With Orbx England, default type airport buildings appear in UK2000 EGCC

[Pete Dowson 558]

I'm going around in circles here. Ever since installing Orbx FTX I've had one problem after another.

 

I installed FTX Global Base, OLC and Vector. I also have FTX England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and N.Ireland, but hadn't yet installed them.

 

I've been exploring assorted UK airport environments and generally admiring FTX's textures and the general effect of the scenes before me. Very nice -- until I came to look at the area around London City airport, EGLC, for which I use UK2000's excellent version.

 

The airport was fine, but the Thames and basins around it had trees and some buildings growing in them! What sort of Land Class is that!? :-(

 

I thought, well perhaps the Global Land Class is simply not accurate enough -- though that thought worries me a lot about what I might find everywhere else, too, especially those areas not yet covered by FTX's specific OLC series!

 

Anyway, to fix this I installed FTX England and enabled it with Hybrid Mode set in FTX Central. Fine, it fixed it well, looks nice now.

 

BUT to my horror, my home airport, EGCC, for which I also use UK2000's fine effort, is now wrecked by having what looks exactly like the default EGCC airport buildings plonked in and amongst those correct ones from UK2000. It was absolutely fine before installing FTX England.

 

How does that happen? How does Orbx manage to get default buildings showing in much higher priority sceneries which otherwise are fine? I know it aren't any BGLs in the Orbx folders -- I've now disabled every single BGL in the Orbx folders which include "EGCC".

 

I'm at a loss at present on this one. Does anyone else use FTX England with UK2000 EGCC?

 

I've checked the nearby EGGP (Liverpool), also by UK2000, and that's fine!

 

Orbx products seem to be a lot of work. I've effectively now spent over 5 days, about 12 hours each day, trying to make them work. If I don't manage to get them sorted out by the end of this week I'm going to have to try to unnistall them all and change back to UTX and family. I suppose then I'll have a painful time trying to get rid of stuff and be forced to reinstall P3D from scratch, again!

 

:-(

 

Pete

[bill10 13]

Pete,

 

If you are familiar with how to create 'EXCLUDES" you can fix the problems with FTX England and UK2000's add-on airports.

 

Specifically,  your problem, with UK2000 EGCC and ORBX FTX England have you renamed/removed these two files?

 

ADE_FTX_ENG_EGCC
ADE_FTX_ENG_EGCC_CVX

 

They would be located at:  Orbx/ FTX_EU/ FTX_EU_05_SCENERY/scenery.

 

Hope this helps,

Bill

[xenonsk 129]

Hi. Make sure, that UK2000 airports are above ORBX sceneries. Also try run AEC in vector configurator.

[stufer 30]

Hi Pete

 

I've used FTX England with UK2000 EGCC and I'm sure I fixed the anomalies by just disabling the EGCC BGLs in C:\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3\ORBX\FTX_EU\FTX_EU_ENG_05_SCENERY\scenery.

 

Have you also run the Vector configuration tool? In FTX Central, go to Tools, then you should find the tool towards the bottom of the list. Go to the Elevation correction tab and run the auto-configuration.

 

Cheers

Stu

[spesimen 135]

i'm convinced this is a problem with some of their UK and NZ installers as i had the same issue after an install, it was a corrupt terrain.cfg

 

(also assuming things are in the right order in scenery library)

 

the fix was pretty easy it is outlined on their forums here: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/79004-resolving-rapid-ground-texture-morphing/

 

edit: i should note after this fix all my uk2000 and orbx regions play perfectly together and i did not have to do any manual removal or messing about with bgl files

 

cheers and good luck

-andy crosby

[CavalierDuck 106]

I've also been through the wringer with both of the problem types you describe. What you're seeing is actually two separate problems, but the good news is they're both known and fixable. No need to make excludes, and it's not an issue of scenery library order (although the UK2000 entries should be above all the Orbx entries).

 

Trees and buildings in the water sounds like the ground texture morphing/terrain.cfg issue and I can vouch for Holger Sandmann's fix (given in the link in the above post) which sorted it out for me.

 

As for the default buildings popping up in EGCC, this is a separate issue.  It happens with some of the UK2000 airports, I also see it with the some of the ACG military fields.  The way I understand it is the UK2000 scenery excludes buildings from default FSX, but doesn't exclude buildings that Orbx England has added to the default (a lot of the UK2000 airports will pre-date Orbx England, after all).  The fix is to take out the Orbx BGLs, as referred to above.

 

For every UK2000 or AGC airport I install in Orbx England, I make sure I go through the FTX_EU_ENG folders in ....\Flight Simulator X\ORBX\FTX_EU, find all the files with that ICAO code in the filename (EGCC, EGKK, etc) and switch them off (I just change the file extension to .OFF).  From memory there are usually between 2 and 4 files per airport to change. Once you know that's what needs to be done, it only takes a couple of minutes and saves a lot of grief!

 

It's a bit of a pain to have to do all this I know, but the end result of Orbx England + UK2000 (+ in my case ACG fields for military flying) is well worth the effort, IMO.  Good luck!

[Pete Dowson 558]

Specifically,  your problem, with UK2000 EGCC and ORBX FTX England have you renamed/removed these two files?

 

ADE_FTX_ENG_EGCC

ADE_FTX_ENG_EGCC_CVX

 

They would be located at:  Orbx/ FTX_EU/ FTX_EU_05_SCENERY/scenery.

 

Thanks! I renamed both of those two scenery files -- or so I thought. I've just re-checked and they are still there! either that or something has replaced them! ;-)

 

I've now MOVED them out, to a "Saved" sub-folder That seems to have fixed it! HURRAH! ;-)

 

On to the next Orbx incompatibility. I'm sure there must be more. I don't really understand how an Orbx BGL can reintroduce what look like FSX/P3D default EGCC buildings back into a UK2000 higher-priority scenery when the real default layers do not. Weird, and unfathomable to me. Makes me rather lose my faith in the layering priority system!

 

Thanks again, 

 

 

Have you also run the Vector configuration tool? In FTX Central, go to Tools, then you should find the tool towards the bottom of the list. Go to the Elevation correction tab and run the auto-configuration.

 

Yes, but oddly that doesn't list either EGCC or EGLL, the only two I have had problems with ... so far!

 

i'm convinced this is a problem with some of their UK and NZ installers as i had the same issue after an install, it was a corrupt terrain.cfg

 

(also assuming things are in the right order in scenery library)

 

the fix was pretty easy it is outlined on their forums here: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/79004-resolving-rapid-ground-texture-morphing/

 

Okay, thanks. Checking that out now!

 

edit: i should note after this fix all my uk2000 and orbx regions play perfectly together and i did not have to do any manual removal or messing about with bgl files

 

Hmm. Interesting. So airport buildings can fall under the TERRAIN.CFG control too? Wow. This does get complicated.

 

Pete

[Raven9000 272]

Pete: why would you set the mode to "hybrid" to fly within a region? ("England"). If you fly within a region you are to set that region within FTX central. Hybrid is only for flying between a region and a non-region area.

[bill10 13]

Pete,

Your welcome. Glad to help you out!

 

Bill

[spesimen 135]

 

 

 

Hmm. Interesting. So airport buildings can fall under the TERRAIN.CFG control too? Wow. This does get complicated.

 

Pete

 

i think it is related to autogen buildings that are part of those terrain/texture mappings, not really sure exactly, i saw random trees and buildings all over the place where they shouldn't be and they went away with a clean rebuild of that file

 

anyway good luck

cheers

-andy crosby

[Nemo 1,305]

Have you checked ORBX compatibilty forum. Many useful tips and descriptions are given there. Holger and others are very helpful.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Pete: why would you set the mode to "hybrid" to fly within a region? ("England"). If you fly within a region you are to set that region within FTX central. Hybrid is only for flying between a region and a non-region area.

 

I fly throughout Europe, using mainly EGCC (my home airport) as a hub. Why in a 738 simulator would I only fly within the UK?

 

I have all the best add-on airports for "Greater" Europe, but nowhere else in the world now. I used to prefer flying anywhere BUT Europe, because I know what it should look like so well.  In FS4, FSW95, FS98, FS2000 and FS2002 I could make believe what I saw in the US or elsewhere was "realistic"!  But since FS2004 you can approach realism so much, I fly here in Europe where I know what to look for, what I like to see!

 

Does that explain "hybrid" mode enough? ;-)

 

Pete

[Raven9000 272]

I fly throughout Europe, using mainly EGCC (my home airport) as a hub. Why in a 738 simulator would I only fly within the UK?

 

I have all the best add-on airports for "Greater" Europe, but nowhere else in the world now. I used to prefer flying anywhere BUT Europe, because I know what it should look like so well.  In FS4, FSW95, FS98, FS2000 and FS2002 I could make believe what I saw in the US or elsewhere was "realistic"!  But since FS2004 you can approach realism so much, I fly here in Europe where I know what to look for, what I like to see!

 

Does that explain "hybrid" mode enough? ;-)

 

Pete

 

Hahahah well as always, the answer is "depends"

 

Your forst comments were that you added england, set to hybrid and it didn't look like you expected, so I assumed you were flying within england and of course it could look ugly here and there in hybrid mode.

 

If you fly in europe, if you fly within their regions (england to wales, scotland, etc.etc.) it would still not be hybrid, would be Europe you need to set it to. Now if you're flying elsewhere in europe where there's no region then yeah, hybrid for those cases.

 

Anyway, glad you got it sorted out.

[Pete Dowson 558]

...  I assumed you were flying within england and of course it could look ugly here and there in hybrid mode.

 

If you fly in europe, if you fly within their regions (england to wales, scotland, etc.etc.) it would still not be hybrid, would be Europe you need to set it to. Now if you're flying elsewhere in europe where there's no region then yeah, hybrid for those cases.

 

Anyway, glad you got it sorted out.

 

Of course? So Hybrid mode doesn't work as described. I thought it meant that the local layers would take precedence when available, as in UK, and the European ones elsewhere in Europe.

 

What sort of ugliness should I expect?

 

This isn't sounding good. :-(

 

Pete

[Pease_W 6]

On to the next Orbx incompatibility. I'm sure there must be more. I don't really understand how an Orbx BGL can reintroduce what look like FSX/P3D default EGCC buildings back into a UK2000 higher-priority scenery when the real default layers do not. Weird, and unfathomable to me. Makes me rather lose my faith in the layering priority system!

 

An object placed within FSX/P3D won't be excluded by higher-priority work if there is no exclusion area that covers the object's placement point. XML-based exclusions are rectangular and at times are drawn only to take out a certain object. Making a large rectangle that encloses an irregular shaped airport can take out more than what might be intended. It all depends upon the person making the work, as to how they anticipate what else might be there besides what they happen to see.

 

So unless the UK2000 scenery was predicting that another object could appear in an area and applied the exclusions appropriately, it's to be expected that another object could and should appear from lower-priority scenery.