Trying to Make Sense of FTX-Orbx (What's free and what's not free)?

Someone (who shall remain nameless, to protect the innocent :rolleyes:); posted a nice YouTube video showing off some particularly good scenery at an airport. I inquired and he told me that it was Orbx, and he said I should get it. He said that the airport he was at, was part of their freeware airport collection for North America-- okay simple enough I thought. I went to their website, found the freeware airport downloads, as he had described:

http://s10.postimg.org/7pfw074tl/Orbx_freeware_airports.jpg

So I downloaded & installed them; wasn't sure if I should load all the bgl's into my addon scenery folder like I do my usual airport/afcad addon's, but I figured, oh what the heck... just leave them where orbx wants to put them (minus the fact that orbx was looking to install them in my C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam folder, and I prefer to keep it C:\Steam (direct)).

Well, I went to the airport he had been at to test my results, and much to my chagrin, I had a few new palm trees, a few parked cars around the airport, some new or adjusted parking spaces for the planes, and a new chain link fence on the perimeter... but the airport buildings he had were non existent.

I touched base with him again, to ask what I might be doing wrong. He said try also downloading the free orbx libraries that come with it on the side:

http://s14.postimg.org/cpdulbdhd/Orbx_freeware_libraries.jpg

He said I shouldn't have to run any of their other global or regional attachments to make it work. So I tried... installed the libraries as he told me. Now I get extended Orbx weather themes that I didn't have before (and that's pretty cool, because I like the alto-cumulus cloud coverage on one of them better than any of the FSX default ones). And unless it's my imagination (placebo effect), I think I might be getting better trees and some better road vectors and land class textures; but I can't confirm or deny that for sure.

But the problem is like the first scenario, I still haven't solved the lack of airport building problems. I get random addon palm trees and vehicles, changes in parking spaces for the planes, and perimeter chain-link fence, but no addon buildings. Just the default buildings if I turn up the sliders for autogen and default scenery. And not to say the default airport buildings are horrible... but I was trying to get the ORBX buildings to work.

What am I doing wrong? I didn't pay for anything per say, but I didn't think I had to. Weren't these supposed to be free?

Sorta' confused. If someone can help sort this out for me, I'd appreciate it. ORBX website is kind of overwhelming. Not sure exactly what it is they are trying to offer... textures, scenery, terrain mesh, land class, airports.... or all of it? Talk about a "Home Depot" approach to flight simulator addons. Can I get a little help in aisle 17? !!!!!

Thanks,

-- John

GUI settings? Buildings are defined by the settings for autogen. If you don't have the slider far right you will see a proportionate reduction in displayed autogen. FTX uses different slider recommendations as their autogen `paints` at different slider levels to default

The freeware sceneries do require FTX libraries, so you did the right thing there.

ORBX is simple, and layered:

FTX Global, textures, replacing default

Vector, replacing and adding to default

Landclass, changing and adding to default

Regions, dedicated focus on the area incorporating all three of the above and mesh

Then there are a addon airports that can be used with any or all of the above. The Freeware are variations on that theme. MOST are designed to be used with FTX Global as a minimum. Much of the autogen installed with the FTX libraries is ONLY called on the base installation of FTX Global - the freeware. If you don't have that payware, why would you even think the addons will display correctly in a default installation?

You have previously been given the reference to a freely-available document from ORBX that defines what each product does, and how each enhances what you see. The freeware is intended for FTX Global at the least, although it works even better with Global, Vector and OpenLC installed, and is specifically matched to the Regions.

All of which you don't appear to have.

If you are installing `stuff` into your sim you dont understand then you should stop that immediately. Ask questions first, or be ready to reinstall the sim and perhaps the operating system, because you WILL commit some sin from which there is no recovery.

Are you new to this ? If so then concentrate your forum efforts in the newcomer forum until you develop the basic understanding of addons, and how to have a vanilla backup of your installation so that any terminal failure caused by your fiddling doesn't critically injure your flight sim installation.

Would you tell us the Airports name? So I can check what could be the trick.

As far as I read your post, there is nothing you are doing wrong. I only can Imagine that the "otherguy" has some more FTX software installed.

Would you tell us the Airports name? So I can check what could be the trick.

As far as I read your post, there is nothing you are doing wrong. I only can Imagine that the "otherguy" has some more FTX software installed.

It was PHNY in Lanai City, Hawaii.

The one thing I didn't do, as I recall was I never copied the configuration text file to the FSX scenery.cfg file. Though I did reference the FSX\ORBX folder in the scenery library inside the sim, in the hopes that it would detect the new airports that way. I don't really know if it made a real difference or not.

And usually if you add an airport or scenery to the scenery library in the simulator, it should automatically populate the scenery.cfg file in the main folder. At least that's how it's always worked for me in FS9. But in this case, I don't think it carried over on it's own. Could that be the problem?

I got some freeware from them a while ago and it came with a launcher, did you get that too, the scenery I got all worked OK.

No I didn't get the launcher. Unless the launcher IS the library thing I took a picture of in my 2nd screenshot.

Is the launcher, libraries, or airports supposed to cost any money... or are they all truly free? I was under the impression that freeware meant freeware, but maybe I am misunderstanding, and these freeware extras... are designed to be used in CONJUNCTION with items that are payware. And maybe that's the part that has me confused.

What do you think? Is there anyone who's been able to use ORBX freeware airports from the long list of NA and EU airports w/o having to first set up something that one has to pay for?

Do understand, I'm not trying to illegally get something for free that I'm not supposed to. I'm just trying to understand how it works, and what I'm supposed to be doing. If using the free stuff requires paying for other stuff first, then I can accept that, save up my money, and purchase the starter stuff later. But I though I could try out the free items as posted on their own.

Though I did reference the FSX\ORBX folder in the scenery library inside the sim, in the hopes that it would detect the new airports that way.

Afraid that won't work. You need to add each airport separately to the library. FSX is not parsing any subfolder structure for you that might or might not contain sceneries. It expects to be directed to a folder with "scenery" and/or "texture" subfolders in it. Same goes for the ORBX libraries, which have to be below the airports in the scenery lib AFAIK.

But shouldn't all this be there already in the library, after installing? Do you have the FTX Central application anywhere in you start menu or on your desktop (you can find it in the ORBX folder too). That one switches the scenery between "ORBX" and "Non-ORBX" in FSX.

Though I did reference the FSX\ORBX folder in the scenery library inside the sim, in the hopes that it would detect the new airports that way.

 

Afraid that won't work. You need to add each airport separately to the library. FSX is not parsing any subfolder structure for you that might or might not contain sceneries. It expects to be directed to a folder with "scenery" and/or "texture" subfolders in it. Same goes for the ORBX libraries, which have to be below the airports in the scenery lib AFAIK.

 

But shouldn't all this be there already in the library, after installing? Do you have the FTX Central application anywhere in you start menu or on your desktop (you can find it in the ORBX folder too). That one switches the scenery between "ORBX" and "Non-ORBX" in FSX.

I couldn't get the FTX Central application to set me to ORBX, only default. Once set to default it got stuck there.

just finally got it to work. bldgs finally showed up. I figured out what I was missing. I don't know if I did this correctly or not.. but it worked:

The two main file structures were:

1. FSX\ORBX\FTX_GLOBAL\FTX_FTXG_AIRPORTS\Scenery\(lots and lots of airports-- both .bgl & CVX.bgl)

& ...........................................................\Texture

AND....

2. FSX\ORBX\FTX_AU\FTXAA_ORBXLIBS\Scenery

& ...................................................\Texture

I simply copied and pasted the scenery and texture folders from group #2 and merged them into the scenery and texture folders from group #1.

I doubt that is how it is supposed to be done, but by putting everything in one scenery and one texture folder-- and group one is the one I both assigned to the scenery library of the sim and manually copied letter for letter to the scenery.cfg file in the main FSX folder-- it now works. Go figure.

Thanks everyone for your inputs.

OK, you now have a completely non-standard installation.

Be ready for a reinstall of everything. Because this procedure will come back to bite you.

OK, you now have a completely non-standard installation.

 

Be ready for a reinstall of everything. Because this procedure will come back to bite you.

Okay, fair enough. I will take everything out and start over again. At least the orbx folder. The rest of the sim is working fine, so I see no reason to do a fresh reinstall... at least not yet.

But I suspect that if I clear orbx out now before it causes any further issues, and use the scenery library add correctly, it should work.

All I'm doing is running a few airport .bgls in one folder, and some library extras in another. The only real fault I see I made was dumping them all into the same folder(s), because I didn't know how to add the folders to the library scenery system correctly. Funny thing, I got the name to appear in the sim library system correctly, but it never created a new entry in the scenery.cfg file. I do believe that nuitkati above you suitably explained the reason I may not have gotten the scenery library to act correctly.

I know your concern is that I'm not using the product correctly, and I appreciate that. But the person who originally told me that orbx free airports could be used with the free library downloads-- without using the global scenery-- wasn't making this stuff up. He seems to know what he's talking about and said it was a workaround I shouldn't have any issues with. So I am cautiously trusting him.

Though I suspect that before I even finish typing this, you will probably vehemently disagree. I just wanted to get a small taste of how ORBX looks, because it's impressive. I'm sure there's a more correct way to do this, but I don't have the money to install all of ORBX's payware layers at this time... so I'm trying to do it the poor man's way.

Yes... I can already see you rolling your eyes, clear from across the pond over here to California... but I'm just trying to have a little more fun with the limited resources I have to enjoy the hobby. That's all.

There should not be ill effects now.

It will only come back to byte you :) if you install more ORBX addons, and that's for sure. These all need the ORBX libraries, and those get updated pretty regularly too. So it is advisable to keep them separate.

But it is no big deal and easily fixable if you want to. Just rename the folder FTX_FTXG_AIRPORTS, that is working for you now, to any odd name, so you have a backup you can revert to. Keep the FTXAA_ORBXLIBS folder. Then reinstall only the airport scenery, so that this FTX_FTXG_AIRPORTS folder reappears. Then you go into your scenery library in FSX and repeat the adding process for FTX_FTXG_AIRPORTS and FTXAA_ORBXLIBS (you need to get this right anyway, these won't be the last sceneries you will want to add).

I think what probably went wrong is that ftxconfigurator.exe (in the Orbx\scripts folder) is the tool responsible for adding things to your scenery library and you wouldn't have had that on your system until you installed the Orbxlibs. Most folks using the freeware airports would already have the libs installed for other products so this being your first go with Orbx is sort of a special case. What normally happens is the freeware airport installer would trigger ftxconfigurator to run after the installation to put your new scenery into the library but it couldn't find it so it didn't happen.

If you're gonna start over again I'd delete the Orbx folder entirely and try installing the libs prior to the airport bundle this time. When it's all said and done you should have 2 new scenery areas, the Orbxlibs on top, the freeware airports below and it should all happen automatically.

Okay thanks Jim.

I have one other question. And this is more of a moral, ethical question.

Is it wrong for me to be trying to use the freeware files without building them on the payware products-- as recommended by the ORBX team?

This was a slippery slope, that I was purposely trying to dodge, which is why I was coming across so cryptic and secretive when I first posted this thread. I wasn't sure if I'm technically "stealing" from FTX-ORBX by doing this.

I know flightsim.com does not condone piracy or workarounds for payware being gotten for free, so I didn't know if this was one such case or not. Though what makes it a shade of gray issue, is that technically the files I downloaded were free.

It's not like I found a way to download one of their payware items for free. That I know would be flat wrong-- and I wouldn't even come on here to ask about that. That would be just plain foolish, and would be asking to be banned from the forum.

I just don't know if using them outside of conjunction with the proper payware is fundamentally wrong.

I would ideally like to comply with the proper install from the ground up as FTX suggests, but with the base global product costing near $100 Australian =~$73 USD (last time I googled the exchange rate), my bank account can't quite handle that at this time.

I'll admit that I was trying to get a "cheap ORBX thrill" without paying for it-- with the freeware that existed.

If this is fundamentally wrong and most people here would think I'm wrong for doing that, I will gladly remove all ORBX products and wait until I'm more gainfully employed and have money saved up.

But if most here believe that what I'm doing is not fundamentally wrong, then I suppose I'm willing to have a go at it.

FYI OrbX will always be in the "default" region on the Central control panel unless you actually buy some OrbX regions. You dont "apply" anything from the freeware packages, its all autoloaded in the scenery config.

And you need the OrbX libraries installed to make sure the freeware airports actually work.

The correct way would have been to have both in your scenery library (FTX_FTXG_AIRPORTS and FTXAA_ORBXLIBS) and then seeing to it that they are layered correctly. I suspect one of them was added to the library the wrong way

Yup! Out of this whole discussion, I think you hit the nail on the head as to what the real issue is here. Whether I choose to enhance the ORBX experience, by buying all the products properly, is something that can be open for conjecture indefinitely. But a misuse of the scenery library assignment system is a very real problem. And I think you are right that I never got this right.

Let me ask you this: Is adding new scenery to the Scenery Library in FSX with Windows 7 really that different than doing the same with FS9? Because it took me awhile to get the hang of it, but I finally got it. I thought I was doing the same here, but for some reason I just can't get it right. What I'll get is the proper title in the Scenery Library ranking box, but it NEVER shows up in the FSX\scenery.cfg file when I go to check it. I always have to manually type in my own entry into the scenery.cfg... and I know I shouldn't have to be doing that. So I must really be duffing something up big time.

I suspect one of them was added to the library the wrong way- by double clicking it?

You know... I can't remember if I double clicked or not. I might have. I know what I tend to make my biggest mistake on, is I never know how many layers deep to go, before hitting the "OPEN" button on the lower-right corner of the box. That has always been a mystery to me. Sometimes I go all the way down until I click on and open the scenery folder-- which never seems to work. And other times, I click just enough for the Scenry title to display in the window below, and then I click "OPEN". I think what I really need is more consistency in the way I do things around here. That would probably make the learning curve a lot easier for me. But when I tend to do things completely different each time I do it, it's a wonder that I ever learn any procedure that requires "trained habit".

In FSX adding sceneries to the lib has a small bug on Win7 and beyond.

Okay, so is this the same rule that applies to FS9 when adding scenery, because in that sim I think I figured it out, and got it down pat. Or is it slightly different?

In Add-Area-mode, you click for example on FTXAA_ORBXLIBS in the folder structure ONCE, then "OK", and then click anywhere in the then opening explorer window. Only then will the scenery become active.

Okay, and when you say the scenery will become active, do you mean it shows up in the ranking box and the scenery.cfg folder, or ONLY the ranking box? As silly a questions as that sounds, I ask it because I swear I think I've seen things I've added to FSX start to work, if I've added to the scenery library ranking box-- even if it DIDN'T make the scenery.cfg file. But I can't say beyond a reasonable doubt that that is indeed the case.

I think what probably went wrong is that ftxconfigurator.exe (in the Orbx\scripts folder) is the tool responsible for adding things to your scenery library and you wouldn't have had that on your system until you installed the Orbxlibs. Most folks using the freeware airports would already have the libs installed for other products so this being your first go with Orbx is sort of a special case. What normally happens is the freeware airport installer would trigger ftxconfigurator to run after the installation to put your new scenery into the library but it couldn't find it so it didn't happen.

 

If you're gonna start over again I'd delete the Orbx folder entirely and try installing the libs prior to the airport bundle this time. When it's all said and done you should have 2 new scenery areas, the Orbxlibs on top, the freeware airports below and it should all happen automatically.

Sorry, I'm like 14 hours time delayed in responding to all this, because I just had too many other things going on Friday afternoon that had to get done. But I think you brought up the most practical explanation and prudent solution as to what happened here.

You are completely right that I installed the freeware airports first-- thinking they were totally stand-alone (like the Hypnotoad AFCADS from my FS9 days). Just shove 'em on in there any old way, and by golly, they'll bloody well work if it kills me (and it probably will!).

Then when my secret-agent-man... said, "no dice fella'... you need the freeware library downloads as well", I then took his advice and installed them after the fact. If as you say, the library download contained .exe programs designed to run and install features, that I was trying to manually install myself, no wonder I was running into so many problems!

You shoulda' seen the first night I got this stuff. I tried to pull it all out of its folders, and dump all the files loose in the FSX\Addon Scenery\scenery folder. I thought... well, it's scenery... what the hell? Scenery's scenery.. it's all the same. Yeah... you'd probably all get a kick out of my flight sim hard drive, if you could see it now! (My P3D folder buried somewhere deep inside my FS9 folder... still looking for it since late May... I know it's in there somewhere! Darn canary in a coalmine! ;-) just kidding)

Maybe Mallcott is right. If I don't know what I'm doing, I should stick with Infinite Flight on my iPhone. That's a sealed system that you can't possibly pull apart and futz up! But that wouldn't be as much fun, I don't think.

But all joking and self-deprecating humour aside, thanks for your insight, and I'll give it a try.

- The first window you see when you open the "Add Area" dialogue is titled "Select Scenery Directory"

- Here you navigate to the folder that contains the subfolder "scenery" and/or "texture" (in some sceneries only one of them is present), but you do not open it

- You click on this top folder ONCE in the explorer like window

- It shows up below, the boxes "Directory" and "Scenery area title" get filled in automatically.

- You click "OK"

- Now a second explorer view opens automatically, and you can see the subfolders "scenery" and "texture"

- And here is the trick: now you just click somewhere in the white area below these two entries

- And you are back in the scenery library, and everything is fine.

As for the scenery.cfg: sceneries only show up in FSX and its scenery library when they are in this file. The only exceptions are, when you move bgl files right into the default folders in the main FSX directory (like, /Addon Scenery/scenery). Note this only works if you drop bgl files in there- moving whole scenery folders in here will not add them to the library.

Word of advice about FSX (and computers in general)

Don't be so quick just copying or moving files around, or clicking on stuff without knowing what it does or how it works (and without backing up beforehand). This is the sure way to screw things up very badly. This may seem funny in the beginning, but if you really get into something, make this your hobby even, investing time and money galore into it - and then come to realize that you screwed it up and have to start over... It takes more than a sixpack to get over that.

Many a simmer complaining about bad performance or constant CTD or BSoD has only himself to blame.