Dane Posted August 12, 2019 Share Posted August 12, 2019 First let me say that AivlaSoft EFB2 were certainly left out of the loop in the beta testing of ORBX Central - bad on ORBX. Many users including myself have voiced our displeasure over this new ORBX release and how it has not been tested enough and certainly not with other add-on developers like yourselves. I do see the post from lonewulf47 (Oskar) that informs us of the situation. In principal I can see the reason why ORBX did what they did, only poorly handled. I went ahead unknowingly and migrated all of my 87Gb of ORBX data to the new Central system. I am now ready to go back to FTX Central3 but before I do that my one big question for AivlaSoft is - How long do you think it will be before you are able to figure out a fix for this current issue? - a week - a month???? Thank you for your awesome product and service. Regards, Dane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 12, 2019 Share Posted August 12, 2019 Hi Dane, We are certainly not the people to decide upon deletion of third party software neither will we be able to give any recommendations for their use😉. AivlaSoft is on the way to update EFB2 to be compatible also but not exclusively with ORBX Central. I'm fully aware of the impact this ORBX Central had on the Simmer Community. Nevertheless there are a few things to be observed before hammering at ORBX' door😀 What we experienced here is the first occurrence of a third party software working with (priority) layers within P3DV4's package sytem (BTW, it was introduced already with P3DV3 but nobody used it). This also posed a few problems to EFB2, as the complete depth of the layering was neither known nor ever used - until ORBX came up with its new Central. In the meantime we are positive that we have found a valid approach to the problem and we will therefore be able to provide a solution within reasonable time, if nothing disastrous is going to happen. Apart from the zillions of complaints in the respective forum, it is also noteworthy to know that the "invention" of the package system is in no way related to ORBX. This is purely grown within Lockheed Martin's development team. IMHO ORBX was coming under pressure by the community, because lots of users were complaining that ORBX was still using the conventional "scenery.cfg" to prioritize its sceneries. The introduction of the package system by LM made things much more complicated than most of the people involved were realizing. When analyzing the present situation it is by no means a "simple" solution to prioritize sceneries when you have to handle two different "add-ons.cfg" (pointing to individual "add-on.xml" files with or without priority layer) in addition to the existing scenery.cfg. For us at AivlaSoft it meant that we needed to update EFB2 in order to cope with future layering - not only by ORBX Central, but which was in fact initiated by the appearance of ORBX Central. Maybe it was not the worst moment that we had to get deeper involved into the P3DV4 Package system. By now we think we are well familiarized with the package system and its limitations. Maybe ORBX was a bit too quickly releasing its Central, nevertheless I can also add my personal experience on working with ORBX central: When I installed it first, I quickly noticed that migration of existing installations was faulty - to say the least. In an attempt to solve the problem I uninstalled all my present ORBX Sceneries (making sure that everything was properly cleaned up where necessary) and re-installed using ORBX Central. This took almost one full day - not comparable to other users reporting that it would take a full week... Funny enough this radical handling solved all my problems and since then I'm working with ORBX Central exclusively on both P3DV4 and X-Plane11 without further problems. Together with the (internally) updated EFB2 everything runs smooth and priority levels are well observed within the whole installation. I work with two independent systems, one exclusively for Flight Simulation, having installed around 90% of all available ORBX sceneries including all Area Sceneries, and the other being my "normal" office computer, with around 10-15 sceneries for P3DV4 and about 10 for X-Plane11. So as a conclusion: we will (hopefully) soon be ready to release an update for EFB covering the needs of ORBX Central. A few limitations are of course still valid for some ORBX Sceneries within ORBX Central. These are addressed in the respective ORBX forum threads. Whether or not users will change to ORBX Central is beyond our scope. The updated EFB2 will continue to work with all kind of installations, as long as they are properly done. Much more could be said on this subject, but for the time being this must serve as an initial contribution from my side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dane Posted August 12, 2019 Author Share Posted August 12, 2019 3 hours ago, lonewulf47 said: Hi Dane, We are certainly not the people to decide upon deletion of third party software neither will we be able to give any recommendations for their use😉. AivlaSoft is on the way to update EFB2 to be compatible also but not exclusively with ORBX Central. I'm fully aware of the impact this ORBX Central had on the Simmer Commuity. Nevertheless there are a few things to be observed before hammering at ORBX' door😀 What we experienced here is the first occurrence of a third party software working with (priority) layers within P3DV4's package sytem (BTW, it was introduced already with P3DV3 but nobody used it). This also posed a few problems to EFB2, as the complete depth of the layering was neither known nor ever used - until ORBX came up with its new Central. In the meantime we are positive that we have found a valid approach to the problem and we will therefore be able to provide a solution within reasonable time, if nothing disastrous is going to happen. Apart from the zillions of complaints in the respective forum, it is also noteworthy to know that the "invention" of the package system is in no way related to ORBX. This is purely grown within Lockheed Martin's development team. IMHO ORBX was coming under pressure by the community, because lot of users were complaining that ORBX was still using the conventional "scenery.cfg" to prioritize its sceneries. The introduction of the package system by LM made things much more complicated than most of the people involved were realizing. When analyzing the present situation it is by no means a "simple" solution to prioritize sceneries when you have to handle two different "add-ons.cfg" (pointing to individual "add-on.xml" files with or without priority layer) in addition to the existing scenery.cfg. For us at AivlaSoft it means that we needed to update EFB2 in order to cope with future layering - not only by ORBX Central, but which was in fact initiated by the appearance of ORBX Central. Maybe it was not the worst moment that we had to get deeper involved into the P3DV4 Package system. By now we think we are well familiarized with the package system and its limitations. Maybe ORBX was a bit too quickly releasing its Central, nevertheless I can also add my personal experience on working with ORBX central: When I installed it first, I quickly noticed that migration of existing installations was faulty - to say the least. In an attempt to solve the problem I uninstalled all my present ORBX Sceneries (making sure that everything was properly cleaned up where necessary) and re-installed using ORBX Central. This took almost one full day - not comparable to other users reporting that it would take a full week... Funny enough this radical handling solved all my problems and since then I'm working with ORBX Central exclusively on both P3DV4 and X-Plane11 without further problems. Together with the (internally) updated EFB2 everything runs smooth and priority levels are well observed within the whole installation. I work with two independent systems, one exclusively for Flight Simulation, having installed around 90% of all available ORBX sceneries including all Area Sceneries, and the other being my "normal" office computer, with around 10-15 sceneries for P3DV4 and about 10 for X-Plane11. So as a conclusion: we will (hopefully) soon be ready to release an update for EFB covering the needs of ORBX Central. A few limitations are of course still valid for some ORBX Sceneries within ORBX Central. These are addressed in the respective ORBX forum threads. Whether or not users will change to ORBX Central is beyond our scope. The updated EFB2 will continue to work with all kind of installations, as long as they are properly done. Much more could be said on this subject, but for the time being this must serve as an initial contribution from my side. Thank you Oskar - like I said at the beginning I and others do appreciate your time given to answering your users questions/concerns. Your answer and background information goes a long way to making one understand what has taken place with ORBX as well as LM P3D. With that said I am going to keep my ORBX Central migration and not go back to FTX Central3 even though the EFB2 Database is never happy. Then I will patiently await the upgrade to EFB2 from you. Thanks again and best regards, Dane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 12, 2019 Share Posted August 12, 2019 1 hour ago, Dane said: ...even though the EFB2 Database is never happy.... Hi Dane, Let's call it "not happy yet"...😀 So far the present update looks good and will (hopefully) be available soon... Thank you for your kind comment! Looking forward to whatever the (Simulator-) future will bring us... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterHeyn Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 Hallo Oskar, one question regarding your complete new install of ORBX, did you opt for migration of the files to an external disk or did you leave the files within the Prepar installation? cheers Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 9 minutes ago, PeterHeyn said: Hallo Oskar, one question regarding your complete new install of ORBX, did you opt for migration of the files to an external disk or did you leave the files within the Prepar installation? cheers Peter Hi Peter, No, I uninstalled all ORBX scenery using the "old" FTX Central 3 and re-installed eveything in a new directory using "ORBX Central", nowadays also referred to as "Scenery Library". In fact, for practical reasons this "scenery library" is on the same SSD as the simulator, however in its own directory outside the Prepar3D root, but COULD also be in any other place. Present restrictions apply for one small portion of the original install within the Prepar3D root directory: for the time being the entry for "FTX ORBXLIBS" must remain in the old place, as there is a file named "OF_Config.xml", which will be updated by ORBX Central for all airports with ObjectFlow activities. According to ORBX this restriction will be lifted in one of the future updates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterHeyn Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 thanks for this, trying it right now cheers Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 6 hours ago, PeterHeyn said: thanks for this, trying it right now cheers Peter Hi Peter, Let's hope things run as smooth on your end as they did on mine. There are still a few things that I simply do not understand, however I'm definitely not sure whom to blame - ORBX or LM. In any case we will soon release an update which will cope with the layers withing the package system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterHeyn Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 Hi Oskar, all working. I haven't installed the airports, as I believe that is where the layering problems happens. The library is a mess but I am sure the Dev's at ORBX are working overtime to get this right. Thanks for your help and support cheers Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dane Posted August 16, 2019 Author Share Posted August 16, 2019 On 8/12/2019 at 3:06 PM, lonewulf47 said: Hi Dane, Let's call it "not happy yet"...😀 So far the present update looks good and will (hopefully) be available soon... Thank you for your kind comment! Looking forward to whatever the (Simulator-) future will bring us... Oskar, Like I said before you guys at AivlaSoft are amazing - I do wish more developers acted and reacted as professional as your team. I now have a "happy" database after installing v2.1.110.0 The only thing I got after the update was a report that there is 1 warning - not sure where to look for that or what to do about it - any thoughts on this would be helpful. Again - thanks to the entire team at AivlaSoft, Dane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 16, 2019 Share Posted August 16, 2019 41 minutes ago, Dane said: Oskar, Like I said before you guys at AivlaSoft are amazing - I do wish more developers acted and reacted as professional as your team. I now have a "happy" database after installing v2.1.110.0 The only thing I got after the update was a report that there is 1 warning - not sure where to look for that or what to do about it - any thoughts on this would be helpful. Again - thanks to the entire team at AivlaSoft, Dane Hi Dane, A Warning is something that has no influence on the database function, however it usually points to a scenery which was not found (or not installed properly). The corresponding logfile is to be found in "C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\AivlaSoft\EFB2\Server\Logfiles" under the name "dbBuilderLogfile.txt", which is the most recent logfile. Just open it with a text editor and do a search for the word "warning". There you will have the explanation what caused the warning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dane Posted August 16, 2019 Author Share Posted August 16, 2019 1 hour ago, lonewulf47 said: Hi Dane, A Warning is something that has no influence on the database function, however it usually points to a scenery which was not found (or not installed properly). The corresponding logfile is to be found in "C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\AivlaSoft\EFB2\Server\Logfiles" under the name "dbBuilderLogfile.txt", which is the most recent logfile. Just open it with a text editor and do a search for the word "warning". There you will have the explanation what caused the warning. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted August 17, 2019 Share Posted August 17, 2019 Hi Dane, Thank you very much for your kind words about the team! 13 hours ago, Dane said: The only thing I got after the update was a report that there is 1 warning - not sure where to look for that or what to do about it - any thoughts on this would be helpful. just as an additional information to what Oskar already laid out, after pressing the OK Button on the dialog which tells you about the warning, you can scroll upwards the list from the 'Progress monitor' and look for a yellow "bulb" ... The 'Progress monitor' is kind of a live display of the content of the logfile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dane Posted August 17, 2019 Author Share Posted August 17, 2019 8 hours ago, aivlasoft said: Hi Dane, Thank you very much for your kind words about the team! just as an additional information to what Oskar already laid out, after pressing the OK Button on the dialog which tells you about the warning, you can scroll upwards the list from the 'Progress monitor' and look for a yellow "bulb" ... The 'Progress monitor' is kind of a live display of the content of the logfile. Thanks Yes, I did go to the log file and saw the file/folder referenced but the strange thing is that file/folder does not exist anywhere in my system. It used to, but was deleted during the migration process. So the warning never goes away but I guess it does not matter. Dane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 17, 2019 Share Posted August 17, 2019 3 hours ago, Dane said: Thanks Yes, I did go to the log file and saw the file/folder referenced but the strange thing is that file/folder does not exist anywhere in my system. It used to, but was deleted during the migration process. So the warning never goes away but I guess it does not matter. Dane Hi Dane, If the file/folder was referenced by a package, then the Package need to be removed first. This is done by running P3Dv4 up to the GUI. During this "Discovery Phase" P3DV4 should actually remove empty/non existing packages. EFB2 reads all packages from both add-ons.cfg files. However if a scenery from a package is deleted or moved onto another place, EFB2 simply doesn't find it. Package administration within the add-ons.cfg files is done by P3DV4 during its "Discovery Phase", i.e. the first part of the startup until GUI is displayed. Can you confirm that you have run P3DV4 already and still have this warning? If yes, can your please attach the DbBuilderLogfile.txt to your next post? I might need a closer look into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dane Posted August 17, 2019 Author Share Posted August 17, 2019 3 hours ago, lonewulf47 said: Hi Dane, If the file/folder was referenced by a package, then the Package need to be removed first. This is done by running P3Dv4 up to the GUI. During this "Discovery Phase" P3DV4 should actually remove empty/non existing packages. EFB2 reads all packages from both add-ons.cfg files. However if a scenery from a package is deleted or moved onto another place, EFB2 simply doesn't find it. Package administration within the add-ons.cfg files is done by P3DV4 during its "Discovery Phase", i.e. the first part of the startup until GUI is displayed. Can you confirm that you have run P3DV4 already and still have this warning? If yes, can your please attach the DbBuilderLogfile.txt to your next post? I might need a closer look into that. Followed your instructions but I still get the warning message - attached is my dbBuilder.txt file Dane dbBuilderLogfile.txt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted August 18, 2019 Share Posted August 18, 2019 Hi Dane, in the file 'C:\ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\add-ons.cfg' you will find a section '[DiscoveryPath.1]' which points to the folder 'D:\Documents\ORBX\p3dv4' which does not (or no longer) exist. If you are familiar with editing text files you may remove the section '[DiscoveryPath.1]' and the warning will no longer appear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 18, 2019 Share Posted August 18, 2019 Exactly, that's what I was just about to write too😀. It seems that either ORBX Central (or you) have not removed a former (now invalid) library path entry. Just make sure you pick the right one. There might be '[DiscoveryPath.0]' AND '[DiscoveryPath.1]'. Only '[DiscoveryPath.1]' should be removed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dane Posted August 18, 2019 Author Share Posted August 18, 2019 8 hours ago, lonewulf47 said: Exactly, that's what I was just about to write too😀. It seems that either ORBX Central (or you) have not removed a former (now invalid) library path entry. Just make sure you pick the right one. There might be '[DiscoveryPath.0]' AND '[DiscoveryPath.1]'. Only '[DiscoveryPath.1]' should be removed. Thank you Oskar that solved my problem. Regards, Dane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewulf47 Posted August 18, 2019 Share Posted August 18, 2019 25 minutes ago, Dane said: Thank you Oskar that solved my problem. Regards, Dane Good to hear 😀! Thanks for reporting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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