>Paul, the scenery designers on the beta team share your>concerns, and have been disappointed about this change also. >We aren't allowed to discuss the goings on within the beta>process, so I can't say much more...but understand that>scenery design was represented on the beta team...and we>worked hard to detect the problems with the product.>>I decided, some time ago, that I'd do the bulk of my modelling>testing in fs2k2, and use fscof only as a final check just for>the ability to conveniently refresh. For terrain, perhaps it>won't work...but for models it sure will.>>>Best,>>Bob Bernstein>Edmonds, WaBob,Thanks for the extra insight as per the design representation on beta. It might have been preferred that if MS felt that they needed to dumb things down for the general public that they could have provided a

John, I think this is a very poor decision and I'm very disappointed by it. Probably the only people who need to change scenery or access the scenery library while actually flying are scenery designers - and by definition they are the very people who will be aware of any pitfalls in this process. For example, refreshing scenery in-flight can cause problems with autogen. Well, the solution is easy: re-start FS! I use my AutoAsm program to generate Airport 2.60 buildings and trees from the LWM/VTP data. With FS in flight, I run AutoAsm to generate a new Airport file, run the file through Airport to generate the new BGL and then, in FS, open the scenery library and close it again - and then see the modified scenery pop into view! If the autogen didn't work properly it wouldn't matter - because I'm working on Airport objects. The autogen will appear later the next time I re-start FS. If I can't do this in FS2004 then I think it's a very bad decision. My computer is quite slow and it will result over a long period in possibly hours of wasted time. I would hope that in the next version Microsoft would give some thought to the needs of aircraft and scenery designers. Some aircraft and scenery refresh commands that can be mapped to keys would be very useful indeed. Best regards, Cheris Wright

Hold off guys... There may be a way.. In XML type gauge programming there was a fix I found that could reload XML gauges after modifying them while the sim was running..( 02 & 04 ) (>K:RELOAD_PANELS) The first thing I did when FS2004 came out was to find what was different ( and exciting ) in in the gauges aspect of the sim.. Lo and behold... A variable named (>K:REFRESH_SCENERY). Make a little gauge, place it on the panel and giver a hoot.. Could be the golden nugget.. Send me an e-mail if one needs to be made via the AVSIM mail service. Regards,RomanGREEN BAY PACKERS][/i :-ukliam :-beerchug

As someone who must have used Scenery Library to force a reload of the scenery many thousands of times over the past couple of years, I can only add my voice to those expressing concern at this retrograde step.As much of my work is with photographic scenery, the inconvenience can be mitigated to some extent by switching the confirm on exit check off and making sure that Previous Flight is my default. Because most of the startup time is taken up with loading custom terrain textures, the difference when working with this type of scenery is less significant. However, when working on other types of scenery, this will be a serious set-back, and as far as possible, I will be tempted to use FS2002 during most of the development cycle (as someone else has suggested) provided what I'm developing is compatible with FS2002 and FS2004.I'd just like to point out that this doesn't just affect scenery designers. One of the tips I added to my photographic scenery manual was that if the scenery had become out of focus, e.g. due to excessive slewing, it could be reloaded via Scenery Library, I know from feedback that many of my users have taken this onboard, and I've already had a posting from a user (not a developer) on the Visual Flight forums expressing disappointment at this aspect of FS2004.JohnVisual Flight - VFR Photographic Scenery of England & Waleshttp://www.visualflight.co.uk

I concur! This is a very bad move on the part of MS. Although for GMAX and 3D models you had to restart the sim (FS2002) to see the changes, simple changes to airport layout etc. could be effected and viewed by refreshing the scenery library. This will become a pain now.I guess I will follow Bob's example and use FS2002 for scenery design...not a very good solution though.Shez