Over the years, I've been asked to place afcads in many different locations within the FS9 scenery folder structure/hierarchy. Many times an author will specify the location and that's where I'll put the afcad. Often times the location is not specified or an author has simply dropped it into the "Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery" folder. So I'd like to have this clarified if possible.What's the optimal placement of an afcad when it's location is not specified? Also, when an afcad, (or any .BGL file), is placed in the "Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery" folder where does it rank in terms of scenery priority? Now with regards to the "Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery" folder, please note that I'm not talking about the "Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Scenery" folder. I see that Microsoft defaults the "Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Scenery" folder to [Area.038] which is a very low priority, (large number). The folder that I'm talking about is it's parent folder..."Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery".Many scenery designers drop their afcads into this folder and if I'm not mistaken, this parent folder doesn't appear to hold to the normal scenery folder requirements of "Scenery Name\Scenery" and "Scenery Name\Texture". Anything that is placed in this folder appear to be rendered...but at what priority? Is it rendered after everything else of before or where?I hope I haven't confused anyone but I may have missed the explanation of this special folder somewhere along the lines. So once again, what is the optimal placement of an afcad when an author doesn't specify it in their distribution and where does the "Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery" folder rank in terms of priority within the FS9 scenery folder hierarchy?So please advise and thanks for all of your help!Mark

I have a dedicated folder in the FS Scenery Library called 'ADD-ON AFCAD & Traffic' which has a scenery folder ( no texture ) to put all the addon afcad and traffic files.In the priority of things , it sits at #10.Hope this helps.Pete.

Any AFCADS that come with an addon scenery are ususlly placed within a "scenery" folder within that scenery. Most of my addon sceneries themselves go into FS9\addon scenery. So typically within... FS9\addon scenery\ABC Airport\scenery.I dont think it matters if the "ABC Airport" scenery itself goes into "addon scenery" or into the main FS9 root. The main thing is that when adding the scenery to the scenery library in FS9 you place it correctly...ie above any landclass or mesh.I am somewhat confused by your post as I have never seen any scenery instructions to put the AFCAD within FS9\addon scenery itself, only within a "scenery" folder.Peter

Just "Addon Scenery" makes no sense. It's not an active scenery folder. It is listed in the scenery.cfg file and the proper location for files is Addon Scenery\scenery (and Addon Scenery\texture). I think when authors refer to Addon Scenery, they mean in fact Addon Scenery\scenery.It's very simple really, place Afcads in a scenery's own scenery subfolder if available, like the above example of ABC Airport\scenery (wherever ABC Airport is located). If such a folder is not available, because it's just an Afcad and not a complete scenery, place it in Addon Scenery\scenery. It may have a relatively low priority, but above it should only be addons, so it's in the best location anyway.Don't overcomplicate things, it only makes FS more prone to instability, IMHO. For example, traffic files. MS placed its own traffic file (traffic030528.bgl) in Scenery\World\scenery, why would you then place your traffic files anywhere else?

I'm not sure which folder is the best place in terms of the ideal for the system - usually it doesn't seem to matter, though I have at least one payware scenery that if I move the AFCAD to anywhere other than where the installer placed it, everything goes haywire. So maybe it does matter what folder. I'll yield to the experts on that.For me the big issue is making sure you don't have duplicates. That's a major trouble maker. There is a freeware program that will find duplicates and I run it from time to time. It is called Scan AFD.