MD80 Seated Passengers Still Not Fixed

[davidcherrie]

The issue is still not fixed in 2024. Enabling seated passengers with Maddog MD83 & MD88 still causes the external model to disappear in the hangar view and in the world.

Attached is a link to the livery after it has been enabled by GSX.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3pn8mjtk7w6uia1i89v49/lsh-maddogx-livery-QJE.zip?rlkey=w7jhxi986zd01a6k68jkm0pqy&st=ohvi6mm6&dl=0

[virtuali]

That's because this livery is not exactly the same you asked me to download from flightsim.to to test, which I tried and it worked in 2020 by first passing in the hangar, or in 2024 SU3, where it worked straight away.

This uses a different form, because the base container has been changed from the previous version to be the ..\MaddogX88 instead of ..\MaddogX. This caused a new special case, of a container pointing to a folder that doesn't contain the models themselves, but another model.cfg pointing back to another relative path.

This different case didn't get the specific fix for the model.cfg upper/lower case incoherency, because of this "double-jump" of different model.cfgs, but if you update again NOW, the updated installer is already online.

[davidcherrie]

When testing last night I could see that your model merge was referencing files in places they don’t exist…

I asked in the previous thread did you test this with the MD88 by configuring the livery in the Maddog installer to that aircraft and you said you didn’t have to use the installer, it worked by placing the livery in the community folder. This means you tested it with the MD82 because that’s what all liveries are created by default for and the users can change them to the different variants via their installer.

Not to mention but the default aircraft of the MD83 and MD88 although having their exterior model, all of their animations were broken and meaning the landing gear was up in the hangar and when you spawned in so it seems you haven’t tested this at all for MD83 and MD88.

[davidcherrie]

Have done three redownloads and still the issue isn't fixed. Could this be a CDN deployment issue or has the fix not be done yet?

[virtuali]

done three redownloads and still the issue isn't fixed. Could this be a CDN deployment issue or has the fix not be done yet?

Sure it's fixed, but only if the livery is used by just copying it in the Community folder. I had no idea it would change again if it was first run from the Livery manager, that's yet another case it must be taken care of.

I don't understand this:

This means you tested it with the MD82 because that’s what all liveries are created by default for and the users can change them to the different variants via their installer.

So what's the point of the base container being set to  "..\MaddogX88" then ?

[davidcherrie]

Base container is set to that because it's a different aircraft even though it shares files with the base MD82 that your program assumes are in in the MD83 and MD88 which they aren't. Surely you know that...

So in other words it is not fixed with MD83 nor MD88. You can't even use those default aircrafts with GSX Seated Passengers installed. Their animations are broken cause you're highjacking the external model and referencing the files that aren't in the MaddogX83 or MaddogX88 aircraft folders. Do you even have or test the expansion or do you just do the MD82 and call it a day?

[virtuali]

Base container is set to that because it's a different aircraft even though it shares files with the base MD82 that your program assumes are in in the MD83 and MD88 which they aren't. Surely you know that...

You are now confusing completely different things. What the installer assumes will be fixed, of course.

What I don't understand (let's forget GSX), why if the base container is set to the MD88, you said it's still acting like an MD82, and it requires passing through the livery installer first.

Do you even have or test the expansion or do you just do the MD82 and call it a day?

OF course I tested it, and I have all the animation working, it's because I just copy the livery in the Community folder, and it is patched correctly and it works. I'm trying to understand WHY it must be processed by the livery installer, especially if the base container is already set to the correct variant.

[davidcherrie]

The livery installer assigns the livery to the correct aircraft so that it uses the correct engine model and performance of the expansion variants whilst still referencing everything else back to the base aircraft which is the MD82. Have you not read the manual?

If you're not using the livery installer to assign the livery to the correct aircraft, then yes your aircraft is going to say it is an MD83 or MD88 in MFS but it is going to have the performance of the MD82 and not the chosen variant. So you aren't testing the MD83 or the MD88 at all, your just testing something that has changed the name of the aircraft title to MD83 or MD88 but in fact just using the MD82.

[virtuali]

If you're not using the livery installer to assign the livery to the correct aircraft, then yes your aircraft is going to say it is an MD83 or MD88 in MFS but it is going to have the performance of the MD82 and not the chosen variant.

That's precisely why I asked that.

Isn't the base_container entry supposed to control that ? That is, if it's MaddogX, the livery will take all .CFG files (aircraft.cfg, flight_model.cfgm etc. ) of the MD82, and when it's MaddogX88 it takes all parameters from the MD88 instead ?

Isn't this the reason why you changed it from the version you told me to test on flightsim.to, so you could have an pre-configured livery that doesn't even need to use the Livery Manager ?

Because something is still not clear to me. I saw a tutorial saying you are supposed to place liveries as ZIP files in the Documents\MaddogX folder. But if I place your ZIP file there (they one from Flightsim.to, it's not used.

So I went to flightsim.to again, saw a comment this is supposed to be installed in the Community folder instead, then use the Livery Manager to set options. So I did that, started the Livery manager, selected the MD88 and it said the livery was already installed.

I assumed I had to set some option to see a change, so I changed from Kgs to Lbs, went in to the Livery Manager page again, clicked Apply, got a brief pause saying "Updating liveries", checked the livery folder again, and the ONLY thing changed was the base_container line, changed from ..\..\MaddogX to ..\MaddogX88 and that works with our update installed.

What I'm missing here ?

[virtuali]

Wait, I think I understand the problem: the MaddogX installer probably updates files by looking at file dates, so I installed it after the base exterior was already patched by GSX, so the installer never updated it, because it was more recent.

I completely removed it and reinstalled it from scratch, and I can see now the base exterior .XML is VERY different that what I had before, it uses ReleativeFiles lines to load behaviors instead of having the behavior included in the same XML, that's why gears and stuff worked for me: I had a base model version which included all behaviors (it was probably like that a while ago), so each time GSX made a copy, it worked, because all behaviors were included on each livery.

I was wondering why YOUR XML looked different than mine, which worked perfectly.

[davidcherrie]

Each aircraft doesn’t have all the files so your XML is referencing a Behaviours and FX XML that don’t exist in that aircraft because the MD83 and MD88 fallback to MD82. Kind of like the way Fenix have all their sharklets and IAE engines reference the original CFM aircraft rather than having duplicate textures in every instance.

Yes, all the liveries were first done for the MD82 so there was no switching required. When LSH came out with the expansion of MD83 and MD88 the livery configuration was necessary but also gave users the freedom to easily move existing liveries into other variants because the external models were still the same.