How to manually add scenery/addons into P3D v4 the right way

[jasonboche 7]

downscc, thank you so much for the replies. Very helpful.

lennie, have faith in yourself and the flight sim community who are here to help you. Also, this doesn't need to be done in one day or one weekend - I consider it a journey.

[lennie 48]

53 minutes ago, jasonboche said:

downscc, thank you so much for the replies. Very helpful.

lennie, have faith in yourself and the flight sim community who are here to help you. Also, this doesn't need to be done in one day or one weekend - I consider it a journey.

Thanks Jason! That's comforting. I can prob get my son to help. I will probably keep FSX for awhile, so should i add another SDD? Have 960GB empty now. Also thinking to get 2-1080s as i use 3 monitors. Any suggestions from you and others on the forums are greatly appreciated!! I just can't fly over SoCal Orbx with even the default 172 without so many crazy stutters and jerks. I was reading the forum on the Real Air Turbine Duke, one of my favorites, and that scared me off P3D; i will never be able to do the editing needed. I wish someone could buy the rights to that plane and make the adjustments.

[downscc 1,327]

2 hours ago, lennie said:

I don't think there is any way that an old guy like me can manage it.

Don't sell yourself short.  I'm in my late 60's but when I don't understand something I don't give up.  I watch my Mom drift away with Alzheimer's and it scares the bejeebers out of me so I keep my mind active.  A new flight simulator? Great!!  I'm also teaching myself C# programming.  Granted I've been around computers since before personal computers but not as a profession.  There is nothing about this topic (add-on scenery) that is complicated and there is detailed SDK documentation and a forum full of helpful compatriots.

[jasonboche 7]

6 hours ago, downscc said:

Ray Smith updated most if not all his airports for P3Dv3.2 (or thereabouts, not sure of the minor update number) to fix an issue with taxiways being invisible in P3D.  Any of those can be used with the add-on.xml approach.

I have created a "Addon Scenery" with Scenery and Texture subfolders in my P3Dv4 addons directory.  Put Ray Smiths AFCADs into the Scenery subfolder.  Under Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-Ons\ folder create a "Addon Scenery" subfolder and in it place a new add-ons.xml file. Add an <Addon.Component> for Addon Scenery pointing to the Scenery folder where the AFCADs are going to be placed.  All AFCADs placed there will be automatically picked up by P3D.

With the help of the Addon Organizer tool as well as the help found throughout this thread, I think I got the hang of this new P3D v4 stuff. Unfortunately, it does look like the 1st Ray Smith airport which I added tonight has the invisible taxiway issue - KEWR. It was last updated June 2015. There was a previous version before that.

[downscc 1,327]

4 minutes ago, jasonboche said:

Unfortunately, it does look like the 1st Ray Smith airport which I added tonight has the invisible taxiway issue - KEWR. It was last updated June 2015. There was a previous version before that.

It is easy to fix.  For P3Dv4 you need the beta version of Airport Design Editor ADEv1.75, free from Scruffyduck.  I recommend anyone who collects addon airports be at least minimally aware of ADE.  Load the Ray Smith airport into ADE and open up the list of taxiways and press the button that says something like RESET ALL DRAW FLAGS. Compile the airport to get a new AFCAD (prerequisite is installed SDK also free, and preset two SDK paths in ADE which is done with a button too). Very easy.  The reason for this is because FSX has always had two flags in the taxi link property but it never used them. P3D started using them around v3.2 I think.  Really easy stuff.

[jasonboche 7]

11 minutes ago, downscc said:

It is easy to fix.  For P3Dv4 you need the beta version of Airport Design Editor ADEv1.75, free from Scruffyduck.  I recommend anyone who collects addon airports be at least minimally aware of ADE.  Load the Ray Smith airport into ADE and open up the list of taxiways and press the button that says something like RESET ALL DRAW FLAGS. Compile the airport to get a new AFCAD (prerequisite is installed SDK also free, and preset two SDK paths in ADE which is done with a button too). Very easy.  The reason for this is because FSX has always had two flags in the taxi link property but it never used them. P3D started using them around v3.2 I think.  Really easy stuff.

Cool I will give that a try. I'm quite familiar with ADE as over the past few years I've reworked about a half dozen local airports in my area with it. There's another part of the hobby that can REALLY consume your time.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

I've just found a problem when using Lordy's Addon Organizer to create a scenery.cfg using the existing one plus the two add-ons.cfg.

When FSDT and FB airports are installed using the Addon Manager they create an entry in their respective add-on.xml which includes the word scenery. This is causing Lorby's utility that reads this file to not pick up the correct path.

I have had to edit the generated scenery.cfg to remove \scenery in all the FSDT and FB entries before I can run MakeRunways and EFB's database generator.

This is going to be a bit of a pain. Does anyone have a solution?

[egntpilot 19]

Hi Ray,

What version of makerunways are you using? This thread on Pete Dowson's forum seems to suggest the latest version 4.82 should solve this.http://forum.simflight.com/topic/83577-issues-with-makerunways-4801/

 

hope this helps

 

Steve

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

Hi Steve,

I'm sure I'm running 4.82 but can't check definitively as my FS machine is off.

Thanks for the link. I'll recheck everything tomorrow and come back to you. It will save a lot of faffing around if I don't need to edit those entries each time I add scenery.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

Steve / All,

I do have MakeRwys 4.8.2.0 and having read its readme I've run it and examined the MakeRwys_Scenery.cfg.

I'm puzzled. All the FSDT and FB entries still include \scenery which means anything reading those such as EFB won't find the scenery BGLs.

Am I missing something obvious here? Can the path be modified to exclude \scenery by editing the individual add-on.xml files created in Users\XXXX\Documents\Prepar3D v3 Add-ons ?

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

15 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

When FSDT and FB airports are installed using the Addon Manager they create an entry in their respective add-on.xml which includes the word scenery. This is causing Lorby's utility that reads this file to not pick up the correct path.

Hi Ray,

"not pick up " in what way? The path should be in the temporary scenery.cfg exactly like it is defined (including the \Scenery\ part).

The difference is in the specification. Entries in the scenery.cfg are supposed to be "scenery areas", containing optional subfolders "Scenery" and "Texture". For the add-on packages (=the xml files) this can be used differently, you can assign scenery and textures separately, and some developers do. Both methods work in P3D V3 and V4 add-on.xml files.

I had a brief discussion with Pete about this. For the time being, we agreed to leaving it like this. Once and if makerwys is updated to run on its own, I can change the addon organizer too, to target the top folder of a scenery for the export.

To be honest, I have no idea if other software will have a problem with this. They will have to update their stuff anyway, including the addon package parser, just like I did.

Best regards

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for your quick reply. I exported using your utility before realising that MakeRwys also produced a scenery.cfg. Both yours and Pete's programs include \scenery in the path to the FSDT and FB scenery layers.

To get EFB to find those it needs \scenery to be removed otherwise it looks for a \scenery\scenery folder which won't exist of course.

It's early days and things will change. But for now it seems I'll have to manually edit out \scenery from the temporary scenery.cfg you produce and also the one Pete produces when I use his before EFB will find these entries.

Maybe someone clever can write a batch file to do it automatically? Too hard for me I'm afraid.

[beechcaptain 105]

That is odd, my files do not include \scenery in the path for any of the FB or FSDT sceneries I have.  In fact, the Runways.txt and xml files in my P3Dv4 root directory, after running Makerwys, have all the respective FB and FSDT airport sceneries I own.

 

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

18 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for your quick reply. I exported using your utility before realising that MakeRwys also produced a scenery.cfg. Both yours and Pete's programs include \scenery in the path to the FSDT and FB scenery layers.

To get EFB to find those it needs \scenery to be removed otherwise it looks for a \scenery\scenery folder which won't exist of course.

It's early days and things will change. But for now it seems I'll have to manually edit out \scenery from the temporary scenery.cfg you produce and also the one Pete produces when I use his before EFB will find these entries.

Maybe someone clever can write a batch file to do it automatically? Too hard for me I'm afraid.

Hello Ray,

I will change the export process, so it will jump to the top folder if it is a direct reference to a \Scenery subfolder.

Just for the record: Makerunways uses my tool to generate the .cfg file. At least that has been the case in the first V4 compatible version. And Pete has said that he will account for the paths that include the "\Scenery" bit.

Best regards

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

Version 1.02 of the Addon Organizer is online now.

Change: when exporting all scenery to a temporary scenery.cfg, all packages that directly target the "\Scenery" subfolder of an area are exported as their top folder.

This will affect the file that MakeRwys uses as well (if that tool still works that way, that it silently calls the P4AO to get that file).

Best regards