I had Blue Sky installed before I bought MSX SoCal, but back then Blue Sky didn't extend to San Diego.  I disabled the obvious overlapped Blue Sky stuff around LA, put MSX SoCal higher in priority and didn't bother to sweat the details around the edges.  I'm pretty sure both are based on the same imagery, as they look pretty much identical if you discount the MSX autogen.  Note that MSX does a lot of adjustment of airports and placements for updated alignment, and Blue Sky offers a lot of adjusted airports as well.  It's fairly easy to figure out where the airports are so that you can be sure to disable the adjusted Blue Sky ones.

 

BTW^2, this is another reason I'm somewhat reluctant to just move to MSE v2 in SoCal.  The original X product did a lot of work to make things (especially airports) align properly, and Blue Sky does as well.  The bar is pretty high if you already have these products.

 

Scott

I'm using v1 autogen from MSE v1 Colorado tiles on v2 and so far I've not had any problems.  Things might not work as well trying to do the same with MSX SoCal, though, as I know the "X" products do some interesting things.

 

Scott

Great - thanks for the info. Might give it a go then.

Cheers,

Danny

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My last two MSEv2 purchases were New Jersey and New York State, and to be honest, I don't see much difference at all to v1.  A real disappointment.

 

I agree, Picked up Florida and |Connecticut and was very impressed...

 

My last 2...New York and New Jersey not impresseed at all...Have e mailed the vendor...

 

Dave

Use blue sky in certain regions in California to cover masking issuses. At local San Diego airport knew where to make traffic pattern turn to avoid Mexican Airspace in Tijuana. Easy to get in Tijuana but took hours to get back to USA

 

 

I do not like the new installer. It extracts all of the files and throws away the zipped file. So, after installation, you have a bunch of unzipped setup programs. After installation, I usually kept the zipped setup files and threw away the unzipped ones to save space. I can zip them all back up but that will take some time.

 

Hi Jim, I replied to your comment on this in another post, but will repeat it here in case you missed it. I think there is a bit of confusion about how the MSE Install Manager works so hopefully this will help.

 

Just to clarify, that is the way the MSE Install Manager is designed to run, it extracts the ZIP files and retains the installer EXE files because both the ZIP and the setup EXE are the same size, so there is no space saving if you re-zip the setup files.

 

Keep in mind the ZIP files are merely containers to facilitate downloading without Internet Explorer/Anti-virus software kicking up a fuss when downloading an EXE file. The ZIP files are not compressed, the compression is applied to the installer EXE files so there is no advantage in keeping the MSE installers hidden within a ZIP archive.

 

 

 

After the installation of California Central, the utility asked if I wanted the program to optimize my Fsx.cfg and I said no. But, after completing California North, the utility evidently popped up while I was on the Internet and the next thing I saw was the changes were made to my Fsx.cfg. Nooooooooooo!

 

Please be assured the MSE Optimizer will not make any changes unless you click yes (the only changes made are those listed on the MSE support page where it recommends about 4 scenery settings so its easy to change them back). Also, it does not pop up when folk are on the internet, it may have been a copy that was already running in the background behind the browser window. It is displayed by the last MSE installer in the series of setup files, just the same as if you were running them manually, not by the Install Manager.

 

Hope that clears it up.

 

 

On another note, I must say here that the MegaSceneryEarthInstallManager (what a filename!) version 1.2 is great. I use a program named Free Download Manager to orchestrate my downloads. That is still a bit cumbersome but I can queue all of the files for download and then leave for a couple of hours while that all completes. Now the MegaScenery Earth Install Manager takes over from that point and performs the unzipping and installation, retains the install .exe files, and deletes the original .zip files. The installer is right now finishing the last of the 22 files for Northern California and the unzip and install process took just under 30 minutes. The installer has automated what formerly was a tedious and time consuming set of processes.

 

Glad to hear you say that because this was the whole point of the utility, for it to act as an invisible pair of hands that performs the entire process with one click. The Install Manager doesn't make any changes to the system or perform any other tasks, it just unzips and runs the user-selected installers/uninstallers sequentially. I don't want to make any promises that someone else has to pay for, but one day it may even download them for you.

Hi Jim, I replied to your comment on this in another post, but will repeat it here in case you missed it. I think there is a bit of confusion about how the MSE Install Manager works so hopefully this will help.

 

Just to clarify, that is the way the MSE Install Manager is designed to run, it extracts the ZIP files and retains the installer EXE files because both the ZIP and the setup EXE are the same size, so there is no space saving if you re-zip the setup files.

 

Keep in mind the ZIP files are merely containers to facilitate downloading without Internet Explorer/Anti-virus software kicking up a fuss when downloading an EXE file. The ZIP files are not compressed, the compression is applied to the installer EXE files so there is no advantage in keeping the MSE installers hidden within a ZIP archive.

 

 

 

 

Please be assured the MSE Optimizer will not make any changes unless you click yes (the only changes made are those listed on the MSE support page where it recommends about 4 scenery settings so its easy to change them back). Also, it does not pop up when folk are on the internet, it may have been a copy that was already running in the background behind the browser window. It is displayed by the last MSE installer in the series of setup files, just the same as if you were running them manually, not by the Install Manager.

 

Hope that clears it up.

Thanks for the explanation.  I did not realize the Compressed Zipped files and the unzipped files were the same size so that makes sense.  I was getting ready to recompress them into zipped files.

 

I do know that I have to select yes to have my FSX settings changed.  I tried to explain that I accidentally hit the yes button (I guess because my Mouse defaults to that key).  As California was being installed I was here on AVSIM reading some posts and replying to them and didn't realize that in the background, the utility popped up and the next key I hit on my keyboard caused it to select yes.  But that's totally my fault and I have learned to be more careful in the future.  I plan on backing up my config before doing the install if there is a next time.  But thanks for taking the time to explain!

 

Best regards,

Jim

No worries Jim, glad I was able to save you the hassle of having to rezip everything.

So being a California junky, I'm anxiously awaiting some screen shots before I plunk down the coinage. If you early adopters would be so kind as to snap some pics off at Lake Tahoe, Big Bear, San Dieo Bay, Long Beach, Catalina, Id really be grateful. No noon time shots, morning or afternoon would be appreciated. Mucho Thanks!

 

Chris

 

 

Glad to hear you say that because this was the whole point of the utility

 

Fermin,

I did have an issue with installing the California MSE2.  It happened twice, in different scenarios.  The automated installer installed the files for all three areas (N, S, and C.) but only added one area into my FSX scenery library.  Central, and it was merely named MegaSceneryEarth California (not Central California).  Central was the first area the automated installer processed.  I did some flying and the Central area was the only area active in FSX.  I used the uninstallers and removed all three areas.  Then I separated the install files into the three areas and installed all three separately.  I had much the same result.  This time I added the other two areas to the scenery library manually and that finally worked.

 

Did no one else have this issue?

 

FP

Hi FP,

 

Actually, I did notice someone else mention this in the comments on the news release (AVSIM front page). The Install Manager only runs the installers, it doesn't actualy perform the installation itself and from what you are saying I gather you get the same result if you run the installers manually. You may want to report this to Robert at PCAviator in case there is some collective experience he can draw on to resolve this, or they may have to issue new installers because the setup EXE files should create the scenery library entries for you automatically.

from what you are saying I gather you get the same result if you run the installers manually

 

No. I did not run the installers manually.  What I did first was download all the Calif North .zip files.  I positioned them in a directory with the autoinstaller and used it to install them.  Then I moved the Calif North .exe files to a backup drive.  Then I did the same with Calif Central, and then followed with Calif South.  Following that, within FSX I found only a scenery library item of "MegaScenery California".  Just one.  The north scenery (the first I installed) was working in FSX but the central and south were not.  A check of the destination directories showed that all of the .bgl files for all three areas were in place.  Just not properly installed within FSX.

 

Then I uninstalled all of those.

 

Then I positioned all of the California .zip files, all at once, and used the autoinstaller to install them.  Same results.  One FSX scenery library entry for "MegaScenery California", and it pointed only to the California Central scenery and it was the only one working in FSX.  I assume this is because the autoinstaller processed them in alpha order, so Central came first.

 

If I get a chance I will go to the PC Aviator site and provide this to Robert.  Guess I do not understand the respective responsibilities between MegaScenery and PC Aviator.

 

Regards,

FP

Sorry, I probably should have said the MegaSceneryEarth site instead of PCAviator (Robert owns both) where the support is more direct for the MSE product.

OK.  Thanks.