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Zoandar

Can any other simulators use FSX Scenery BGL files?

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Having spent nearly 10 years creating my own custom photo-realistic scenery files for my FSX installation, I've got a lot of time and effort in those files. Now that I had to switch to Windows 10 (my new motherboard requires it) and can't get FSX to run, despite hours of online research, I am considering trying one of the newer simulators. But it would be a real plus if I could take my scenery files along with me. So can any of the Windows 10 compatible flight simulators use the same kind of BGL scenery files?

If anyone also knows of a step-wise guide to guaranteed success making FSX work on Win10 Home Premium, please let me know. There is too much vague discussion on the forums about it, so I couldn't find anything concrete to make it happen. 

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Jude Bradley
Beech Baron: Uh, Tower, verify you want me to taxi in front of the 747?
ATC: Yeah, it's OK. He's not hungry.

X-Plane 11 X-Plane 12 and MSFS2020  🙂

System specs: Windows 11  Pro 64-bit, Ubuntu Linux 20.04 i9-9900KF  Gigabyte Z390 RTX-3070-Ti , 32GB RAM  1X 2TB M2 for X-Plane 12,  1x256GB SSD for OS. 1TB drive MSFS2020

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All of the Megascenery photoscenery use .bgl format and I have them installed in P3Dv4 so no issues with P3DV4.


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I have FSX on both my Win 10 machines without issue. Happy to help unless you are set on changing to one of the modern alternatives 🙂

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Thank you all for the replies and offer to help. Trying to stick with the seemingly hopeless idea of making FSX work was secondary in my OP, so I didn't want to get long-winded about what wasn't working until I saw some of you good folks reporting that you have done it. 

Essentially, I am seeing the following error. At first I saw it during the initial installation from my FSX  Gold with Acceleration DVDs, so I did re-run the installation a second time using the "repair" option, and the process reported successful completion. Note that I have not yet gotten to the point of installing Acceleration. 

"Flight simulator was unable to read some program files and will now exit. Please reinstall Flight Simulator to restore or repair the program installation."

This is a newly rebuilt PC using:

EVGA SUPERNOVA 1300 G2 1300WATT Modular Power Supply – SN: 1803441308808609 – 10 YEAR WARRANTY
ASUS Prime X370-Pro AMD Ryzen AM4 DDR4 DP HDMI M.2 USB 3.1 ATX X370 Motherboard 
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Processor  - YD2700BBAFBOX
EVGA CLC 240mm All-In-One RGB LED CPU Liquid Cooler, 2x FX12 120mm PWM Fans, Intel, AMD, 5 YR Warranty, 400-HY-CL24-V1
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz C15 Desktop Memory Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B3000C15)
EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1070 Superclocked 8GB DDR5 Graphics Card
LG WH16NS40 Super Multi Blue Internal SATA 16x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter
Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Computer Case with Metal Body and Hinged Side Panels
TWO (2) Scythe SY1225SL12L 120mm "Slipstream" Case Fans
Asus VS228H-P 21.5” LED SN H1LMTF119753 as RH display 
Asus VK228 - HDMI , VGA, DVI-D as LH display 
LG34UM65 - HDMI , VGA, DisplayPort as CENTER display 
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD SN: S3Z1NY0M412602   -  Main Drive for Windows 10 Home OS

FSX is being installed to a Samsung 960GB SSD, from which I ran it when this PC previously ran Windows 7 Home Premium on a different SSD holding the OS. So there is a lot on that FSX-dedicated SSD. All the bits from the previous, heavily customized, FSX install. My custom scenery files load from yet a different SSD. But I never got to the point of working with scenery files in Win10.

After the seemingly successful "repair" re-installation, any attempt to execute the FSX.exe file on the 960GB SSD presents me with the same error message above. I am always an administrator on my PCs, so no need to try running as administrator. I tried compatibility mode for Win8, Win7, and even a desperate attempt at WinXP, but all yield the exact same error message. Note that I never saw this message before. Is this specifically a Win10 error message?

Most of the forum discussion I have found searching that error message is over a year old. Some are many years old. I even found the exact same error message being reported in P3D. But there was never what I would call a firm list of steps to take to fix it. Just a ton of speculation. And those who claimed eventual success never returned to detail what worked, so often there would be several other folks posting afterward with the same problem and no replies to their posts. I tried using the handy Time constraint in Google search hoping to discover a fix posted within the past month, then within the past year, to little avail. I know Win10 has evolved, supposedly fixing a lot of problems. So I didn't want to dwell in topics addressed in the early stages of Win10, as they may no longer apply today. I appreciate any help you can provide on this, and will try again to install FSX if it seems very likely to lead me to success. 

Regarding the compatibility of other simulators with FSX BGL files, let me clarify that the files I mean are the "ground" you see when you look down from above, and not buildings, etc.. Although creating such files from online satellite imagery looks great from about 3,000 feet AGL upward, it replaces all traces of buildings, trees, anything that would be normally found outside of the metropolitan areas where the FSX team did a lot of extensive work for realism. I like to "fly" in my general home area, around the Great Lakes. And I look recognizing where I am when I look out the window. The shorelines are beautiful in reality, but sadly FSX generic attempts to render them are beyond ugly. I just HAD to do something about it. So that kicked off my 10 year project to make the ground and shorelines look like they should. Unless someone has actually started using genuine satellite imagery in a simulator, I would really miss all the work I did. If someone HAS done so, please tell me who! 🙂

 

Edited by Zoandar
Win10 timeline clarity

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Actually, even though you are set up as Administrator, there is a higher administrator account. I don't know if "run as administrator" will help, but it might be worth a try. Also, it is not clear to me if the 960 SSD was wiped or if you are trying to run W7 things from it. BGLs and the like as storage shouldn't be a problem. Things that are installations could be.

I have to add my voice to those who have have no problem installing default FSX Deluxe (though not Accel) on W10. Personally, I prefer to have the OS and any important software on the same drive. I know there are arguments against that. SSD's are the only way to go, even for general storage. My desktop is a combo of SSD and HDD and I think that even though it has faster CPU, GPU and more faster ram, that it is a bit slower over all than my laptop. Mainly because it has to deal with different speed drives. I'm not talking about how the two run software. The desktop wins hands down. I'm talking about times when both types of drives are involved. Like when the video editor (installed on the SSD) has to go to the HDD to get video files to edit. Then after the edits are done, has to render the files back to the HDD. Just something I notice. 

 


Bob

i5, 16 GB ram, GTX 960, FS on SSD, Windows 10 64 bit, home built works anyway.

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1) Have you just pulled the SSD from an old system and put it in a new system, and tried to run Fsx ?

2) or did you install the SSD to the new system, and re-install FSX?

1 wont work as registry entries will be missing.

2 is what you need to do to fix that.

theres also the question of install location, keeping it out of c:\program files.

and the admin thing...as regard to Fsx. Get friendly with right click run as admin, on everything, if you forget, pull out of the install and rerun with the right click method.

That includes the very 1st time you run the initial installer for FSX, run it via right click run as admin.

and any other installer you may use for aircraft, scenery, always install via right click run as admin. 

Even being admin, right click method still required.


Luke Pype

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Thank you for the reply. I am aware of the benefit of keeping certain programs away from the C drive, and I know FSX is one of them. That's why it has its very own SSD that does only FSX stuff. 

I installed FSX anew, overlaying the existing file content of the FSX-dedicated 960 GB SSD with whatever files Windows 10 re-installed in the process. Note that I "un-installed" FSX before I removed the old motherboard which ran Windows 7. Is it possible that some Windows 7-specific files remained on the FSX SSD and interfered with the Windows 10 new installation of FSX? I did think about trying to copy the many GB of FSX files off the 960 SSD, install FSX to it as a newly formatted drive, and then copy all the ancillary files back to the drive again. I was hoping I didn't have to do that. I've never needed to in the many times I've reinstalled FSX in the past using Win7 and WinXP. 

I did not know there was yet another level of administrator privileges above being an administrator account. Thanks for the tip. 

I can try again to install FSX (it is currently uninstalled from Win10) with that tip in mind.

 

On the other half of this topic, I just learned from a friend that there is a utility called FS2XPlane  which can convert FSX scenery BGL files for use in X-Plane. 

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As you know, just because you uninstall a program doesn't mean it's all gone. There are usually things left behind.

As a test you might install FSX on the OS drive just to see if it works. But I'm sure it will.

I think a clean install is best with an OS change. Easy for me to say since I don't run any add-ons.


Bob

i5, 16 GB ram, GTX 960, FS on SSD, Windows 10 64 bit, home built works anyway.

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Thanks, BobbyJack. If I do try a clean FSX install, I would not put it on the OS drive, for multiple reasons. I would more likely try installing it to its own cleanly formatted drive. If that worked, I could then copy over the multitude of add-on and custom files I have from my currently populated FSX drive left over from Win7. 

I like to make drive image backups of my OS drive to revert to when things go sideways. For that reason I install hefty programs with many GB of files on a different drive away from C. It keeps the OS drive image backup files more reasonably sized. And historically, I can just reinstall an OS on a major build, re-install the programs right over top of their files on the other drives, and be good to go. On Win7, this worked for FSX. 

For now I am playing with a full version of X-Plane 11, and some of my custom FSX scenery files I successfully converted using FS2XPlane. I appear to be seeing hybrid landscapes now, a mixture of theirs and mine. So I need to see how to suppress the mundane artificial landscapes used in X-Plane, without affecting things like their airports. The only airport inclusions I have done with my own scenery were fixes for when FSX airports aren't located correctly in their default scenery. 

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