active Did I buy too many products? And how can I make back ups.

[Boeingboy]

Hello All,

First post on your forum so I apologise for asking questions that are covered elsewhere. I have tried to search but can't quite find what I need to know

 

1. Having taken advantage of the sale I have purchased the following:

FTX Global

FTX Open LC Europe

FTX Vector

FTX Trees

Also Regions England/Scotland/Wales.

 

After a lot of trial and error in researching how to get these to work best with other add on products I seem to be doing OK. Frame rates have come down from around 40-50 to 20-30 but I can live with that and I'm pleased with the results. However after running around the UK I thought I would try some European areas and flew out of LOWI. Without any specific country overlay I found little difference in quality but notably better frame rates despite painting the mountains and towns etc. I wondered therefore what benefit I am getting from using the regional files on top of the European ones. That said, I can see that accuracy of roads and towns etc. is marginally improved from having both.

2. I did not spot the option to download and make a back up until just about everything was installed. I had problems downloading Vector through the installer so did a separate download for that. Can I simply copy the uncompressed files from the Orbx folder in FSX to an external drive or do I need to download everything again.....(please don't tell me it's the latter. Life's too short!)

 

Best Regards,

David.

[Jon Clarke]

Welcome to the forums for a start. Your topic title needs a response ! There is no such thing as "too many" 

Now to your questions: There is a good deal of difference in regards to detail in a, what is referred to as a Full Fat Region like ENG/Wales/Scotland versus what is in the OLC EU with Vector. The Regions contain ALL the data that OLC and Vector would introduce inbuilt in the product, including Mesh. There is no need at all to have Vector and OLC EU enabled when flying in a Region, although it is said that you can leave them enabled as they are supposed to not interfere with the Region's data. I do disable them, but that is my preference.

I agree with you that there "appears" to be not much difference visually when you are outside a Region and flying in for example OLC EU. However be assured there is. The only EU region to date (excluding Norway) is Germany North and if you had it, you would notice the extensive additional details versus a flight in OLC EU over the same territory. OLC EU, being in less detail will therefore give you potentially better FPS.

Regarding backups. There is a topic pinned in the forums here which explains what you can do to save time if you need to reinstall FTX addons. Basically go to your P3D folder and find Orbx. Copy the entire folder over to a storage drive. The go to the P3D Scenery folder and find World. Copy that folder over also. The reason to copy the World folder is that FTX will install some additional files within that folder which pertain to elevation corrections for some airports. To reinstall these addons you would just copy back in to P3D the files I have mentioned. Run Central 3 and they will be added back to your scenery library. Then you would go to Central 3 settings and perform the Scenery Library Insertion task to ensure they were layered  correctly.

In the mean time you could actually go to OrbxDirect and slowly start to download your addons again as a additional backups.

Remember that the copying of the Orbx folder and Scenery/world folder, would need to be done regularly to ensure you have kept up to date with any additional FTX installs you may have done since your initial copying.

[Boeingboy]

Thanks jjaycee.

 

I should have mentioned that I am operating an original FSX disc with SP2 installed. I presume the method you describe above for P3D will be similar.

 

Do I still need a world file or similar to be transferred?

 

Best Regards.

David

[Jon Clarke]

Hi: Yes it's the same process for FSX. I mention the whole of the World file because the Scenery part has all the elevation adjustments made by installing ENG/SCO & Wales and future Regions or airport addons (FTX) plus some traffic files , and the Texture part will contain all the Global Base textures that replaced the default one's when you installed Global Base.