active FSX Steam and FSX Gold.

[Pontiusthepilot]

Good Morning.

 

Pardon me if this has been asked before, but I notice that Nick Cooper has two versions of FSX running (both Gold and Steam), presumably using the same ORBX scenery.

 

I had a problem with my PC which meant that I had to re install FSX Steam. As a result there are now FSX-SE and FSX folders on my hard drive. Unlike the last time this happened, This hasn't caused any serious problems, but FTX Central seems to think that I'm running two versions of FSX and asks me to select a version every time I start the application.

 

I would like to ba able to run both versions so that I can have one for DX10 and the other for DX9. Is this simply a matter of re installing FSX Gold again? Or is it a bit more complicated than that.

 

Pontius.

[norfolk mike]

I've been running FSX Deluxe together with FSX-SE together ever since the latter was released, and apart from a very minor (but frustrating) issue with FTX Central not initially recognising FSX-SE, I've yet to encounter a problem. I've uninstalled and reinstalled both sims numerous times, putting them onto different drives (currently residing together on the same drive) and with various combinations of ORBX sceneries (i.e. separating regions from Global, Vector and OpenLC), as well as MegaSceneryEarth, and in my own experience, they seem to coexist quite happily.

 

One thing I HAVEN'T tried is separating the sims into DX10 and DX9 versions, but if your 'fixer' recognises the different installs, I can't imagine that being an issue. As your registry already has residual FSX Gold entries (hence FTX Central picking up on your previous FSX Gold install) , FSX-SE would have installed in 'co-existence' mode anyway, so reinstalling your boxed edition after FSX-SE shouldn't be a problem. In fact I'm sure I've done just that (more than once), but you might want to await wiser words from a wiser Owl than me before doing so.

[Nick Cooper]

Thanks for that, good advice for Pontius to follow.

[Pontiusthepilot]

I installed FSX Gold yesterday and basically everything  has gone reasonably smoothly and  this evening I was able to install some aircraft and fix a few initial problems. There seems to be no problem in having one version using DX10 and the other using DX9.

 

But when I started FSX Gold, I received a long succession of SCENERY.CFG errors to the effect that my ORBX Scenery can't be found. When I start a flight, I only get the default scenery.

 

I've spent most of the evening going through the scenery library and editing the paths of all of the FTX and ORBX! entries to reference the ORBX folder under fsx steam.

 

But some (but not all) of the errors refer to ORBX\VECTOR\FTX_VECTOR_AEC\SCENERY and FSX won't let me edit or remove this. So what ever the problem is, I can't fix it.

 

So I don't know what to do next other  than to make my way, dejectedly, to bed.

 

Pontius.

[Nick Cooper]

When you have both versions installed, there are two scenery.cfg files.

For FSX Gold it is in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX and for FSX Steam,

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX-SE.

 

From what you write, it seems likely that the scenery.cfg file in the

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX  folder has been written to by FSX Steam.

Now it is being read by FSX Gold and the error messages refer to items

installed in FSX Steam but not in FSX Gold.

 

Have a read of this topic and make the two entirely separate.

[Pontiusthepilot]

Last night, I read post 100665.

 

After thinking about it over a cup of tea, something told me that all I had to do was to re install FSX Gold.

 

So I uninstalled the gold edition, removed every last trace of it's files and registry entries and re installed.

 

Now it starts and runs with no errors and both FSUIPC and EzCamViews are working as they should.

 

FSX Gold still uses the default scenery and there is no trace of ORBX objects in the scenery library. Also, FTX Central fails for FSX Gold because it can't find an ORBX\User Documents\Versions under Flight Simulator X. This is understandable - there isn't one.

 

So everything seems fine now and all have to do is to get FSX  Gold to use the ORBX sceneries currently istalled in under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\ORBX.

 

Of course, in all of this, I have blindly assumed firstly that this is possible and secondly that doing so doesn't constitute a breach of my ORBX license.

 

I'd imagine that all this will take will be to add the files to the FSX Gold scenery library. But having got this far, I thought it might be best to check with the experts first before going ahead and ruining all I have achieved so far.

 

Pontius.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

You can't use the files at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\ORBX

because the Orbx folder has to be inside the simulator folder.

What you can do is make a symbolic link inside your FSX Gold folder from the Orbx folder

in your Steam Installation.

You will have to install FTX Global into FSX Gold but everything else should work from the

link.

Don't worry about the licence, you can have as many copies as you wish, provided that they are all

on the same PC.

[Pontiusthepilot]

It turns out that I've to go the other way and link from Acelleration (not Gold - my mistake) into Steam. This is because the ORBX installers only give me the option to install into FSX, which is currently my FSX Acceleration installation, but not FSX:SE.

 

After no end of putting two and two together, I've worked out how what I symlinks I need to create and at the moment, I've got all my of ORBX products appearing in the scenery libraries of both simulators.

 

The problem is that I've just purchased, Southern Alaska and Northern California. This is fine in FSX Acceleration where it is hard installed, but in Steam where it is symlinked, I am getting an airport elevation problem at Valdez-Pioneer. I have run the elevation correction multiple times but the problem persists so, unless you know of a solution, it looks like this enterprise has fallen at the last hurdle.

 

It seems to me that I will have to dual install all of of my licensed and freeware ORBX products in the tree of each simulation. As a single ORBX file is 77gb, this is going to be expensive on disk space. I will also have to find out how I can get the installers to work with both Acceleration and Steam.

 

Ah well...

Pontius.

[Nick Cooper]

Linking the ORBX folder is not the whole job because there are also files in scenery\world\scenery.

Without these in both sims, elevation corrections will not work in the one without.

Global would need to be installed into both because it replaces vast numbers of default texture files.

[Pontiusthepilot]

Right from the very start, I had global installed in both sims as you said. I presumed this meant all of it, i.e Base, Vector and Open Landclass. Which is what I did. Originally I tried to link Vector and the Open Landclasses but this didn't seem to work - unless I made some sort of mistake in the process.

 

All I've done now is to rename the scenery folder in FSX:SE to scenery.original and I've linked the FSX:ACC scenery in it's place.

 

I've started FSX:SE and kicked off a flight at Valdez-Pioneer and.....

 

BOOM! No elevation problem! The Airfield is as flat as a pancake.

 

I'll give it a good test and report back at the end of tomorrow.

 

Sorry Nick. I'd intended to post this on Sunday but somehow it got lost. Basically this works with the proviso that it will not be possible to configure scenery differently in FSX:ACC and FSX:SE because they share many of their files.