GSX does not read any FTX Iceland file

[kmax59]

Hello,

I'm currently flying a lot in Iceland, unfortunately GSX is not reading any of the afcad file coming from FTX Iceland (which comes for free with FTX Global).
Instead of using the FTX afcads, it uses the default afcads of P3D for all of the Icelandic airports.

I've enabled the couatl logging and it actually does not even read the related orbx files (located here: Prepar3D v4\ORBX\FTX_OLC\OLC_EU8\Scenery).
I've tried to add this in couatl.ini : "airportCacheMaxBGLSizeBytes = 4000000" but it didn't help either.

There is absolutely no error in the couatl log file about any of the icelandic airport, it just seem that GSX completely ignore this scenery entry and just doesn't read any bgl file from there.

I've duplicated the OLC_EU8 folder and renamed it "Iceland", I moved it elsewhere then I registered it as a new scenery entry and disabled the original OLC_EU8 entry. After that, the FTX Iceland afcads are correctly read.
I did exactly the same test again with the "Iceland" folder kept in the "FTX_OLC" folder: it does not work again, thus it appears that the OLC entries are being excluded by couatl.

The first solution appears to work but can't be a final solution as the orbx layering is important and FTX Central will reset it at each start of the app, meaning that I can't properly add a custom folder between OLC_EU7 and OLC_EU9 in the scenery entries.

Why would GSX ignore the Orbx/OLC folders?
How could I make it reading this scenery entry properly without the need to create a huge mess in my orbx files? Is there a way to force GSX to read this folder?
If I can't solve this on my side, could you please make GSX reading the OLC_EU8 folder in your next release? This folder only contains files for FTX Iceland.

[virtuali]

I did exactly the same test again with the "Iceland" folder kept in the "FTX_OLC" folder: it does not work again, thus it appears that the OLC entries are being excluded by couatl.

Yes, of course it's excluding it, as explained here:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,17623.msg123391.html#msg123391

How could I make it reading this scenery entry properly without the need to create a huge mess in my orbx files?

I'd say that having an airport file inside a folder which suggest it belongs to a Land Class folder, which also contains tens of thousands of file, is already a mess per-se, since not only GSX might have to read the airport database, but lots of 3rd party utilities do that as well, so keep AFCADs there is not a very smart idea, because each of them would be wrongly accused of being slow, just because it was forced to read through an insanely high number of files (even getting the simple list of files for that folder takes time).

Maybe we might add something like a whitelist in the program, so you could decide if you are prepared to very slow cache regeneration time, but it would be your choice, we couldn't do it by default, especially if that folder is also not excluded by the antivirus, so the long scanning would become *very* long.

[kmax59]

I'd say that having an airport file inside a folder which suggest it belongs to a Land Class folder, which also contains tens of thousands of file, is already a mess per-se, since not only GSX might have to read the airport database, but lots of 3rd party utilities do that as well, so keep AFCADs there is not a very smart idea, because each of them would be wrongly accused of being slow, just because it was forced to read through an insanely high number of files (even getting the simple list of files for that folder takes time).

Maybe we might add something like a whitelist in the program, so you could decide if you are prepared to very slow cache regeneration time, but it would be your choice, we couldn't do it by default, especially if that folder is also not excluded by the antivirus, so the long scanning would become *very* long.

I understand your concerns about slow loading, however it's not fully right: you don't need to add all the OLC folders in your white list, OLC_EU8 is the only folder that contains afcads from all the OLC folders, so only this one can be added to your white list.
As I've said in my first post, this folder only contains iceland airport and nothing else, basically almost only afcads and such files, the folder contains 85 files and is about 200Mb so it's even lighter than most of the current sceneries. The OpenLC landclass files are located in the other folders.

Thus, putting "OLC_EU8" (only this one) in your white list would allow FTX iceland to work properly with GSX and would not make the cache generation longer.

[kmax59]

Could you please consider reading the OLC_EU8 folder only which contain only airport files as explained in my post above?

[sw34669]

hes not interested in fixing this. there have been many discussions since 2016 i think
"I dont think people should store scenery like that so i wont read it"

[virtuali]

hes not interested in fixing this. there have been many discussions since 2016 i think "I dont think people should store scenery like that so i wont read it"

It's not that I'm "not interested", it's just that we obviously have far more pressing things to do than fixing what is clearly a very cumbersome way of installing a scenery.

Installing an Airport as a sub-folder of a Landclass scenery that already contains tens of thousands of scenery, is just silly, and it has no benefits whatsoever, since the simulator will consider it as two separate areas anyway, but of course will create issues to other addons that might require to read it ( and not just GSX, flight planners might require to read it as well ), and which are trying to be as fast as possible doing that, so they MUST exclude their 30.000 .BGLs Landclass monster that is above it.

But yes, of course, as usual, we always listen to suggestion and we always add what users asks so, even in this case, we'll try to add a user-configurable white list file, so we can still exclude the OLC monster folder, and specifically include other folders inside .

[kmax59]

hes not interested in fixing this. there have been many discussions since 2016 i think "I dont think people should store scenery like that so i wont read it"

It's not that I'm "not interested", it's just that we obviously have far more pressing things to do than fixing what is clearly a very cumbersome way of installing a scenery.

Installing an Airport as a sub-folder of a Landclass scenery that already contains tens of thousands of scenery, is just silly, and it has no benefits whatsoever, since the simulator will consider it as two separate areas anyway, but of course will create issues to other addons that might require to read it ( and not just GSX, flight planners might require to read it as well ), and which are trying to be as fast as possible doing that, so they MUST exclude their 30.000 .BGLs Landclass monster that is above it.

But yes, of course, as usual, we always listen to suggestion and we always add what users asks so, even in this case, we'll try to add a user-configurable white list file, so we can still exclude the OLC monster folder, and specifically include other folders inside .

Many thanks for considering this Umberto
I agree this is quite a weird way from Orbx to install airports in a specific OLC folder instead of creating a region folder but as this one is not heavy, having the choice would be great.

I'm personnally very satisfied with your products and as a developer I know you must make some choices sometimes which does not please everyone, the most important as you said is that the final user have the choice in the end.

[Wakner]

Thank you from me too for considering this ... I'm struggling with the same issue as flying in Iceland often with ORBX OLC and can't use GSXv2 for the reasons given above.

Best

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[sw34669]

ta as ever

[DellyPilot]

So is there a way to make FTX Iceland BIKF work with GSX?

Did the whitelisting capability ever get added, seems a fairly reasonable suggestion?
If it was in config, then its opt-in and up to the user to make the call on slow caching?