MegaCity Hawaii Ouahu Erases FSDT Hilo Airport

[grasshopper]

Never content to leave well enough alone, I decided to purchase MegaCity Hawaii, so that I could have some more true-to-life scenery in the areas beyond the dazzling FADT renditions of Honolulu and Hilo Airports.

MegaCity Hawaii downloaded with no errors, but then vanished into thin air.  That baffled me, so I decided to check and make sure my FSDT Honolulu and Hilo airport sceneries were intact.   Honolulu was fine, although the surrounding scenery I had been hoping to change for the better with MegaCity Hawaii remained annoyingly identical to the default FS9 scenery I had before. 

Next I checked Hilo airport, and to my horror, the entire airport scene had vanished.  All that was left was the runways, with NO buildings, and that moonscape was surrounded by the same dismal default FS9 scenery I had before I wasted my money on MegaCity Hawaii.  I should have left well enough alone, because what I have evidently just done is PAY MegaCity to completely erase my copy of FSDT Hilo airport, while leaving me with drab default scenery for the trouble.

I am in the process of repeating the download of MegaCity Hawaii, to see if I can at least get that working, and I would like to ask here if I will also need to re-download FSDT Hilo Airport, after perhaps un-installing the copy of Hilo that worked beautifully before I went and threw MegaCity into the mix.  I checked the archives in this forum, but found nothing that warned of any compatibility problems between MegaCity Hawaii, and FSDT Honolulu and Hilo.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  In hindsight, I shouldn't have bothered adding MegaCity Hawaii, since there was absolutely no improvement whatsoever when I did install it.   If there is a known problem with MegaCity I will happily deep-six that product in favor of my FSDT works of art, however, if the two products are compatible, I sure would like to solve this problem and get them all working seamlessly.

[virtuali]

As usual, when you install a photoreal scenery, be sure its layer in the Scenery Library is BELOW any airport it might affect.

[grasshopper]

That is the weird thing, Virtuali.  I placed Hilo at the top of my scenery list, AND MegaCity Hawaii simply vanished right after installation, such that it is not even visible in the FS9 scenery list, yet, it obviously wreaked this havoc on Hilo, while giving me zero scenery ehancement over that same old default FS9 moonscape outside the airport boundaries.   MegaCity leaves me with a sour taste, fer sure.

Do you suppose tha Hilo has been corrupted by my bungled MegaCity addition attempt, and so now has to be un-installed, before being downloaded and  activated again ?

I definitely regret making that MegaCity purchase.  It gave me nothing, and wrecked what I already had, at a cost of $15.

Would you recommend that I simply stop trying to utilize MegaCity Hawaii ?   Are there any known un-resolved conflicts between their products and those of FSDT ?

[virtuali]

I'm sorry, don't know Megacity at all but:

- I doubt it has "corrupted" Hilo, and the opposite is true, Hilo surely can't corrupt any other scenery.

- Usually, putting airports ON TOP of a photoreal scenery, will fix this issue. However, I can't vouch for Megacity specifically, because I don't have it and besides, under FS9 we only test sceneries with a clean default config.

There's no much we can say, other than we allow to test all our products before purchasing. If ALL developers did the same, it would be easier for anyone (both users AND US) to verify compatibility issues.

[grasshopper]

So, to restore Hilo, would you advise a total un-install of the copy I have, and then a new start with a completely new install ?

[virtuali]

As I've said, since it's not possible Hilo would be "corrupted" by the Megacity installation, it's no use reinstalling it, unless you remived it manually or played with files.

The obvious first step would be checking what's happening by disabling Megacity

[grasshopper]

I'll give this a shot, Umberto, but what I find baffling is that MegaCity Hawaii at downloaded but did NOT appear in FS9 at first, but even as I noticed that and searched for what happened to MegaCity, the damage was already done to Hilo, which simply vanished, buildings and all.

[simbio]

Firstable Megascenery Hawaii cover only Oahu island (Honolulu) Hilo is on the Big Island(south).
There are some issue with FSDT PHNL and Megascenery but there are topic in the forum.

Megascenery compatibility
There is a big exclusion area in Megascenery that cause a conflict,
so the only way is to rename or remove hawaii-004.BGX and the Afcad PHNL-HonoluluIntl.BGX in the current location
\\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\megaCityHawaiiOahu\Hawaii Oahu\scenery.

It's clear that there is a messy on your installation after you install or remove scenery.
My advice is to unistall Megascenery and then our scenery PHNL/ hawaii VOL1 then delate megaCityHawaiiOahu folder from FS9 main one.
If after you can lunch FS9 and rebuild your scenery config, if it's ok then procede with correct file from megascenery and then reinstall our FSDT airport.
If its' still messy I m sorry you will have to reinstall FS9
Hope this help

[grasshopper]

Thanks for the reply Simbio.  I have decided to let well enough alone, and leave Hilo unfixed for now.    I finally have my entire FSDT collection working, with Hilo as the only one still non-functional.   The Megascenery does seem to work fine with FSDT Honolulu, with the two products blending together seamlessly, making some really spectacular sight-seeing flights possible.  Cloud9 LAX also works perfectly with Megascenery Socal.  

The small sacrifice of not having Hilo work is more than offest by the amazing detail and beauty of all FSDTs other offerings, from Honolulu to the jaw-dropping Dallas Ft.Worth.   The only FS9 flying I ever do these days is touch-and-go circuits, and now I can fly those circuits surrounded by truly spectacular ground scenery in a number of airports from Zurich to Denver to OHare and JFK.

Life is good, and I eagerly await the next FSDT airport scnery to hit the market.

[grasshopper]

Figuring I didn't have much to lose, I un-installed Hilo Airport, re-installed it, and to my amazement, it worked perfectly with the airport appearing like a mirage after a gruelling desert crossing.  My entire FSDT collection is now finally complete. 

Thanks, once again, to Virtuali and the other code-meisters who make this magic possible.

Over and out.