Compass Headings Reversed in Fs2002!

I was testing some of William Shea's Fs2004 scenery today in Fs2002. When I took off from Runway 10 on Block Island I noticed that FsNavigator and the Shift-Z compass showed 226 degrees instead of 090. I exited Fs2002 and restarted it selecting a flight from Block island again. I still noticed the compass headings were 180' off! I also tried to start a flight from KSYR runway 10 and noticed the same thing. This is the first time I've used FS2004 scenery in Fs2002, could that be the cause of the problem?

 

Thanks, in advance!

 

Christopher Tarana

 

Removing the Fs2004 scenery solved the problem, the compasses are back to normal. But now the airports are ugly again!

Most of the newer FS2004 scenery used newer tools to generate the BGL's. I've run into problems like this in the past and it seems to be due to the header info which is written into the BGL files. The short way to explain it is that 2K4 needs different header info than 2K2 so newer scenery may NOT be backward compatible in 2K2.

The short answer is that you can't convert the newer BGL's to work in 2K2 without dealing with some unexpected results, if they work at all.

What you could try is to look for scenery that was uploaded prior to, say, 2007. The scenery designer MAY have used the older 2K2 BGL compiller to generate the files.

 

One important thing you should do whenever you try to load any 2K4 scenery into 2K2 is back-up your FS and scenery config files. That header info I mentioned could over-write the CFG data to the point where you can't recover some areas in FS by switching back to the older scenery. I learned that the hard way..

Hi Bob; After reading this post, I wonder if that's what happened to me. My aircraft compass readings are 13 degrees more than what Shift Z shows--been like that for a long time. I do recall bringing in Carrier scenery from 2004 and other stuff, and my readings have been off ever since. Any idea how to correct this in a config. or something? Thanks, Pete

Hi Bob; After reading this post, I wonder if that's what happened to me. My aircraft compass readings are 13 degrees more than what Shift Z shows--been like that for a long time. I do recall bringing in Carrier scenery from 2004 and other stuff, and my readings have been off ever since. Any idea how to correct this in a config. or something? Thanks, Pete

 

ANY fan of Don Martin :cool: deserves some kind of answer..

 

The problem is that there are several ways to install scenery files in FS, so I can't give you a "one size fits all" answer.

 

In general, your first option is to live with it if you don't want to turn off the files you added. In a lot of cases, this is the easiest way to go if everything else is working and looking the way you'd like.

 

Next would be to edit your scenery in-game and uncheck each scenery layer you added until you find the culprit, assuming you used the in-game menus to add the scenery. You could also try to change the "load order" of your scenery levels in-game by moving a scenery level you suspect is causing problems up or down one level at time and then checking the result.

 

If you added BGLs to folders that were already enabled, things can get tricky. Try to think back to when you first started to notice the problem then figure out what you added at that time. Next, find the BGLs you dumped into the folder and drag them out of your FS main folder, to let's say, your desktop. Check if that fixes the problem (it might not if the scenery database was modified) then add each BGL back into its old folder until you find the culprit.

 

The last gasp is to try doing a re-install of FS over the old files. This *should* preserve a lot (most?) of the files you've added but will take your scenery configs back to a box-stock condition. As you can guess, this is why the "just live with it" option works better than we may want to admit. :rolleyes: