I'm looking for a product that can accomplish the following requirements:

 

1. Manage scenery and texture files and identify conflicts and have the ability to enable/disable (move files and/or update necessary config files)

2. Manage aircraft files/gauges/DLLs and identify conflicts and have the ability to enable/disable

3. Monitor before/after images when any add-on install is performed and display what was added/changed

 

The basic problem I'm trying to solve is knowing when products conflict and being able to disable those conflicts and/or move various add-ons "In or Out" of view of FSX core processing.

 

I've seen a lot of performance tweaking tools, but never anything that manages one's entire scope of what FSX sees and uses. I'm not really interested in "performance tweaking" as with my current hardware performance is not a problem (hardware has finally be able to make FSX seem reasonably fast even if done by brute force).

 

Problems I run into a lot (I have over 3TB of add-ons from scenery to aircraft to textures to you name it) are conflicts between products so what I find myself doing a lot is backing up all the key FSX directories that I know are being used before doing any "installs" of new products. This worked for a while, but when I started moving into the Multi-TB backups it became a time consuming process to backup and restore if I found a conflict. Also, some products write to the Windows registry which complicates my backup/restore process.

 

I have thought about coding my own tool/product but if something already exists, I'd prefer that route and I'm not sure I have enough motivation to code such a tool (I have many other projects consuming my free time). I know this is functionally possible.

 

Anyone know of such a tool?

 

Thanks, Rob.

I know only for scenery, "scenery configurator" - just search Avsim library for that. It's really good. But i didn't hear about application to manage DLL's, that would be awesome BTW, i do that manually right now

Hi Rob. I wish it were that easy, a tool for this and a tool for that.

 

Yes scenery configure would work however, its important not to go jumping into modifying a scenery config file haphazardly moving stuff around. Many freeware and payware sceneries require that they are placed in specific order within the library. Learning the architecture of the scenery library and proper way to prioritize sceneries is actually a way of avoiding conflicts. IE top are local, next are regional, next are global.

 

Regarding managing aircraft a good payware tool would be Addit Pro here

http://www.byteforge...p_fsx/index.htm It can do some of what you are look for. I don't use it, but I know the structure of FSX very well and what goes where and I take extra care to not install something without knowing what it's doing and where it's going.

 

On the before and after images, I can only think that you might look to something like I use which is snapper screen saver here

http://www.michielov...ftware/snapper/

 

Before installing a scenery say of an airport, slew to that area some elevation above the airport to give you a good perspective, take a screenshot with the above at high resolution, save the flight in that position in case you need to come back to it, and then install your scenery, update your library and it will recompile into the exact position you have slewed to. Once loaded, take another screenshot, then you will have two screenshots to compare to see what has changed etc. I do this with mesh addons because some mesh can effect various aspects of your ground textures displayed based upon the slope, and perhaps I might not like the changes for some reason and it may effect elevations of airports in a manner that creates some issue.

 

My message to you on this topic is to learn how FSX works, and install (add) sceneries, aircraft with care, one at a time. Get to know exactly what your scenery is, where it should sit in priority and keep rigorous management of your library. Check for conflicts immediately after installing a new scenery. Know how "addon scenery" related to more global stuff under the Scenery>Global and World Scenery Folders....do some reading.

Sometimes a conflict is just one file located in global or world scenery folders that need to be turned off or on.

 

cheers

 

 

Also see

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/388125-scenery-order-assistance-please/

Thanks for the input all, so basically it sounds like there is no such tool. :(

 

I'm VERY familiar with how FSX works, hence why I'm looking for a "canned" solution to save me time writing/coding my own solution. As you folks are aware, the process of conflict validation is labor intensive and I'm looking for an application that can remove some of the labor ... figured I'd see if something already existed before I started to code my own solution (if I can find time that is).

 

My development environment (I'm an MSDN Ultimate subscriber) provides monitoring tools for various activities (DLL calls, file monitor, registry monitor, etc. etc.) ... but they are not specific to a task (i.e. FSX). I have successfully attached VS 2010 (and now 2012) debugger to FSX processes so I have a pretty good understanding of what goes on including some of the more strange things that go on (i.e. scenery ordering/loading).

 

FSX 3rd party add-on community is a tad bit of crap shoot when it comes to performing due diligence with their installations. Some 3rd party vendors are very good and determine environment conflicts and prompt one along the way and provide known issues in readme files. However, some 3rd party vendors just don't care and overwrite or make changes as needed. Heck some 3rd party tools "install process" (use that with a grain of salt) consists of a 1 line readme ... "copy all these files to this directory".

 

I spend a lot of time navigating my way around, in, and out of the mess and have a rather extensive list of what I need to do if I want to perform a specific flight/activity - so I'm constantly swapping in/out files.

 

This unfortunately is just the way it is ... can't force 3rd party vendors to do otherwise. It's not that their product is bad either, they have done some nice work that I would like to enjoy.

 

I am a little surprised nothing like an "FSX Manager" exists already after so many years ... surely I'm not the only one that bumps into regular conflicts with 3rd party vendors and/or has grown their library of 3rd party products to 3TB or so?

 

Rob.

 

P.S. I had at some point tried to purchase the source code to FSX, at first I got a positive response ... but then it mysteriously became unavailable and not further contact (I think because FSX may indeed come back to life in near future -- as in a new product).

so basically it sounds like there is no such tool.

I have one. My Brain! Unfortunately its no longer supported or in development.

Hi Rob, perhaps we were thrown off by the "newbie" status, which you are obviously not.

 

There is no tool that I know of, but several tools which you may be familiar with that do some of the job, ie like search for dupicate gauge files etc.

 

If you can make such a tool perhaps you will have found a new calling and can quit you day job because for the right price folks might pay for such a product.

 

Good luck.

I have one. My Brain! Unfortunately its no longer supported or in development.

 

LOL ... my problem is that my Brain seems to have a limited "RAM" capacity, and some things must go in order to make room for other more important things

 

Hi Rob, perhaps we were thrown off by the "newbie" status, which you are obviously not. There is no tool that I know of, but several tools which you may be familiar with that do some of the job, ie like search for dupicate gauge files etc. If you can make such a tool perhaps you will have found a new calling and can quit you day job because for the right price folks might pay for such a product. Good luck.

 

But I don't want to quit my day job ... I enjoy it (well, most of the time). It's unlikely I'll invest the time to develop an end user product especially with Prepar3D 1.4 lurking. The more I thought about this project the more complex it became and I can see why other's have not attempted such a difficult project. In addition, to do this correctly it requires one install FSX from scratch so a base image can be made and all subsequent installations are monitored and images made.

 

Anyway, thanks for the information all. Much appreciated.

 

Rob

Notebook + pen!

I prefer excel spreadsheet actually, but even then I get lazy and don't update.