Scenery priority/order between marketplace and community?

[abrams_tank 7,387]

Hi all. So I'm sure this will become a bigger problem as more sceneries are released in the future.  I purchased the scenery for Hong Kong (Hong Kong City Times, made by Sam Scene 3D) from the MSFS marketplace today.  Also, a few days ago, somebody released an awesome version of the Kai Tak airport at https://flightsim.to/file/4713/hong-kong-kai-tak (it's a completely new version than the first one, created by an entirely different person).

In a nutshell, the scenery for Hong Kong from the marketplace contains a cruise ship terminal, which is accurate since that's what is there today.  For flight sim enthusiasts though (aren't we all flight sim enthusiasts?), of course we want to install the freeware Kai Tak airport to go back to the old days for nostalgia's sake.  So when you put the two sceneries together, you get this:

Of course, there may be a fix for this by both scenery developers.  But that's not the point.

The point is, is there a way for us, as a user, to order the priority of sceneries in MSFS?  Did Asobo create such a feature for us in MSFS to override sceneries?  If there is, I would love to know. If there isn't, this is something we should request from Asobo.  Because this problem will keep getting worse as more and more paid sceneries hit the market, and more and more freeware sceneries are created in the future.

Edit: Seems like this problem is also affecting the Thames river add-on, and the Orbx London scenery add-on: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/please-help-with-scenery-order-priority/336170/5?u=gadwin777

Edited December 16, 2020 by abrams_tank

[Alvega 2,119]

Did you try removing the Kay Tak scenery (or disabling it if you use Addons Linker) and then adding it again? It will hopefully then stay on top of the marketplace one.

[abrams_tank 7,387]

9 minutes ago, Alvega said:

Did you try removing the Kay Tak scenery (or disabling it if you use Addons Linker) and then adding it again? It will hopefully then stay on top of the marketplace one.

My understanding is that the content.xml file will control the priority of how the sceneries are loaded, right?

Anyways, I actually edited the content.xml file directly and changed the order.  Unfortunatley, it didn't seem to make a difference. 
 

[Alvega 2,119]

So, you didn't try what I said?

[kaosfere 3,115]

(Let me start with a caveat:  I am not an expert in scenery development, I've only mucked around with it a bit and combined it with my deeper general understanding of the sim.  I could be completely off-base here, so don't take this as anything but my own thoughts on the problem.  I'm sure one of our massively experienced scenery devs could provide some more authoritative information and guidance.)

We talked about this a bit in the previous thread about the specific scenery in question.  The supported way of ordering non-marketplace scenery is by the name of their folder in the community directory.  That is the only "official" tool we have been given. 

I haven't really seen a full description of the role of content.xml in the new sim.  It clearly serves some purpose, but it's not a canonical source for scenery information -- you can determine this easily by removing it and seeing it get recreated the next time the sim starts.   Ordering things in there manually may or may not have an effect, I'm not certain that anyone has experimented with that.   It could probably be rather quickly done by creating two sceneries of the same area, one with excludes and one without, and seeing what happens if you invert the order in that file.

The interaction of marketplace and non-marketplace addons complicates things.  My understanding is that everything on Official is loaded first, then everything in Community is added.   Marketplace add-ons go into Official, which means that, without tweaks, something in Community will always have priority over marketplace stuff.

What I suspect is happening here is that whoever created the Kai Tak scenery didn't drop an exclusion rectangle -- or dropped an incomplete exclusion rectangle -- on that area so the underlying scenery is showing through.  This would happen whether the underlying scenery was built-in or marketplace, because they live in the same area of the folder structure.

If my assumption is correct, even if we could invert the order, it would not fix, and if anything would worsen, the problem.

(One thing that might work:  create a mini-mod with nothing but an exclusion rectangle where the problematic area lies and make sure that goes between the marketplace mod and the community mod.  This is just a somewhat-educated hunch, no promises it will work.  🙂)

If I have time today and no one smarter than I in this field has guidance I'll do some experiments to figure out some of the more esoteric points of scenery priority in the new system.

[Edit:  I made some time today and I'm doing some experiments.]

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by kaosfere

[kaosfere 3,115]

OK, I've done some experimentation over the course of the day, and had some informative results.

To summarize:  I quickly created two different airports.   I placed them at the exact same location (in the Sahara desert, just so there was nothing else nearby to conflict and it was nice and quick to load in and out).  I actually made a template for the first one and then copied it and modified it for the second so they were centered on on precisely the same speck of dirt.  

Each had one runway:  the first one (RCJ1) had an 18/36, the second (RCJ2) an 09/27.  Doing it this way made it very easy to see what was active and, since they were centered on the same spot, in what order.   To complete the mix I gave each airport a tower (designated as a tower in the scenery editor) and a pair of barriers bracketing the runway (just plain scenery objects).    RCJ1 was also configured with a full set of deletes and an exclusion zone under it set to exclude everything; RCJ2 did not get that.

I then performed a series of experiments in which I loaded them either in the OneStore folder, or the Community folder, in different orders, and with or without modification of content.xml, to see what happened.

I took screenshots of every iteration, but won't share them all as they are basically all in one of two basic forms.  The first, which I'll call 2-dominant (2D) had RCJ2 on top of RCJ1, with all the objects of both airports visible.  The second, 1-dominant (1D) is the reverse, RCJ1 on top.  However, this was where the first surprise (to me at least) came in: it masked out the barriers from RCJ2, but the runway and tower for RCJ2 remained.  I'll come back to this.

(The airports are not pretty.  I did not try to make them so. 🙂)

The iterations I went through went as follows:

1. RCJ1 and RCJ2 both in Community, in that priority order.  This one was 2-dominant.
2. RCJ1 and RCJ2 both in Community, with RCJ2 loading first.  This one was 1-dominant.
3. The same, but modifying content.xml to put RCJ1 back above RCJ2.  This was 2D again.
4. Deleting content.xml and letting it regenerate.  1D.
5. Putting RCJ1 in OneStore, RCJ2 still in Community.  2D.
6. Keeping that position, but inverting them in content.xml.  1D.
7. RCJ2 in OneStore, RCJ1 in Community, content.xml regenerated. 1D.
8. The same, but with an inverted content.xml order again.  2D.
9. Both in the OneStore, RCJ1 then RCJ2.  2D.
10. Both in the OneStore, inverted order. 1D.

This matches exactly what I hypothesized in my earlier post:  OneStore loads in alphabetical order, then Community loads in alphabetical order.  However, as I indicated, the surprise to me was that in every case the runway and tower for both airports was present, even when the barriers disappeared.

What this indicates is that we can mask out any plain scenery objects, and we can mask out the default airports built into the sim.  But we can not mask airports that, themselves, exist in a standalone package, regardless of their order or directory location.  This applies even to the "handcrafted" airports that Asobo provides, the ones that are stand-alone packages on the OneStore directory.

(This comports with what one commercial developer, whom I unfortunately can't recall, who has developed an airport that is also "handcrafted" in the sim have had to tell their customers, which is to delete the Asobo airport to avoid having duplicate objects.)

Thus, if you're trying to override one scenery with another, from what I can tell, you are out of luck if they are both airports and you want to get rid of the airport objects.   (I didn't go to extreme detail with every kind of airport surface to figure out any particular combinations that would or would not go away, because I think the basic point is clear.)  However, if one only uses library scenery objects, dropping an exclusion rectangle in the higher priority one should take care of the problem.

As for order:  it does seem that you can change the order of stuff in content.xml and it will affect the order in which things are loaded in the sim.  But this comes with a peril in that if that file is removed or corrupted it will be regenerated and you will lose your configuration, so you should be prepared for that.  (It's also possible it's regenerated in other circumstances, it's an unsupported technique, so you take your chances.)

One interesting thing I did notice, with both airports existing in the exact same spot, was that the airport marker on the global map always bore the name of the airport that was earlier in content.xml, even though it was lower in priority order.  Not any deep meaning to that, I just found it notable as I was playing with this stuff.

I did do one more thing while I was at this:  I created a third scenery which consisted of nothing but an exclusion rectangle, and then I sandwiched that between RCJ1 and RCJ2 to see if it would mask out the non-airport objects from RCJ1 and allow RCJ2 to dominate even though it came later.   And it did -- so this was the one combination that had RCJ2 on top with only its objects.  This indicates that my proposed method for fixing the Kai Tak scenery conflict with a minimod that's just an exclusion rectangle would probably have worked if the dev didn't fix it for us.

Annnd.... I think that's about it.  If anyone's curious about other ordering or combinations I'm happy to do more testing when I have time.  (This ate up a good chunk of my day, so I need to de done with it for now, at least. 🙂 )  Hopefully this is useful information that will help folks out and answer some of the questions about scenery priority that keep coming up in the MSFS community.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

 

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by kaosfere

[abrams_tank 7,387]

10 hours ago, Alvega said:

So, you didn't try what I said?

I don't have Addons Linker.  And I don't want to install it just to fix this problem.  My guess is, Addons Linker is probably just modifying the content.xml file anyways.  I would rather understand how the base files of MSFS work, such as how the content.xml file works, so I can adjust/configure MSFS directly by myself in the future. To be honest, if I have to install Addons Linker just to troubleshoot this problem, I think I can live with the problem instead.

[abrams_tank 7,387]

4 hours ago, kaosfere said:

What this indicates is that we can mask out any plain scenery objects, and we can mask out the default airports built into the sim.  But we can not mask airports that, themselves, exist in a standalone package, regardless of their order or directory location.  This applies even to the "handcrafted" airports that Asobo provides, the ones that are stand-alone packages on the OneStore directory.

 

Hmm, that's interesting.  That cruise ship terminal is a custom object that Sam Scene 3D created.  So if your hypothesis is right, there may be no fix for this, aside from getting a version of the Sam Scene 3D Hong Kong Times scenery without the cruise ship terminal.

For what it's worth, the Kai Tak developer updated the freeware Kai Tak to include an exclusion zone for the area of the cruise ship terminal.  But I got the updated version and it still didn't fix the problem. I also rearranged the order of the Scene 3D Hong Kong Times scenery and Kai Tak freeware scenery in the content.xml file, even with the new exclusion zone in the freeware Kai Tak scenery and it had no effect.

[sluihn 68]

For the record...  correct me if I’m wrong.  MS add on Linker does not touch or modify anything to do with any add on.  it’s purpose is to 

organize your addon freely in folder and subfolders in your folder of choice
- will create links in the community folder. There is no need to move files in and out of the folder.
- very easy to activate/deactivate groups of addons (single click)
- lets you save presets of addons
- lets you rename addons (link will be automatically updated)
- lets you add / update / remove addons

 

FYI. Cheers

 

[marsman2020 1,310]

7 minutes ago, sluihn said:

For the record...  correct me if I’m wrong.  MS add on Linker does not touch or modify anything to do with any add on.  it’s purpose is to 

organize your addon freely in folder and subfolders in your folder of choice
- will create links in the community folder. There is no need to move files in and out of the folder.
- very easy to activate/deactivate groups of addons (single click)
- lets you save presets of addons
- lets you rename addons (link will be automatically updated)
- lets you add / update / remove addons

 

FYI. Cheers

 

Correct.  Addon Linker creates symbolic links (which are part of the NTFS file system and are transparent to the simulator as part of the file system) from an 'Addon repository' folder of your choice into the Community folder, allowing addons to be enabled/disabled with one click with no file copying needed.  It does not change any of the simulator or add-on files.  Also, it doesn't really 'install' at all, you just extract it somewhere convenient and run it and point it at your Community folder and 'Addon repository' folder.  It is very useful and very low impact. 

It also displays some of the basic information from the package/layout .xml files of each addon in a tabular form.  This can be very useful since if there is an error in this file in an add-on, the Content Manager in the sim will not load and just display a 'spinning circle'.  Addon Linker displays an error in its table for such add-ons, making finding the culprit easier.   Without this extra clue you have to do things like move 1/2 your addons manually, see if the problem is solved, move 1/2 of that 1/2, etc to find the culprit. 

Highly recommend the Addon Linker. 

Edited December 17, 2020 by marsman2020

[abrams_tank 7,387]

Well, based on what sluihn and marsman2020 are saying, Addon Linker won't fix this problem at all, aside from removing the scenery outright (removing the entire scenery outright is not really fixing this problem though).

[ryanbatc 12,770]

5 hours ago, kaosfere said:

OK, I've done some experimentation over the course of the day, and had some informative results.

 

 

So that's what you were doing...ooofda!  That's research!

[kaosfere 3,115]

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

For what it's worth, the Kai Tak developer updated the freeware Kai Tak to include an exclusion zone for the area of the cruise ship terminal.

Hmm.  Not sure what's going on with that, from what I've seen if it's just a terminal you should be able to suppress it.   But again, I'm not an expert and could be missing something.  🙂   (Also, reading the developer's comment quoted above it didn't sound like they were very confident with what they did.  It's entirely possible they made the right change and it didn't work for some reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some other issue with it.)  

I'd do some experimentation myself, but I don't have the marketplace scenery.  If you want to give me the coordinates for the terminal in question, and I have some time tomorrow, I can put together that "minimod" for you and we can see if it makes a difference or if there's something else going on.

[abrams_tank 7,387]

20 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

Hmm.  Not sure what's going on with that, from what I've seen if it's just a terminal you should be able to suppress it.   But again, I'm not an expert and could be missing something.  🙂   (Also, reading the developer's comment quoted above it didn't sound like they were very confident with what they did.  It's entirely possible they made the right change and it didn't work for some reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some other issue with it.)  

I'd do some experimentation myself, but I don't have the marketplace scenery.  If you want to give me the coordinates for the terminal in question, and I have some time tomorrow, I can put together that "minimod" for you and we can see if it makes a difference or if there's something else going on.

Hi. The longitude and latitude of the cruise ship terminal is 22.30629520729165, 114.21330479724708.  I got it off of Google Maps (you can search for "kai tak cruise terminal" in Google and then go to Google Maps, to get the longitude and latitude). I spawned using those longitude and latitude coordinates at the World Map screen in the game, and it correctly puts the plane above the cruise ship terminal (just to be sure the location was correct, I immediately slewed and lowered the altitude of the plane to ground level).

I would think you should probably also download the Kai Tak 1.1 scenery add on from flightsim.to to make your test meaningful though: https://flightsim.to/file/4713/hong-kong-kai-tak. 

From what you mentioned about the custom airport objects not being excluded, my intuition is, MSFS probably doesn't differentiate between what is an airport object and what isn't an airport object.  It probably looks at all custom objects the same way and those custom objects can't be excluded.

Edited December 17, 2020 by abrams_tank

[Manny 1,293]

14 hours ago, kaosfere said:

 

The iterations I went through went as follows:

1. RCJ1 and RCJ2 both in Community, in that priority order.  This one was 2-dominant.
2. RCJ1 and RCJ2 both in Community, with RCJ2 loading first.  This one was 1-dominant.
3. The same, but modifying content.xml to put RCJ1 back above RCJ2.  This was 2D again.
4. Deleting content.xml and letting it regenerate.  1D.
5. Putting RCJ1 in OneStore, RCJ2 still in Community.  2D.
6. Keeping that position, but inverting them in content.xml.  1D.
7. RCJ2 in OneStore, RCJ1 in Community, content.xml regenerated. 1D.
8. The same, but with an inverted content.xml order again.  2D.
9. Both in the OneStore, RCJ1 then RCJ2.  2D.
10. Both in the OneStore, inverted order. 1D.

 

Amazing work. Thank you. 🙂