH priority, by moving it DOWN the list to about the number 3 position in the scenery library. Everything I have just mentioned works like a charm and I have had ZERO problems with FS98, FS2000 and FS2002 by doing it this way. There are other ways, but this is how I have decided to do it and have nothing but 100% perfect results. I hope that answered you and that you followed that. If not, you know where to find me! :)Don

[Guest Lindy]

Thanks Don......this does help, especially the part about the mesh sceneries being moved downward in the Scenery Library. Your ABC sceneries I did install as you suggested -- all in one file/folder under ABC. Although I put everything in the AddOn folder. Thankfully, though I DO have all my sceneries zipped up on my 2nd hard drive so I don't have to re-download them again.Since you report not having any difficulty, now I'm starting to wonder if I added some specific file that just doesn't agree with FS2K2 -- although I don't have a clue which one it could be. This is certainly a pain in the butt........ suddenly having FS2K2 quit cold turkey on me! :-( And not having any idea what's wrong. Bummer.-Lindy :-wave

[Donmo 6]

Better get it fixxed! I posted a pic of the Maine scenery in the forum. (mine) It's pretty in the fall. When you get her back up, I'll help you. You know that. :)Don

[gosta 0]

Hi Lindy,at what point exactly does FS quit on you? You may want to check your scenery.cfg for duplicate layer/area numbers - this could cause FS to crash to the desktop as soon as you hit the 'Fly Now' button.Cheers,Gosta.

[michal 44]

Per instructions from some scenery designers like Orlando, Matt Fox or Neil I actually treat landclass and mesh as normal sceneries and add them through the FS2002 menu - like regular scenery. I have all my sceneries under "ADD ON" folder and would have a seperate "Lanclass" or "Mesh" sub-folders there. This way I can turn on/off individual landclass or mesh sceneries from within the FS program. There are some overlapping landclass sceneries and I may use one one day or another another day depending where I fly and what coverage I want. I even sometimes like to turn on/off mesh or lanclass sceneries for performance reasons - if I fly at night I clearly don't need them. ;-)Michael J.

[Guest sgreenwood]

Hello Lindy,> mesh sceneries being moved downward in the Scenery Library.I am afraid it does not matter where you install the mesh, since the sim does not consider layers where mesh is concerned. Although I wish it did. Mesh information from all "active" Scenery Library areas is "pooled", and the sim uses the following rules to resolve conflicts:1) When the LOD values differ, the higher LOD level mesh file is used.2) When the LOD values are the same, the higher source data resolution mesh file is used.There is a good deal of speculation about other factors that may be involved (scenery layer, filenames, installation sequence, ...), but none of these have any impact. I expect the sim never needs more than the two rules above.This approach seems to work reliably, wherever you install the mesh, so I doubt that mesh is the source of your difficulty. Based on threads I've read here, I would suggest looking at landclass installations first, then scenery.Like many others, I place my mesh files in separate folders, by source, area covered, or resolution. I do this so I can control which mesh is active, for testing purposes, but this is just my personal preference. No surprises yet with over 8GB of mesh files and growing!Good luck,Stevewww.fs-traveler.comPS: LOD - Level of Detail - specified by the mesh developer, determines the horizontal spacing of elevation data in the mesh file. And the priority mentioned above.

[Francois_Dumas 10]

Hi Steve,as I always have understood it there is no difference BETWEEN mesh files as to where you stack them in the scenery.cfg, as indeed the highest resolution mesh for a certain area seems to be selected automatically. (There is a penalty on having two meshes for one area of course, since the processor needs to read them to determine that fact).But...... since texture AND additional sceneries are laid UPON the mesh, there could be a difference in where to stack it. This is assuming that all terrain profile gets built first (by exectuing the mesh files) before additional scenery is 'draped' over it. If that is true (everything with this software is 'if' ;-) ) then it DOES make a difference to put the mesh files down the stack to be execute first.I have no proof for all this, but this is what I have heard repeatedly from different sources.... I wish MS would deny or conform for once ;-) :-outta Francois :-wave[table border=0 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0][tr][td valign=bottom" align="center]"At home in the wild"[/td][td valign=bottom" align="center][link:avsim.com/alaska/alaska_052.htm|Don's Alaskan Bush Charters]"Beavers Lead the Way"[/td][td valign=bottom" align="center][link:www.avsim.com/vfr_center/mainpages/vfr_flights_main_page.htm]VFR Flight Center]"Looking Good Outside"[/td][/tr][tr][td valign=top" align="center]http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/logo75b.gif[/td][td valign="top" align="left" colspan=2]http://www.fssupport.com/images/moose2.gif[/td][tr][/table]________________________Francois A. "Navman" DumasAssociate Editor &Forums AdministratorAVSIM Online![/bemail: fdumas@avsim.com________________________

[1mikel151 71]

I like Don's way of doing it, very organized. For a scenery designer, I really don't have that much add on scenery, (mostly my own), I to, keep it outside of the main folder. I had d/l an aircraft carrier from a French site last month and it shut down FS when I loaded it, everytime, luckily I was able to open up the scenery cfg and delete it and it was fine after that, never knew what about that scenery caused it to shut down.Michaelhttp://www.geocities.com/res052cd/cmhbanner.gif

[Guest sgreenwood]

Hmmm. Good point, Francois. >But...... since texture AND additional sceneries are laid UPON the >mesh, there could be a difference in where to stack it. This is >assuming that all terrain profile gets built first (by exectuing the >mesh files) before additional scenery is 'draped' over it. I don't use much addon scenery, so I have not tested this explicitly. Common(?) sense suggests that all elevation data is evaluated (according to the above rules), the terrain profile built (using some sort of CLOD algorithm), and textures placed on that profile - as you suggest. This does seem to be the case.Unfortunately, I don't think most scenery is included in this process, other than autogen objects. And we sometimes see suspended trees and buildings, so even they present some challenges. The various routes of small streams over different mesh resolutions is even more curious. I believe "scenery" is designed with location, size, and elevation (absolute, not relative) fixed in the design. If this is the case, the scenery and mesh are independent, except that the sim does provide texture to bridge the area between the scenery and the surrounding mesh. The many airports that appear on buttes or in holes seem to support this view. And I suspect this problem persists no matter what level any or all mesh is moved to in the Scenery Library. But would love to hear otherwise.The growing amount of add-on scenery being designed to work with specific add-on mesh files suggests that some scenery developers see this as an issue that needs to be addressed as well. So I am going to stick with my original (somewhat pessimistic) position, for now. But thanks for the provocative post. I may have to tackle a little scenery design to explore this further.SteveEDIT:I just ran a test using the newly uploaded scenery for Mt. Washington, NH, comparing the elevation of one of the structures using 10m and default mesh, and the structure elevation was adjusted (over 60') to the mesh elevation. So at least some other scenery is "draped" on the terrain, along with autogen, roads, streams and textures. I first tested with the mesh level below the scenery, then with the mesh level above the scenery. The results were the same. This does seem to suggest that the mesh is processed first, no matter where it is in the Scenery Library. This is reasonable behavior, and supports my perception that mesh location/layer is irrelevant. Of course is also means there is no harm done if it is all placed as Don suggests:>I also set it to HIGH priority, by moving it DOWN the list to about >the number 3 position in the scenery library. Cheers

[Guest Lindy]

It seems as if there are plenty of opinions as to how to install scenery add ons, with really no surefire way of doing it. To Gosta who wanted to know exactly when FS2K2 was giving up the ghost: 99 percent of the time, I start the program, everything loads up, and I'm sitting at the default Meigs location. But as soon as I access the menu (to change aircraft, location, or whatever), the whole thing freezes up and I have to do a reboot. The other 1 percent of the time, the program goes through the loading procedure, but never shows the default Meigs..... I just get a black screen. Again I have to reboot in order to get out of it. It could be some new scenery that was just installed, but I don't know which one as I installed several just prior to the problems starting.Yes, Don, I expect to have things fixed up, one way or another, by the end of this month -- and an upgraded, muscle machine to boot!! ;-) If I DO have to reinstall all my sceneries, though, I intend to be much more careful about how they go in and plan to check each and every one as soon as I install it to make sure it works. Thanks for the replies, guys. :-smooch-Lindy :-wave -beerchug

[michal 44]

Lindy,I don't know of it is good or bad but there seems to be more than one way to do things in FS2002. Early into my FS 'career' I realized that some scenery authors provide very good installation instructions - some just hardly mention it since they figure the subject has been treated 100 times. Orlando Sotomayor provides very good instructions - and you can use those instructions for anybody else's files. He suggests the method for landclass files which is very clever because it takes care of situations when you have multiple authors covering the same area. But being able to disable/enable individual sceneries (mesh, landclass, anything ..) from a menu within the FS2002 I consider a very handy feature indeed. If you put sceneries inside the scenery folder you loose this ability. But it is all up to you how you want to run your scenery 'shop'.Michael J.

[alastairmonk 0]

Just to add to the above, I find it useful to keep the readme files in a "Docs" folder for those "compilation directories", like Don's Alaska scenery) which gives you an easy reminder as to what's been installed.

[Francois_Dumas 10]

Thanks for trying that Steve ! As I said, I wish we would have some more detailed info from MS as to these matters. I haven't found anything useful (on this issue) in the SDK's yet.So it is still a lot of trial and error ;-) :-outta Francois :-wave________________________Francois A. "Navman" DumasAssociate Editor &Forums AdministratorAVSIM Online!email: fdumas@avsim.com________________________

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Lindy,Before you do anything drastic, try a simple solution:Rename your scenery.cfg (for example, "scenery. old") and launch Flight Simulator.The graphics engine will rebuild the scenery.cfg without all your add-on scenery. If it boots correctly, then you can proceed to re-organize your scenery in a more logical fashion.I would follow Don's very good advice - personally, I keep everything out of the Flight Simulator folders so as to avoid confusion.Best regards.Luis