Work Around To Have More Than 328 Addon Sceneries?

[Guest]

Greetings (again)!Re: Addon Scenery FolderSeems like no matter what scenery I add to the 239th area, MSFS2002 crashes. Area.238, fine. No problems. Area.239 and it hangs up upon rebuilding the scenery data then wants to send a tech report before crashing.Perhaps it's just me, or is this a known issue. I tried to check but didn't find anything.Thanks,jeff

[Dark Moment 0]

Hi JeffIn my experience, the critical thing is 'layers', not 'areas'. I have tested this carefully in FS2002, and the limit is 331. However, going over this should not crash your system; it should only cause the given scenery area not to appear. Thus, it seems that your problem may lie elsewhere. What scenery have you installed lately? You may have a rogue bgl or something; if you've installed something with an autoinstaller, you may have a corrupted AFD file or something. There've been some unintended nasties about lately.Hope this starts the recovery process. Let us know these answers and then we'll look at what to do next.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

[Guest]

Thanks Mark!331, huh? I thought I would there must be some limit. Too bad. I think what I'll do Mark is go ahead and divide the addon sceneries up into individual folders according to continent. Then, as I "globe-trot" pull out those not being used and install those pertinent to my travels to avoid any quirks.Thanks again for your response!Jeff aka mrMertz

[Dark Moment 0]

Jeff, all I do - given that I hit that limit some time ago - is consolidate stuff. Thus, all my Swiss scenery goes in one folder ... all my Aussie stuff in another ... etc. That doesn't work when exclude and flatten lines are necessary for individual sceneries, but that's rare these days. You also need to keep careful track, because of updates that require removal rather than overwriting of earlier files. But basically that works fine. I must have about 800 different sceneries in all in addition to default stuff, and they are all always active.Some people, I know, have different SCENERY.CFG files for different flying areas. That's another way of doing it, but it's a bit of a pain to have to reorganise such every time you want to change continents. My way works just fine and I can flip from La Guardia to Kathmandu in a moment.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

[Donmo 6]

Hi Jeff, Don. Remember MS has put 22,000 sceneries into it. It can hold way more then the barrier you hit. They do it the same way I do...or vice-versa! What you need to do is to consolidate as mentioned in another post. For example, my Alaskan scenries have 1 entry. There are over 75 sceneries in that folder. What you do is to keep adding similar sceneries into that folder. You can do it by country, continent, author, whatever! Just keep adding scenery bgls into that particular scenery folder and the texture bmps and r.8's into that particular texture folder. It is then self adding too. The only bad thing about doing it this way is if you don't like it, it's hard to get rid of. You can remove the bgl for the scenery, but you will still have the textures. Once the bgl is removed, so is the scenery. No big deal if you're not worried about space. Other sceneries will probably use those textures along the line anyhow. I also keep all my sceneries outside of FS. This way IF I have to reload it, those sceneries are still there. I just click "add" and they are all in. Hope this helps.Don

[Bearracing 3]

Jeff,It sounds like you've got some issues other than just the number of areas you've added on. I've done like what Don Moser has suggested, in that I've consolidated my addons by continents.If the addon scenery does not contain any flatten or exclude files, I then include it into a common scenery and texture folder for that area, for example:Folder names and sub-folders in my Addon Scenery folder in my FS2002 root directory are as follows:01 EuropeUKFranceSpainItalyAustria_SwissGermanyOtherscenerytexture02 AsiaRussiaChinaJapanOtherscenerytexture03 Africascenerytexture04 North AmericaUnited StatesCanadaMexicoscenerytexture05 Oceaniascenerytexture06 Bush CountryAlaskaCanadaOtherscenerytexture07 Norwegian countriesscenerytexture08 Central South Americascenerytexture09 Caribbeanscenerytexture10 Mesh SceneryscenerytextureBy using this method, I have roughly 25GB of addon scenery and I'm up to area.367 and layer.313 in my scenery.cfg file, with no crashes or operational problems.Bear!

[Dark Moment 0]

JeffI see that "Bear" has probably explained things pretty well, but in response to your email - and I publish my response here for others:The critical thing is your SCENERY.CFG file, which cannot have more than 331 layers i.e. scenery entries. It doesn't matter where your sceneries are kept on your hard drive as long as they are properly referenced. By default, there is nothing in your ADDON SCENERY folder, I think, but the file references the SCENEDB and SCENERY folders. You have no cause for any housekeeping unless you're getting up to near 331 layers in your SCENERY.CFG file (not areas - those numbers aren't significant for what we're discussing here). If you are, you can either disable scenery areas that you aren't using by unchecking them or deleting them entirely, or consolidate your folders. The latter is what I do.Any entry that has must have flatten and exclude lines, such as Bill Melichar's earlier scenery, must have its own entry so you can't do anything there. But stuff such as much of the Aussie scenery, or Daniel Gauthier's Swiss stuff (which is wonderful) does not require such. Thus, whenever you download Daniel's airports, for example, you can put the whole lot under one folder for recognition by FS2002.e.g. SWISS AIRPORTS - SCENERY - TEXTURE - and other filesThat way, you can have dozens of airports under one folder. The snag comes when an author updates an airport and changes the names of files, so that you can't just overwrite; you've got to go through carefully and remove previous bgl files from the area's scenery subfolder. But it's no real pain once you know your way around a bit.It's an idea, by the way, to stay fairly well under the magic 331 figure. Too many of these horrid self-installers assume that there is plenty of room for their scenery on most users' disks, and happily write automatically to the SCENERY.CFG (Ireland by ISFD this week, for example, does that). If you are already at the limit, that can cause some confusion. I back up my SCENERY.CFG file often, just in case!Another thing to do is make up different SCENERY.CFG files for different flying areas, but that means manually changing the file every time you start up your sim. Not for me. Consolidation works. As I've said, it doesn't matter where you keep stuff, but keep some sort of record if housekeeping matters to you. I keep a list, for example, of all landclass files in my main SCENERY folder in case of upgrades, replacements, better versions.Hope this helps. Wish I had more time to reply, but this may help a little.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

[Carabou 0]

Hi All,I was having lots of system crashes and very slow response to "Display Option" and "Go to Airport" changes while running FS2002. Here's my solution which works well for me.First my system specs: Dell PIII, 1 gig, 512 mb ram, GeForce 2 400 mx 32 mb, 40 gig hdAs you can see my system is not very powerful, but I've been able to get the most out of it by doing the following:I've set up separate folders for different catagories of scenery with a separate scenery.cfg for each. Example: /scenery Alaska BC Wash (contains Alaska, British Columbia, Washington state),/scenery Switzerland Aus Ger (contains Switzerland, Austria, Germany)and so on for all of my scenery files.I only use the /addon scenery folder for add on files which are common to all scenery.Example:If I'm flying in Alaska and decide I want to fly instead in Germany, I would delete the current scenery.cfg file, then copy and paste the scenery.cfg file which contains Germany. Then rename the copy to scenery.cfg.While it does take a lot of work to initially to set up the scenery folders and .cfg files, it is worth it to me with my lower end computer system.I don't have system crashes while in FS2002 anymore! Also, FS2002 starts much quicker. Also, when I make changes to a different aircraft or option or airport while in FS2002, the change takes much less time to complete.Yes, it takes a bit of work but the results work well for my situation.Hope this helps.Howard

[Dark Moment 0]

Out of interest, at what do you have your scenery cache set, Howard? To my knowledge, more folders in your scenery folder or cfg file, rather than less, should make no difference, as FS only loads what it uses; except when you have a lot held in cache. Not true for aircraft, though, I confess. On start up, FS takes some time to index large FS2002/AIRCRAFT folders and it may well be the same with the SCENERY folder, given the indexing process of new additions; but once you're in, you're in. Switching between airports shouldn't be slow ... I think. Anyone else?Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

[meccadom 1]

You may want to check out Michael Garbers FS Scenery Manager athttp://www.scenery-manager.com/I know that it is shareware; but if you enjoy having different sets of scenery available to you without all the additional overhead of non-used scenery areas, then this is the ticket.I consider it a "must have".Dom

[macwino 14]

Bear, I'm intrigued by your system for organizing scenery. I've been using multiple scenery.cfg files up to now. What I am unclear about is what files, if any, you place in the country folders you list in your message. For example, in the Europe folder, you list folders for several specific countries, as well as scenery and texture folders. From reading your message, I assumed that you would put all the relevant scenery and texture files in the folders with these names and that would be it. If so, what goes in the country folders? Is it just the Read Me files, your notes, etc., or does each have its own set of scenery and texture folders? Thanks for sharing your setup with us. And thanks for your many wonderful reviews. I really enjoy them.Macwino