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FSX Going back in time

robystar

robystar

Messages
5,214
Hi all,

Time maybe for a new challenge.
I would like to restore FSX (well, the scenery I mean) to the state it would be in in the 1940's (no huge airports, no GPS, ILS, hardly any GA or commercial airlines, etc.) so that I could enjoy flying the oldies like their pilots would have had to fly them.
There are a lot of vintage aircraft available but hardly any scenery.
But that is not the problem because you can always make the scenery yourself as the airports were not that complicated at the time.
The real question is how to inactivate the present day airports and the present day AI in an easy way so that it would be possible to switch between the two era's.
I remember I read somewhere how to do it but cannot find it back (No problem for the aircraft container, that is easy).
Thanks beforehand,

Roby

PS (so that you know it is me): I am not looking for scenery or anything else, just the technique to adapt FSX to switching between the two.

PS2: I not only lost my childhood, George, but also my fps.
 
Last edited:
robystar said:
The real question is how to inactivate the present day airports and the present day AI in an easy way so that it would be possible to switch between the two era's.
Click to expand...

It could depend upon what your definition of "airports" is?

First, having a good, working understanding of the file structure in FSX helps. It's the grid layout shown in the SDK's Terrain portion. If you only want to affect the BGL compiler portion you could take all the APX and NVX files from the numbered folder of FSX and move them into a new scenery location that would allow you to toggle them on or off. Placement of this layer in the Scenery Library would probably work if it was above Propellers and below Addon Scenery.

But "airports" also could entail the terrain portion aka the flattens, which are contained in the CVX files found in all the numbered folders. You can't realistically separate these out because these files hold so much more than just airport flattens and turning them off without replacement work will give you a big glob of dirt all across the planet... :rolleyes:

So you could toggle off the above ground airport effects, but I've never tried, so no guarantees offered.
 
Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions.
I would not set back the whole world in time but just a portion, say the north of Europe for instance, open the big airports with ADE, put in new ones without the present day buildings and runways (excludes would work fine), and add planes and scenery of that period in time.
But I would like to be able to chose between two scenery library lists and load just one of them.
The thing is that somewhere in the back of my mind I remember something about making a shortcut pointing to an alternative FSX.exe that loads another fsx.cfg and scenery.cfg but cannot figure out how to.

Roby
 
Hi,

I knew I had read about it but I did not figure it was me myself that already posted the question (see "[FSX] vintage fsx.exe" in the General Chat of a couple of years back) :o.
Will have to read it again.
Tks LC,

Roby
 
Hi,

I read and thought this previous thread through, thank you LC (Hope I am not going to start lithping now:D).
I came up with the following two batch files I am reluctant to try out before someone having checked them.
The first one would be for the WWII bat file:
@echo off
cd\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX
del scenery.cfg
copy WWIIscenery.cfg scenery.cfg
cd\users\Roby\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX
del fsx.cfg
copy WWIIfsx.cfg fsx.cfg
cd\Program files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\
FSX.exe
cd\users\Roby\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX
copy fsx.cfg WWIIfsx.cfg
del fsx.cfg
cd\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX
copy scenery.cfg WWIIscenery.cfg
del scenery.cfg
exit

and the second one for the present day FSX:
@echo off
cd\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX
del scenery.cfg
copy defaultscenery.cfg scenery.cfg
cd\users\Roby\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX
del fsx.cfg
copy defaultfsx.cfg fsx.cfg
cd\Program files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\
FSX.exe
cd\users\Roby\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX
copy fsx.cfg defaultfsx.cfg
del fsx.cfg
cd\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX
copy scenery.cfg defaultscenery.cfg
del scenery.cfg
exit

Would that be OK?

Roby

PS If this works I would still have to customize the AI as well.
 
What this does, is you have two sets of fsx.cfg and scenery.cfg, named as can be seen in the text, and it copies the ones you use to "proper" fsx.cfg and scenery.cfg, and then launches FSX. Seems safe.

As for traffic, you could either add renaming/copying traffic bgls into these batch files, or I believe that traffic can be in an addon scenery folder as well, so you can turn it on/off easily with switching scnery.cfg.
 
Grrrmmmmff

Hi,

Thanks for the info.
Darned be my impatience for not waiting for an answer (it is saturday so I had time to mess things up:o).
I loaded FSX from the WWII.bat and everything went fine. I closed FSX and chose the default. And that is where things started to go wrong.
Using the WWII.bat did not work either.
First it said FSX cannot find the scenery.cfg, then it said it could not find the FSX.cfg.
As FSX wouldn't not start any longer, I tried to repair it by running the FSX setup again and choose 'repair'. Finalized the repair and launched FSX.
Result: "Fatal error occurred":eek:. Error report says simprop.dll error.
I have a backup and substituted the simprop.dll by the one I saved. No result, same error message.
Unless somebody comes up with a bright idea, I will have to reinstall FSX, sp1, sp2, SDK etc.
Looking at it from the bright side: I still have FS9 working (I suppose?.... Yes, it still works).

Roby
 
I came through earlier, but I really like to have had my fill of coffee before posting. Sorry to hear of the problems.

I'm just wagering a guess here, but since you are on Vista you ran into a permissions problem. Since FSX is installed in a "protected folder" that *may* have added to your woes. But I'm not quite the geek I used to be.

Here is one of my batch files;

echo off
cd\documents and settings\all users\application data\microsoft\fsx
del scenery.cfg
copy scenery.cfg.shortCA scenery.cfg
cd\documents and settings\lance\application data\microsoft\fsx
del fsx.cfg
copy fsx.cfg.designCA fsx.cfg
f:
cd\flight simulator x
fsx.exe
c:
cd\documents and settings\lance\application data\microsoft\fsx
del fsx.cfg
copy fsx.cfg.normal fsx.cfg <--------#1
cd\documents and settings\all users\application data\microsoft\fsx
del scenery.cfg
copy scenery.cfg.normal scenery.cfg <-------#2

You'll notice that I always leave a valid .cfg file for FSX, marked #1 and #2. That way if I start FSX without considering what I "want it to be" conditions, it should still take off. <----sorry, being punny!

Why FSX bombed by saying no Scenery.cfg file or FSX.cfg file *may* be due to ownership of the folders and trying to run a batch file against them. When I moved from XP64 to Win7 64 I made sure not to; install in a protected folder, turn off UAC and to take ownership of a lot of folders and their sub-folders.

It seem s you can try to fix what might be broken or bite the bullet and think of a reinstall, which would include not putting anything into the \Program Files or \Program Files(x86) folders. You can read about the "Take Ownership" process here; http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/
 
Installing the FSX even out of Program Files will still have the .cfg files in system folders (namely %APPDATA% folder in User structure).

Here, only solution is to make sure you always always run as administrator, or better turn of UAC alltogether.
 
Hi,

I turned off this monstruous UAC ages ago. And I did back up the originals. Replacing did not solve the problem though.
But I think I have found what caused the batch file to fail: the dots! I have no dot between the files to copy and apparently I did it the other way round.
Well, you learn everyday.
Busy installing FSX again +sp1+sp2+ the sdk.
Hope to be around again (and with FSX running) by tomorrow.

Roby
 
re-installation woes

Hi,

Sorry, but I am afraid I am going to abandon this idea of mine to adapt FSX to different era's using batch files.
In the process I managed to screw up things terribly.
I lost FSX, I lost my internet connection, restored windows to a previous state(because nothing worked any longer), I uninstalled FSX and all the sp's and SDK's, installed the whole bunch again, could not point ADE to FS9, had no Traffic board, had to fix my registry, fill in the paths to the new SDK location for the various tools, run windows update again, lost my saved flights, had to reinstall fsuipc, etc.
Everything now again works as it should, except...the FPS!!!
Now I still have to try and tweak the FSX.cfg back to what it was before because I now have 5 fps instead of the constant 20 I had before (I also lost my miraculously working tweaked fsx.cfg in the process).
A blessing in disguise was fortunately (once I got my internet connection back) to be able to go through the steps that Paul (Basys) so kindly put in the SDK forum (he must have gone through the same ordeal as I am now going through;)) to get things right again.
But the tweaking still is a major headache and if I do not manage to do it, I will be forced to buy myself a new computer (and probably experience the same problems:rolleyes:).
Hope I will be back soon with some better news,

Roby

PS: advice: do not mess with your FSX settings too much and settle for what you have, if possible. Do not apply all those FSX.cfg tweaks the multitude of 'experts' suggest because you are going to regret it and make things worse:(;):mad::)!
 
fixed

This installing business apparently raised quite some dust.
The fix: clean the heatsink of the processor.
Problem solved.
Thanks for your interest and compassion:),

Roby
 
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