active Airport elevation corrections in Scenery-World-Scenery

[Bert Laverman]

[I start with what happened, before I come to the question. Please don't react to the first paragraph without reading through.]

 

While flying over Germany with both ORBX Germany North installed, as well as parts of the Europe Photoreal freeware scenery, I soon discovered that having the airport AFCADS of both were causing trouble. I fact, Prepar3D v3 crashed if I had the same airport twice, independent of the order. The writer of the freeware AFCADS told be he did not use ORBX Germany North, so couldn't help. Since we were flying with a small group, allmost all using only the Europe PR2 scenery, I disabled the ORBX Germany scenery.

 

A few German airports now turned out to be horribly elevated (or sunk actually) with respect to the surrounding area. I initially though of the AEC tool in ORBX Vector, but that did not change things. Even disabling the AEC folder in Scenery config didn't. Then I was asked to check Scenery\World\Scenery and found there were elevation corrections installed there as part of ORBX Germany North. Disabling the ORBX Germany North scenery naturally didn't do anything about those files.

 

Could you please suggest something to help me here? Or allow FTX Central to disable cleanly a scenery, so I don't have to go the uninstall-redownload-install route? Or perhaps stay out of Scenery\World\Scenery?

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

installing two versions of airports will never work.

There is no provision in FTX Central to disable the scenery, only to

install and uninstall it.

If you wish to have a dual installation, it would make sense to have two

scenery\world\scenery folders, one for your FTX products and one for your

conflicting addons.

Elevation adjustment files must be placed in scenery\world\scenery.

[Bert Laverman]

Nick,

ORBX vector has this working, because it uses a separate AEC (Airport Elevation Correction) folder.

 

Sorry, I know having two installations of the same airport will cause trouble. That is entirely my point. I am looking for an easy way to switch between two scenery packages, without having to do an install/uninstall cycle. Being caught between two scenery providers who both say "let the other guy fix it", with both unwilling to acknowledge that this is a valid scenario makes it even worse. Scenery\World\Scenery should IMHO not be used by addon scenery. Just use custom addon folders, and the ordering like FTX Vector does, and all my problems are reduced to enable/disable.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

this is not an ORBX failing as you seem to think.

 

Also there is no "let the other guy fix it".

It is a simple fact that if you install two add on airports for the same place, neither of them will work as intended.

 

Every airport developer has to use elevation adjustment files if they are developing

an airport that is one of the simulator defaults and there is a need to change the elevation.

These file must be placed in scenery\world\scenery to work and every developer must do that.

 

As I mentioned above:

If you want to run two different configurations, you need only create a second scenery\world\scenery

folder and name it to suit your purposes, say "scenery2".

In this version, you can have the default contents all your alt and traffic files etc for your other airports.

If you want to fly in them, just rename the scenery folder to scenery ORBX and scenery2 to scenery and nothing will conflict.

 

Naturally, you will also need to have at least two separate scenery.cfg files, each without the conflicting airports'

scenery library entries. 

 

Once set up, it really isn't difficult, I do it all the time.