If you have land in the ocean in P3D, here's how to fix it

Every so often, I get the strange problem of yellowish, muddy looking land appearing off the coast in P3D:

 

 

Installing P3Dv5.3 HF1 gave an opportunity to find out what was going on since I had to re-install.

 

It was definitely an Orbx problem as it didn't happen with a "stock" P3D setup with no extra scenery and mesh installed.

 

Yellowish, muddy looking land showed up again off the Florida coast after doing a re-syncronise via Orbx Central.

 

After lots of searching, I found this:

https://forum.orbxdirect.com/topic/180760-land-instead-of-ocean/

 

To fix this, I did "Verify Files" on all the Base files including Vector and also LC North America and checked the order of the  Orbx!VECTOR_* files in scenery.cfg

 

I then spent all day Friday sorting the scenery.cfg file in this order (http://c-aviation.net/fsx-scenery-library-order-Orbx-global/) with Lorby:

 

• scenery libraries (e.g. FlyTampa, 29Palms / other than Orbx)
• airport sceneries
• city and POI sceneries (e.g. landmarks)
• area sceneries (e.g. Aerosoft’s Night Environment)
• fotosceneries
• Addon Scenery
• FTXAA_ORBXLIBS
• FTXAA_YSCH
• FTX_AA_xxx (Orbx Airports – several entries)
• FTX_EU_xxx (scenerie europejskie – several entries)
• … (FTX NA, FTX AU)
• Orbx!OPENLC_EUROPEx (openLC Europe – several entries)
• Orbx!OPENLC_NAMERICAx (openLC for Northern America – several entries)
• Orbx!OPENLC_BASE (openLC base)
• other landclass add-ons (e.g. Scenery Tech – Africa)
• FreeMeshX-xxx (FreeMeshX folders or any other mesh you use – several entries)
• Edwards_AFB
• Berlin
• … (all named FSX sceneries)
• Asia
• Africa
• Orbx!VECTOR_OBJ
• Orbx!VECTOR_APT
• Orbx!VECTOR_CVX
• Orbx!VECTOR_EXX
• 1107 Base
• … (all numbered FSX sceneries)
• 0000 Base
• Orbx!VECTOR_AEC
• Default Scenery
• Default Terrain
• (optional / deselected!) FS9 World Scenery

 

After all this sorting (I have *lots* of Orbx stuff and extra terrain files and mesh -- MegaSceneryEarth, Nuvecta, Toposim, etc), I checked again to see if the Orbx!VECTOR_* files were placed together in the following order:

• Orbx!VECTOR_OBJ
• Orbx!VECTOR_CVX
• Orbx!VECTOR_EXX

 

This finally worked.  No more land off the coast

 

I don't know if this is something people are just supposed to know by osmosis, but making vital information secret tribal knowledge doesn't make it useful.

Hope This Helps 🙂