resolved Libraries and existing symbolic links

[FalconAF]

Win 10 Professional

X-Plane 11.35

Enough ORBX Products to Choke a Pony Already Installed in Symbolically Linked Folders on "Other Drives"

 

OK, this is all totally confusing, because what the User Manual says will happen doesn't happen. 

 

1.  The "NEW" library the new Central is SUPPOSED to create will have SEPARATE SUB-FOLDERS for each flight sim you have...for instance, a separate sub-folder for P3D, for X-Plane, and for AF2.  That makes sense as ORBX products are SPECIFIC to a given flight sim platform.

 

2.  But as someone else has already mentioned, Central asks you to "Create a New Folder" by asking you to select a PATH to that new folder, AND a NAME for it.  But if you select the folder where you ALREADY have all of your ORBX products installed OUTSIDE of the main simulator folder(s), it WON'T let you DO that (it says the folder is "not empty").  

 

3.  So if I create a new EMPTY folder, Central wants to start RE-DOWNLOADING every ORBX product I ALREADY have installed in a different folder on a separate hard drive that is ALREADY symbolically linked to my main X-Plane installation.

 

How in the heck can I get Central to realize I ALREADY have all my ORBX products installed "in a different folder on a separate hard drive" and DON'T want to re-download every one of them again?

 

It appears the only way to "migrate" anything is if you already have your ORBX products installed in the MAIN flight sim folder to begin with.  Are we screwed if we already MANUALLY created our own symbolic linked folders where all our ORBX products really are?  Do we have to redownload EVERYTHING again to get them in a new Central folder?  I can't just copy the ORBX products over to the "new EMPTY folder" because it doesn't contain the new folder structure of having separate sub-folders for each flight sim.

 

Thanks for any clarification.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

 

37 minutes ago, FalconAF said:

2.  But as someone else has already mentioned, Central asks you to "Create a New Folder" by asking you to select a PATH to that new folder, AND a NAME for it.  But if you select the folder where you ALREADY have all of your ORBX products installed OUTSIDE of the main simulator folder(s), it WON'T let you DO that (it says the folder is "not empty"). 

Thanks for any clarification.

 

Interesting point.

 

If you create a new and empty folder and then select migrate, I would have thought that

Orbx Central should see your existing symbolic links in the ORBX folder and migrate the

files to the new folder.

 

Of course, there is no need to migrate the files at all, other than to create a whole xml add-ons

structure.

 

I look forward to the developers' comment on this.

[FalconAF]

12 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

Interesting point.

 

If you create a new and empty folder and then select migrate, I would have thought that

Orbx Central should see your existing symbolic links in the ORBX folder and migrate the

files to the new folder.

 

Of course, there is no need to migrate the files at all, other than to create a whole xml add-ons

structure.

 

I look forward to the developers' comment on this.

 

I updated my above post to indicate I am using X-Plane 11.35.  I don't need to create any .xml entries.  All my ORBX products are already installed in other folders/drives and already use symbolic links to my main X-Plane folder on a different drive.

 

I can't believe nobody during the beta testing tried installing the new Central with already having all their ORBX products on a separate folders/hard drive configuration already.  ALL I NEED for Central to do is...

 

1.  See I already have all the ORBX products installed on other drives, then...

 

2.  Re-create the new folder structure for all of them while keeping the already in-place symbolic links.

 

It won't seem to let you do that.  It insists I re-download everything to a new "Empty Folder".   

 

If I'm missing something, let me know.  But following the instructions in the User Manual won't allow any sort of migration of ORBX products already installed OUTSIDE the main flight sim folder.

 

[Nick Cooper]

2 minutes ago, FalconAF said:

 

I updated my above post to indicate I am using X-Plane 11.35.  I don't need to create any .xml entries.  All my ORBX products are already installed in other folders/drives and already use symbolic links to my main X-Plane folder on a different drive.

 

I can't believe nobody during the beta testing tried installing the new Central with already having all their ORBX products on a separate folders/hard drive configuration already.  ALL I NEED is for Central to

 

1.  See I already have all the ORBX products installed, then...

 

2.  Re-create the new folder structure for all of them while keeping the already in-place symbolic links.

 

It won't seem to let you do that.  It insists I re-download everything to a new "Empty Folder".   

 

Thanks.

 

If you make no changes to your installation, does Orbx Central in fact show that everything is installed and in order?

[Ben McClintock]

Hi @FalconAF,

 

I have split your questions into a separate topic - they'll be easier to answer here.

 

31 minutes ago, FalconAF said:

2.  But as someone else has already mentioned, Central asks you to "Create a New Folder" by asking you to select a PATH to that new folder, AND a NAME for it.  But if you select the folder where you ALREADY have all of your ORBX products installed OUTSIDE of the main simulator folder(s), it WON'T let you DO that (it says the folder is "not empty").  

If you select a folder that already has your Orbx products in it, Central won't pick it up unless they follow a very specific format. (e.g. "<library>/xp11/TrueEarth Great Britain South", with that folder containing its own "Custom Scenery", etc).

 

That said, Central should detect the products that you already have installed if they are symlinked correctly. So you are experiencing a bug. We did have quite a long beta period: internal, closed beta, and open beta. However, with any software there will be bugs. Especially when you are using it less than 24h after it has been released.

 

Can you please help us understand how your scenery is currently set up? Screenshots of your Custom Scenery directory, plus where you have your Orbx scenery installed will help. This will allow us reproduce your issue, and implement a fix as fast as possible.

[FalconAF]

OK, here ya go with some screencaps and folder structures for an already symbolic linked installation.  But I've discovered Central doesn't want to re-download everything.  It just insists on you having to click on the "Migrate" option on EACH product's page after you create a new "EMPTY" folder to move ALL the ORBX products/files.  Then it will "migrate" that whole product from an already perfectly functioning symbolic linked folder to a different folder, because the current folder doesn't use the new folder structure.  That's really silly, because right now my GB South is transferring 44,283 perfectly working symbolic linked files at a snails pace to an adjacent folder on the SAME drive, just so it can "reorganize" them into a different folder structure.  By my estimation (doing the math) it's gonna take about 6 hours just to do that for GB South.  For the non-techy savvy people who don't understand why, here's an excellent explanation (and the reason you ZIP all the files into ONE ZIP file before moving them all...one file will transfer a WHOLE lot faster than 44,000 files will):

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/cknf01/why_does_bitrate_fluctuate_eg_when_transfer_files/

 

So I can understand why Central insists on having a new "empty" file if the ORBX products were already in the main Flight Sim root folder and you wanted to MOVE them outta there.  But it's really silly to already have all the products in an outside folder somewhere else and have to move it all again to a new "empty" folder somewhere.  Nobody could write a batch file that would just "reassemble" the files into the new folder structure in the EXISTING folder that was already symbolically linked?

 

Heck, it would be easier for me to just re-download everything all over again.  I have unlimited bandwidth on my ISP provider's plan.  But seeing as I'm a nice guy I'll save YOUR bandwidth and do it the silly way 'cos I have to create an "empty" folder to do the file transfer(s).  

 

Here's the way it happens now if you already have your ORBX products in symbolic linked locations:

 

(Click on the pics for easier to read higher resolutions)

 

Symbolic Links Folder Before ORBX Central Install

 

Custom Scenery Folder Before ORBX Central Install

 

Install New Central. Central Says No Libraries

 

Can't Choose Existing Linked Folder

 

So You Create an Empty Folder

 

Then This Happens Which Tells You Nothing About What Is Happening

 

And You See This in Explorer While It's Happening

 

But I Had To Select the Migrate Option for GB South to Get It  to Start This

 

Isn't there some way to get Central to just re-organize an existing Symbolic Links folder without having to move 600+ GB to another folder?

 

(I'm going out of town for a week, so I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.  But still..…)   

 

[FalconAF]

As an add to the above, this is what happened when the GB South "migration" finished:

 

Central REMOVED the 4 ORBX entries for GB South from my Custom Scenery folder (Custom, Overlay, Ortho, and the separate EGLH airport) 

 

And re-created those 4 folders in the new "ORBX Library 2" folder (the "migration" folder).  But it did NOT remove the folders it migrated from the original "ORBX Library" folder.  So, it actually just COPIED the folders/files instead of migrating (moving) them.  It also REMOVED the 4 entries from my scenery_packs.ini file, and unless I manually Symbolic Linked all 4 folders from the new migrated location, they would not be in the Custom Scenery folder nor the scenery_packs.ini file again.  (Yes, I started and closed X-Plane to give it a chance to update the scenery_packs.ini file.  It couldn't, because the 4 GB South symbolic links folders had been removed from the Custom Scenery Folder).

 

Unless I'm doing something terribly wrong, the new Central is not user-friendly nor accurate when it comes to "migrating" an existing Symbolic Links folder.

 

[Ben McClintock]

Hi Falcon,

 

Sorry for the late reply here.

 

We have fixed a few bugs with migrating X-Plane 11 products to a library.

 

However, we've also updated the guidance inside Central to recommend not migrating into a library for products you already have installed. In your case, there would be no benefit to migrating (as you've correctly identified).