Toolkit menu options and world scenery

[jandjfrench 3]

Hi,

Referring to the Flight Toolkit Menu:

 

 

I don't have a handle on the different menu choices.  I've tried reading past posts here and at FS Developer but still it's a mystery to me.  Plus, I don't know how current the information is.  Most posts are over a year old and it seems Toolkit has been revised several times.  I'm looking for a brief explanations of any or all of the selections.  I'd like to get the "big picture" before concentrating on any one choice.

The Addon Manager seems to be self explanatory but beyond that everything is foggy or worse.  And perhaps there are cautions that I should be observing but am not aware of.

I think I'd like to start by adding the world scenery from FSX.  I deleted my Steam version and installed my Gold version today so my scenery is completely default.  

Andreas provided the code used for a .bat file for the Steam edition and it seems simple enough to tailor it to my install.  I think that that this is to be run external to Toolkit and uses software that's contained in the Toolkit folder.  I feel certain of this but would like confirmation.  And then activation would be thru the Addon manager.  Is this correct?

It seems like creating the world would be a good first step and has a familiar ring to it.

Jim F. 

 

[EzRyder 35]

You are correct the FSX scenery conversion uses ContentConverter.exe which is a command line utility so has no 'menu'

Its worth mentioning that the second directory ( /o "xxx" ) referenced in the bat file is the temporary output folder (used to hold the converted files and can be named anything you wish) for the converter (output). Some have had to manually create this temp folder but that may have been fixed by now, also it is not used by Flight since the 'addon' is written to the addons directory at the end of conversion. Also note the conversion will take a good long time to complete so be patient (in my low end pc it takes more than 2 hours) And yes after conversion you will want to fire up the Addon Manager and 'activate the addon if its not active (this will also take some time ~15 minutes)

The first directory ( /i "xxx" ) as you appear to understand is the install directory of your FSX (input).

In addition I like to use the /a option on the end which tells the converter to create an actual .flightaddon file but then I have to manually add this to Addon Manager, but it allows me to save the addon for reinstall later if needed. here is my bat file for comparison:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Flight Tools\Flight Toolkit\ContentConverter.exe" FSX /i:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X" /o:"C:\FlightTemp" /a
Pause

Basically there are only 2 GUI programs that come with the Toolkit that 'do anything', The Addon Manager and the Addon Builder, the other 2 are mostly for developing addons and 'looking at' the available assets to do it with.

I personally haven't used the dev apps more than just looking at them as the main one I use is Addon Manager so cant explain them at all.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but figured id give you what I could

[mibmab 6]

On my core i5 the conversion takes less than 20 minutes if the source folder is on my data hd and the destination folder on my ssd.

[jandjfrench 3]

Okay.  So far so good.  It sounds like I'm on the right track.

Just a few more questions; more for future reference and making sure I understand this.

I think I read in a post somewhere that the fsx scenery.cfg determines which files are converted.  If this is true it seems that scenery.cfg could be temporarily monkeyed with to point only to that part of the world to convert for use in Flight.  As I currently have only default scenery, if I have any problems I'll know they're not related to some scenery addon.  It also seems that if I did have some addon scenery that would be converted also.  I don't know if this could sabotage the conversion.

Thinking in terms of future addons; can an addon with enhanced scenery for a certain area be created and take precedence over the already present scenery for the area?  Rather than using generalities I'll cite a specific example.  Tom Stovall created enhanced scenery for KRDD (Redding, CA).  It's "KRDD_2013.zip".  This  uses photorealistic scenery I seem to have read that this part would not be converted but would it cause the tool to fail?

Okay, enough for now but as someone once said, "I'll be back".

Jim F.

"

[stonelance 136]

Yeah, right now FSX scenery conversion is a command line process.  I was planning on adding it eventually to Addon Builder, but haven't bothered to get around to it since most people seem to be able to figure out the command line, although maybe it would be more discoverable if it was in one of the existing tools.

 

Addon Builder is basically for assembling your own addons to distribute to other users.

 

Addon Viewer is a new tool for viewing models, but I believe in the current public version it doesn't work.  It can also only view uncompressed models made by the conversion process unless you manually put a granny dll into your Flight Toolkit installation.

 

Object Browser lets you search through the list of all the content in Flight and view it.  It also needs the granny dll to work with official Flight content.