To fellow simmers having problems...

[dominique]

I am puzzled as an user, and I suspect many others are, to see some fellow simmers struggling with difficulties displaying textures or autogen. I do not speak here about the plateaued airports which is a well recognized mesh issue. Just having wrong ground textures or trees in water etc. I

 

Your sim is a very fragile ecosystem. If I had only one advice to give, it would be let the automatic installers do their job : download then extract in a separate folder then run and thats it ! Do not try to outsmart the installers, moving layers around afterward, changing scenery/terrain.cfg etc. Don't touch anything if not recommended by an OrbX team member.  When changing disks, a reinstall is always safer than moving stuff. 

 

If you have weird things coming up, be sure that you have dowloaded the last object libraries (the famous OrbXlibs) . If you still have a problem, switch once from your selected region to another and back. For instance if you fly Global, go to FTX Central, switch to NA, apply, switch back to Global, apply. Still a problem, reinstall !

 

Rarely, a third party addon will cause grief, being redundancies (My Traffic X for instance) or incompatibilities. If so, do not rush into moving things around (sorry to repeat myslef ), including with FTX Central.  Take your time, read and consult. Don't follow the advice of the first user who posts (except if he belongs to the OrbX team of course). Also, FTX C is a nifty tool for taking stock, switching and updating but use it with parcimony to order priorities ! Remember that the Sceney Library is what your sim actually uses and sees. In the SL, be sure that your third party addon are on top.

 

 OK, maybe a second advice, after all  . Read the OrbX Definitive Guide, an excellent means to understand how your OrbX world tticks  ! 

[BamaKevin]

+1

[lawrence aldrich]

+2

[gumbypickett]

I agree Dominique, after a basic install with airports etc ,I leave it

 

to do it's thing. For me to start playing around with files and what not ,

 

would turn out to be a complete nightmare. I've learn't from the past.

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

Wish more people would read your posting dominique and not only read it but follow your suggestions. Frankly I have never understood WHY people can´t just follow a simple instruction from the developer and quit fiddling around with their sims. To me it looks as if the only ones having problems are the ones that just have to do it their own way (EMT, DX-fixers, tweaks, you name it). They mess everything up and then complain on every forum on the net about the "crap" products they have bougt.   

 

 

Jack

the Swede in Spain

[FreeBird]

Where is the compassion anymore. There are allot of new flight simmers out there and they don't have the knowledge we have. Just imagine yourself when you first started and made mistakes did people climb all over you. I to get fed up with some of these post but realize I was there once to. Even after 10 yrs I get the occasional problem. I read,follow instructions but still have issues at times. Does that make me stupid! You got to remember this is a support forum that allows abet of community and not a social site. Lets show each other some respect and not call people out when they have issues with there ORBX products. Josh

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

Josh you missunderstand my posting. I have no objections agains posts from people that have followed the install instructions. My point was to point to the fact that MOST simmers with problems are the "fiddlers", doing everything their own way, not the "right/safe" way. They have a NEED to follow every tip from every forum on the net.. 

 

Let me give you an example. How many posts have we had about "installer asks about disc 2"? IF the simmer can´t even understand how to un-zip a downloaded add-on or search on this forum, it´s obvious that he will get in trouble later on. Another one "I can´t get XXXX to work in my P3D v2.5" and it´s totally clear that XXXX doesn´t have a triple installer and is not compatible with v2.5 or "I have used EMT and XXXX doesn´t look right"!!!!  I could give you a lot more examples.

 

I strongly recommend new users/beginners to ask on this forum, because the knowledge her is fantastic. But again,follow the instructions. Look at the usernames of the simmers having problems, it´s interesting reading. 

 

NO Josh, having issues doesn´t make anyone stupid. We all have experienced problems and have had help from fellow simmers, but again, that´s not what i´m talking about.

 

 

Jack

[dominique]

Where is the compassion anymore. There are allot of new flight simmers out there and they don't have the knowledge we have. Just imagine yourself when you first started and made mistakes did people climb all over you. I to get fed up with some of these post but realize I was there once to. Even after 10 yrs I get the occasional problem. I read,follow instructions but still have issues at times. Does that make me stupid. You got to remember this is a support forum that allows abet of community and not a social site. Lets show each other some of respect and not call people out when they have issues with there ORBX products. Josh

Josh, you completely misread my post. I do not get "fed up" with newbies and their problems . And I'm trying, like some others, to help them whenever we can, nudging them into the right direction to recover.

 

We see advices on these forums of people who encourage newbies in bad habits. It is thus useful IMO to remind, from time to time, the eternal principles of this hobby : RTFM and do as you are told to do. And don't you move that layer or else  ! Of course we (the old timers) have problems too (I just had to reinstall Vector !) but not because we do things the proper way. I think.

[olli4740]

Will people who don't read the relevant product manual, read the relevant opening post by Dominique?  

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

dominique and Oliver, thanks!     

 

Jack

the Swede in Spain

[Michael Copp]

Do not try to outsmart the installers

 

I ran the OpenLC Alaska/Canada installer a few days ago - it did not add the "ORBX\FTX_OLC\OLC_NA2" entry to my SCENERY.CFG file. Took me a little while to to figure out why my terrain pretty much looked the same as before the install, at which point I added the entry manually.

 

"Do not try to outsmart the installers"? Perhaps (I guess my installer was so smart that it was being too clever by half...)

[dominique]

Will people who don't read the relevant product manual, read the relevant opening post by Dominique?  

That has crossed my mind , Oliver  !  I actually reacted to a couple of cases we have seen, these recent days, of people just drowning into their problems.

[teecee]

The modern Flight simulator, or perhaps i should say , the addons for same have created a very very complex "ecosystem" that can and does cause difficulties for some people, in fact one might easily say "most" people as all those that attend these forums have probably asked for help at one time or another. That is why we have (and need) open forums.. RTFM is not always the answer. Teecee.

[birdguy]

I have come here a lot for help and suggestions. And I have always received courteous, informative replies. But I have always done what Dominique suggests. Let the installer do the work and follow the installer's on screen instructions to the letter. Let the installer open FTX Central, set itself, and then you turn it off. The only time I ever got an 'insert disk' message was when I inadvertently turned off the installer instead of FTX Central and pressed next.

When it comes to installing Orbx scenery I think the installer and FTX Central are smarter than we are.

Noel

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

Michael Copp

 

This is worth analyzing. 100:s of users have installed it without any problems, installer adding it to the scenery.cfg but not in your case. Why? I would really like to know what happend, just to learn somethning from it.

Jack

[dominique]

I ran the OpenLC Alaska/Canada installer a few days ago - it did not add the "ORBX\FTX_OLC\OLC_NA2" entry to my SCENERY.CFG file. Took me a little while to to figure out why my terrain pretty much looked the same as before the install, at which point I added the entry manually.

 

"Do not try to outsmart the installers"? Perhaps (I guess my installer was so smart that it was being too clever by half...)

Michael

 

Many people have made this OpenLC NA install without any problem whatsoever, the NA2 going smartly where it was told to go and without messing up anything in the SL priority order. So what ? You may have had a bad download, you computer may have had a tantrum during the install etc. Tweaking the scenery libray was, IMO, not the way to go but to each his  own. Speaking of bad downloads, I had to reinstall my Vector, for instance, when Nick Cooper convinced me that my earlier 1.2 download was flawed. Did it and reinstalled. No more problem.

 

EDIT I'd add that the constant tweaking of the scenery and terrain.cfg that some do brings problems one day or another (file corruption, syntax errors, etc.) that, I suspect, may fool OrbX installers...

[FreeBird]

Thanks guys maybe I read the post wrong and I replied accordingly to that. But I still believe we all need more compassion in our lives and maybe this is where you are coming from in your post by trying to help others. I just misread your intensions. Josh 

[dominique]

  we all need more compassion in our lives 

we sure do

[Michael Copp]

You may have had a bad download, you computer may have had a tantrum during the install etc.

 

I'm guessing that it may have been some sort of Windows 10 file permission anomaly (i.e. Windows 10 wasn't going to allow an installer application to modify the SCENERY.CFG file, or some such thing). However, there was no warning from the installer that anything went wrong, so I do think that this particular example does underline the fact that even if you do something "right", it can still sometimes turn out "wrong" - just like the old X-Files adage suggested, "Trust no one" (or maybe the words of Ronald Reagan are more apropos, "Trust, but verify")

 

I had to reinstall my Vector, for instance, when Nick Cooper convinced me that my earlier 1.2 download was flawed. Did it and reinstalled. No more problem.

 

Funny you should mention that - I suspect I may be having an issue with Vector right now. I have a support question in at this time, but depending on the responses, I may try reinstalling like you did.

 

Look at that Dominique - another user helped!

[Michael Copp]

 I would really like to know what happened, just to learn something from it.

 

Sorry Jack, your response got lost in the crowd for a few minutes - there's a lot of traffic for this topic!

 

As I mentioned to Dominique, I'm guessing that it may have been a Windows 10 issue with disallowing modification permissions to the SCENERY.CFG file (I've noticed a few similar annoyances since "upgrading" to Windows 10, including the inability of FSUIPC to auto-start about half of the P3D associated plugins and add-ons that it used to have no problems starting before I upgraded to Windows 10).

[dominique]

I'm guessing that it may have been some sort of Windows 10 file permission anomaly (i.e. Windows 10 wasn't going to allow an installer application to modify the SCENERY.CFG file, or some such thing). However, there was no warning from the installer that anything went wrong, so I do think that this particular example does underline the fact that even if you do something "right", it can still sometimes turn out "wrong" - just like the old X-Files adage suggested, "Trust no one" (or maybe the words of Ronald Reagan are more apropos, "Trust, but verify")

 

 

 

Funny you should mention that - I suspect I may be having an issue with Vector right now. I have a support question in at this time, but depending on the responses, I may try reinstalling like you did.

 

Look at that Dominique - another user helped!

 

OrbX has officially stated that they do not support W10 yet. So the installer got maybe lost in the process and went with no news/good news. "Trust but verify" is indeed a wise recommendation !

 

The issue I had with Vector was that all the default files for corrected airports were apparently missing. I had only the AEC triplet. 

 

 

 

 

.

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

Thanks for your reply Michael.

 

I use WIN10 Pro and for me it did work flawlessly. BUT with tha said, not one installer acts the same way on to different PC:s. I have had flawless installs on one PC and problems with another, depending on my hardware/settings.

 

Please understand me, I didn´t mean to be rude. I just wanted to maybe learn something. 

 

Jack  

[jsapair]

If you get scared half to death the first time, what happens the second time? A bumper sticker I saw today. Sorry for hijacking the thread.

 

                                          jsapair

[chumley]

I agree with Dominique and allowed the installer to do it's thing.

 

Problem is in doing it's own thing YMAV and YMEN appear as though a bulldozer moved in overnight and demolished all the buildings.

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

And you did run latest ORBXLibs after the installation?

 

 

Jack

[Ed Correia]

Installer 101.

 

The installer goes through the following steps;

1. Starts up and gathers registry information of your installed sims


2. On selection of sim type, the installer reads the setup path of the sim and sets that as the install path


3. Files are then extracted to their folders, generally only overwriting when an older file is detected


4. Post install procedure depends on what is required. If FTX Central needs to run, it is called up. If scenery library entries are required then one of the FTXConfigurator executables is run. FTXConfigurator uses the scenerylib cfg files to make the entries and these are the Regions, Airports, mesh & Orbxlibs. FTXConfigurator_OLC.exe handles the openLC entries and uses the openlc_lib txt files for adding the library entries. FTXConfigurator_VECTOR.exe handles the Vector library entries and just uses the VECTOR_lib.cfg for that.

So if you follow the basics you should not have any issues. Basic things to remember - don't run from within the zip, run as Admin and if possible exclude your sim folders from real time anti-virus scanning. 

 

Also, there is a reason why we harp on about having the latest Orbxlibs installed. Our stats according to FTX Central show that of FSX, only 72% of installs had the current version of Orbxlibs while in P3Dv2, 82%.

 

Lastly, make sure that ObjectFlow is present in your DLL.XML and is allowed to run or update when asked.

[dominique]

Andy

 

I didn't say that was a miracle solution only that doing it the way recommended by OrbX should avoid the major problems we see on a daily basis on this forum. Now, sh*t can happen too.

 

You should post a support post. Making the hypothesis that your sim is clean i.e. no legacy of insane tweakings of the SL layers or the scenery and terrain.cfg, not having buildings comes, if I understand well, or from the OrbXlibs or rather the lack thereof as Jack said or from a missing Objectflow.dll (or not having the authorization to run).

 

EDIT oops I see that Ed has already answered !

[windquest]

This is a great discussion but I think Dominique is right in one way and not in another.  There are three types (or more) users, the newbie, the casual user and the hard core.  There are users that fly only the most modern, up to date offerings, and there are others that fly some vintage stuff never meant for the likes of P3Dv2.  With that in mind, Dominique is right on for those new at ORBX and or flight simming in general.  Make a clean install, install with the proper installer and test.  Don't change more than one thing at a time...follow the directions.  For those that have to take drastic steps, do so at your own risk....and I think you can ask for help here, just understand you are in uncharted waters and you may have to start over.  So play it safe or try the cutting edge (also the bleeding edge) or copy and paste and win or lose.  This is a hobby.  Make a restore point and make an other approach.  And most of all READ the forums before asking a question.  Most of the time, problems already have solutions....take the time to find them. 

 

And enjoy.....my 2 cents

Henry

[dominique]

I agree with what you say, Henry, but note that I was not covering the installation of legacy/vintage aircraft or sceneries in P3D, an entirely other story, just the OrbX products installs. I was reading another forum where people, not newbies as it appears, mind you, men of the (sim) world, were exchanging recipes to manually install OrbX products because  the automatic installers didn't place the products where they should, declare the sceneries or even wiped already existing SL entries. The same installers work for me, they work for you. But not for them. Even manually putting files into the addon scenery folder ! You read also stories of meltdown after their OrbX installs. It figures, doesn't it ?

 

Repeating myself, the sim is a fragile ecosystem and OrbX switching, multilayered architecture which brings us so much fun, increases this inherent fragility. You do the wrong thing, you pay. You then think that you know better. You pay more. 

 

Also, the FTX Central is an excellent tool for switching and updating but is also a little complicated to use for prioritizing orders when you dont really know how the machine ticks and must be used with care and parcimony. Put that in perspective with Ed's statistics about how many people don't even load the OrbXLibs, then you have people with inextricably messed up setups.