Darren and Vikki from Earth Simulations, who sadly ceased trading at the beginning of the year, are unfortunately now not contactable at all.  Consequently, it is impossible to find out any information about use of scenery in v3, and there will be no further support or installers created. 

 

As (ex!) beta testers for Earth Simulations, both Christopher Low and I are in possession of manual install versions of I think all Earth Simulations scenery.  What I would like to do, should there be no objections from AVSIM mods, is to see if we can produce an easy set of instructions to follow to manually set up the ES scenery in a v3 compliant fashion, so that people can continue to enjoy them and that future upgrades to the core sim do not impose any repeated manual re-installation hassles.

 

It will take a little bit of time to work out what needs to go where (just because of pressing real world issues!) so hopefully posting this will give anyone concerned sufficient time to register an objection.  I hope that in the event that no such issues are raised, AVSIM will allow this thread to survive?

 

Thanks K

We (mods and staff) have discussed this issue many times ... and it's a difficult issue to tackle ... sorta decided to deal with the issue case by case -- I had a hunch ES would come up.

 

I have some questions:

 

1.  How long have you give Darren and Vikki to respond?

2.  I heard rumors they were perhaps doing some work for another major 3rd party content provider?  If so, were any purchase deals made by other providers?

3.  Is anyone else distributing ES products? 

 

Cheers, Rob.

Hi Rob,

 

1. since January. All attempts at contact have met with zero reply, and I am aware Darren has made it politely clear that he wanted to break all links with the past. I know Darren has frequented AVSIM in the past and my post was intended to allow him the opportunity to have an input, publicly or privately, should he read it.

 

2. I have heard the same rumour but no-one I have spoken to has been able to confirm anything. I am not aware of any prior content purchase deals being done.

 

3. There are a couple of retailers who I understand still sell older boxed content already in existence at the time ES was dissolved. I am not aware of any new material being produced since then. I haven't enquired of these retailers what their commercial status is, I suspect they wouldnt say, but given they are selling pre-existing content, so long as any instructions for workability in v3 do not circumvent any copy protection (they wouldnt, and I am not proposing to distribute any ES produced files, just v3 installation procedures), then such instructions would only serve to make the scenery stocks more saleable for them?

 

Happy to discuss more here or by PM if necessary.. thanks K

I have somehow (not fully sure what I did) been able to get ES into P3D V3 using pre saved esi packs, it was not straight forward though and I would welcome a guide from more experienced users.

 

Somewhere I read that Darren had joined a (direct) competitor and I suspect they may have made stipulations.

 

I purchased all ES offerings bar the last one.

 

Is it possible to update ESI installer 2.5?

 

Gordon

Yes Gordon, it was possible with v2.5 as well, achieved simply by pointing the installer at the right location. I believe it requires the latest versipn of ESI which is not universally held or liked. Even that will not install the scenery in a v3 compliant fashion though.

 

ES never charged for platform updates in the past and I am not aware if any impediment to this approach being carried over to v3.

If it is resident on one of your drives, all that is needed is to point to the scenery folders and edit the default.xml.

When they closed it was said that we could continue using the scenery we already bought, if I remember right, I read this on the ES website.

I seem to remember there was advised to backup the ES folder-tree, before the installation-servers would go down and the installer software wouldnt work anymore. Not sure where this information came from, but far as I remember it was either from official source, or copied from official source. So I made a backup from the folders and from there on I've been reinstalling it in P3Dv2 by copying the folder-tree from my backup and assigning it into the scenery library manually. It's a poo-load of work, but it always worked fine for me.

I've been looking around if I could find anything about P3Dv3, but I havent been able to find anything (yet...)

Don't forget effects, sounds, autogen entries.

 

I have it all working - I did it my way . . .   ;-)

If it is resident on one of your drives, all that is needed is to point to the scenery folders and edit the default.xml.

Some of the sceneries are a little more involved than that...

Don't forget effects, sounds, autogen entries.

 

I have it all working - I did it my way . . . ;-)

Not everyone is up to doing it themselves though Mike, hence the impetus to create an easy guide to it . Congrats for fixing it yourself, knew it would be possible, did you do it compliant with v3? K

i will post my advice;

please understand it is not supported by me or approved by Darren or Vikki

 

you can try and mooch P3D v2.5 install dir; add the reg key representing P3D 2.5 to the reg,

create a folder in the reg install path and place Prepar.exe in it (copy it from v3)

try to install ESI products and configure them; than map the scenery in P3D v3.0

 

i don’t own any of their product to test this myself; this is just a workaround suggestion

Not everyone is up to doing it themselves though Mike, hence the impetus to create an easy guide to it . Congrats for fixing it yourself, knew it would be possible, did you do it compliant with v3? K

 

 

No sorry, creating guide a good idea - the bit about effects etc. was just a reminder to those who thought it was just adding/pointing  the scenery library entries at the scenery folder(which are of course easy to do, forget installers and registry entries) (I'm one with the "I hate installers brigade"). You did all install the ES sceneries - and the photo etc. - in external folders didn't you?

 

I've PM'ed you about the effects etc, how you want to put in guide your choice  ;-)  I used the old non-compliant/non-recommended method initially to test working (anything OrbX can do . . . ) but have set up an external structure for initially for effects, sound etc. I use (not all the ones I don't have anything for or use)  That bit was easy too, just using own naming as no convention and suspect 3PDs will each use own if/when they go compliant.   Just a few new folders.  It's the harder part now making sure the .cfg's and paths are correct and referenced right for priority as per the SDK and Fr.Bill's email. That's a once only for my stuff, but will complicate if the 3PDs each use own external structure - the .cfg's will end up a pigs ear

 

Though in all honesty - if OrbX and others are going to ignore - don't want to get into that argument - it's at your own risk.

 

Mike

Mike, yes Ive had all my scenery on a separate drive for a couple of tears now PM returned.. K

Is that tears (sic)?

Any more input from mods at all please? Further to my OP Ive been in touch with two developers who contributed significant content to some of the ES sceneries and they confirm they already gave permission for use of any of their copyrighted material in P3D, inc v3. Cheers K