active An ***Important** FYI...XPlane auto reordering of your Scenery.ini file

[Orbx Flyer]

I have been reading of some that have had their Scenery.ini file (inside the Custom Scenery Folder) reordered, after they have custom placed by user, the Scenery loading preference.

One thing that does trigger a Scenery.ini rewrite (from top to bottom ) of all the entries, is if (as I have), you have scenery placed on drives that can be shut down, OR...that W10 does not 'sniff' on the BIOS start up...on every first turn on, of your computer, such as USB drives.  I have a high speed USB HUB board that does not always get polled by the BIOS at every start up.  Sometimes, after seeing that...the drives are not posted, I have to RESTART W10, which then on the second pass, DOES pick up the card, and then posts the drives. 

 

Now...here is where that can affect your usage of XPlane .   I have all my Ortho4XP files on my various USB MyBook hard drives. If I do NOT check to see that those drives are posted to W10...and I then fire up XP...what happens is that XP sees the shortcuts to those files, but then does not post them and 'load them in'. The next time I run XP, (and the drives are 'seen' by W10, what Xplane does...is to post all those 'new' discovered Ortho4XP files, to the TOP of the Scenery.ini file.  So, that is one case, where you must always check to see if all your drives that carry Xplane files are in fact, being seen and accessed by XP.  

 

I suggest that you always check at the first log into W10, that all your drives are 'on-line'.  If not...reboot, and they will be, espeically if they are USB, and running on a custom USB HUB as I have mine.

 

Basically, anything that is in your Scenery.ini file, that XP does not 'see', will on the next, or any run, that it DOES see, will write (add in) those files (re-order) to the top of the Scenery.ini file. Even if they were always there, previously.  That is the nature of the XP 'beast'.   BTW...if you do have any custom Ortho4XP that you created, the biggest tip-off, of your files now are at the top of the loading heap...is that there will be no airport buildings or super structure.  That is because those Ortho4XP files were loaded in first when they should be loaded in by XPlane, lastly, just above MESH files.

 

The easy solution, of course, is to shut down XP...open up your Scenery.ini file...and cut and paste them down to where you had them....and then SAVE.   If you are constantly getting Scenery.ini auto reorders...it might be that you have a hard drive that Power Saves...and shuts down, where XP can not access the files fast enough and then ignores them. The next time that drive is hot and ready to go.....you know what happens....the Scenery.ini file gets rewritten to the top with the 'new' files XP polls and finds, before placing you to the 'what do you want to do...screen...

 

Just a FYI.