• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Utility idea

And surely, thinking logically about it...(MS made this...so why logic would play any part....) there must be a way to say, ok...library A, object B points to this texture. If library B, object F points to the same texture, then why can't I just get rid of object F in library B. It doesn't have to delete the texture. Just the call for it.
Click to expand...

FS tries two places for textures as I recall. The local texture sub directory that is associated with the library and the global texture directory. so your IF could be a big IF. IF the two libraries are in the same folder and IF the textures for both were loaded into the same folder then there would only be one texture and deleting it would affect the remaining object. I seems to recall at one time looking at the problem of cleaning up duplicate textures. I think there was a utility to do that.

This whole thing gives me a headache so I am going back to Brain Surgery 101 for some relief :)
 
Gary.. You hit it right on the head.

I am sure the objects that fsx has to deal with on my system are one HUGE reason I get .7 - 3fps at MOST airports.

I want to delete, kill, turn off, remove, whatever you want to call it, the duplicates on MY system.

Again, maybe I am just some really stupid thinking person...but the problem you all want to prevent, is the problem I want to fix locally... I will NOT create a new library of objects for MY scenery. And, if to fix my FSX, I have to remove 90% of all these scenery objects..then so be it.. And won't it be a shame to all those people that worked so hard making the objects if they knew people have to remove them because they can't turn off a few....

I don't know...I am beginning to think that when it comes to this issue, I am totally alone, and apparently thinking like a dumb ass.

- Greg
 
scruffyduck said:
FS tries two places for textures as I recall. The local texture sub directory that is associated with the library and the global texture directory. so your IF could be a big IF. IF the two libraries are in the same folder and IF the textures for both were loaded into the same folder then there would only be one texture and deleting it would affect the remaining object. I seems to recall at one time looking at the problem of cleaning up duplicate textures. I think there was a utility to do that.

This whole thing gives me a headache so I am going back to Brain Surgery 101 for some relief :)
Click to expand...

I guarantee that my add on directory would give you a migraine!!!! LOL

I will try to NOT make your head hurt anymore.. I wonder, could you not delete the guid file from a library without deleting the associated texture?

I ask this because thinking back...I know I told it to replace duplicate textures. Thus, the fact that 2 items call the same texture could be the reason some items show up textureless in fsx?.?.?.? Maybe..maybe not....

So maybe the utility, if it ever gets made, could show the file location of the texture for each object. Is that possible? That would solve a ton of problems.. then, when looking at a list of duplicate guid's, you could see the pics (if available), the libraries they are in, and the file locations of the textures. ie..the file name... Then, if whomever decides that we do have the right to delete an object on OUR own system, we could delete say 5 duplicate guid objects, keep one, and keep the one texture file that all 6 calls used.

Hope that makes sense.. God, I wish I could program.

- Greg
 
Libraries do not contain textures. What they do contain are the model (mdl files) that are the library objects. It is really quite easy to remove one from a library file so I suppose for personal use there is no issue if a user wants to re-structure their object libraries so that there is only one of each unique object on their system. What I do not think would work is creating a library containing the objects needed for a scenery and then distributing that library with the scenery. At least for the very practical reason that this could just introduce more duplicates for the end user. What would also need to happen is to ensure that no MS stock objects got deleted from the stock libraries and if somehow a user got duplicates of those in user libraries it would be the user libraries that were modified.

So the only way to 'turn off' a duplicate object is to remove the library that contains it (and then usually removing a load of other objects) or delete it from the library. Since it is easy enough to find out what textures it uses (I go back to LOM again) then it should also be possible to look for unused texures. I think that would be the way to deal with textures. do it separate from the objects and look for duplicates or orphans.
 
Sounds good Jon. I have learned a lot from this. And I now know that I would never release a library of textures for any of my scenery. Apparently, many of the ones I have, are just that. Ones people made for their work and then released.

I just looked...and FYI, my add-on scenery folder is 632 megs with 4408 files in it. And I don't have ANY big add-ons installed. No mega scenery, or any other packages. This is JUST the objects that I have put in there for my use in scenery design. No wonder my FSX runs like crap!

So yes, I would love a util that would let me control what is on MY system better. Thanks to you all. Many things I never knew before.

- Greg
 
SpectroPro said:
Sounds good Jon. I have learned a lot from this. And I now know that I would never release a library of textures for any of my scenery. Apparently, many of the ones I have, are just that. Ones people made for their work and then released.

I just looked...and FYI, my add-on scenery folder is 632 megs with 4408 files in it. And I don't have ANY big add-ons installed. No mega scenery, or any other packages. This is JUST the objects that I have put in there for my use in scenery design. No wonder my FSX runs like crap!

So yes, I would love a util that would let me control what is on MY system better. Thanks to you all. Many things I never knew before.

- Greg
Click to expand...

Interesting area to explore. I have filed the idea away to look at again in a quiet time ;)
 
Hi,

Let me come back to the GUID things Gary mentioned.

In FSX the GUID is indeed stored within the MDL file. Although the user could hack (uh, I mean change) the GUID, normally including it in another library will mean the same GUID is present in multiple libraries.

In FS2004 the situation is different though. The GUID is not defined in the MDL object, but in the XML when making the library BGL. So if you decompile a library and reuse some objects that chance is very big that you give them a new GUID. This means that although the objects are identical, they will have a different GUID. This situation is obviously more difficult to find, since more than a GUID check is needed to see if they are the same.

The textures I would not worry about too much, since they are only loaded when the object is actually used. But having many objects in libraries obviously gives an overhead and has an influence on the performance. So, just like Jon, I will store this idea in my head. I have been thinking about making a library viewer already based on the ModelConverterX (it can do most things we want, just needs a better GUI). But at the moment I don't think I have the time to code this.
 
SpectroPro said:
You can always work on it during your honeymoon. ;)
Click to expand...

I might, but the actual honeymoon is only planned for early next year. So if you are willing to wait that long :D.

I hope that in the coming months I can make some time for this idea. Since I have a lot of code in the ModelConverterX tool already, I think I mainly need to make a better GUI and add some search/analysis functions.
 
Ok....since I am back, let me start re-hashing old ideas...that since I left for 8 months....are still new for me. :)

Arno: I hope all went well and you had a great honeymoon!!!!!

Jon: Hope the headaches are gone...but seeing all the work you have been doing, I am guessing probably not. LOL

Now, on to the topic of this thread....any more thoughts on this type of utility? I am still very interested, now that I am working on my project again and dealing with 8 minute loads of FSX scenery. You can see my system specs in my tag...this is NOT top of the line, but should easily handle FSX. And the 3-7fps is getting soooo old.

I still would like to do a web site that is JUST for scenery objects. A place where people can upload and share their objects. If it became popular enough, and large enough, you would simply need to tell people to get their objects they need for your projects there. You could have a utility for scenery developers to use that would read all the objects in their scenery, and store those numbers in a list. Then, create a utility that would allow the end user of that scenery to run it, and it would connect to the web site library, and auto download the items it needs.

Hope that makes sense...and if anyone is really ambitious, this would be amazing for the community!!!! IMO.

As far as the util I asked about for personal use...I do hope some more thought has been or will be given to it. I can't be the only idiot with over 4000 items in a folder over 600megs!!! My poor fsx. hehe

- Greg
 
Hi again, Greg,

I suggest you read the threads about MCX and Google Sketchup.
Although not perfect yet (no animations), it is easy enough to build all the objects you want and convert them into mdl's to be used in FSX. Bob will undoubtedly concur.

Rob
 
Hey, Greg

Just some thought for you.

When I used to run FS on a P4, I had to be very careful what kind of scenery I loaded into it. I found some great objects, but they were so detailed that they just killed my fps. It would only take one of these objects in an airport to do that. I couldn't just slap in any hanger no matter how good looking.

Also, how big is your simobjects folder. That can cause long loading times also. As you recall, it is possible to easily start FSX with different sets of planes.

All of this has nothing to do with your bloated libraries. You have multiple mdl files of the same object. Do you also have multiple textures for those objects? Or one texture that services multiple mdls? IE:

Library A ( object a, object b, object c, etc...)
Library B ( object c, object d, etc...)
Library C ( object c, object e, object f, etc...)

Texture folder( texture a, texture b, texture c, copy of texture c, copy 2 of texture c, texture d, texture e, texture f, etc...

If you don't have copies of textures, I don't see why you couldn't do a guid search and delete copies of models. Then you would have to combine your libraries into one. Lots of work, but it sounds like you may have to do that anyway just to find the objects you want for each scenery you want to release.

Better yet, make a lot more work for yourself and make your own objects.
I took a stab at Gmax and soon gave up. Sketchup, on the other hand is so easy to use that even I can make it work. And while Gmax is a better program, some truly wonderful things can be done with Sketchup in a short period of time. The first time you use it you will be amazed.

Whatever route you take, sounds like a lot of work. But then you are use to that.

Bob

By the way, is that you as a pirate?
 
Bob, I am going to check that program out in a few minutes. Yeah, I have a ton of work ahead... But will pay dividends in the end...so I am ready.

And yes, I was a pirate for our VBS this year. :) Put together an actual costume.. Boots, sword, gun, leather head piece, etc.... Nice thing, is that I can use this for years to come now... And will have to to get my money's worth out of it. lol

- Greg
 
No way! I was a pirate in VBS this year,too. Got the shirt, head scarf, eye patch. Pulled the ankles of my sweat pants above my knees, got some long white socks, and my wifes favorite red scarf for a belt. No sword or gun, though. I didn't want to scare the pre-schoolers. At one point I was listening to music on my "aye-aye pod". I told the kids it was better than my old "walk-the-plank-man".

Bob
 
haha..that's great bob. I also was for the pre-schoolers. I do the sing n play for them.. Yeah, I actually SING.... hehe

We did High Seas this year. You do the same?

- Greg
 
Ours was called High Seas Adventure. I was supposed to play a goofy tourist, but I changed it to a pirate. Much more fun.

Bob
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top