Changes introduced in our upcoming update Version 2.5 and higher

  • Dear Aerofly FS scenery developers,

    starting with our soon to be published update for Aerofly FS ( version 2.5.x.x or newer ) we will introduce some changes on how airports and places ( e.g. landmarks like bridges, cities or other non airport related buildings ) are organized.

    With more and more airports showing up, especially due to your great work, the startup performance and loading performance has decreased over time. The main reason for this slowdown is the fact that Aerofly FS needs to open each TSC it sees to find out what it is and to know when it needs to be loaded. This is slow if the number of TSCs is many hundreds or more even on a SSD drive.

    So starting with Aerofly FS version 2.5.x.x the new organization is as follows:

    • All airports with a valid ICAO code should have their folder name start with the ICAO code itself and will be placed in the 'airports' folder of each 'scenery' folder. So for the airport KSFO San Francisco, the new folder will be 'ksfo_san_francisco_int'. The extra text after the ICAO is optional, e.g. 'ksfo' would also suffice.
    • All airports with no valid ICAO code should either receive their official identifier with a maximum of 6 letters or if none is found, use the 2 letter ICAO code of the country followed by a 4 letter code you make up yourself. Do not use more than 6 letters per identifier.
    • All landmarks, cities, cultivation files and so on should stay in the 'places' folder. To speed up loading here as well the new Aerofly FS content converter will add the approximate coordinates of the place in the front of the folder name. For example the Golden Gate bridge will now be in a folder called 'w12247n3781_golden_gate_bridge'. Where we encode longitude and latitude in the front of the folder name.
    • Airports or places not following this convention will still work but will of course slow down startup performance. Please also keep in mind that in a future update we might drop support for those older airports and places. The main reason are again performance and if airports are added that do not have the correct ICAO code, we can't properly use it for navigational purposes that is included in our global database.

    We strongly encourage to apply the changes to your own airports and places after we have published the update. One of the future updates might drop support for older places.

    If you want to try out our new Aerofly FS Content Converter, please download it from here.

  • Quote
    • All landmarks, cities, cultivation files and so on should stay in the 'places' folder. To speed up loading here as well the new Aerofly FS content converter will add the approximate coordinates of the place in the front of the folder name. For example the Golden Gate bridge will now be in a folder called 'w12247n3781_golden_gate_bridge'. Where we encode longitude and latitude in the front of the folder name.

    I have a question about this addition of approximate coordinates:

    Starting point is a staggered folder structure such as:


    Then what is better:

    • either add the approximate coordinates to the top directory only

    • or add the approximate coordinates to each of the directories concerned

    Tschüss, Michael (🍎🚁)

    Configurations:

    - MacBook Pro (16", 2021); Chip: Apple M1 Max; actual macOS || Thrustmaster TCA AIRBUS EDITION: 1x Sidestick, 2x Quadrant, 2x Quadrant Add-On || Pro-Flight-Trainer PUMA X

    - iPad (12,9", 4th Generation, RAM: 6 GB); actual iOS || nimbus steelseries

  • Thank you very much for the answer.

    Existing sceneries I would like to convert by hand only in exceptional cases, because the content converter will certainly do a better job of that. I'm curious what happens with sceneries where the reference points of the tsc file are unchanged by copy&paste while the objects are "on the other side of the earth".

    The main reason for my question is, how is it best to create future sceneries, because then I can already do it optimally now.

    Tschüss, Michael (🍎🚁)

    Configurations:

    - MacBook Pro (16", 2021); Chip: Apple M1 Max; actual macOS || Thrustmaster TCA AIRBUS EDITION: 1x Sidestick, 2x Quadrant, 2x Quadrant Add-On || Pro-Flight-Trainer PUMA X

    - iPad (12,9", 4th Generation, RAM: 6 GB); actual iOS || nimbus steelseries

  • Hello admin

    I have a lot of tmb objects with tscs (but often not the tgi file).

    1) Is there anything I can do to auto generate the new format with location in the name?

    2) I also tried the place preprocessor 1.0.5 together with the beta content converter.

    The output tscs look like always (in the format oahu_10_0f60_8fa0.tsc).

    Is this already sufficient to be compatible with the new format?

    It would be very nice to see some examples and TUTs how to apply the new format.

    Cheers, Thomas


    Edited once, last by TomSimMuc (August 9, 2020 at 8:44 AM).

  • K9NSP: Please post more details and if possible tell us the folder where the scenery is installed and the TSC file as well.

    It's all airports without an ICAO, but we'll stick with the S78 example in Idaho for now.

    Path to S78 is C:\Users\order\OneDrive\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\addons\scenery\k9nsp_Idaho\airports\Region 3\S78
    TSC for S78 is attached.

    The one exception to the above statement is the OXBO airport. Also non-ICAO, but it does show up as being available.

    Path to OXBO is C:\Users\order\OneDrive\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\addons\scenery\k9nsp_Idaho\airports\Region 2\OXBO
    TSC for OXBO is attached.

  • @K9NSP: Could you please copy your airports to the 'places' folder instead of the 'airports' folder. The airports folder should be used for registered ICAO airports only. Also, copy the airport 'flat' into the places folder, e.g. C:\Users\order\OneDrive\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\addons\scenery\k9nsp_Idaho\airports\s78\s78.tsc.

    We also strongly recommend to use no spaces in files and folders and to use lower case only, this way your airports will work properly on MacOS and Linux as well.

  • It would be very nice to see some examples and TUTs how to apply the new format.

    Thomas, I noticed my SouthFloridaTL_V2 radio towers aren't showing up in Florida any more after this update. I moved the folder /addons/scenery section and created a /scenery/SouthFloridaTL_V2/places folder for the other tower folders but no luck - still no towers.

    Any suggestions?