Mission Building with Windows 7

[Frin63]

Hi all! I'm new to this forum but not new to FS design, I've been designing scenery and flights since about FS4 I think but I haven't recently beemn very active with MSF. Now I've decided to take on the new challenge of designing missions for FSX!

I've already done a lot of reading, and I have been able to get the famous OPT running. Still I'm running into something that's annoying me like hell: Everytime I try to edit and save a file that's part of a mission under Windows 7, I get an error that I don't have the rights to write that file. I can only write it to a different location. Yep, my profile has administor rights and I modified the directory rights so that I should be able to have full control over those files but that doesn't seem to work. I can still write the files to another location and then move them over to the right spot (yes, that DOES work ), but those are extra actions no developper is waiting for. From what I understand from other forums is that this is standard behaviour for all subfolders of the 'Programs' folder, and since the missions are under the FSX main folder, it has this behaviour.

Has any of you run into this as well, and has anyone discovered a practical way to develop missions under WIndows 7 without harrasments about rights all the time?

 

[Horst18519]

I don't have this problem, I'm using Win 7 64bit. Do you use the UAC? Disable it.
Maybe you need to run FSX as Administrator?

 

[ollyau]

Have you tried these steps to give your account full permission to the root FSX folder?

Navigate to your root FSX folder -> Right click folder -> Properties -> Security tab -> Edit -> Add... -> type your Windows username -> OK -> select Allow checkbox for Full control -> OK or Apply.

 

[lmoelleb]

I don't have this problem, I'm using Win 7 64bit. Do you use the UAC? Disable it.
Maybe you need to run FSX as Administrator?

Please do not tell people to disable UAC. If people know what they are doing, they already know exactly why UAC is stopping them and how it can be fixed (as ollyau indicated). If they don't know enough about how the operating system works to address the problems themselves, disabling essential security features of the OS is the last thing you want them to do.

 

[Horst18519]

Sorry, but I don't agree with this. We're selling addons and I receive lots of support requests each day. Most of them are solved by telling the user to get full admin rights before installing the addon.

 

[Frin63]

Thanks for the feedback. It does seem that UAC is the culprit, but I'm reluctant to deactivate it altogether. UAC regards the %program% folder and it's subfolders as a proctected area. I haven't tried ollyau's exact steps yet (I will give it a try tomorrow) but I have tried similar steps myself before with no success.

Still it's not all bad news: I found a work-around in the documentation of FSX Mission Editor (from FSADDON): It's possible to create a virtual subfolder that is in reality located elsewhere on disk, like under the 'My documents' folder. Those files are not in the proctected area so here you can develop all you like without rights issues, and FSX will still see them. Details are in the manual (free download) under 'Vista Oddities'.

Quoting:

Although the editor works with Vista (it was developed on Vista) there are
some things which may cause confusion. This is because of the way that Vista
tries to protect system files.
If you have done a default installation of FSX, it will be stored under
“C:\Program Files” or “C:\Program Files (x86)”. This is a protected area in Vista,
and the system will not normally let you write any files there. Unfortunately,
that's where the missions need to be stored if FSX is to see them.

Here's an example on how to create a virtual subfolder (this example creates the physical folder under the 'public documents' folder and creates a virtual 'My Missions' subfolder under FSX/Missions that points there):

> cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Missions"
> mkdir "%PUBLIC%\FSX Missions"
> mklink /D "My Missions" "%PUBLIC%\FSX Missions"
symbolic link created for My Missions <<===>> C:\Users\Public\FSX Missions

 

[lmoelleb]

Sorry, but I don't agree with this.

You are requesting people disable an essential security feature leaving their computer more vulnerable to security problems in for example Internet Explorer. Making such a recommendation without even warning that this is the case sugest to me that you do not understand computer security to the level required to judge if you can or can not agree with this. Personally I believe telling people to turn of UAC without a very clear warning should be a criminal offense (you are basically assisting criminals taking over computers), but I do accept you are unfortunately legally allowed to do this.

We're selling addons and I receive lots of support requests each day. Most of them are solved by telling the user to get full admin rights before installing the addon.

Of course it helps badly written addons to work. Just as turning of firewalls and clearing admin passwords can help getting a badly written program working - but this doesn't mean it should be done.

Your options are:
1) Get the addon developers to fix their products. If they want to make money from it, maybe they should learn how a computer works.
2) Figure out exactly which settings are required to be changed to allow the program to run (typically some write access as suggested here) and instruct people to perform these changes instead of turning entire security features off (yes, a lot more work).
3) Stop selling the addon. UAC was introduced three years ago, so there has been plenty of time for developers to adjust ther products and/or documentation.

And yes, I did of course take the time to support UAC in EditVoicepack 4.0 (not that dificult, even when you do it the fancy way where you detect UAC is needed while the program is running), and for EditVoicepack 3 I instruct people to run it as administrator. I would never consider telling people to turn UAC completely off.

 

[lmoelleb]

I started messing with missions a few weeks back, and I had no problems once I assigned write rights to all users on the system (I assigned it on the subfolder of Missions where I had my development stufff, but if you are lazy just assign it on the Missions folder). This worked with both the MS object placer and FSX Mission Editor. Of course you can also set the rights for the entire FSX root folder as adviced, I just avoid that to ensure my own addons deal correctly with the default rights.

The symlink approach will work as well, but it's a lot more work and less transparent what is going on.

 

[Horst18519]

Fantastic, you're my developer of the year 2009.
Now will you excuse me, I've got some users I need to tell how to disable the UAC.

 

[lmoelleb]

As I said Thorsten, you do unfortunately not have the required knowledge to realize what you are doing, so I am not surprised you just dismiss this. When someone does not even realize how insane stupid it is to run an application as IE (and all it's plugins) with full admin rights the knowledge level is simply so low that it's impossible to explain. Ignorence is bliss I guess.

Too bad paying customers have to deal with such incompentent advice, but I guess if they don't know any better they appreciate your help.

Luckily the OP of this one is smart enough to realize disabling UAC is stupid, but not everyone you give the advice will know.

 

[Horst18519]

Unfortunately I'm clever enough to see if a topic got hijacked, so I will put an end to this discussion - if you want to go on with it, you're free to do so, but not in mission development.