I installed ORBX Central v4 and migrated all my ORBX 29 products to a new library located on the same SDD but outside P3Dv4.5.

Before doing this, initially my P4AO scenery cfg was orderly and working 100% (I saved that cfg file before moving to Central 4). Not anymore.

I could after version 4.04 re-establish some order, but I have yet to understand why I am getting two problems:

1. My close ground (looking down from the aircraft below 5'000 feet) ORBX textures are blurry (whereas this never happened before v4)
2. The scenario loading times are now well in excess of 15 minutes (versus 2 to 3 minutes with v3)

Could this be explained by a wrong order of my sceneries in P4AO please (the same question went unanswered on the ORBX forum).

Thank you for any feedback.

Windows 10, i7 8700K, 32 GB RAM, SDD 1TB Samsung Evo, Nvidia GTX 1070

Hello Jean-Claude,

sorry, but I can't really help you. I would advise against using P4AO anymore when you move to the new ORBX Central. It is never good to use more than one tool that manipulates the scenery library, and the new ORBX Central IMHO counts as one such tool. Plus ORBX is using a strange technique regarding the layering of their products, which P4AO could (will) compromise. 

Blurry textures and long loading times point to a bottleneck in the file access process.

• This could be a trivial thing - for example, when the ORBX scenery was on an SSD together with your sim and now you migrated it to a HDD, then all file access times would go up between 500% and 1000% - a physical harddisk is 5 to 10 times slower than an SSD - and with that many files to parse, you will definitely feel that.
• It could be a case of duplicate or incorrectly linked assets - when P3D has to search through many folders to find a specific texture, if the same textures exist mutliple times or if it doesn't find it at all, processing errors in general will have a big impact on performance.
• Or it could be a systematic bug in P3D when addon packages are used - but then everyone would have the same problem.
• The scenery library order alone - I can't imagine that this would make any difference - unless it causes one of the above. For example scenery assets not being found, that are required by a layer that normally has higher priority but the library now is on a lower layer. But you would notice this in the sim too, objects, ground, sky would be black.

Best regards

Edited October 19, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

Thank you Oliver,

I understand your points. FYI I have used P4AO this afternoon to reorder the sceneries, making sure all ORBX files would be (as they were before migration) below my FSAID files and all my airport add-ons (many of them). Apparently P3D took it without any problem. I had also reordered ORBX files as they were under v3 and again all went well.

Since I have not flown yet with this new scenery.cfg file, I cant tell if it will have an effect on the blurry texture, but what is certain is that it did not change one thing to the scenario loading time where it freezes as soon as it gets on Loading auto-generated scenery (presumably ORBX files), this is where the 15 minutes go, the rest of the loading process is absolutely similar to what it was with v3. Bear in mind that all 29 ORBX products have been migrated to the SAME SDD as the one where P3D and Windows are (I have only one hard drive), hence there is no apparent reason for this excessive loading time for the auto-generated scenery as far as hardware is concerned.

Remains as you mentioned in your reply duplicates, I used P4AO tp eliminate them (there were a few in the ORBX files and they are not listed anymore. )When going through the list of each ORBX files, I found duplicate numbers and first thought they were duplicate files, but going to the path, they apparently were part of a package with different names inside, so I avoided touching them.

As a matter of curiosity, is there a way to open a saved scenery.cfg P4AO file with a word editor, I'd like to check what has changed in the ORBX file names? Again, many thanks for your kind help.

Best regards,

 

Edited August 11, 20196 yr by Jean-Claude

On 8/11/2019 at 4:34 PM, Jean-Claude said:

excessive loading time for the auto-generated scenery

I imagine that one thing has indeed changed with that. If I remember correctly, ORBX used to manipulate the autogen and terrain definition files of the simulator. This is no longer necessary with P3D V4, and maybe they are now keeping their own definition files in an external package too (I don't know, I haven't gotten that far with ORBX Central yet). Then the simulator would have to process two sets of autogen definitions, default and ORBX. And theoretically this could cause the loading performance issues, because it is a new logic that it didn't go through before.

But - this is all conjecture. I don't really know, I am just speculating. Once I proceed with ORBX Central to that point, I guess that I will find out...

Best regards

Edited October 19, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

12 hours ago, Jean-Claude said:

As a matter of curiosity, is there a way to open a saved scenery.cfg P4AO file with a word editor, I'd like to check what has changed in the ORBX file names?

Sure. There are several options.

1. Right click on a node in the scenery list on P4AO and select "Export list". This will create a html formatted report of the scenery library.
   Or
2. use the "Create scenery Index report" feature to get a similar report of what the sim has compiled into the scenery indexes
   Or
3. Use the "Export library for external tool" feature in P4AO to temporarily create a scenery.cfg that contains all add-on.xml references too (= the new ORBX library). Copy it to your desktop, then complete the process in P4AO which restores the scenery.cfg to the normal state. The resulting cfg file on your desktop can be opened with any text editor.

Best regards

Edited August 12, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

Thank you Oliver, if only ORBX support was like yours....!

With kind regards,

 

I'm personally still using P4AO with orbx central and don't see any issue caused by P4AO @Lorby_SI

The layering used by orbx still uses the scenery.cfg layers to insert its layers and basically does the same thing as FTX central but it now integrates add-on.xml in the library instead of adding scenery.cfg entries.

About the blurries, I also observed that blurries happens much more quickly than before when flying fast and low and that loading ground textures is a bit slower. I don't really get blurries in normal situations though. From all the testings I've done through the years, I unfortunately these are mainly due to these 2 reasons explained by Oliver, especially the 2nd one:

21 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

• It could be a case of duplicate or incorrectly linked assets - when P3D has to search through many folders to find a specific texture, if the same textures exist mutliple times or if it doesn't find it at all, processing errors in general will have a big impact on performance.
• Or it could be a systematic bug in P3D when addon packages are used - but then everyone would have the same problem.

Also, there's a huge flaw in how orbx implemented the world texture components in their addons. It's been confirmed by orbx after a serie of tests I've been running during the last week: https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/177646-major-issue-world-textures-add-on-component-does-not-replace-default-textures/

I even wonder if it's been really tested as it should not have been released with such an important issue.

Edited August 12, 20196 yr by kmax59

Thank you Maxime, I also found that using P4AO was OK finally, after some trial and error, but that - unfortunately - did not at all solve the scenario loading time (15 to 24 minutes) with a i7 8700K and 32 GB RAM. This is at this time the main challenge for me. Are you experiencing this as well?

Blurries were only, as you describe, low and fast when on approach, otherwise everything looked OK, but I certainly did not scrutinize the ground textures the way you did it in your testings (I had read that thread at ORBX). So it really looks that in spite of implementing the xml, one would need to revert to version 3 if we want to use ORBX products for the foreseeable future. Their support is far too slow and it is difficult to understand how a tested and released product can have so major shortcomings.

Thank you for your kind and precious input.

With best regards,

Straight answer - no it should not have been released in it's current state.   Nowhere near enough testing was done, the evergrowing posts in the Orbx Central Forum is testament to that.

I tried it, but for the moment have gone back to v3.   The new version offers no obvious advantage as yet, and a significant number of disadvantages.  The slow loading was the tipping point for me (i9900K).

Hello @ll,

I think that I am seeing the blurries too, I just didn't realize it. On my devel system, I only migrated GES and GEN on Friday. These last weeks I have been developing and testing the next version of LorbyLiveTraffic at EDDM, and now, when I switch between AI aircraft, suddenly the ground is blurry, and it stays that way for quite a long time. But it is only the ORBX textures that are blurry, the airport background at T2G EDDM is sharp! Very odd.

When I find the time, I will revert back to Central 3, see if it makes a difference.

Best regards

Edited August 12, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

 

Since migrating all my orbx content (other than Global Base, of course) I'm also observing (orbx) ground textures are now slower to fully resolve (ie blurries are present closer to the aircraft) 😞

It's not terrible... but it is noticeably worse than under the old scenery.cfg method.

Edited August 12, 20196 yr by paj

Today, I found that FTX central 3 messes up my scenery order. It seems, while inserting his ORBX stuff into the correct "below ..." position, it renumbers the scenery layers of all scenery entries except those of the documents\add-on folder, so I got sceneries with the same layer (mixed moveable and unmoveable in P3D) and have them sort again after using FTX central with P4AO and auto-number.

My question: does Central 4 change this behaviour, means: does Central 4 respect all add-ons and renumber their layers in a correct non-duplicate way (as "it now integrates add-on.xml") ?

12 minutes ago, QuaxTheSnoopie said:

Today, I found that FTX central 3 messes up my scenery order. It seems, while inserting his ORBX stuff into the correct "below ..." position, it renumbers the scenery layers of all scenery entries except those of the documents\add-on folder, so I got sceneries with the same layer (mixed moveable and unmoveable in P3D) and have them sort again after using FTX central with P4AO and auto-number.

My question: does Central 4 change this behaviour, means: does Central 4 respect all add-ons and renumber their layers in a correct non-duplicate way (as "it now integrates add-on.xml") ?

As far as I know and could observe, none of the "Central" apps takes the whole scenery library into account. They only handle what is "theirs". Central 3 must relayer the scenery.cfg, because the cfg didn't allow "gaps" or duplicates (in the scenery wold before P3D V4, that is).

If you like a particular order in your scenery library, then things will get even worse when you switch to ORBX Central. But generally speaking, duplicate layer numbers are not problematic, P3D V4 allows that. It is just not ideal, since the results can be unpredictable. Only complete and consistent layering makes sure of a specific sequence.

Best regards

On 8/11/2019 at 9:53 AM, Lorby_SI said:

I would advise against using P4AO anymore when you move to the new ORBX Central

Hi Oliver! Thanks for some awesome tools. I went to ORBX Central but did not migrate anything other than what was required. I used P4AO successfully to sort out some priorities for sceneries. Everything seems good although I haven’t checked all layer numbers.

Now I would like to use P4AO to create groups that I can activate / deactivate depending on where I will be flying. I’ve carefully read your manual, I have activated “Enforce Strict Package Law”. Do you also recommend against using P4AO in this manner since I’m on ORBX Central?  Any other cautions if I proceed? 
Thanks again,

Bruce

7 hours ago, bbuckley said:

Hi Oliver! Thanks for some awesome tools. I went to ORBX Central but did not migrate anything other than what was required. I used P4AO successfully to sort out some priorities for sceneries. Everything seems good although I haven’t checked all layer numbers.

Now I would like to use P4AO to create groups that I can activate / deactivate depending on where I will be flying. I’ve carefully read your manual, I have activated “Enforce Strict Package Law”. Do you also recommend against using P4AO in this manner since I’m on ORBX Central?  Any other cautions if I proceed? 
Thanks again,

Bruce

Hello Bruce,

my advice would be the usual - create a full backup of your config files with P4AO before proceeding.

If you are using P4AO to sort out your layers, the groups and everything else work normally - until you run ORBX Central again. After that you will have to sort out your layers again. The groups themselves are independent of layering, they only care about scenery titles.

What it boils down to is, that two tools are doing the same thing but in different ways. It is not like bad things can happen, but the user has definitely more work on his plate to sort out layering. If there is only ORBX, their way of doing things is fine. But if your scenery world is larger than that, and you need to insert stuff inbetween ORBX, then there will be trouble eventually.

IMHO, what ORBX should have done is, to load the whole scenery library config into a temporary structure, then find the insertion point, insert the ORBX assets, renumber the scenery library, and then save it again - across all add-on.xml files and the scenery.cfg. That is what P4AO does and it is not particularly hard to achieve. As long as the scenery layering remains the same, nobody will complain that all scenery config files have been updated.

This gives me an idea about how one may be able to automatically rebuild a certain layering, even if ORBX Central is run. I need to think about that a bit more.

Best regards

Edited October 20, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI