Scenery Database - Please Help ! Trouble brewing !

[Guest]

Greetings - After installing bush sceneries (multiple files grouped by author names), I always end up running into trouble. At startup now, I always get the "building scenery database" run, which is a sign of trouble. Thereafter, I sometimes (not always) have trouble installing more scenes; sometimes I've lost the borders/coastlines on my 'map view'; sometimes I then get errors trying to use the airport listing and/or 'go to'function. I install scenes one at a time, and test them. I've done a clean install and started from scratch, and it's happening again - this is getting really time consuming and I just want to fly! Can anyone suggest what to look for? Do scenery add-on managers help eliminate these things? Many thanks,Ted K.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

From time to time, a good scenery "cure" involves finding and deleting all the scenery.dat files, and deleting the *INDEX* files in FS2002's main folder.For some odd reason, these can become corrupt at times. Launching FS2002 after such a deletion will take a while, but it will sometimes fix the problem you have.The other issue, if you've made any changes to AI, is possible damage to your traffic.bgl. If AI is working, I suspect that this is less likely, but it can happen as well.If all else fails, on the tips page at FSGateway.com, I have a default, full install scenery.cfg under my Windows 95 install instructions that could be used as a foundation for rebuilding your scenery.-John

[Bearracing 3]

At startup now, I always get the "building scenery database" run, which is a sign of trouble.Ted,Being one that has installed gigabites of scenery and aircraft addons, I too ran into the problem of my system always running "building scenery database" at startup, but my system has always done that and in 1 1/2 years I have never been able to identify what or which scenery install has caused it. I suspect it is one of the LandClass files in my main FS2002 "Scenery" folder. Frankly I don't think it is any problem nor do I believe it is related to any possible impending problem either. Because of several personal obligations, I've had to severly curtail my weekly "Bear Picks", not to mention I ran into a situation of my system being over taxed because of the size of my scenery and aircraft folders (over 45GB for the two). This is causing a large number of other problems for me as well, but as time goes on, I am slowly removing file after file and getting them down to just the files I use most often. Until I get a new system, I really don't know if I can renew my weekly Bear Picks or not.Bear!

[Guest]

Thanks to all for the replies. Can you clarify:"a good scenery "cure" involves finding and deleting all the scenery.dat files, and deleting the *INDEX* files in FS2002's main folder"Where and what should I be looking for the scenery.dat files? I'm not bad at moving or manipulating files, but I don't really know these, what they do, how they're generated, so I want to be careful about what I casually destroy. I can give it a go tonight. Thanks!Ted K.

[Guest LonelyplanetXO]

Try approaching the problem from an analytical basis. I install all addon sceneries in the directory called "addon scenery" in FS. That isolates each scenery set from the default ones. Never mix sceneries ie. do not include more than one .bgl set in one scenery folder. Instead, create sub-directories eg. addonscenery/carriers/cvn67/scenery/texture cvn69/scenery/texture cvn71/scenery/texture cvn73/scenery/texture CharlesDeGaull/scenery/textureWhen activating sceneries, I only ever activate one at a time.So if I have a problem of any kind with the scenery config, its easy to manually edit it & delete all addon scenery sets, then just re-initialise them one at a time until you isolate the problem one.If you say that this method makes you run out of scenery areas in the config then you can simply delete sceneries you use rarely from the config whilst retaining the scenery set in addon scenery. In reality, you should never get to the point of hitting the max.# of scenery config areas. If it ever happens its a hint to clean out your scenery directory.Hope that helps.LonelyplanetXO

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Do a find within FS2002 program folder and subfolders for scenery.dat.These files are generated on the fly, along with the already mentioned *INDEX* files, and are updated whenever you add or delete scenery. As to how they work, I haven't a clue, but they seem to be a method used by Microsoft to speed access to scenery.I have never had a problem removing these files when refreshing scenery....as I've said, they have cured a lot of odd things I've seen, going all the way back to FS2000...-John

[Guest]

Hey John - about *index* files?Thanks for your tip - I found and deleted all the scenery.dat files in my fs2k2 folder and my 'outside sceneries' folder. There were about 250 of them. No change was noted, but nothing bad happened either, and I can see that getting rid of these could clean things up (not that I really understand!) I use a 'Go Back' function to re-write my hard drive to an earlier state when I have real mess-ups, and it's saved my bacon many times, but it's possible that in this process it also 'clones' a lot of these scenery.dat files, thus causing trouble. Who knows?You'd also suggested getting rid of *index* files - in my search I only found about four, and these were ICAO index, flight index, lat index; etc. stuff like that - don't think I should delete these! Can you clarify what you mean? Many thanks to all,Ted K.

[gosta 0]

It's in the FS2002 root folder and called 'INDEX_FILE', without any extension. It should be about 4MB or so in size.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg