Add On scenery & it's location

[Kowalski65]

I currently have FSX located on drive D, but am fast running out of space!

If I were to move the "addon scenery" folder to a different drive(probably an external one via USB 2.0) would there be a performance drop in flight?

Would it take longer to load?(FSX already takes ages to load as I have a LOT of stuff!)

Would I need to change any .cfg files?

If I were to put other folders, say VFR Horizon, or nl-2000, files on the external, would that need other changes?

Cheers

Andy

[falcon409]

A long time ago, I moved all my scenery files out of FSX and put them on a larger HDD. Other than the default files, there's nothing extra in my main Addon Scenery folder inside FSX.

Needless to say, once you move everything, you'll have to go back to the Scenery Library and reload all your scenery from the new location. As far as loading any faster or slower. . .no idea really, mine takes a fair amount of time to load as it is and everyone's loads at different speeds so that's something that can't be compared one system to another. It is what it is really.

Bottom line is, wherever you move your files to, the only requirement is that you reload them from the Scenery Library from the new location. Which is actually a good thing to do anyway because you may have sceneries you never fly to anymore, or seldom fly to and you can weed out a lot of unnecessary older scenery files that way.

[Kowalski65]

Cheers Falcon...now to go & get a hard drive!

[GypsyBaron]

Cheers Falcon...now to go & get a hard drive!

Not only can scenery be located anywhere in FSX, you can also create folders to
hold your additional aircraft and AI and put them anywhere you wish. In the case
of those items (SimObjects), merely add a line to the main section of the fsx.CFG
file that points to your new folders.

I have SimObject folders named "AI Aircraft", "Military Aircarft", "Propliners" and
a few others. All located outside of my FSX installation folder and on different
drives.

Paul

[falcon409]

I tried that once, a long time ago Paul. Took me the better part of a day to get everything moved, in the correct folders and changes made to the cfg file. It was something I had always wanted to do, but assumed it wasn't possible until I read it in a thread here.

I also remember (since I no longer have them separated) that I moved everything back a day or so later because of some problem I discovered. I don't even remember now what it was, but it seems that either there was a recognition problem in FSX or it affected the aircraft selection menu such that I couldn't use the menu. At any rate, while it sounded like a great idea, there was also a downside to it that caused me to move everything back.

[scott967b]

If scenery loads slowly from USB hard disk, you can try editing scenery.cfg so that the lines
Local=
are changed to
Remote=
which causes FSX to copy the files from the "remote" storage (could be network, DVD, etc as well) to a local hard disk cache folder. There is also an "empty cache on exit" option that can be set to false, if you normally fly in the same areas so that the sceenry files remain in the cache between program starts.

scott s.
.

[Bjoern]

Not only can scenery be located anywhere in FSX, you can also create folders to
hold your additional aircraft and AI and put them anywhere you wish. In the case
of those items (SimObjects), merely add a line to the main section of the fsx.CFG
file that points to your new folders.

I have SimObject folders named "AI Aircraft", "Military Aircarft", "Propliners" and
a few others. All located outside of my FSX installation folder and on different
drives.

This would work even better if it wasn't for those add-on related files in the "FSX\Effects" or "FSX\Sound" folders.

Or can you outsource those folders as well and just place appropriately named shortcuts in their place instead?

[rohan]

Not only can scenery be located anywhere in FSX ...

That statement is only true from the FSX point of view. The individual scenery fileset may not work correctly (or at all) if it isn't placed where the designer(s) intended. A prime example is the Orbx FTX products which apparently demand that they be installed in the FSX root folder - an annoying little fact that makes it difficult to place everything where I planned on my newly built PC (which has separate drives for the o/s, FSX and scenery),
Ro

[ananda]

I I also remember (since I no longer have them separated) that I moved everything back a day or so later because of some problem I discovered. I don't even remember now what it was, but it seems that either there was a recognition problem in FSX or it affected the aircraft selection menu such that I couldn't use the menu. At any rate, while it sounded like a great idea, there was also a downside to it that caused me to move everything back.

It will effect aircraft selection only if there is an alias in the aircraft.cfg, panel.cfg or sound.cfg referring to ..\.... Changing it to a full path will correct it, eg.

alias=F:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes\b747_400\panel

Similarly, if there is a fallback. line in the texture.cfg.

[Kowalski65]

Right,I finally got my new Hard drive-PC is coming back today with an internal 1 Tb drive, so rather than just move the add on scenery, could I just move all 300+ Gb of FSX to the new drive?I presume I would just have to alter the desk top shortcut location? Would there be a problem with stuff like Horizon VFR & Megascenry which are outside the main D/Program files bit of FSX?

I suppose if it doesnt work I can always copy it back-may take some time though

[Roger]

This link may help Andy. If either of your drives is a Seagate or Maxtor you can download the free Acronis tool, otherwise is about $50. Dennya's post has a link to the tool.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...ght=disk+clone

[Kowalski65]

Cheers Roger.As I dont need to copy any OS Im looking at using the Symantec tool, downloading it now

Andy

[guzler]

The only thing to watch out for by relocating aircraft is if they are aliased to default aircraft for panel and sound. You have to edit the sound or panel CFG to include a link that includes the full path eg.

alias=E:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes\B737_800\Sound

This is a pain, but I now have all my aircraft (apart from UT2) outside FSX all together.

It helps my OCD to do this !!!!!!!

[Kowalski65]

After taking 1 look at the 200 page Symantec manual, I thought "Sod that!" & decided to just drag & drop everything into the new J drive, and then rename it, but that would have taken about 4 days, so for now I have just relocated Addon Scenery & re-listed them.I also moved Megascenery X , but that seems to have some problems I will sort out later.Still,its freed up 100 Gb of space for planes, but I bet it wont take long to fill that up the way I d/l everything I can find!

Thanks all for the help!