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Tutorial: Getting Around Missing X-Plane Object Libraries
Nels_Anderson posted an article in Featured
Getting Around Missing Object Libraries By Dominic Smith Over the last 17 years, I have watched with great interest as X-Plane has grown in both features and popularity, and with the release of the last two versions of X-Plane, that trend seems only to have been amplified. In the case of X-Plane 11, a lot of this is down to the new and improved interface, and while it's true that there are some among the community who dislike this new look; on the whole, it works reasonably well. Another area which seems to have enticed a fair number of converts, is the plethora of freeware sceneries which are created on a daily basis - and this is true for both X-Plane 10 and 11. The rate at which these are released is quite staggering, especially when compared to other simulators. One of the reasons why there are such large numbers of sceneries being developed in such a short period of time, is due in part to the ease at which they can be created - they use and rely on third party libraries. These, much like the sceneries they help to populate, are again free, and are developed by generous members of the X-Plane community. By using already created objects, realistic representations of locations can be modelled in next to no time at all, which is great news for all. However (that was always coming), there is a slight snag which is often overlooked by new adoptees of X-Plane; that being, making sure you have ALL the required object libraries installed in your Custom Scenery folder. Most of the time, a developer will state which libraries are required, (often with links to the download) which makes everything extremely easy. On other occasions, a few libraries might be listed, or, worse case scenario, none at all, which means that if you don't have the necessary requirements installed, you're going to run into problems. While X-Plane 11 does a good job at pointing you in the right direction, the same can't be said for X-Plane 10. So, how do you get around this issue? Well, there exists in the world of X-Plane, a utility by the name of X-Publish, created by the very talented, Jonathan Harris. Jonathan created X-Publish as a way of creating cross platform scenery/aircraft zip files, and it is available for both Windows, OSX and Linux. One of the many great features of X-Publish is that it can be used to inform you of what libraries are required, and which ones happen to be missing from a scenery, and this is what I primarily use it for. As a long time user of X-Plane 10, I find this utility invaluable, as on more than one occasion during the X-Plane loading process, I have found myself stuck in front of a scenery error message. This is normally down to a missing object, and while the scenery usually loads, you will find that there will be objects missing and the scenery will look incomplete. For new users attempting to ascertain what the issue is, it can be quite a daunting process, especially when a long time veteran of the sim, tells the user to check through their scenery_packs.ini file for missing objects! A far easier option (in my opinion), is to check the scenery with X-Publish. So, first things first - let's go and download X-Publish: Windows OSX Linux Now, to show you how I use this program, I am going to create a situation, where an object library happens to be missing from a scenery description. The scenery is question is Gun Lake Airstrip by Nils Lips: As you can see from the description above, the author of the scenery has kindly listed and hyperlinked all of the libraries needed to properly display the scenery as it should be. However, for the purpose of this demonstration, let's imagine that 'The Handy Object Library' (THE_HANDY_OBJECTS_LIBRARY.ZIP), was mistakenly left out by the author of the scenery and is one that I don't have installed. With Gun Lake Airstrip installed in my X-Plane 10 Custom Scenery folder, I fire up the sim ready for a spot of bush flying. But wait...what's this I see, a scenery error? I thought I had all the sceneries listed! Fear not young Dominic (how I wish), for help is on its way, in the form of X-Publish. Once you have downloaded and installed X-Publish on your system, fire up the program and point it to the folder of the scenery package you are having issues with - in our case, Gun Lake Airstrip. As you can see from the above screen shot, X-Publish separates the files from a scenery package into clear and manageable categories. The section we are interested in is the 'Missing or Unreadable' category. Ignore the .pol files, as these don't usually bring up scenery load errors. What we are interested in are the .obj (objects) files which help bring a scenery to life, and if these are missing, then the scenery will be incomplete. Looking again at the screen shot above, you can see that (as planned) X-Publish has informed us that there are three objects from The Handy Object Library missing. This is the information we required, so it's now our job (or rather mine), to get those .obj files installed. With the Handy Object Library now installed, X-Publish is loaded up for a second time and pointed to the same scenery folder. As you can see, the .obj files which before were situated in the Missing or Readable section, have now been removed due to being found in X-Plane's Custom Scenery folder. As they say, the proof is in the pudding, so let's fire up X-Plane to see if indeed we were successful. Plenty of custom trees... Buildings and people present... Judging by the screen shots of Gun Lake, I would say that X-Publish has done its job. So going back to the beginning for a moment, if you're a new user of X-Plane and find the whole object library situation rather daunting...don't be. With the help of X-Publish, you can quite easily get around many of the scenery issues you'll possibly encounter; which means you'll get more time to spend in the air. Surely a good thing... -
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