How to add Scenery and components

[somiller 694]

Oliver,

I have been struggling trying to get freeware Global AI Ship Traffic into P3Dv4.3 I used P4AO to add the scenery part (.bgl's of ship routes...I think), and the components "SimObjects," Effects," and "Sound," but no ship traffic is showing up, so I am wondering if I have a problem with targeting the wrong directories.

Here is the directory structure in Windows Explorer:

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2 (all scenery/component directories are contained in this path), so they look like this:

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Scenery\World\scenery

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Simobjects\Boats

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Simobjects\Animals

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Effects\Texture

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Sound

 

Currently the paths as I have them selected, and showing in P4AO are:

On the scenery tab I have Global Ship AI and the path is:

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Scenery\World

On the Other Addons tab I have the following components added in the Ship AI .xml:

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Simobjects

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Effects

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\For New Computer\~Prepar3D\Traffic\Global Ship Traffic\Global_AI_Ship_Traffic_V2\Sound

Any ideas where I might want to make changes to get my traffic to show up in P3D? Obviously this addon has nothing to do with you, but I suspect I may be targeting the wrong directories. Everything shows up green in P4AO, but no traffic in the sim. PLEASE HELP...lol

Kind Regards,

[Lorby_SI 2,062]

Hi,

hard to tell when I am not at your computer. I can only give you generic advice at this point:

• Make sure that the ship traffic slider is up in the P3D settings...
• Limit the length of your file paths. Windows has a hard limit at 256(?) characters, but you never know if some app might still be expecting older (=shorter) path strings.
• Don't use non-alphanumeric characters in your file paths. There is no guarantee that every program will accept paths containing a "~" for example

Here is my add-on.xml for comparison

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
  <AddOn.Name>ShipTraffic</AddOn.Name>
  <AddOn.Description />
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Effects</Category>
    <Path>D:\Shiptraffic\Effects</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>SimObjects</Category>
    <Path>D:\Shiptraffic\Simobjects\Boats</Path>
    <Name>ShipModels</Name>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>SimObjects</Category>
    <Path>D:\Shiptraffic\Simobjects\Animals</Path>
    <Name>Animals</Name>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Sound</Category>
    <Path>D:\Shiptraffic\Sound</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Scenery</Category>
    <Path>D:\Shiptraffic\scenery\world</Path>
    <Name>ShipTraffic</Name>
    <Layer>128</Layer>
  </AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

From the looks of it, you may have the simobjects paths wrong. It must be the folder directly "above" the object folders themselves.

Best regards

Edited November 15, 2018 by Lorby_SI

[somiller 694]

Oliver,

Interesting you should mention file, path names - that's one of the things I considered, as I've got a couple of long folder names...I'll shorten them.

I suspect, however, as you mention, that my simobject path is wrong. I'll correct them using your example and see what it does...will report results.

Kind Regards,

 

Update:

Oliver,

Happy to report that I now have ship traffic. I suspect it was simply that I had the wrong simobject path/s selected. I did shorten my path names, but did not remove "~". Evidently in this case, some non-alpa-numeric characters work.

Goes without saying...what a fantastic program we have in P4AO. I can say without hesitation, that without P4AO my sim would be a boring, lonely place, because I just wouldn't bother to manually add much of what I have installed!

Kind Regards,