ANSWERED Object flow updater - what is actually updated?

[robmw]

Hi,

 

I've just installed the latest Orbx Libs for FSX and P3D and saw on the forum that all airports are now updated to use the unified Object flow dll. I've run the updater in the scripts folder but it seems that the dlls are still present in many of the older airport scenery folders rather than only the xml description files? I notice that with newer airports there is no dll in each airport folder presumably because the unified version in the Orbxlibs scenery folder is loaded and reads the xml definition files for each airport.

 

What I've noticed is that the updated object flow dlls in each airport folder are now actually the same as the unified one in Orbxlibs (binary compare) and just appear to have been renamed? If so do they still need to be present?

 

The reason I ask is that I've found loading very many of these dlls can slow down performance for me at times and if I just load the ones I need for the region I'm flying in things improve. I have software which can generate the correct dll.xml so all I need to know is can I ignore the various object flow dlls in the airport directories from now on and just load the single (unified) Orbxlibs version?

 

Hope that makes sense and some guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

Rob W

[Wolter van der Spoel]

have a read at this post here => http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/93002-orbx-lib-150215/?p=845852

[Alex Goff]

Hi Rob,

 

Here's a quick explanation of the ObjectFlow updater and the "unified" DLL.

 

Originally each airport and region was distributed with its own ObjectFlow modules since FSX was static and the modules never needed to be changed. These modules are all identical except if one is updated and the others are not. Once Prepar3D 1.x hit the scene and followed by 2.x it became a much bigger deal to update ObjectFlow for new releases so auto-updating was integrated into the modules along with a manual update tool that located all instances of ObjectFlow and forced an update.

 

With that capability it became easier to rely on a central module since there was no longer a worry about accidentally breaking the module if a user installed an old product with an old version of the module that would not work with the version of Prepar3D installed. So for about a year now every airport functions using the module distributed with the libraries. As older airports are patched their modules are removed and the XML files use the "unified" module. You can disable the modules if you're not flying to an airport or within the region, but the airports will still use their older independent module instead of the unified one. By the time all the airports have triple installers they should all be using the unified module.

 

Cheers,

 

Alex

[robmw]

Thanks Wolter and Alex, that makes sense to me. I've noticed the independent modules disappearing when updating with the newer triple installers so I'll keep updating with those as they are released. As you say everything should be fully updated eventually.

 

Now I know what to keep enabled I'll carry on using my method of controlling the dll.xml file as this works well for me.

 

Now Orbx have created so many products it's quite a job to keep on top of it all! The new automated FTX Central will definitely help here I think.