Orbx Just Released Meigs for X-Plane

[Griphos 138]

16 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

As far as Orbx, their FTX Central on the P3D side provides the ability to "set insertion" points for those that want to get more "involved" in their scenery ordering.  Orbx currently aren't providing a similar option for XP11 ... but XP11's method of organizing scenery based on folder naming does have some weakness and that's why very popular tools like xOrganizer exist

This is the part that is relevant.  Discussion of whether or not users should be asked to do more than click an "install" button is beside the point.  I have no expectations for end users of flight simulators whatsoever.  My concern was with FTX Central, and the way in which using it, absent any tool for setting insertion points or maintaining the order of the config, may cause problems. Particularly if the scenery involved might just as easily be installed by dropping a folder in a folder.  I understand there are separate security concerns behind using the FTX Central delivery mechanism.  I just hope the developer's legitimate security concerns don't cause problems for end users.  

You may want to turn the discussion to the relative merits of various platforms; but my concern stands on its own.  I will wait to see whether FTX Central causes problems before deciding whether to use Orbx scenery for XPlane, particularly since I'm quite happy with the significant amount of custom scenery I already have.  

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

I just bought it after looking at all the pictures from other users.  It looks good. I hope it works well.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

5 minutes ago, Griphos said:

This is the part that is relevant.  Discussion of whether or not users should be asked to do more than click an "install" button is beside the point.  I have no expectations for end users of flight simulators whatsoever.  My concern was with FTX Central, and the way in which using it, absent any tool for setting insertion points or maintaining the order of the config, may cause problems. Particularly if the scenery involved might just as easily be installed by dropping a folder in a folder.  I understand there are separate security concerns behind using the FTX Central delivery mechanism.  I just hope the developer's legitimate security concerns don't cause problems for end users.  

You may want to turn the discussion to the relative merits of various platforms; but my concern stands on its own.  I will wait to see whether FTX Central causes problems before deciding whether to use Orbx scenery for XPlane, particularly since I'm quite happy with the significant amount of custom scenery I already have.  

Ok, I just tried my first flight.  It loaded, with no problems, but I did have a few error messages, when Central tried to clean up its files.  That apparently didn't cause any problems in the loading, and you'll see there are three notations for their product. In your .ini file, two are at the top, and one is at the bottom with a ZZZ, that would have the ini routine place it at the bottom of the .cfg file.  That's about it.  Now, to do some more flying.

Edited March 4, 2018 by Sesquashtoo

[Susu986 76]

While I agree  to a certain degree with both sides on the 'simple-not simple' discussion, I believe that oversimplifying X-plane usage even more would only attract the type of crowd who should not be using X-plane in the first place. We shouldn't forget that it can be used as an FAA approved simulator, and I believe that anyone who touches it, should beef up their computer skills a little bit. People doesn't need to become computer scientist, but a simple understanding of copy-and-paste, and how scenery folders should be ordered, would be very useful for every X-plane user. And don't forget that those things are not exactly the PHD level of computer usage. If you are willing to pay thousand of dollars for a computer, knowing a little bit more about how to use it would be logical, isn't it?

While I'm all in for a large userbase for X-plane (I'm a developer after all, and that would also mean more sales), I would also like to see a somewhat more knowledgeable X-plane crowd. There are other alternatives available (recently Aerofly FS2 also became cross-platform), so anyone, who is unwilling to put some effort into learning how basic computer usage, should probably be better off with a different option - it would spare them a lot of frustration along the way, while they could still take on the virtual skies.

Real world flying also requires learning techniques and procedures (way more difficult stuff than understanding X-plane scenery hierarchy or learning how to copy-and-paste), and I believe that X-plane should be treated the same way as well: before you jump into it, learn about it - if you are unwilling to do that, than how do you expect yourself to learn the intricacies of a complex machine as an aircraft? 

X-plane used to be (and still is), a tweakers simulator: it works well by default, but if you're up to the challenge, you can go in, and modify stuff absolutely to your taste. This serves everyone well: more casual users get a great experience, while more knowledgeable users can get their ways, too. And we (the more knowledgeable crowd) don't want to give up the option to dig into the gamefiles, and modify stuff - this is part of our hobby, and X-plane's tweaker heritage.

Edited March 4, 2018 by Susu986

[Guest]

I guess we disagree, I don't want to place unnecessary requirements on end users that just want to fly nor place artificial exclusions on "qualified" users.  Over time as one's scenery and plug-ins start to pile up, relying on one's memory on how to "remove" a scenery they installed a year or two ago is pretty optimistic ... it's going to force the user to go back to readme files and other update files from their source rather than click a simple "uninstall" button.  Just seems like an unnecessary end user burden to me for no real benefit.

36 minutes ago, Susu986 said:

only attract the type of crowd who should not be using X-plane in the first place

That seems elitist to me ... why exclude beginners?  Writing a good installer really isn't that difficult ... in most cases it can be done with very little effort as there are many tools that come with development platforms (i.e. Visual Studio) that will do most of the work for you ... I've created many installers over the decades.

I think you'll find conflicting opinions on XP11 being a tweakers platform, just as you would with P3D ... I know many users of flights simulators that have left because there was just too much "tweaking" ... it's definitely NOT something I would encourage or consider a positive for platform growth.

Cheers, Rob.

 

[jt8d9a 1,881]

Well, i bought it to support the work of Tony. Unfortunately the installer gives me an error:

 

EDIT:

My solution to the problem: make a backup of the scenerypacks.ini before the installation. Then create an empty scenerypacks.ini and install the scenery. Copy the 3 lines of Orbx into the backup scenerypacks.ini and replace the orbx scenerypacks.ini with the backup.

 

Installers are really not necessary :( They work if you are lucky but srew things up easily.

Edited March 5, 2018 by jt8d9a

[tonywob 4,768]

6 hours ago, jt8d9a said:

Well, i bought it to support the work of Tony. Unfortunately the installer gives me an error:

Hi Nils

Please make sure you file a bug about this over at ORBX. It seems FTX central is having issues reading certain encodings from some sceneries.

I've never liked installers myself, especially those ones that insist on going full-screen (Like A2A's stuff), but I think I'm more the exception than the rule, since I know many people much prefer installers do all the work for them.

23 hours ago, CaptCWGAllen said:

Looking forward to seeing this! Hope you had fun working on it Tony.

Thanks Peter, it was good fun to work on. I added the extended autogen and photoregion which should bring the coverage area on-par with the AF2 version. It's also a great piece of nostalgia to fly around, as I remember this airport fondly from FS98 and FS2000  (Graphics seemed to have improved a bit since then )

[MarioDonick 752]

On 4.3.2018 at 9:52 AM, tonywob said:

It correctly looks at other scenery installed and places things in the right place (hopefully :)).

Mostly. For some scenerys on my PC, it showed an error message because it was unable to determine the scenery type. But it was possible to click aways each error message and installation continued.

I manually changed the sorting in scenery_packs.ini though, because I prefer my overlays to be directly above my meshes, not mixed between airports.

By the way, today I noticed some floating objects near the Adler planetarium (the wall with the staircases, and some thing which looks like a tunnel entrance or something similar).

Edited March 5, 2018 by MarioDonick

[Susu986 76]

11 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I guess we disagree, I don't want to place unnecessary requirements on end users that just want to fly nor place artificial exclusions on "qualified" users.  Over time as one's scenery and plug-ins start to pile up, relying on one's memory on how to "remove" a scenery they installed a year or two ago is pretty optimistic ...

Sorry, but if you get into your old car, you won't start to panic, it's been two years you've last driven it - you are going to KNOW how to drive it, because you have a drivers licence which qualifies you to drive about any type of car out there. If you don't want to earn your drivers licence, well, then you shouldn't drive a car. Same thing with sceneries: I don't remember myself many scenery I've installed, but if I need to remove any of them, I can find them ASAP because they are named intuitively, and since I know the basics of file interaction, it's just a matter of deleting folders. Again, removing plugins is the same thing: 90% of them resides in the plugins folder, and they are named intuitively. I'm sorry, but you make this whole thing sound like overly difficult, while it's clearly isn't (an as someone who can create installers with Visual Studio, I don't see what is so difficult about basic file-folder operations). And if everyone would have the same attitude (I don't want to know how it works, I don't want to put in the effort), then today we wouldn't have thousands of gateway sceneries, or those addons and plugins you are talking about. The world of X-plane would be much poorer. Which doesn't mean that there are no beginner users (both to flightsims and to computers), but this behavior should not be encouraged in my opinion, instead, people should be helped to UNDERSTAND what is going on behind the scenes: 'Give the man some meat to feed him for a day, teach the man how hunt, and he shall never be hungry anymore.'

11 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

That seems elitist to me ... why exclude beginners?  Writing a good installer really isn't that difficult ... in most cases it can be done with very little effort as there are many tools that come with development platforms (i.e. Visual Studio) that will do most of the work for you ... I've created many installers over the decades.

And while that might sound elitist, that is my point. After all, you cannot just show up at your local airport, and demand that you want to rent an aircraft without proving first that you have the right qualifications and know how to fly an aircraft, because you've earned it. A good flight simulator is there to simulate the procedures of real flying, thus requires (or should require) at least some study and effort. 

11 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I think you'll find conflicting opinions on XP11 being a tweakers platform, just as you would with P3D ... I know many users of flights simulators that have left because there was just too much "tweaking" ... it's definitely NOT something I would encourage or consider a positive for platform growth.

And if those people have decided to leave, then probably an X-plane level flight simulation was not for them, and they are going to have more luck with other offerings (such as FSW or Aerofly, which are both great product by the way, but require little user interaction). If they would have been REALLY interested in the hobby, they would have said 'The hell with it, I'm going to teach myself a little bit about this, I'm sure it's not rocket science'.  After all, even in real life, having a pilot's certificate is not a right, but an earned privilege. Why would people expect that they could just jump into the cockpit and fly a virtual aircraft in a FAA certifiable simulator, with no effort being taken?

And I'm not talking about an 'exclusive club' here... anyone, who can read and have about a few hours can learn about these things, can easily become at least basically qualified in these matters. We have other platforms which are 'dumbed-down', or shall I say 'more beginner friendly' or 'sealed-off', where end-users can't touch anything about the software, and they get what they've offered, whether they like it or not, but thank God, X-plane is different, and I hope it stays that way. Those who find basic file-folder interactions and text file editing difficult, and totally unwilling to learn, should try their luck elsewhere in my opinion, because flying is not about having 4 buttons on a controller in a casual action-shooter game. Instead it's about learning new things, respecting aviation, and putting in effort. What are they going to do in the virtual cockpit of a 737? Because Boeing doesn't exactly care to make their aircraft 'beginner friendly' to appeal to a wider audience.

Anyway, I see we are not getting terms on this, and it's getting really off-topic now, so I leave it there, but I had to voice my opinion and follow up your post.

Edited March 5, 2018 by Susu986

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Well, I flew around a bit...and it is a nice addition to XP.   Good work, Tony!

Mitch

[Griphos 138]

I hadn't realized it was Tony who built the scenery.  I would like to support Tony as well.  He's certainly contributed a LOT to Xplane.  

How does one go about getting the zip version (for Mac or Linux users I believe) rather than using FTX Central?

Also, the preview shots I saw of Barton Manchester are stunning!  Excellent work, Tony.  I'd like to participate, but am anxious still about using FTX Central.  If a separate process for installing is available, that would seal the deal for me.  

[tonywob 4,768]

Thanks guys, but I'm not the one who built or converted the original airport. I added the large extended autogen and ortho coverage for the Chicago metropolitan area. The original conversion was done last year when ORBX originally announced Project X

You can download the zip by logging into your FTX Central account over at ORBXDirect, and clicking on you purchase of KCGX. You'll find the zip file there.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

44 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Thanks guys, but I'm not the one who built or converted the original airport. I added the large extended autogen and ortho coverage for the Chicago metropolitan area. The original conversion was done last year when ORBX originally announced Project X

You can download the zip by logging into your FTX Central account over at ORBXDirect, and clicking on you purchase of KCGX. You'll find the zip file there.

Hi Tony...this is another reason to purchase XP11 and start learning on it.  Some good times ahead, for sure!  It all looks good and is seamless with Ortho4XP tiles beyond the boundaries of Orbx's KCGX.

[Paraffin 2,197]

21 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

Ok, I just tried my first flight.  It loaded, with no problems, but I did have a few error messages, when Central tried to clean up its files.  That apparently didn't cause any problems in the loading, and you'll see there are three notations for their product. In your .ini file, two are at the top, and one is at the bottom with a ZZZ, that would have the ini routine place it at the bottom of the .cfg file.  That's about it.  Now, to do some more flying.

Count me as another one who isn't thrilled about having an installer directly touch the scenery ini file. Especially one that messes with the ordering with a zzz prefix.

I have my ini file structured with folders that begin with a zzz prefix (HD and UHD mesh, New Zealand HD, and treelines and farms North America V2). So the Orbx installer places another one with zzz prefix at the bottom of that list? This means they may be overriding some of the HD and UHD mesh files. This may be necessary for custom mesh, but it's still going to conflict with instructions for installing some of this other stuff.

It won't stop me from purchasing an Orbx scenery product if there is no conflict, but I think there is justifiable cause to be concerned about how this works within the "ecosystem" of scenery files that we've enjoyed until now. 

For example, what happens when the next commercial add-on company wants to use this method with an installer that touches the scenery ini file order? Are two different installers going to fight to see which one gets the zzz prefix folder listed last for priority loading? Orbx isn't working in a commercial vacuum here.

[tonywob 4,768]

Meigs is just the beginning, there are more coming:

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/150659-orbx-and-x-plane-releases-in-2018/