I have tried yesterday creating xml for some of my sceneries using your excellent software (that I have used for the last six months with no issue).

However this time, I met with unexpected results: After I made those changes I had elevation issues at one airport (FT EHAM) and decided to revert to the old scenery.cfg method. Unfortunately, after doing this, P3Dv4.3 starts, and loads the "creating index file" screen and gets stuck on 83%.

I then restored an earlier scenery.cfg file (still using your software), with no result, still stuck at 83%.

I deleted P3D.cfg file and tried generating a new one, to no avail. As I have quite a respectable number of add-ons including ORBX, I hesitate deleting the scenery file all together as I expect even further trouble ahead and wish to seek some help before doing anything else.

Thank you in advance for any guidance in this issue.

Problem solved: I downloaded another scenery management tool that pointed to five scenery files not having proper paths (they were the ones that I created xml for). I rectified the path and my sim is up and running again.

Thanks.

20 minutes ago, Jean-Claude said:

Problem solved: I downloaded another scenery management tool that pointed to five scenery files not having proper paths (they were the ones that I created xml for). I rectified the path and my sim is up and running again.

Thanks.

Which tool did you use? Lorby?

1 hour ago, Jean-Claude said:

Problem solved: I downloaded another scenery management tool that pointed to five scenery files not having proper paths (they were the ones that I created xml for). I rectified the path and my sim is up and running again.

Thanks.

Hi,

if those "improper paths" were in the add-on.xml files, then restoring the scenery.cfg or the Prepar3d.cfg will do nothing to solve it.

In what way were those paths incorrect exactly - that P3D wouldn't even start? It seems to be something that a tool can catch and advise the user about (and could be built into the P4AO too)?

Best regards

Edited June 30, 20187 yr by Lorby_SI

For all those who used FS9 and FSX, there was a necessary scenery tool management called "Scenery Config Editor". Unfortunately, although it "works" with P3Dv4, it wont read the sceneries installed with xml only those in the scenery.cfg file.

So what happened was that after creating the xml with P4AO for several sceneries, I started to have elevation problems at EHAM, so I decided to revert to the "old fashion" scenery filing way and removed (with P4AO) the xml, converting my five files back with the hope to reinstate xml one by one to see which one was the culprit.

However, the next time I started P3Dv4.3, my P3D scenery loading screen froze at 83% each time, hence P3D was unusable. I reinstated an earlier scenery.cfg file within P4AO but it yielded no result, the loading freeze was still there at the same 83%. I changed my scenery file within P3D this time with an earlier one, still no joy. In my P4AO screen, I had no indication of anything wrong. Hence my first post seeking help.

As a last resort I looked for and found the old SCE mentioned above and installed it. At the very first run it detected my five files wrongly linked, probably as a result of my re-instating the xml to regular scenery.cfg files. Having corrected those paths, P3D could start and work normally, except... that I have still to find the file creating the elevation problem at EHAM which is still there. What I am now doing is to uncheck (deactivate) my sceneries one by one to see which one causes the elevation issue.

I hope this helps.

With thanks for a superb tool and help.

Kind regards.

Just now, Jean-Claude said:

my five files wrongly linked, 

Hello Jean-Claude,

wrong how? What exactly was wrong about them? 

If this error can be detected by software, I would like to build that into P4AO too, to avoid the same thing happening to others.

Best regards

I had something very similar happen, only P3Dv4 starts up and after about 1 minute it freezes (not CPU activity) and stays that way (I even tried waiting 2 hours... though not intentionally).  The problems started with elevation issues at EHAM as well... and I eventually had to add the scenery the old way (non-xml method) to get it to work without elevation issues.

Then, for another reason, I ran the P3Dv4 tool (Delete Generated Files) that removes generated files and it mucked my system up very badly (this was what resulted in the freezing at load) and nothing I tried worked (I do P3D tech support for several developers, so I tried a LOT of things). I suspect there is a bug introduced in 4.3 with the tool and I'll be speaking to LM about this on Monday.  For now, I wouldn't think about using it.  Anyway, just a heads up on this, if you need to remove generated files then I'd do so manually and stay away from the tool for now.

Best wishes.

 

Thank you Dave, I will surely stay away from this P3D tool and wait until it's fixed! I will re-install FT EHAM which is the culprit, no other scenery has an elevation problem! FT sceneries don't do too well with xml except those released with it.

Oliver, the paths were wrong after I restored the regular scenery.cfg and cancelled the xml. Why, I cannot tell. As mentioned earlier, there was no information with P4AO that would lead me to this, only when I run the "Scenery Config Editor", the five sceneries were highlighted with a warning sign and a red tag showing five errors, so I immediately knew where to look and what to do. Perhaps you could eventually implement this as well in your software which is so useful otherwise.

With best regards,

Edited June 30, 20187 yr by Jean-Claude

Similar here. But of my own making. Moved scenery folders out of p3d root folder to another location. Does AoO have a tool built in to rescan scenery folders after the user screws around with them. I know you can edit them manually with assistance of your utility which is what I did.

1 hour ago, Jean-Claude said:

Perhaps you could eventually implement this as well in your software

If you tell me what to do, I probably could ;o)

I can only implement something if I get specs for it. Right now I don't even know what to look for - only you do.

Best regards

6 minutes ago, jalbino59 said:

Similar here. But of my own making. Moved scenery folders out of p3d root folder to another location. Does AoO have a tool built in to rescan scenery folders after the user screws around with them. I know you can edit them manually with assistance of your utility which is what I did.

Hello Jose,

what happened on your end? Were the paths just plain wrong, pointing nowhere, or were they pointing at something else? It has never happened before on this platform that an incorrect scenery path would halt the simulator, so I am very interested in hearing more about this.

The problem with scanning is, that I would have to force one of the two possible variants on you, how scenery can be referenced in the sim:

1. by targeting the top folder which contains \scenery and \texture as Path (= referencing a Scenery Area)
2. or by splitting the two apart, and adding \scenery and \texture separately.

Obviously both have to be scanned in a different way, and method 2. would constitute an error if I implement logic to scan for 1.

I just know that whatever I do people will take offence, because not everybody shares my view that method 1. is the correct one.

Best regards

7 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Hello Jose,

what happened on your end? Were the paths just plain wrong, pointing nowhere, or were they pointing at something else? It has never happened before on this platform that an incorrect scenery path would halt the simulator, so I am very interested in hearing more about this.

The problem with scanning is, that I would have to force one of the two possible variants on you, how scenery can be referenced in the sim:

1. by targeting the top folder which contains \scenery and \texture as Path (= referencing a Scenery Area)
2. or by splitting the two apart, and adding \scenery and \texture separately.

Obviously both have to be scanned in a different way, and method 2. would constitute an error if I implement logic to scan for 1.

I just know that whatever I do people will take offence, because not everybody shares my view that method 1. is the correct one.

Best regards

Hello, well its embarassing when I think of it really, what I did was move the entire FlightBeam folder, which contained the scenery and texture files for PHX, SFO, AND DEN, in their respective sub folders, as well as their update and configuration executable, and some documents.  It was originally in my P3D root folder and I just chucked the whole thing onto another drive.  So yes the paths were wrong and pointing to a folder that did not exist any more. I fixed it by manually editing the scenery and textures paths with your with AoO. Probably the same way Jean-Claude did. 

But yes, when I launched the sim with the incorrect scenery paths, it seems to have crashed while trying to create the indexes. I seem to remember in FSX when such an error was encountered, the sim would just give an alert saying the scenery could not be found and prompt you to answer whether you wanted to unload it or not. This seems not to be the case with scenery making use of addon.xml. 

That said, I wanted to assure you that I take absolutely no offence at how your application works. It's a absolute must have application if your going to use this sim and very intelligently and elegantly designed.   

Thanks,   

Jose

     

Edited July 1, 20187 yr by jalbino59

13 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

If you tell me what to do, I probably could ;o)

I can only implement something if I get specs for it. Right now I don't even know what to look for - only you do.

First and foremost, please do understand that I am not in any way complaining about your software since it has helped me so much to sort out scenery issues in P3D (I moved on from FSX to P3Dv4.1 last December and used P4AO since then). Your product is great and simple to use. The only reason I post there is that I thought I did something wrong and needed help from a qualified person. After posting I kept thinking about a way out of my situation and this is when I thought about my FSX days and reloaded the SCE freeware and that saved the day... Had it been an xml error, I would still be looking...!

Now what SCE caught on its first run was that five paths to sceneries were non existant and hence red-flagged them. When I followed those paths, there were no folders in my P3D anymore (these were the ones I had created xml for). This was the reason why P3D could not load, as José pointed out FSX would have indicated that with an error message and ask us to unload the missing scenery before moving on, P3D does not dot that and hangs for ever with no indication of what is wrong. Perhaps Dave could mention that to LM when he speaks to them, this simple feature would certainly help resolving minor issues like this.

Thus my question to you: Could your software detect such missing folders (or "wrong" path) and show them in red for example so that we look into the right direction?

Once again Oliver I am extremely grateful for your work and dedication to this community, my posting here was not meant to create any bad feelings about your product.

Enjoy a great week-end!

Edited July 1, 20187 yr by Jean-Claude

Morning All, 

 

I have the same issue, in that it seems to be 'stuck' on what sceneries are active and I cannot change them at all, was Ok up until now V4.3??

 

Thanks

 

Update...Sorted SimStarter Issue

Edited July 1, 20187 yr by alpha117

5 hours ago, Jean-Claude said:

was that five paths to sceneries were non existant and hence red-flagged them. When I followed those paths, there were no folders in my P3D anymore (these were the ones I had created xml for). This was the reason why P3D could not load, as José pointed out FSX would have indicated that with an error message and ask us to unload the missing scenery before moving on, P3D does not dot that and hangs for ever with no indication of what is wrong.

Hello @ll,

I made a couple of tests, and I can only force the issue that P3D "hangs" when I add an invalid path that P3D does not yet know about. The "crash" seems to happen when the scenery cache is built. 

I have uploaded P4AO 1.35 to the Lorby-SI website just now. In this version, if a content path is invalid (or empty), the entry will turn violet in the treelist.

Best regards

 

Edited July 1, 20187 yr by Lorby_SI