Scenery Order in P3dv4.3

[unc1rlm 31]

I have never understood the scenery layering in FSX or p3d.... I don't know why Lockheed Martin couldn't develop a more graphical interface to actually show the consumer where things are. For example...the top section could be a highlighted box that is expandable  say for airports... then say the next layer below that say scenery or whatever and then a box below that for meshes or whatever. Maybe I am not making sense. I have all this scenery and I am installing FS Global Next Generation and I don't know where it belongs.. At the very top or at the very bottom.....I know scenery order is very important but have no clue if its right. I have FSAerodata and I don't know where it belongs...at the very top or below the add on airports etc.

Here are some pics to show you what mine looks like... This is the top section...notice everything is kinda helter skelter. Second pic is ok but look at the last one. Little old Kai-Tak sitting way at the bottom...all alone. I believe the add-on manager order is the same as this. Now Kai-Tak is in "violet"

Does Add-on Manager put scenery in the right order or no. I know that one of the fsaid files (1 of 3) is between an airport and something else and the other two are somewhere else.

Hope I am making some kind of sense....lol

Thanks for your great program.

Bob M.

Edited August 4, 2018 by unc1rlm
added pictures and some questions.

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

Hello Bob,

there is no "correct" sequence, as in "commanded by a written specification". Noone can tell you where you have to put what, because technology wise there is absolutely no difference between airport files, terrain files or mesh files. It is impossible to make this visually more pleasing, for that the scenery system itself would have to work differently. 

FWIW your scenery library looks fine. Scenery is loaded from the bottom upwards, that is why many developers accepted this as a general rule. The reason is, that to be able to override parts of the scenery, say, to replace a default airport building with your own, you must create an "exclusion", basically a BGL file that wipes out everything that has been loaded before. Naturally that makes it necessary to rely on a certain sequence. Over time it has been established that first you load the default scenery (= everything that has the path "Scenery\..:", that is why it always is at the bottom of the list, up to "Bathymetry"). On top of that you should load any mesh replacement products, and on top of that your airports. That should guarantee that the added mesh excludes the default and that an addon airport excludes whatever has come before. There is one exception to that rule, and those are elevation correction files that for whatever reason are loaded right before everything else, at "Scenery\World". Your FlyTampa KaiTak World is an example of that (btw. if it is violet in P4AO, that means that the folder is either empty or it doesn't exist - make sure that the Path really is correct).

Gut feeling says to put FSGU_NG on top of "Central North America", the last of the default meshes. But mesh is tricky, the theory goes that the sim is automatically loading the mesh with the highest resolution and ignores the others. I haven't seen proof of that happening though.

ORBX does whatever they want. You cannot rely on the sequence of P4AO when you are using ORBX. In my sim I have set the insertion point of ORBX to be below the "FSAD Navaids", and that keeps it tidy. If you don't set an insertion point, FTX Central will shuffle the scenery positions every time that you start it.

One trap that many are falling into is that the scenery priority that you see in the library dialog is the numerical opposite of the scenery Layer number that you have in the scenery.cfg or the add-on.xml files (and the sequence which you see in P4AO). The "scenery priority" exists only on the scenery library dialog, and in your case it ranges form 1 as the top most (=last loaded) to 163 (as the first loaded). The real sequence depends on the scenery Layer parameter, and there the scenery that is loaded first has Layer 1 and the last loaded has Layer 163.

Best regards

 

 

Edited August 4, 2018 by Lorby_SI

[gaab 111]

1 hour ago, unc1rlm said:

Now Kai-Tak is in "violet" 

Because you disabled the Animated AI Ships, which is the only file there...

[unc1rlm 31]

2 hours ago, gaab said:

Because you disabled the Animated AI Ships, which is the only file there...

How did you know...Are you Psychic or  what lol 😎

Thank you,

Bob M.

[unc1rlm 31]

THANK YOU OLIVER!!!!  Alot to digest 🙂

Bob M.

[unc1rlm 31]

When I run STB and reload scenery..I get this error message?

Any idees..Thanks,

Bob M.

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

Hello Bob,

sorry, but STB is not one of my products.

Best regards

[unc1rlm 31]

Not a problem....its just I don't have an xml for KaiTak Ai Ships...Thanks,

Bob M.

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

20 hours ago, unc1rlm said:

Not a problem....its just I don't have an xml for KaiTak Ai Ships...Thanks,

Bob M.

If it shows up in P4AO then there is one - somewhere. Or an entry in the scenery.cfg.

But I don't have either product (STB or KaiTak) so I can't comment on what they do, sorry.

Best regards

Edited August 5, 2018 by Lorby_SI

[unc1rlm 31]

Got it...Thank you so much for all your help 🙂

Bob M.