Infrequently Asked Questions - #1

[lliaudais 2]

Greetings enthusiasts...If you enjoy TileProxy as I do, you know it can take up some serious hard drive space with tiles and images... maybe too much!Q: Why do I have 'identical' tiles from different seasons in my TileProxy World Scenery Folder?- FAll, HardWinter,SPring,SUmmer,WInter -003001013200012FA.BMP003001013200012HW.BMP003001013200012SP.BMP003001013200012SU.BMP003001013200012WI.BMP003001013200013FA.BMP003001013200013HW.BMP003001013200013SP.BMP003001013200013SU.BMP003001013200013WI.BMP003001013200020FA.BMP003001013200020HW.BMP003001013200020SP.BMP003001013200020SU.BMP003001013200020WI.BMPA: Because you fly in different seasons.FSX has 5 seasonal variations for most of the default ground textures. TileProxy apparently makes tiles with names based on the season in which you fly - because that's what FSX/FS9 expects to see.Q: But there's only one set of images downloaded.A: Correct.Q: Then what's the difference in the seasonal tiles that TileProxy makes?A: None - except their names.Q: So I may have up to 5 'seasonal copies' of the same textures?A: Yes, possibly, and you always will if you fly in the same area in all 5 seasons. Q: Can I delete the extras (to save space) and will I have to fly over the same area again to restore missing tiles?A: If you delete all but one particular season that you will fly with in the future, you can delete the tiles with other seasonal endings.The remaining season may not be 'complete' when you do this but you would fill it in as you fly with it in the future - heck, in that case, it's not (seasonally) complete now and the situation is the same.Q: Couldn't I just make all the tiles the same season?A: Not where a name already exists and more importantly, would you want to risk overwriting a high resolution Summer tile with a low resolution tile from the "Fall Collection", but with the same name? Better to pick a season to stick with, bite the bullet and get rid of the rest.Q: what if I want to keep all the seasons?A: That's OK, too. Remember that you won't ever see the seasonal 'copies' except when you fly in that season and then you will probably continue to make more tiles that are only visible in that particular season.I almost always fly the last week of June in the Northern Hemisphere because it's the most daylight hours of the year so it was almost by accident that I stumbled across this - and answered my own question posted many months ago...Loyd

[Guest Anubis]

It is a pity that Windows does not support hard/soft links such as any Unix system. With links, we could easily keep one set of tiles and create links (that is, artificial files) with different file names all pointing to the unique real file.EDIT: I stand corrected. I found a nice shell-based utility called fsutil (should be available on any Windows variant) which allows the user to create hard links (which should fool the system to believe there are several files).The way to use fsutil is the following (from a command shell):fsutil hardlink create OLDFILE NEWFILEwhere OLDFILE is the existing filename and NEWFILE is the hardlink you want to create. So for example let's say you have the existing texture tile12345FA.bmp and you want to create the other seasonal variants you may do:fsutil hardlink create tile12345FA.bmp tile12345hw.bmpfsutil hardlink create tile12345FA.bmp tile12345sp.bmpand so on...Use the full path to point out where OLDFILE and NEWFILE are located.Cheers,Paolo

[lliaudais 2]

Paolo,Nice find!This would enable someone who wants to fly with system/realworld time and date to "make" the scenery in a single season initially and then create seasonal "ghost" copies for the other seasons if they wanted?This would have to be handled by a script of some sort - you definitely wouldn't be doing this by hand!But then wouldn't it be easier to just run a scrip only when the seasons change to convert all the real tiles from SU to FA and a few months later to WI and then HW and then SP and then back to SU? That way you only "update" 5 times a year instead of doing it each time you made scenery at a new location.Interesting idea...Now I'm especially glad that I stay in the long summer days...Loyd

[Guest Anubis]

Paolo,Nice find!This would enable someone who wants to fly with system/realworld time and date to "make" the scenery in a single season initially and then create seasonal "ghost" copies for the other seasons if they wanted?This would have to be handled by a script of some sort - you definitely wouldn't be doing this by hand!...Loyd

Hello Loyd,Yes, an hard link would allow you to make ghost copies (that is, without using additional HD space), allowing TileProxy to create .BMPs only once for each specific location.This could be done by a simple automatic script that would scan the TileProxy scenery, find out all the BMPs, check if the seasonal links exist or not, and create them if needed.You could run this script at the end of each FSX session or only before the beginning of a new season, as you like.In a Unix environment (that is, where I am coming from) it would take 5 minutes to write it. I can do that in Windows, but I need to find some freeware Unix utilites before (mostly I need a good find command and some filename manipulation operators).More on this later...Cheers,Paolo

[lliaudais 2]

Script: still a neat solution for someone that needed it.The cygwin package might be adequate for script writing; lots of features.I haven't had any occasion to do any UNIX stuff in the last decade or so... had to write a shell with C for a course many years ago.I was the only survivor of that course so they never offered it again - too advanced for the tech college crowd, I guess...Loyd