Strange Problem with Scenery Database

[old_wombat]

Glad for your sake you don't look like your avatar

What I was trying to gently suggest to you is that what the more knowledgeable guys advise us to do quite often works. If it doesn't, it's not because what they said is wrong (that is fairly rare), it's because there are yet undiscovered issues that haven't been addressed.

Steve from Mudgee
Mudgee == A beautiful small town in NSW, Australia

[biffer]

Glad for your sake you don't look like your avatar

What I was trying to gently suggest to you is that what the more knowledgeable guys advise us to do quite often works. If it doesn't, it's not because what they said is wrong (that is fairly rare), it's because there are yet undiscovered issues that haven't been addressed.

Steve from Mudgee
Mudgee == A beautiful small town in NSW, Australia

G'Day, Steve-oh,

Yup ... I'm glad I don't look like my avatar, too (I'm actually much uglier).

When you say, "... it's because there are yet undiscovered issues ... ," I couldn't agree more. If you look back at my reply yesterday to ocseong818 you'll see that's exactly what I said.

I'm still looking ...

Cheers!

[Capt_Flappers]

biffer, i was searching the forums for information about something I was interested in and I came upon this thread and thought about you and this thread. This thread may be of some use to you.

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showth...enery+priority

especially the post by fahmey where he talks about the 2 utilities he uses to keep his scenery.cfg file in order. There may be issues in your scenery.cfg that are hard to spot, maybe on of these utilities can find it for you and fix your issue.

[biffer]

biffer, i was searching the forums for information about something I was interested in and I came upon this thread and thought about you and this thread. This thread may be of some use to you.

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showth...enery+priority

especially the post by fahmey where he talks about the 2 utilities he uses to keep his scenery.cfg file in order. There may be issues in your scenery.cfg that are hard to spot, maybe on of these utilities can find it for you and fix your issue.

Thanks for that, Flappers (Bernie) - much appreciated! Those utilities sound promising, so I'll look into them later this evening and report back.

Cheers!

Biffer (Andy)

[biffer]

Thanks for that, Flappers (Bernie) - much appreciated! Those utilities sound promising, so I'll look into them later this evening and report back.

Cheers!

Biffer (Andy)

Well, Bernie ... I tried. I downloaded Steve Greenwood's SceneryManager, and sure enough, it came up with a list of five Scenery Areas that were out of sequence. However, even after replacing the corrected Scenery.cfg file, I'm still getting the same problem of a constantly loading scenery database. I even deleted all the scenery.dat files again and let FS replace them - still nothing.

Here's a thing ... I found that I've got a Scenery.cfg in the root folder of FS9 and in my 'C'-drive's Application Data folder, but not in my main Scenery folder, which is where I thought it should be. I'm vaguely aware that FSX has an 'active' Scenery.cfg in its Application Data folder, but I thought FS9 only had the root-folder one. Anyway, I replaced the corrected file in both locations, but still no result.

Maybe I'll just have to live with it ... ???

Andy

[StringBean]

FS9 uses the scenery.cfg in the root FS9 folder.

The scenery.cfg in the AP Data folder is created by FS when you have a crash so it can be sent to Microsoft should you choose to do so.

BTW, don't bother choosing to send the info to Microsoft, nobody there to accept it.

To the best of my memory, your issue of FS constantly rebuilding the database has always been caused by bad scenery files.

You say you disabled all your addon scenery, have you looked closely at your default scenery folders for addon files?

As an example, everyone puts their traffic files in Scenery\World\scenery, which is a default scenery folder, and those qualify as scenery files.

Many addons have you place files in the default scenery folders including programs like Ultimate Terrain, etc. (not that I think that UT is the cause).

Do you have a clean copy of FS9 somewhere on your system? It is a good idea after a clean install to copy the virgin FS somewhere safe.

If you do there is a nice little program called WinMerge (freeware) that will compare files and folders on a binary level that you could use to compare your working copy of FS to your virgin copy of FS.

Just a few thoughts, hope you can sort this out 'cause it ain't right.

peace,
the Bean

[biffer]

... have you looked closely at your default scenery folders for addon files?
the Bean

Thank you, 'Mr Bean',

Having checked - you're right. There are a couple of files in Scenery/World/Scenery that are more accurately described as add-ons (JustFlight's 'British Airports', for example). Should I remove these and paste them into the Add-on Scenery folder ... or will that just screw things up even more?

Andy

[StringBean]

You could certainly move them to a temporary folder to test and see if they are the culprits.

Airport files in that folder are commonly what is known as "stub Afcads" that are required in FS9 to get AI to recognize an airport elevation change.

If you do want to move them out, I suggest you create a new scenery area for them and add it to the Scenery Library.

You would want to place the new area down at the bottom of the Scenery Library, just above the first 2 default folders.

I have this on my setup and it works great. I named it "Elevation Corrections" and did so to make it simple to turn these files off for testing, if needed.

peace,
the Bean

[biffer]

Hi Folks!

Apologies to all who have followed this post and especially to contributors. I've been ill lately and not brought you up to date.

Basically, one thing that effected my health was that I was spending what little time I had, faffing around with 'stuff' trying to solve this problem, and hardly any time at all enjoying the sim'. Nothing I did seemed to cure the fault, so now - sadly - I've decided to give up and let the bugger do its own thing. I guess it's like the man who was asked why he kept banging his head against a brick wall - "Because it feels great when I stop!"

So, my sincere thanks to all those who tried to help, but I'm just going to get used to waiting minutes on end for FS9 to load up and watch it 'updating the scenery database' - at least then I get to use the damn thing.

Happy Landings!

Andy