I know this has prob been answered many times but i am still learning lol and just want to get a direct answer Yes or no lol

 

Ok lest say for example i do an entire hard drive search for Add_birds.BGL and this BGL shows up in 3 different Active  Scenery locations same size same date example picture below. What would be the proper action to take? Is it safe to disable or delete the other two and just leave one active.

 

I should then delete the ones in the other two scenery folders and allow only one to be active in one scenery folder and it will show up everywhere?

 

So if i disable the one in VOZ active Library folder and just leave the one in Ez-scenery it will still appear in my VOZ sceneris?

 

 

Yes, you should have only one instance of a particular object library. It shouldn't matter which one you keep, as FS9 will search all active scenery folders for an object, but in the interests of maintaining some sort of logical system, in this case I'd leave the one in the RWY12 folder and delete the other two.

Yes, you should have only one instance of a particular object library. It shouldn't matter which one you keep, as FS9 will search all active scenery folders for an object, but in the interests of maintaining some sort of logical system, in this case I'd leave the one in the RWY12 folder and delete the other two.

Roger Thanks sidney Now i have to go ahead and delete the Textures from those Lib. I've disabled lol Tedious and time consuming   

Yes, tedious and time consuming it is. I periodically have to go through my scenery folders and weed out duplicate libraries. It's been my experience that the main cause of duplicate libraries is scenery designers who package the libraries with their scenery instead of instructing the user to download the libraries ONLY IF THEY DON'T ALREADY HAVE THEM. A pox on them, I say. [Duck and run] 

Yes, tedious and time consuming it is. I periodically have to go through my scenery folders and weed out duplicate libraries. It's been my experience that the main cause of duplicate libraries is scenery designers who package the libraries with their scenery instead of instructing the user to download the libraries ONLY IF THEY DON'T ALREADY HAVE THEM. A pox on them, I say. [Duck and run] 

:lol:

LOL One more question sidney, Its good to get advice from someone who has alot of experience...What can duplicate library objects cause? for example can it cause performance issues  Ive deleted tons of duplicates (Dont worry ive been very careful) Only the ones with the same exact name and sizes and containing the same models as i use Model X Converter to scan each LIB one by one for textures and visual preference has been deleted.

 

I've also made sure that the Lib i left Active has al the texures it needs within its texture folder lol Just got to go search for the left over textures later on from the lib i left behind perhaps ill leave them there just in case one texture ends up missing lol in another LIB active texture folder :lol:

The main problems caused by duplicate libraries are objects not showing up, or showing up but with no textures.

Perfect thanks for all of your help for really clearing things up now i can confidently continue to weed out duplicate library objects B)

Yes, tedious and time consuming it is. I periodically have to go through my scenery folders and weed out duplicate libraries. It's been my experience that the main cause of duplicate libraries is scenery designers who package the libraries with their scenery instead of instructing the user to download the libraries ONLY IF THEY DON'T ALREADY HAVE THEM. A pox on them, I say. [Duck and run] 

 

 

Not all of us design libraries with the intent/purpose of them being used outside the scenery they are intended for, I know i don't. Each library I make for a scenery is intended to be used with that scenery and that scenery alone with it stated in the readme NOT to use any part of my library with any uploaded files, of course, there are many in the community that don't care to follow this and use your work in their uploads, usually without any permission,.

I agree with you Mike, as far as libraries of custom objects made for a specific scenery. I'm talking about the "shared" object libraries that are available for download on the various flight sim sites. Even I use them even though I can make my own objects. It makes sense to make custom terminals and other buildings unique to a particular airport, but I'm not going to make, say, ramp lights for each scenery. I've already made a library of them that is available for anyone to use, so I just re-use those. And of course there are scenery designers who don't know how to make objects and build their scenery entirely from these shared libraries. It's these shared libraries that users are most likely to accumulate multiple copies of, because some many designers will include them with their scenery. 

 

I remember when Lago's FSE came out. It was the first program to allow the placement of objects within FS directly, a la EZ-Scenery, which came later. Lago insisted that all objects made for use with FSE be uploaded to Lago's servers and not to sim sites in general. The end user would be told (I forget exactly how) if they needed to download any objects for a scenery. At the time Lago's policy seemed overly restrictive, and it didn't help that their server didn't work reliably, but now I can understand that they were trying to avoid the very problem we're discussing.

I've certainly learned my lesson, for example i just downloaded captains Keith Adventure Pack and realized there were many objects within this package that ive already had inside my Libraty Object folders within my sim, VOZ also causes this problem as i realized they've included many objects ive already had within my scenery folders. I use Anti Twin to get rid of my duplicates i simply choose 2 folders at a time and compare them with other folders to find duplicate and it has helped me tremendously.

 

It allows you to compare 1 active scenery folder with All other active scenery folders and searches those folders for duplicate LIB objects that are already in the first folder you selected screenshot below will show an example 

 

 

Thanks for the tip on Anti-Twin...I've never heard of it before. There's also Duplicate Object Finder by Jon "Scruffyduck" Masterson, creator of ADE9X. 

Roger i may have tried that b4 a bit difficult to understand lol but i haven't really given it much effort lol   i find anti twin to be the simplest way as you can select the folders yourself ;-) Probably a bit time consuming lol but much easier for me to understand B)  :lol:

Duplicate Object Finder looks inside files to find duplicate objects. It seems like Anti Twin is a duplicate file finder (of which there are many of course). A duplicate file finder is perfect for identifying if you have the same file in several locations or the same file with different names. It won't identify objects inside the files.

 

So I guess it depends what the objective is - removing duplicates of the same library or understanding where the same object is located in different files.

Your correct i usually compare the Libraries with Model X Converter if there the same size to look inside and see if the LIB contain the same exact objects if there the same size and created the same exact date. Ive found tons and deleted allot of them and ive also re-visited the locations to make sure everything is in order. LOL I was very careful  B)

 

I had allot of duplicates Between VOZ_Library  EZ Scenery LIB and static Objects LIB and other airport scenery Folders that here active  where the publisher included the objects Anti twin found them all open each of them up and compared them with Mode x converter to see if the objects where exact and deleted the ones i dint need so far had no issues and all objects are still appearing in other airports. :lol: