How are scenery conflicts excluded in the new sim? Especially if you have installed scenery updates from different 3rd party developers who use the same landmarks? This may not be a problem at the moment, but it may be in the future if certain landmarks are offered by several developers at the same time. I had corresponding problems with FSX.
What seems to happen is that scenery is displayed in the order it is originally loaded in the sim, so the latest scenery takes precedence. This works OK if the previous area is cleared before imposing the new one.
However, if an area is updated without excluding the original scenery in that area, the scenery is just superimposed on the previous scenery. This has happened with the Orbx London Landmarks scenery, where the Albert Memorial is placed in the middle of the original office block:
Other areas where the Orbx scenery is done correctly (for example, the Albert Hall on the left of the picture) work OK.
So as long as the designers do it correctly, it’s the last scenery loaded which you will see, otherwise you will see a jumble.
I was wondering the same thing. What if one creates an entire city, and the other creates a single building of way better quality. Ideally you’d have both and have that one building replace the lesser one.
The find posted above is cool, but I guess it needs a lot of testing to put in a couple of pieces together.
*Dream modus: if we worked open source as a community we wouldn’t have these problems. And we’d be improving each other instead of doing better in one field and worse on another.
This is the main reason why I want to see the Scenery Gateway. And not only for airports, but also for scenery stuff. But I guess that’s unlikely. At the very least I want it to be airports + terrain.
edit: this issue is why I don’t like people creating packages for entire areas. Please split them up!
Just to be clear, the Community directory is read in alphabetical order, the further up the alphabet takes precedence.
Given there are multiple ways to exclude objects and different object types, it is likely comparable objects will be displayed together, or that it’s possible some objects are excluded. There’s no way to tell.
Technically, it is ultimately up to the user to sort out how to deal with this problem that works best for them. Expecting scenery authors to deal with it, well, isn’t going to happen given the depth and breadth of skill of authors and the myriad ways of creating and excluding scenery out there.
There is a “content” file which includes the scenery as loaded from the community folder. This seems to be updated whenever new files are added to the folder, and references to these files (probably in aphabetical order) are added at the end of the index, and not mixed with previously logged files.
I used this fact to solve a problem mixing the Orbx London Landmarks with the Thames Water addon. I already had the Thames water installed (and logged in the sim), but then the London Landmarks overwrote it when I installed that. So I removed the Thames water, ran the sim (which updated the content file), exited, replaced the Thames Water and ran it again. This put them back in the order I wanted.
See (Freeware add-on no google imagery used) River Thames London fixes for default London for the Thames water.
In fact in this updated post, @Dorrager actually shows how to edit the content file directly to achieve the results he wants (and which I achieved using the above method).
Yes, the issue with doing this is, with every update, most users move their community addons out with every update, then back in again. They’ll need to back up this content file (which they’ll have to remember where it is), and copy it back over when they move their community files back in again. And they’ll need to manage it every time they add or remove an addon, as it’s likely MSFS will reorder it again.
To me, I prefer to just name my addon directories in the order I want them installed, since the software has a habit of updating the file with every change anyway. That way, I only have one place to manage things.
It’s not like the old days where you controlled your scenery.cfg file in the interface or in a separate program. MSFS actively modifies this file every time you make a change to the community directory.
I don’t mean to say that your way is wrong, it’s very powerful. I was just stating the reasons why I do it the way I do.
It definately is a problem. Orbx and Asobo Innsbrook (LOWI) try to occupy the same space… I had to delete the Asobo version - sorry guys even if you had better landside ground textures.
The reason I say it’s a problem is that you can’t…
- Disable a DLC, you have to delete it.
- Filter content which has updates to download. So you do what everybody else does and check select all in the Content Manager and all the delete content come back again.
I think the Content Manager needs a little work here to make it more accomodating to handle conflicts. As for the conflicts themselves I think the owness should be for third parties to exclude Asobo default content at least for all versions of the sim and where applicable third parties should be aware of popular scenery which could conflict there own.
Yes, that’s a good way of doing it, and the best way of ensuring the order when moving the files during the sim update.
The problem I had was that I had bought the OrbX London Landmarks in the sim, so it was not installed in the community folder. When the update came out, this was then placed at the bottom of the list, taking precedence over the Thames Water add-on. My method (or a similar one) was the way round this - in fact probably just renaming the file after OrbX update was installed would have worked, and been quicker.
So it’s basically “Horses for Courses” - it’s useful having both methods, depending on the situation.
Got it. Well here’s to hoping they bring back an interface for maintaining install order…
It seems as though Asobo completely underestimated the popularity of addons? I don’t know how they could have.
When I see those tall pictures in the hangar for choosing an aircraft, I think to myself… I’m all for artistic UI design, but not at the expense of usability… WTH? Do they understand how many aircraft and liveries I’ll eventually have installed in this software?
And what’s this Marketplace store design… “Oh, we’ll cover up the images of the product you want to purchase with a text box so you can’t see the images, and we won’t give you a button to hide the text box”?.. again… WTH??
After recently purchasing the Washington Landmarks and KDCA scenery I ran into this issue after loading the scenery. It seems to be the only issue I have noticed after taking a tour of the scenery.
- Where Marine One sits in front of the White house there seems to be a “mound” and a “hole” right where Marine One should be parked.
- The Capitol building is also surrounded (and swallowed) by a large mound.
The fix…
Find the Drzewiecki folders in the MSFS Community folder. Don’t bother any of the files in the folder itself but RENAME the folders putting a Z_ at the beginning of the folder name. This forces MSFS to load the scenery package last (which effectively puts the scenery on the top of any other loaded scenery giving it the higher priority). I did this and the issue was instantly corrected. Hope this helps the next user.
Guys, I have Miami by LatinVFR installed and when I fly over downtown Miami I’m getting the default buildings and the LatinVFR versions together. How do I exclude only the default buildings in Miami that the 3rd party package is covering while maintaining all the photogrammetry that LatinVFR has not included?
Steve
Keep an eye on this thread. Richard from Navigraph already asked the Dev Team: