Tired of changing scenery.cfg files.....

[Jive1 2]

Hey!
Since many years I have been collecting sceneries of all countries, and I installed these in my FS9. I can say that I have many beautifull airports and regions in my FS9. That is what I did over almost 10 years. At one time I got from my FS9 the messsage that I could not install any more sceneries because the memory did no longer accept more. That was whel I had somewhat over 2000 sceneries installed. That was the end at that time.

Then I started to make different scenery.cfg files, separate ones for each continent, and that was a good solution at that time. I had 8 different scenery.cfg files.

Flying from one to another continent however made me stop that flight when I was midway, somewhere over an ocean or over a no-mans-land, I stopped the flight, changed one to another scenery.cfg file, as well as my moving map ( PLAN-G ) settings on a second pc, and continued the flight towards the planned arrival airport. But these 8 differend scenery.cfg files give me from time to time real troubles, especially when I had forgotten to adapt things.
I want to change that, but I don't know how I can do better and also easier....
My problem to me is, always having to change settings during the flight, it makes flying less realistic, whereas every decent flightsimmer searches for more reality in his flights...
Is there anyone who can give me good advise on how to organize my transatlantic flights without having to stop midway and change my scenery.cfg file, each time risking to forget things and having to redo the whole stop and change....
I have now over 3500 scenery folders in my FS9, and the air is full of WOAI and MAIW aircraft and I want to keep them all directly available for when I have to change my flight, and so that I don't have to change settings...

You know, many of these sceneries installed made me also modify the original default scenery files and after some time there are so many modifications inside FS9 that I cannot even remember why I had to  make these.... My FS9 became  since that time so crowded that to make no mistakes when modifying something this became really not realistic anymore....
In fact, I became somewhat tired of all these chances of making mistakes, and I do sometimes, allthough I want continue flying my FS9 and I want that my FS9 world becomes still better and more realistic...
So... I have a problem!
Any advise on how to proceed whit better and easier organisation of FS9 is welcome.
Greetz
Jive1

 

 

[Jim Young 2,356]

For one, I would get Scenery Config Editor - http://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/.  It has a better interface and it will look for and find errors and let you know. Before you start up FSX you can open up the Scenery Config Editor and disable any scenery you want (perhaps all the scenery except for the area(s) you will be flying in and, of course, any default scenery). 

 

I really do not know how successful you can be by enabling/disabling different scenery configs during a flight.  I have never heard of such a thing in all of my years of flight simming (since 95).  How can that work?  You might think it is working but it is in fact not.  In any case, I have no further suggestions.  Just thought you might find the Scenery Config Editor useful as I have for FSX.

 

Best regards,

Jim

[alexos 1]

Erm Jim... He's talking FS9!

[rainerk 1]

Scenery Config Editor works for both FSX and FS9.

[HaraldG 559]

Hi Jive1,

 

maybe the following isn't the kind of information you hoped to read, but I just can't imagine that you can load sceneries which aren't active at the beginning of your flight without leaving FS2004 and starting it new.

 

What may help is to re-organize your sceneries. I know that I'm in danger of taking "owls to Athens", as you may have organized your sceneries similar or even better.

 

At the beginning I organized my sceneries after continents ( + one "worldwide" folder for worldwide mesh, timezones, object libraries etc - I never used the "Addon Scenery" folder), within these after countries, within these after cities... but: I would have come to the point you are now at if I would have continued this way. That brought me to the following:

 

1. I checked if I really needed these sceneries. For instance, after making a RW journey there, I once downloaded every forest landing strip in southern Patagonia, but I realized soon that I never flew (and I think I will never fly) an appropriate plane to land there. It was hard to delete them though, but at the end I did.

 

2. I checked if there were outdated sceneries which I once liked but which were developed for an "early" FS2004 (in certain threads we would call it FS 9.1-9.3) or even FS2002 so that they were outdated regarding optics and performance. I decided to delete many of these when I built my 9.5.

 

3. I checked if there were airfields or sceneries (which I really needed) which were from the same developer, who always used the same libraries, the same textures, the same file naming system... I tried to copy them into one scenery folder (Example: The Russian airports by Andrei Anta). This method requires backup, backup, backup, and many testing but I saved a lot of entries in scenery.cfg. This method also works for "light sceneries" with just two or three files with recognizable names (with ICAO code in the file name) - I use to gather them in a kind of generic scenery folder for a country or even a continent. The generic continent scenery folder has always a lower priority than the country folders in the library; and the generic country folder has a lower priority than the city/airport folders.

 

I managed to have many sceneries but only one scenery.cfg with ~ 700 entries this way.

 

Now to the problems with changes in generic scenery folders.

I recommend to install every scenery which comes with an automatic installer (even payware) to a sandbox first. (I have on that works both with WinXP and Win7.) This gives you the opportunity to look at the files the scenery installs and/or modifies. You can even copy them into the appropriate places.

(Just for the lawyers: This is not a method to evade copy protection. You have to apply the usual methods of copy protection, too, if going this way. And be aware that if you have a limited count of installings, you will use two of them this way if you're going to install the scenery into your real FS installation after checking it in the sandbox.)

- If I find out that a scenery modifies stock FS2004 files, I make an additional folder within the new scenery's folder named "Scenery.gen" or similar where I save the original FS2004 files. By the way, I mostly test the new scenery without the modified stock files first; there were many cases in which not using them created no negative impact for me (only freeware).

- If I find out that a scenery places dummy afcads somewhere in scenery\world\scenery I make a .txt file with an explanation "this file belongs to..." and place it there. Or, as I know that I have a generic country scenery folder with a lower priority (see item 3 above), I place the dummy there to have it in vicinity instead of just somewhere.

- If a scenery places a landclass folder, a phototerrain folder, a mesh folder, an airport scenery folder and a city scenery folder etc etc and registers all of them as single entries within scenery.cfg, then I can always try to make the folder paths more economic.

But again, I make a temporary backup of the freshly installed folders and files first, before I try to modify them.

 

Dealing this way, I think that I can uninstall almost every scenery I have with all files it installed and/or modified. The only exception are additional texture files, but if I leave these on my system after deleting the scenery they belong to, they "only" need space and do no harm. Nevertheless I can often identify them with their date and name.

 

I hope that I could help at least a little bit.

 

Regards and good luck

Harald

[Jive1 2]

Hey!
Thank you guys!
First of all I ever tried fs-scenery config editor once, but at that time I thought that I could not use it for my purposes, but I will again try it.... Surely when I know that it works for FS9 as well. Problem maybe?... Will I be able to install with Windows7?
Enabling different scenery configs during flight of course is only possible when stopping FS9, change scenery.cfg and restarting FS9 on the spot where you were arrived at the stop, so continuing previous flight. And even when you think it does not work, I can say it works, but it is ennoying.
What GeyerH says is very interesting... But it is rather extensive... I will certainly take it to study a bit, and I will later return on the subject....
Thank you anyway for trying to help!
Greetz
Jive1

[hgschnell 10]

I use FS Scenery Manager 1.8

You can group your sceneries by continent or country or whatever you want.

Then you can activate/deactivate a whole group by one click:

 

 

[Jive1 2]

Hey!

Sorting the sceneries is not a problem, I can do that in FSNav... or in other programs.

The problem is that, once you get about 2000 scenery folders or more, depending on your whole system, the system tells you  that there is no more room for more, wether activated or non activated sceneries....

That is the reason why I had to make several scenery.cfg files....

Greetz

Jive1

[HaraldG 559]

@hgschnell: Am I right that this programm is just an editor for the scenery.cfg file?

 

BTW, if I read "DDR 2012": May I ask which Bautzen scenery do you use? I'm looking for a good one, same for Kamenz and Großenhain. Currently I use the GDR military airfields by Michael Spengler, but they are a little outdated and have elevation problems in FS2004 so that my AI planes hang in the air... Sorry to the OP for being off-topic here.

 

Regards from Dresden

Harald

[hgschnell 10]

@hgschnell: Am I right that this programm is just an editor for the scenery.cfg file?

 

BTW, if I read "DDR 2012": May I ask which Bautzen scenery do you use? I'm looking for a good one, same for Kamenz and Großenhain. Currently I use the GDR military airfields by Michael Spengler, but they are a little outdated and have elevation problems in FS2004 so that my AI planes hang in the air... Sorry to the OP for being off-topic here.

 

Regards from Dresden

Harald

 

Yes it is, but a very comfortable one.

 

For Bautzen I use "Scenery Bautzen.rar" by Michael Schulze with some bgls deactivated...

 

The folders DDR1990 and DDR2012 contain only sceneries which I have in 2 different versions

(ETNU, EDAH, EDCG) from "DDR-flugzeuge.de"

[Jive1 2]

Hey! GeyerH,

Indeed, that is what we need...

A scenery.cfg editor showing in a first column all scenery folders of the Addon scenery folder, with a second column whereto one can add those sceneries that one needs for the next flight, and in a third column, with a button activating the editor that composes the new scenery.cfg file according to what sceneries have been added in the second column, and so that one can see what is in the ewly generated scenery.cfg and what is not.

At last there should be a button that when clicking it puts the new scenery.cfg file on the right place in FS9.

This makes it very easy, comfortable, on condition that all scenery folders in the Addon scenery folder are sorted according e.g. continent, country, region, city, etc, to edit a new scenery.cfg file each time that only has very few lines in it, what guarantees the lessest possible errors...

You were right GeyerH,  but since I am a neighbor of yours living in Belgium and speaking Flemish, my English being poor, I could not explain it from the first time....

Greetz

Jive1

 

 

 

to use any scenery.cfg file

[HaraldG 559]

 

 

Indeed, that is what we need...

 

The credits belong to hgschnell...

 

Harald

[hgschnell 10]

Hey! GeyerH,

Indeed, that is what we need...

A scenery.cfg editor showing in a first column all scenery folders of the Addon scenery folder, with a second column whereto one can add those sceneries that one needs for the next flight, and in a third column, with a button activating the editor that composes the new scenery.cfg file according to what sceneries have been added in the second column, and so that one can see what is in the ewly generated scenery.cfg and what is not.

At last there should be a button that when clicking it puts the new scenery.cfg file on the right place in FS9.

This makes it very easy, comfortable, on condition that all scenery folders in the Addon scenery folder are sorted according e.g. continent, country, region, city, etc, to edit a new scenery.cfg file each time that only has very few lines in it, what guarantees the lessest possible errors...

You were right GeyerH,  but since I am a neighbor of yours living in Belgium and speaking Flemish, my English being poor, I could not explain it from the first time....

Greetz

Jive1

 

 

 

to use any scenery.cfg file

the scenery.cfg created by FS Scenery manager 1.8 is not smaller (with few lines).

It just sets the unmarked as "inactive".

 

And it is not nessecary to put all sceneries in the "Addon Scenery folder", they can reside anywhere.

 

The "Folder structure" of FS Scenery Manager 1.8 is independent of the Windows folder structure.

 

But all is no problem, just comfort...

:smile:

[Jive1 2]

Hey! Hgschnell,

What you say is correct, and I know, but...

The scenery.cfg should be as short as possible, with no "inactive" lines if possible. Inactive lines make that file uselessly bigger.

And with a system as previously explained, one can at every time before the start of a new flight shorten that file by only, and on a very comfortable way, editing the "necessary" active sceneries. The chance for memory errors becomes so small then, and FS9 will run stable... That is at least what I was saying. But mainly for me it is a question of not having to modify the  scenery.cfg every time before an new transatlantic flight, because the systen I use now gives me e.g. for Wetsren Europe a scenery.cfg of almost 1000 lines, and that is not all, because if I want to fly from Europe to say Atlanta, I have to add also a lot of American sceneries, my scenery.cfg of USA is presently 800 lines, but wil become bigger. But already now my FS9 system can no longer support 1800 lines, and that is why I must somewhere over the Atlantic stop my flight, reload the other scenery.cfg en restart my flight... And that is not so amusing anymore.

So I thought if we could do as axplained for the fscfg editor, we would no longer have to stop over the Atlantic....

Greetz

Jive1

Hey!

You are right, a scenery file should not necessarily reside in the Addon scenery folder. But let us then the first column of the editor as axplained, design so, that one can put any scenery file in there, even when they are on another drive or in the main folder of FS9 like some scenerymakers prefer it. As long as we can point and copy every scenery folder to the second column, it will be OK. It should of course be possible to also have these sceneries in the sccfg file, and mention them in the third column, where one could first sort the files before clicking the button that edits and places the scenery.cfg in het FS9 main folder....

Greetz

Jive1

[hgschnell 10]

I manage "only" about 1200 scenery layers, so I cannot say if it works correctly for you.

 

I have no problem with many inactive layers till now, so you have to test it in your environment...

 

Greetings form Bavaria

Guenther