Heads up for SIMstarter!

[guenseli 1,577]

 

 

Capt Pero released a new version of his fomerly known FSX starter: SIMstarter.

 

And guess what? "SIMstarter" because P3D v2 is now also supported.

 

Tool let you define a Master profile and up to 8 further profiles to start your sim.

Ideal for tweaking and tuning and having different settings for different flights.

 

So make a VFR profile with higher LOD and scenery density or make a IFR profile with lower settings.

With SIMstarter you can start the sim directly with such settings.

 

Or have different sceneries activated per profile?

Or different splashscreens?

 

Extra special tool is the Google Earth exporter which lets you export a KML file showing your installed sceneries in Google Earth (or similar KML able programs)

Also included is a livery manager where you could disable or move your installed liveries (ever wanted to get rid of Airbus X' thousands of liveries? ^_^ )

 

 

All in all an incredible tool for P3D!

Oh, and yes.... freeware!!!

(however you are able to donate for several months of developing)

 

 

 

[rippy 24]

Thanks for the heads up. Great little tool - VERY handy. Works flawlessly so far here.

[Capt. PERO 47]

SIMstarter is now (version 2.1) kompatible with PREPAR3D v2.2

(in case of cloud shadows)...

 

Download can be found here:

aviation.pero-online.de

[Appliance 51]

Many thanks for this heads-up.  Appears most valuable.

[guenseli 1,577]

I really wonder a bit about the little response for that tool here ...  :lol:  ^_^

 

 

 

Simply the Google Earth exporter, where you can see all your currently installed sceneries in GE is incredible ... 

[hvw 391]

Thanks, Guenther, on my way to download this little gem.

 

Hans

[ErichB 3,638]

Will try this today. Sounds awesome

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[guenseli 1,577]

I'll add the official feature list here:

 

• Define up to 9 independent Start profiles to start FSX/PREPAR3D
• All settings of FSX and most settings of PREPAR3D can be configured by mouse-click for each profile
• Select preconfigured tweaks for FSX and PREPAR3D
• Create individual ScenerySets for each profile to disable scenerys which are not needed
• Create individual start definition and file operations(copy, rename, delete files) for every profile including exit program when Simulator has been exited
• Define Standard Flight for every profile
• All changes will be documented in Logbook
• Create shortcuts to Desktop for every profile
• Including Livery Manager to sort or hide Liveries
• Sort and validate configuration Files like fsx.cfg
• Diff-Manager which manage changes that have been done by other programs
• TextInfo Manager to easily define TextInfo and SlewTextInfos
• GoogleEarth Export to show all your AddOn Sceneries in GoogleEarth
• Select individual SplashScreens for every profile

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Well, I just tried this program out to see what it offers and I must say SIMMER BEWARE!

 

Why?

 

The program locked up and crashed on me when I clicked on scenery manager.  No problem I thought, I then noticed my scenery.cfg was wiped out.  My custom addon scenery file was wiped cleaned or deleted?   Now P3D will not start saying it cannot find the scenery.cfg file and says I must re-install P3D!  Well, no problem, I'll just put the default scenery.cfg file back in there.  Oh wait, they are already there in the folder(s) and P3D still does not start!?!

 

Now SimStarter crashes every time with an "unhandled exception" error ever time I try to start it as well.

 

Was not expecting to spend my Saturday morning trying to fix P3D because of an 3rd party app.  I am not a happy camper. :angry:  

 

Clutch

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Ok, looks like I was able to fix this so I wanted to jump back in.  For some reason, Simstarter wiped out all the data in the scenery.cfg file.  File was there but all the data was gone... empty file.  I was able to restore the data.  Looks like the empty scenery.cfg file was also causing Simstater to crash as well as it appears to be working again.

 

Now I can get back to my cuppa joe! :Cuppa:

[Capt. PERO 47]

Ok, looks like I was able to fix this so I wanted to jump back in.  For some reason, Simstarter wiped out all the data in the scenery.cfg file.  File was there but all the data was gone... empty file.  I was able to restore the data.  Looks like the empty scenery.cfg file was also causing Simstater to crash as well as it appears to be working again.

 

Now I can get back to my cuppa joe! :Cuppa:

 

Hi Clutch Cargo,

 

I am sorry, that you have some problems with your SIM after using SIMstarter. I am the programmer of SIMstarter. More than 1000 Users are using SIMstarter and me and all of the BETA Team never experienced such problems.

 

Why haven't you used the backup which is stored in .\Backup Subdirectory of SIMstarter? As stated in the manual (LINK) on page 6 SIMstarter will do a backup before EVERY CHANGE to ANY of your SIM files. Therefore the easiest way would be use the first backup which have been done by SIMstarter.

 

Regarding your problem: It would be great if you could send me your scenery.cfg. I would like to double check your file to find out, why SIMstarter is crashing.

 

If you or any other users have a bad experience with my useful tool, don't heasitate to contact me: capt_pero@web.de

 

Regards,

peter

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Hey guys,

 

just wanted to add a post saying Peter was immediately working with me to look into the issue as to what happened to me, and that says a lot about him and his support.  It may have been just a one time "fluke" that caused my freeze up and got me bent outta shape.  I just don't want to scare off other simmers from trying out his program.  He has obviously put in 100's of hours to produce this app.

 

Clutch

[Capt. PERO 47]

Hey guys,

 

just wanted to add a post saying Peter was immediately working with me to look into the issue as to what happened to me, and that says a lot about him and his support.  It may have been just a one time "fluke" that caused my freeze up and got me bent outta shape.  I just don't want to scare off other simmers from trying out his program.  He has obviously put in 100's of hours to produce this app.

 

Clutch

 

Hi Clutch,

 

 

Thank you for your statement and clarification.

I was wondering about your "user warning" especially because you are programmer too.  :huh:  

 

I set up a test environment, imported your scenery.cfg and started SIMstarter. I got no problem - no crash - nothing. All seems to be okay.

 

 

I digged into my code again and I would exclude SIMstarter as source for your empty scenery.cfg. If you start SceneryManager within SIMstarter the scenery.cfg won't be changed. 

 

Only if you assign a ScenerySet to a profile and start that profile... But in that case it only changes parts of that file and NEVER cleans it.

 

 

But it's software and although the best tested multi-billion dollar software could have a software bug. In your case I can't reproduce anything. For deeper debugging I'll send you an email.

 

 

Peter

 

[Graubart 3]

Really a strange kind of "error" reported. I'm using Simstarter now for about 3 month very intensively on P3D and FSX with 8 different profiles for betatesting various addons and I never came across an issue like this. But what I have seen that a certain kind of user thinks that one tool is not enough and fiddle around with other tools also manipulating the same files (fsx.cfg and scenery.cfg) and wondering when something gets broken.

[spirit_66 2]

SIMstarter is now (version 2.1) kompatible with PREPAR3D v2.2

(in case of cloud shadows)...

 

Download can be found here:

aviation.pero-online.de

Hi,

just gave the tool a try to see how it works. Well, it seems to work fine but when I saw that all my comments in the prepar3d.cfg were gone than I got very unhappy and uninstalled the tool immediately. I can't accept any tool which is doing such things with my content.

Spirit