Correct order of Orbx TE GB entries in scenery_packs.ini

[John Venema]

Hello all,

 

Some customers are reporting that FTX Central is not placing the Orbx TrueEarth Great Britain entries correctly in scenery_packs.ini

 

If these entries are not in the correct location, you will experience the following issues:

 

1. Certain London landmarks like The London Eye, Tower Bridge etc, will not appear. These are default Laminar objects.

2. Certain Gateway airports will not be displayed correctly; instead you'll see TE GB facsimile buildings in place

3. Other scenery elements will not be correctly displayed.

 

Fortunately the fix is very simple and straight forward. You just need to ensure that the Orbx TE GB folder entries are BELOW Global Airports and Landmarks London, as shown below.

 

Quote

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Global Airports/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - London/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_A_GB_South_TrueEarth_Custom/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_B_GB_South_TrueEarth_Overlay/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos/

 

Please note that some third party airports may be missing the required exclusions. This is not an Orbx problem. If an airport designer does not use a proper exclude for the airport boundary then it is possible our scenery layers (and any other scenery layer) may interfere with the airport. If you experience interference from TE GB at a third party airport and the scenery layers are as per above, please contact the developer and request an exclusion to be correctly added. Update 18-Oct-18: We will add exclusions to all affected airports by incorporating fixes contributed by FlyAgi in the topic below, and also adding our own fixes for missing exclusions. In this way we can patch TE GB in a coordinated, official way via FTX Central. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

 

 

 

 

We do apologise for this inconvenience and Ben is aware that further development of the FTX Central code is required to overcome every iteration of customers' scenery_packs.ini

 

[Charter]

Thanks John, all fixed, delighted with the scenery , look forward to the other two UK sceneries and airfields when released.  

[FastNeatAverage]

Is the exclusion zone thing not something that you can fix? GBPRO worked fine for me in terms of this autogen issue. I'm also yet to find a single airport apart from the payware Heathrow that this works for.

[Badl4ndz]

Thanks John

 

Any chance you could post the correct order of the Merrill C Meigs and Monument Valley entries as mine seem to have got listed in quite a random order within the scenery_packs.ini?

 

Thanks

 

Keith

[daveangel]

can I asked where HD trees might sit in the order, or if trueearth ignores their presence which I suspect is the case.

[stratshadow]

I had the same problem when my new orbx entries did not install correctly in scenery_packs.ini, but it was soon fixed! 

It's really stunning to fly over Southern England now! Thanks orbx for giving us the best eye candy yet for X-plane 11....

[John Venema]

6 hours ago, FastNeatAverage said:

Is the exclusion zone thing not something that you can fix? GBPRO worked fine for me in terms of this autogen issue. I'm also yet to find a single airport apart from the payware Heathrow that this works for.

 

No, we can’t go and fix other developer’s airports, that is not our responsibility.

 

Can you cite specific examples of third party airports which are affected?

[John Venema]

4 hours ago, daveangel said:

can I asked where HD trees might sit in the order, or if trueearth ignores their presence which I suspect is the case.

 

We use our own custom tree textures in TE GB.

[Gary Sparkes]

Up and running ! wow ! full sliders ,shadows on scenery ,decent frames , Bring on the rest of UK ,magnificent .

 

[yanlaoge]

Strangely I don't have SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - London/ in my scenery_packs.ini after and before the installation. I understand this is Laminar's own, but how can I make it appear?

 

Edit: Sorry my bad. It appears after I upgraded X-plane.

[didcot015]

hi i am a new member i purchased te gb and its not displaying as you said , i think i did this right went into custom scenery then scenery_packs and opened it notepad how do I change the order

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

select the line you want to move, cut it, select where you want it to be, select the entry above

the location, press enter and a space will appear.

Paste into that space and save the file.

[didcot015]

hi ok thanks very much

 

 

[Fizzelle]

21 minutes ago, didcot015 said:

hi i am a new member i purchased te gb and its not displaying as you said , i think i did this right went into custom scenery then scenery_packs and opened it notepad how do I change the order

 

Just cut and paste - it's a simple text file.

[didcot015]

hi thank you for that info

[AEriv40]

I purchased the GB- South True Earth but  it's not working. Every time I run X-Plane I get these errors:

 

0:01:57.924 E/SYS: +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0:01:57.924 E/SYS: | Error, could not locate image file for terrain
0:01:57.924 E/SYS: | Custom Scenery/Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos/terrain/a830x10020x17.ter
0:01:57.924 E/SYS: | Custom Scenery/Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos/terrain/
0:01:57.924 E/SYS: | ../textures/a830x10020x17.dds
0:01:57.924 E/SYS: | (REN_terrain.cpp:146)

 

I wondered what have I done wrong. Could someone kindly help me, please.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

as has already been posted several times, the installation is not complete.

Please try this:

 

Quote

 

Hello,

if the download is complete you can try downloading the attached file and dragging it into

X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery\Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos\textures.

This should convert the textures for you.

 

 

 

Convert.cmd

 

This was the result:

 

 

Quote

 

Thanks a lot for your precious advices. I 've followed the instructions given in Nick'post as you suggest.

I converted the jpg files in dds files by adding the  "convert" file in the texture folder. It took some hours but now everything works perfectly as you can see on the picture.....Marvelous work....I'd pay a lot for the same quality scenery of whole belgium.....

Thank again.

 

•  

[markymarksti]

Cleaned up the order in my scenery_packs.ini file last night, then flew my Bae Hawk in VR from Llanbedr all the way South around the Welsh coast, up the Severn estuary across the bridge down through Somerset to the Dorset coast and along to land at Shoreham taking in all the sights. Awesome, got a real sweat on felt like finding a good bar to unwind after a good days sortie! Wonderful stuff! Thanks for all your efforts and a stunning product. Next phase the Central.....bring it on!!!

[andy1252]

On 10/15/2018 at 12:51 PM, John Venema said:

You just need to ensure that the Orbx TE GB folder entries are BELOW Global Airports and Landmarks London

 

I'm not having any issues with TE GBS as such, but reading this and looking at my scenery.ini inspires a question or two. I can also see that all the ORBX products get installed as "ORBX_xxxx", which seems to be a technique also used by some other scenery vendors like Aerosoft, DD etc. This makes sense in that a vendor can then ensure that all their own products are in the correct order within their own section of the scenery.ini file. I can see that products like Ortho4XP label their folders/links to begin "z" to ensure placement at the end of the ini list, which is also a good thing. My understanding has been that  the XP "Global Airports" should really be below all specifically installed airport entries.

 

I had previously been going through prefixing my folder names with headings like "AAA" for airports, "LIB" for libraries,  OVL, ZZZ etc, so that everything was automatically in the correct order alphabetically, but that became too frustrating for a number of reasons. It meant separating out the different folders in the individual airport packages like ORBX's Meig's Field, for instance, plus in ORBX's case would mean that FTXC doesn't recognise that the product is installed. I also played around with X-Organizer to try and arrange things into groups in the same sort of fashion I use with P3D and the SCE, but frankly, I thought it caused more problems than it solved, so I have gone back in and returned all (well, most) folders to their original names, deleted my scenery.ini and let it rebuild itself alphabetically.

 

I then moved the "X-Plane Landmarks" folders above all the ORBX stuff, and "Global Airports" is already alphabetically ahead of all the ORBX entries. And that (finally!) is my question - do I need to split the ORBX entries within my scenery.ini so that all the ORBX airports are actually above Global Airports and only the TrueEarth entries are below it?

 

Your post ends with a mention that Ben will be looking at further development of the FTXC code regarding the scenery.ini environment. For me, this whole scenery.ini environment seems to be one of the weaker points of XP, as controlling large collections of scenery and its associated libraries, mesh entries etc can get messy, especially given that any complicated manual manipulation of the scenery.ini is replaced by a pure alphabetical entry any time there is a problem with the ini file and it gets rebuilt. Perhaps something within FTXC to separate out airports and regions via a naming convention like "Airports_ORBX_KCGX_A / B / C" and "Regions_ORBX_GB_South_TE_A / B / C" would help ensuring things got placed correctly in the bigger scheme of things. Just a suggestion, and only even worthwhile if the answer to my "Global Airports" question is that the ORBX entries should be split above and below it.

 

(I will attach my scenery.ini file, but I'm not asking anyone to waste any brain cells looking at it, I just include it in case it helps clarify my post)

 

While I'm here, I'll also say that I had absolutely zero problems downloading, installing and running TE GBS, which is pretty damn impressive for such a massive piece of software, and I've said in other posts what a marvel I think this product is, so congrats all round, and I don't suppose you've ever considered taking over and running Microsoft, have you John? Now there's a company that could learn a thing or three from ORBX.

scenery_packs.ini

[floydcox]

I have tried using the convert.cmd command but get an error message saying that texconv.exe was unable to start correctly, what do I do now as I have been trying to install this scenery since sunday morning.

[dekela]

16 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello,

as has already been posted several times, the installation is not complete.

Please try this:


 

Convert.cmd

 

This was the result:

 

 

•  

I have the same issue, I downloaded the convert file and placed it in the place you said, tried to run it and it said : 

3.1.4\texconv.exe" -m 13 -timing -nogpu -f BC1_UNORM -y *.JPG
No matching files found for *.JPG
Done!

I tried installing for the last 3 days, first with FTX Central , than downloaded manually and used FTX to install from the zip file.

 

Still getting the following error:

0:04:22.772 E/SYS: +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0:04:22.772 E/SYS: | Error, could not locate image file for terrain
0:04:22.772 E/SYS: | Custom Scenery/Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos/terrain/a910xfbb0x17.ter
0:04:22.772 E/SYS: | Custom Scenery/Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos/terrain/
0:04:22.772 E/SYS: | ../textures/a910xfbb0x17.dds
0:04:22.772 E/SYS: | (REN_terrain.cpp:146)
0:04:22.772 E/SYS: +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please help!!!

[Nick Cooper]

If there are no jpg files, the conversion should be already done.

The textures folder should contain 12098 files.

[dekela]

1 hour ago, Nick Cooper said:

If there are no jpg files, the conversion should be already done.

The textures folder should contain 12098 files.

I am running FTX Central again now and verifying the files, It downloaded approx 16GB of files and in the process of converting. I will update when its finished.

 

p.s. I find it strange that it was missing files since I downloaded the zip manually and used FTX to install from that zip.

Something is wrong with FTX Central installation mechanism. ORBX should investigate this.

[dekela]

1 hour ago, Nick Cooper said:

If there are no jpg files, the conversion should be already done.

The textures folder shoud contain 12098 files.

After FTX completed I see that the Texture folder now includes 5354 files at a size of 53.5 GB. is that correct?

 

 

[dekela]

I am verifying the files again and again FTX is downloading files (approx 13GB) what is going on? it finished once without an error and now again?

I think somewhere in the installation FTX is deleting files.

[dekela]

I think I may found the issue, When the convert process starts I noticed my disk space is getting extremely low.

It could be that when it reaches zero FTX is failing to convert and not throwing any error. thus leaving me with less files.\

 

I have cleared some space on my drive now and will check again.

[flyguy737]

JV your scenery.ini config wont work for me as you described so I experimented and found that the order that works for me is as follows

 

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_A_GB_South_TrueEarth_Custom/ (I rename this to add an "a" to the front

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - London/ (I renamed this to just Landmarks London) 

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Global Airports/ (I use ZZZ before the name ie ZZZ Global Airports)
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_B_GB_South_TrueEarth_Overlay/ (I add "ZZZ" to the front of the name)
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_C_GB_South_TrueEarth_Orthos/  (same here added "ZZZ")

 

this seems to work for me just fine. all my airports have an "a" at the front and library files have "o" and mesh and overlays "ZZZ"

 

I got this from a youtube video and you don't have to worry about the order of the scenery.ini as it will put everything in the right order.

 

if I do things the way you say JV it doesn't work for me at all?

 

Strange and I don't know why

 

Colin

[FlyAgi]

20 minutes ago, flyguy737 said:

if I do things the way you say JV it doesn't work for me at all?

 

Strange and I don't know why

 

Your method works by deleting the entire scenery-packs.ini and let X-Plane create a new one by alphabetical order. The JV method has to be done manually, you have to edit the scenery-packs.ini and move the entries to the right position yourself. 

[John Venema]

Renaming the Orbx folder names is not a good idea. This will break the automatic patching of updates and bug fixes by FTX Central, which will be looking for specific folder names. This will lead to more support issues in the future when updating fails.

 

Please don't rename any Orbx scenery folder names.

[flyguy737]

I see JV but all I know is what works for me right now. I wish XP11 was easier with the scenery config setup but I cant see any other way around it at the moment.

 

Colin

[FlyAgi]

It's not that hard. Regarding TE-GBS all you need is to care for the Global Airports entry and then place all TE-GBS entries below the Global Airports line, in the correct order, A, B and C. Of course you will need to do this manually in the scenery-packs.ini file. 

 

If you are looking for a scenery organizer you should try xOrganizer.

[flyguy737]

I tried xorganizer but my problem is that as I said if I do in the order stated it just wont work at all. if global airports is above the orbx ones it just wont show up and that's what I don't understand. I have just installed a second copy of xplane 11 and will use that as a test platform.

 

Colin

[FlyAgi]

Well... that sounds like a somehow broken scenery order. 

 

1 minute ago, flyguy737 said:

if global airports is above the orbx ones it just wont show up

 

What does not show up? TrueEarth or the global airports? If TrueEarth does not show up you will very likely have some other mesh sceneries placed on top of it - make sure that TrueEarth is above ALL mesh sceneries and below global airports. 

[flyguy737]

ok i'll try that with the second copy of xplane

[FlyAgi]

I strongly recommend not to micromanage the scenery order. This is completely unnessessary and just causes additional work. Make sure that all mesh sceneries are placed at the bottom of the file (in the right order if you have different meshes for the same location of course) and below global airports. All custom airports have to be above global airports and libraries can be irgnored for most part - if this is all true, most of the stuff will be fine. 

 

[flyguy737]

ok in my second copy of xplane using JV's settings it works fine and looks much better so I must have a conflicting overlay or mesh somewhere in my main install

 

Colin

[Admiralty013]

6 hours ago, John Venema said:

Renaming the Orbx folder names is not a good idea. This will break the automatic patching of updates and bug fixes by FTX Central, which will be looking for specific folder names. This will lead to more support issues in the future when updating fails.

 

Please don't rename any Orbx scenery folder names.

 

Hello JV,  if i may, i'd like to make a suggestion in regards to AIRPORTS and only airports.  The current naming standards that XP uses is ICAO - Airport common name.  Those of us who make/improve/download gateway files are used to using this format, and many (not all) designers use it as well would it be possible (*yes i'm sure it will be a pain in the rear) to swap the naming of AIRPORTS ONLY to follow that format?   While I fully understand asking us to not rename folders since it will cause issues it would be nice to have a single standard used when it came to airport scenery.  As an example I've cut a bit of my ini out this is a Gateway scenery, an AS scenery, 2 Orbx and finally one from SFD (MrX6) Using this format would maintain the prexisting format, yet allow for your automatic updating.  And again i'd like to mention this is for airports and airports only having Orbx in front of TE and other non airport scenery is fine because it groups them together and if a manual adjustment of the ini is needed makes for an easier time in locating them.

 

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EGPF - Glasgow International/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EHAM - Amsterdam Intl/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EIDW - Dublin_1_Volumetric_Grass/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EIDW - Dublin_2_Parked_Cars/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EIDW - Dublin_3_Street_Lights/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EIDW - Dublin_4_Roads/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/EIDW - Dublin_5_Scenery/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/ENHA - Hamar_Flyplass Orbx/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/ENOV - Orsta_Volda Orbx/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KABQ - Albuquerque Intl Sunport/

 

 

 

 

[rod73]

Thanks John, London scenery now fixed and loving it

[flyguy737]

ok I've gone back to basics no renaming as JV suggests and it appears all good now need to do same in my main xp11 install

 

Colin

[flyguy737]

added in the freeware EGLC London city airport and it really is sweet. any chance ORBX will do some London airports like EGLC and EGGW lutton?

 

Colin