Addon Scenery disappeared

[airattackimages]

Last year I made my own airport scenery for several local airports, for my friends and I to fly. I used Instant Scenery to build them all. Everything has been great, we fly them all the time.


Yesterday, they inexplicably disappeared (well, mostly disappeared). Everything on the field has gone back to default (all the crappy generic default buildings are back regardless of my exclusion zones) and all of my placed scenery objects are gone. Yet the funny thing is, all of the off airport details I added in the surrounding areas (like trees, telephone poles/wires, homes, etc) are all still there. At every airport, these off field objects remain, and are confusing me because they were part of the same scenery file that I had made.

When I reload the file in Instant Scenery, it shows everything still being there, and shows my exclusion zones just as I had them. But, the default buildings are staying there now.

The only thing I did yesterday (and this was right when it all happened) was install the latest version of the SOH F7F project. Don't see how that would have caused this, but prior to installing it everything was fine.

Any guesses? I checked the scenery library and all the sceneries are still active. Just to see if I could wake something up, I unchecked them, then re-enabled them. It does its little song and dance about building scenery files, so I thought that worked, but nothing is different. Should I uncheck the box about Emptying the scenery cache on exit?

[falcon409]

You will get a lot of answers to this one as everyone has their own way of handling addon scenery. I will tell you what I do.
This happens to me occasionally as I do a lot of personal scenery using photoreal textures and Instant Scenery. It'll work for a few months then suddenly, as you mention, everything is gone. First of all I don't use the Addon Scenery folder for any scenery work. All my scenery is outside of FSX and so when this happens, I move that particular scenery to a new location. To explain further, I have a folder "Scenery Library". . .inside that I have regional folders and inside those are the individual airports for that region. When I have an airport that disappears, I pull it out of the regional folder and move it to the base Scenery folder instead. That has fixed the problem every time. I don't know why it works and I don't really care. . .I just know it works.

Sooooo, move that scenery folder to a different location and try again. (make sure you delete it from the scenery library list and then add it back from the new location).

[anthony31]

Indeed it sounds like something is excluding your scenery.

This is most likely a scenery order problem. Something that is above your scenery files in your scenery library is putting excludes over the airport, that is most likely why you can see the objects that are outside the airport (and thus outside the range of the offending excludes).

[Mickey D]

The cause of your problem lies with Instant Scenery. It's got a bug. Telling IS to read a BGL in the affected folder makes everything appear.............until the next time. It caused all the problems on my system that you describe until I dumped it. I've used ADEX almost exclusively for a while now and only used IS for lines of street lamps etc. My advice? Dump it! Uninstall it completely. I get a few complaints from customers with the same problems and I advise them all to dump it. Problems solved.

Sorry KK/Abacus but you ought to get it fixed.

[kjb]

Hmm, I've been using IS for years and have never seen it happen. I've also never had one person who's downloaded one of my sceneries complain about it. I've done lots of sceneries, large and small, with thousands of users and somehow it isn't happening to me or them.

IS will show objects in a BGL if you load it, but that doesn't mean that the BGL is in a spot where FSX will show it. That's not a bug, it's just IS showing what has been placed in a given BGL. IS creates stock BGL files that you can run BGL2XML on and edit manually if you're in the mood. For instance, if you want the objects to leave autogen, it's easier to edit the XML if you forget to set it in IS. Do a search and replace and all of the objects will stop excluding autogen. It's a lot easier than selecting each object in IS and changing the setting.

One bug, er feature, that IS2 has is that it doesn't recognize add-ons if they're not in a standard location. Mine are always kept on a separate drive from FSX, so IS2 will complain that it isn't an active scenery area when it actually is. The scenery BGL works, but IS2 doesn't think it will.

[Mickey D]

It's not the sceneries produced that cause the problem. The problem only appears when IS is running on the system but it is an intermittent fault.
IS is OK for the casual user but for more serious work I prefer ADEX now.

[falcon409]

Hmm, I've been using IS for years and have never seen it happen. I've also never had one person who's downloaded one of my sceneries complain about it. I've done lots of sceneries, large and small, with thousands of users and somehow it isn't happening to me or them.

IS will show objects in a BGL if you load it, but that doesn't mean that the BGL is in a spot where FSX will show it. That's not a bug, it's just IS showing what has been placed in a given BGL. IS creates stock BGL files that you can run BGL2XML on and edit manually if you're in the mood. For instance, if you want the objects to leave autogen, it's easier to edit the XML if you forget to set it in IS. Do a search and replace and all of the objects will stop excluding autogen. It's a lot easier than selecting each object in IS and changing the setting.

One bug, er feature, that IS2 has is that it doesn't recognize add-ons if they're not in a standard location. Mine are always kept on a separate drive from FSX, so IS2 will complain that it isn't an active scenery area when it actually is. The scenery BGL works, but IS2 doesn't think it will.
Yea, I don't know why it happens and it's not like it's a rampant problem or anything. . .I'd say maybe out of the hundreds of sceneries I've done it's happened two or three times. Telling someone to get rid of Instant Scenery because it happened is a bit over the top. Let me differentiate here also, I use Instant Scenery not Instant Scenery2. I know ADE users are passionate about that program and that's fine, but if you have Instant Scenery/IS2, there's no reason to suddenly dump it because of a random problem like we've described here. Also as "airattackimages" describes it, with all the default stuff showing back up. . .that has never happened when I've had problems with it. The airport is just vacant. . .no IS objects and no default. . .so the excludes are in effect as they should be, just the objects have failed to appear and moving that one scenery file to a different location has always correct it. Still I never considered dumping a program I paid for. . .I just found a solution and went on.

[Mickey D]

Yea, I don't know why it happens and it's not like it's a rampant problem or anything. . .I'd say maybe out of the hundreds of sceneries I've done it's happened two or three times. Telling someone to get rid of Instant Scenery because it happened is a bit over the top. Let me differentiate here also, I use Instant Scenery not Instant Scenery2. I know ADE users are passionate about that program and that's fine, but if you have Instant Scenery/IS2, there's no reason to suddenly dump it because of a random problem like we've described here. Also as "airattackimages" describes it, with all the default stuff showing back up. . .that has never happened when I've had problems with it. The airport is just vacant. . .no IS objects and no default. . .so the excludes are in effect as they should be, just the objects have failed to appear and moving that one scenery file to a different location has always correct it. Still I never considered dumping a program I paid for. . .I just found a solution and went on.


I think you mis-read my post Falcon I don't tell anyone to dump it I advise them to dump it. Big difference, they don't have to take that advice. :) Yes we can all find workarounds but you can't expect paying customers to do that. Whatever we devs produce MUST work in the vanilla vers. of FSX or FS9. FS alone is the yardstick. The fact remains when complainants have removed IS/IS2 everything works fine again. I rest my case. Have one on me? :guinness:

[kjb]

It's not the sceneries produced that cause the problem. The problem only appears when IS is running on the system but it is an intermittent fault.
IS is OK for the casual user but for more serious work I prefer ADEX now.
I'm curious, if it produces a stock BGL, what difference does the placement method make?

[Meshman]

The cause of your problem lies with Instant Scenery. It's got a bug. Telling IS to read a BGL in the affected folder makes everything appear.............until the next time. It caused all the problems on my system that you describe until I dumped it. I've used ADEX almost exclusively for a while now and only used IS for lines of street lamps etc. My advice? Dump it! Uninstall it completely. I get a few complaints from customers with the same problems and I advise them all to dump it. Problems solved.

Sorry KK/Abacus but you ought to get it fixed.

It appears you do not fully understand how Instant Scenery functions within FSX or FS9. So saying it has a bug based upon your thinking is unfair, IMO. But you are entitled to your opinion. If you are able to properly document this flaw, I believe the developer will work to address any problems.

What I do know is that since it's release six years ago FSX has had random problems recognizing files placed into the \Addon Scenery folder. Scattered about are many postings from people who have encountered this issue. Some I have responded to and it generally sounds like this;

Do not use the \Addon Scenery folders for file placement. Make a new folder structure to place any files into and then activate that new folder within the Scenery Library of FSX. I have not seen a situation where that failed to have FSX find and use the files.

FSX had/has many bugs and the "lost files of the Addon Scenery folder" was/is one of them. When or even if the issue arises is anyone's guess.

[kjb]

That makes more sense to me. I tell people who download my scenery packages to do that, and never use the Addon Scenery subdirectory under FSX. There have been nearly 20,000 downloads (not counting the ones on Avsim, Flightsim and other sites) and nobody has said a word about.

[Mickey D]

It appears you do not fully understand how Instant Scenery functions within FSX or FS9. So saying it has a bug based upon your thinking is unfair, IMO. But you are entitled to your opinion. If you are able to properly document this flaw, I believe the developer will work to address any problems.

What I do know is that since it's release six years ago FSX has had random problems recognizing files placed into the \Addon Scenery folder. Scattered about are many postings from people who have encountered this issue. Some I have responded to and it generally sounds like this;

Do not use the \Addon Scenery folders for file placement. Make a new folder structure to place any files into and then activate that new folder within the Scenery Library of FSX. I have not seen a situation where that failed to have FSX find and use the files.

FSX had/has many bugs and the "lost files of the Addon Scenery folder" was/is one of them. When or even if the issue arises is anyone's guess.

It would appear Meshman that it is you and others on this thread that don't understand what I'm saying here. It's not what Instant Scenery produces that gives the problems, the files are OK. It's the actual presence of Instant Scenery on the users PC that causes the anomolies. Usually missing textures and parts of objects. I've had scenery files on different HDDs when creating scenery and occasionally the fault has occurred. So it is not limited to scenery within the correct location ie. Addon Scenery\ < Named Scenery>. Accessing any bgl through IS within the offending scenery folder usually rectifies it.
I've helped people who've had this problem with other devs scenery and always IS was installed on their machines. It's not limited to FSX either it happens with FS9 too.
If any feel offended because I've had a go at their favourite scenery program then I humbly appologise.

ADEX Pro is fully supported and updated regularly. OK that's enough each to his own eh? I'll get me coat :)

[airattackimages]

I want to say thanks to everyone that replied! Your help is very much appreciated. I've got things working again, and it was actually no problem, if only I would have looked a little deeper from the beginning. What I did, was disable and re-enable all of them, which didn't work. Next time around, I "deleted" them from the addon scenery window in FSX rather than just disabling them. Then, I added them all over again. And they work just like they have for the past year and a half.

Thanks guys. :) I'm more apt to blame FSX than IS. IS works great for a dummy like me, the other stuff is too complicated, lol. I've had a lot of fun using IS and other than this, no problems. Which again, I'm more certain was some random FSX screw up. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to help!

[airattackimages]

Couple shots of me playing around with my new BT-67 at my Hemet-Ryan (KHMT) scenery.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8445/7848402012_fd05e35cf1_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7136/7848401814_11b9dd5d83_o.jpg

[airattackimages]

On final for my Ramona (KRNM) scenery

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8303/7848922600_5b44cf06a1_o.jpg

[Mickey D]

Instant Scenery 2 is sold through Flight 1 not Abacus. My bad memory.