How do I unpod "shared" pods, and repod with SCF's?

[dkohl 0]

I have lots of PODs created by others in my "scenery/shared" folder. Examples include all of Scott's NYC-area PODs (JFK, LGA, NYC, NY1, NY2, LI1), Philly, several European airport PODs, Golden Gate Bridge, etc. Except for a few relevant PODs (eg; BiberAll, Cities, etc.), most PODs are really not "shared", but are specific to an area.I learned from Allen Kreisman that these PODs are loaded in memory at all times, regardless of aircraft location. They take up quite a bit of RAM and appear to be slowing down my system.I'd like to learn how to unpod them, and then re-create PODs and SCFs of smaller areas (eg, one POD per airport) so that each individual new POD only loads when flying in that tile.There appear to be two challenges:1 - Determining which elements of the original PODs go in each tile, along with which elements repeat in multiple tiles (eg; Scott's NY2 contains airports in New York and Connecticut)2 - Learning how to create PODs and SCFs so that I can place them in the "Scenery/XXXSubDirectory" folder.I have read through several tutorials provided with Fly and on this forum, but have not been able to figure out how to accomplish the above. Also, while I have TerraModels software, I have not yet used it -- I am not myself a scenery designer.Suggestions/help would be appreciated.-DK----Fly! II v230Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 512MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v28.83, WinXP Home Edition.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.

[Guest]

Well, my take would be NOT to create individual pods for each airport, but instead to take most of what you already have and just create .SCF files that combine existing pods.For example, with 60 mile visibility, if you can see JFK you can also see LGA and NYC and Long Island. So, breaking those down any further would not really do much good. However, you could create a folder named "New York Area" in the "Scenery" folder, and move all the NY related pods there. You then need to create an .SCF file. The best way to do this is simply copy one of the existing .SCF files from another scenery (like San Fran) and edit it. Just duplicate it to the "New York Area" folder, rename it with a unique name, and edit it with Notepad/Wordpad.When you edit the .SCF file, you'll need some specific information. The tag is used to designate the lat/lon coordinate of the lowest left (southwest) coordinate where there is actually scenery. This doesn't have to be dead-on accurate; the goal was to use this data to map onto a 2D display what scenery you had installed on your machine. The tag is used to designate the lat/lon coordinate of the upper right (northeast) coordinate.The next two tags are and . These designate the lat/lon coordinates of the loading area. Think of it this way -- this defines the outermost boundary that automatically mounts the pods and prepares them to be used whenever you enter the box you define. So, you always want the box to be defined as larger than the actual scenery area itself, with extra room greater than your maximum visibility distance so the pods will always come online before the scenery is needed. I typically recommend about a 100-150 mile border around the and area as the area for the and .Finally, you then add tags listing all of the pods that should be mounted (or unmounted) when you enter (or leave) the defined area. Give one filename per tag, and list as many tags as needed.Now, the only caveat is this: if any scenery you are using also uses models/art from another scenery set (say, a Los Angeles scenery used some of Scott's NYC models), moving them out of shared into their own scenery set will remove those models from being available, and you may receive "model not found" errors. If this is the case, you can edit the Los Angeles (or whatever) .SCF file to add additional tags to give access to the pods they require.My basic rule is that if the model is generic enough that it could be used anywhere, I place it in Scenery/Shared. If it is specific to an area (or contains actual sliced ground textures for an area), I place them in their own Scenery folder.There is a method you could use to separate all the ground textures from the models, and always keep all your models in shared and ground textures in specific scenery folders. The ground textures take the bulk of the pod, and the bulk of memory when the pod is mounted. If you would like details, let me know and I'll post further instructions.Rich

[Guest nycflyer]

Rich,Thanks for the detailed info. So I can keep the scenery as individual pods to keep the individual file sizes smaller to accomodate revisions of a particular area, but still have them moved out to a "NY Metro" folder with the appropriate scf covering the entire area? The NYC.pod would then remain in the Shared folder since it contains base models used in other sceneries.-----------------------Scott CannizzaroPPASEL-KTEB

[dkohl 0]

Rich:Great to see you on the forum. Thanks for the info. The issue I'm having is one of framerates in particular around the NYC area. It seems that for whatever reason, my rates tank in NYC - which in area with Scott's fabulous TerraModels scenery that is very high in TM buildings. Nowhere else around the world do I have such a problem.As you can see from the signature file, I've got what I think is a very powerful setup. But even with that, I often find flying in the NYC area impossible due to a lot of stutter - framerates in the 8 to 10 FPS range is the best I've gotten near the ground on approach, for example.Thanks for the tip above. It sounds like I can do this with other pods like "Golden Gate" or "Philly VS" on the assumption that the models inside the pod are not shared. If you can think of any other "increase framerate" suggestions, please let me know. My Fly.ini is here: http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3d03f2e96aec85fd.txtMy Render.ini is as follows:mipLevelCount=12vertexIndexFormat=0premultiplyColorAndAlpha=0allowAutoMipMapping=0directTextureFlag=0maxTextures32=16maxTextures32_565=64maxTextures64=192maxTextures64_565=16maxTextures128=80maxTextures128_565=415maxTextures256=80maxTextures256_565=450maxTextures512=10maxTextures512_565=8maxTextures1024=2mipMapFlag=896maxTextures256_565=32maxTextures256_565=32Thanks Rich.-DK----Fly! II v230Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 512MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v28.83, WinXP Home Edition.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.

[Guest nycflyer]

I have created the SCF file for the NY area to contain all my NY scenery. However, now the modeling loads as you're flying and seems to affect performance negatively. Dave, If you want to try it out, let me know. I'm not sure it's the best way to go if you like flying in the NY area. It could be a benefit for those who don't fly in the NY area often though.-----------------------Scott CannizzaroPPASEL-KTEB

[dkohl 0]

EMail it to me - I'll "Beta" test it. -DK----Fly! II v230Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 512MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v28.83, WinXP Home Edition.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.