After buying EGJB from earth simulations (and with zero support so far, the forum there is pretty dead and the authors have yet to respond to my support request). I noticed via their forums that developers using custom autogen are cancelling out each other with each install. For example, installing Earth Sim and then Iceland X will cause Iceland X to over write the earth sim autogen, thus leaving us with no autogen for the previouse areas installed (FT Grenadines, France VFR among others use this custom autogen). They do have a neat "merge tool" but it does not seem to work for me. Add to the mix ORBX FTX switcher that shuts on/off their own custom autogen and it leaves us with a mess. What are others doing to remedy this issue? Keeping seperate autogen folders depending where they fly?

No one else notices this issue?

I always make sure FTX is set to default and then I take a copy of my default.xml file before installing new scenery. If the file was overwritten, I track down what was changed and add it to my copied default.xml before copying the file back to the Autogen directory. I also have a program that can decompile spb files so that any changes to those can be sorted out as well.Its a long and tedious process and like you hoped the Merge Tool would save all the hard work, but it doesn't work for me either.Best wishesSteve

Steve thank you for your response. I was thinking I was going crazy.I have a few questions for you if you don't mind but I am on my phone and HATE typing with it (visual if you will, an elephant smashing down on a cell phone with his foot). So I will post them later. Among the questions, I notice not only is the default.xml changed but other files (and not being on my PC I can't recall the names). Do all the files need merging or just the default.xml?Thanks again

Steve thank you for your response. I was thinking I was going crazy.I have a few questions for you if you don't mind but I am on my phone and HATE typing with it (visual if you will, an elephant smashing down on a cell phone with his foot). So I will post them later. Among the questions, I notice not only is the default.xml changed but other files (and not being on my PC I can't recall the names).Do all the files need merging or just the default.xml?Thanks again

Only if they have been modified. The thing I look out for is a size or date modified change. If so, I check if the size has increased and will therefore assume the info has been merged and not overwritten. If its been overwritten the pain of merging the data begins. To verify, I fly the scenery and make sure the autogen matches the screenshots from the developer and in particular roof styles and do the same with another add-on scenery that I know has previously modified the files. Any faults indicate an overwrite and not a merging of the existing files.It's rare for the spb files to be modified. FTX/ORBX do, as well as updating default.XML but its all self contained via the region switching so can be safely ignored so long as you install scenery with FTX set to default. However flying out of ORBX into another scenery area will obviously show incorrect autogen.The key is to determine if the files have been overwritten or actually updated. The other thing to watch out for is default.xml being modified and written in UTF-8 format instead of UTF-16 which will half the filesize but all the data is actually there (Aerosoft Santorini did that).The spb files can be uncoded to xml using a program called spb2xml.exe which I got from somewhere a longtime ago, can't remember where. The files can then be recoded back to spb format using a program from FSX SDK called simpropcompiler.Best wishesSteve

Edited February 24, 201214 yr by Steveo38

As I feared this all sounds very cumbersome. I wonder why this has gone on so long with little complaint from the community and little done about it from the developers?I do appreaciate your help Steve.

I wonder why this has gone on so long with little complaint from the community and little done about it from the developers?

So far it hasn't happened to me and I own tons and tons of addon commercial scenery from several different developers. I think you are the first one to complain about this 'issue', at least here on AVSIM. Earth Sim is aware of it so someone must have brought it to their attention as they issued a 'fix' - http://earthsimulations.com/MergES-Printer-Friendly.pdf. So far my default.xml has never changed in size or date from the original and I own great programs like those from FTX. I would assume this is the same situation with the majority of flight simmers. Thanks for bringing it to our attention here at AVSIM though as many users of Earth Sim might not be aware of this 'problem'.Best regards,Jim

The spb files can be uncoded to xml using a program called spb2xml.exe which I got from somewhere a longtime ago, can't remember where. The files can then be recoded back to spb format using a program from FSX SDK called simpropcompiler.

http://lc0277.gratisim.fr/spb2xml2.zipscott s..

So far it hasn't happened to me and I own tons and tons of addon commercial scenery from several different developers. I think you are the first one to complain about this 'issue', at least here on AVSIM. Earth Sim is aware of it so someone must have brought it to their attention as they issued a 'fix' - http://earthsimulati...er-Friendly.pdf. So far my default.xml has never changed in size or date from the original and I own great programs like those from FTX. I would assume this is the same situation with the majority of flight simmers. Thanks for bringing it to our attention here at AVSIM though as many users of Earth Sim might not be aware of this 'problem'.Best regards,Jim

Hey Jim, MergeES does not work for me. It still creates issues. The problem is creating one way ward scenery can cause this.