From time to time, I run into freeware scenery that has a scenery.dat file included with it. Typically, I don't use it and let FS9 rebuild the scenery indexes on it's own. It takes longer to load up the first time a scenery is used but that's all right, it never takes that long. Sometimes I forget to remove the scenery.dat file before installing the software and FS9 rebuilds the index anyway. I'm guessing that's because I have a non-standard FS9 installation, (on it's own separate drive), and that the scenery.dat file was compiled in a standard install by the developer. So FS9 recompiles the index for my system structure...fine.So I was installing a scenery update yesterday. The readme had a note for me not to forget to delete it's scenery.dat file after installing the update...and I'm scratching my head...Mark

From time to time, I run into freeware scenery that has a scenery.dat file included with it. Typically, I don't use it and let FS9 rebuild the scenery indexes on it's own. It takes longer to load up the first time a scenery is used but that's all right, it never takes that long. Sometimes I forget to remove the scenery.dat file before installing the software and FS9 rebuilds the index anyway. I'm guessing that's because I have a non-standard FS9 installation, (on it's own separate drive), and that the scenery.dat file was compiled in a standard install by the developer. So FS9 recompiles the index for my system structure...fine.So I was installing a scenery update yesterday. The readme had a note for me not to forget to delete it's scenery.dat file after installing the update...and I'm scratching my head...Mark

Deleting the dat file simply "forces" FS to re-index the scenery files - something it will normally do if it detects a difference in file dates.I normally make it a habit to delete the scenery.dat file whenever I add something (and it happens to have one) or if I make a simple change to an entry such as adding or deleting a bgl in a particular scenery subfolder.If I do not do that, occasionally FS does not "see" what I did and does not re-index. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks Opa...it does make a bit more sense now. One more quick question then. Is it advisable to delete the indexes in your ...\Username\FS9 folder every once in awhile? I've noticed that is where FS9 stores what it retrieves from the individual scenery folders. Would that force FS9 to rebuild all of the scenery indexes in one shot? Thanks again...Mark