What is the maximum amoiunt of Sceneries you can have?

[Guest]

Hi!I have been lurking here for the past several weeks or so and I have been doing some searching but no luck as come out of it and I thought some of you could assist me. Like most of you, I have been downloading sceneries/airports/meshes and my question is, what is the total amount of sceneries can FS2k2 handle? The reason why I ask is because once I reached 350 or so, my scenery.cfg kept deleting my old sceneries that were previously listed. Thank you for your time. take careJulian

[Naji 5]

Hi, Julian, if I remember correctly, it is 331. If you reach such limit, start making different scenery.cfg files for different world areas, like Europe, North America,...

[Guest]

Hi Naji!Thank you for the very quick response! It looks like I will be doing that now. I have been flying all around the world for the past three weeks and thus been downloading sceneries for each location.What a journey and a task of downloading! :)I started at Richmond, VA to Norfolk, VA then to DC went west to Chicago, Denver and L.A.. Headed up north for Alaska. Flew over the Bering Straits to Korea, then to Japan, Philippines, Guam, New Zealand and now I am Australia. Notice, I skipped over Hawaii. :) I'll go there later. I usually do a stop over for a couple of days and explore the regions. Most of those addons so far I am very pleased. The "Boys down under" (NZ/Australia) really have some nice sceneries. I am currently working my way back north of Australian and deciding where to goto next. I am thinking Malaysia or Thailand. With all I have downloaded, it makes me really appreciate AVSIM and tne freeware developers with their time and devotion. BTW, I plan to head towards the AVSIM base soon! :)Julian

[Naji 5]

You're welcome, Julian. Hehe... you are simming in a very organized manner :-), and you sound like you're having lots of fun! I normally don't have such discipline; I just think where I'd like to fly and immediately head straight there, jumping across continents and oceans by using the Go To Airport :-lol If you're heading our way to AVSIM Base, I'd better book you a room at our local lodge :-)

[Guest]

Naji, I am trying to be organized. Although there aren't many sceneries for Asia yet. :(I didn't want fly to Hawaii because I know I will just stay there. :)So how much are the rooms? :)

[Guest]

It's not my intent to be a wise guy or step on anyones feet but instead I'd like to offer some simple help in regards to adding scenery and the "unlimited" amount that can be added.Have you ever wondered how or why MS has placed over 21,000 scenery areas, (Airports), within FS and at the same time not even one Scenery.cfg is full? And isn't it amazing how we can fly around the FS default world without having to change Scenery.cfg files!With a full FS installation we can look into the default "scenerydb" scenery directory sturcture and we'll find sub scenery directory structures that are confirmed "Active" scenery directories within the Scenery.cfg file. Also, within any default active directory we'll find multiple scenery.bgl files that cover or blanket the region for which main directory their found. Eastern and Western hemisphere.Being the FS Scenery Library enters our add-on sceneries into the Scenery.cfg file and makes them "Active", wouldn't it be possible to just place more scenery.bgl's and textures into an "Already Active" scenery directory structure? The answer is Yes and with that we do not even have to open or mess around with the Scenery.cfg file at all.As an example, we could make 7 scenery directory sturctures complete with a Scenery and Texture folder of all the continents and make them active from within the FS Scenery Library. Now all we have to do is place any scenery and texture files within those active scenery directories. There is nothing else to mess with and FS will read all the added files as well.The only problems that we'll encounter with doing it this way is when we have sceneries that include Flatten Switches and or Exclude Switches that must be placed into the Scenery.cfg file and this is where we find the limiting factor. Scenery designers can make exclude.bgl's and flatten polygon.bgl's to overcome some of these problems but that doesn't always work either and in that case I guess you'd have to mess with multiple Scenery.cfg files. bummer!!Hope this helpsKen

[Guest]

Hi Ken, Thanks for the response! I have already started doing that with some of my sceneries just merging them into one folder for the same location. I would think with the flatten and exclude statements since they are basically location statements, wouldn't it just work as to add them to directory where you installed the files in the cfg?ie. Say you have scenedb/alaska/anchorage/And there were some sceneries that needed the switches, couldn't you just put the those statements in the scenery.cfg file pertaining to that folder?I do worry about the textures though because if you happen to merge sceneries and they happen to use the same filename; the textures won't show correctly. take careJulian

[Guest]

Hi Julian>ie.>Say you have scenedb/alaska/anchorage/>And there were some sceneries that needed the switches, couldn't you >just put the those statements in the scenery.cfg file pertaining to >that folder?Unfortunately, the Scenery.cfg file is limited in several ways.1. Not more than 332 scenery entries.(Active scenery directories)2. Not more than 1 Exclude Switch per scenery entry.3. Not more than 10 Flatten Switches per scenery entry.If you actually had 332 scenery entries within the Scenery.cfg file and each of those had the limited only 10 add-on scenery areas with Flatten Switches then you'd end up with a limitation of 3320 add-on scenery areas. That does sound like allot of sceneries and it certainly is, (I hope this is within a nice large hard drive!), BUT if each add-on scenery also includes a single Exclude Switch then you could only have 332 scenery entries. Um, i hope that doesn't sound confusing to ya. I'm not sure if I could find better words to describe it.From a scenery designers perspective or from an FS user with enough knowledge to create such things:Exclude Switch Fix :)We can create an Exclude.bgl for each scenery area created and this file will exclude all the default objects and etc from any particular scenery area. Doing this will also make it UN-necessary to enter an Exclude Switch into the Scenery.cfg file. With this you'd bring the limited number of active sceneries back to 3320.Flatten Switch Fix :(We can create Flatten Polygons which places an Area16N flatten command directly into a scenery.bgl then FS will read that scenery file and flatten the area without having to use the Flatten Switch in the Scenery.cfg. With that we could have an UN-limited number of scenery areas with a 5 million gig hard dirve.HOWEVER, and here's the bummer, 3rd party Area16N's do NOT override default Area16N's used for every default FS Airport. The Flatten Switch does override those default Area16N's which agin limites the possibilities.I'm not sure if you'll find any of this knowledge helpful but I hope it does shead some lite on the subject anyway. Also I haven't done much experimenting with terrain mesh to see if this might also be helpful either and maybe someone could be more help in that regard. One part of it all sort of amazes me though, after installing a hundred and fifty thousand sceneries into FS2002, I wonder if all those fantastic sceneries will still work 2 years from now in the next increadable FS2004?Happy Flying and Fly HappyKen

[Guest]

Ken, I found that very insightful and in fact, very helpful. I really like the information you have presented here. I have several big hard drives. Currently my FS install is over 11GB. :)The more the merrier, just sorting out which scenery that matches the terrain's palette is my goal. :)FS2k4? I hope they work! They better! :)Or will CFS3 change so much that all the downloading would be pointless?take careJulian

[Guest]

JulianCFS3 and FS2K4 and certainly big question marks. Basicly I'd think your sceneries will work in them although there will be some oddities in the cockpit view. Propably like sort of what we see when we place FS2000 scenery into FS2k2. Possibly, and I'm only speculating, we may find more default file format changes such as textures and etc. Well, we'll just have to wait and see for sure!!Fly HappyKen

[Naji 5]

Ken, it is a real pleasure to see you here :-) :-wave

[Guest]

Ken, Thank you for reply as it helps me think "ahead". :)