I’ve had a couple of emails asking when the next update might me for OpenSceneryX. Sorry it’s been a bit quiet lately but this is simply because I’ve had little time to work on the next release of the library (work work work).
More releases are planned, and some great new sets of objects are queued up ready for inclusion. Also I very much want to work on the installer to allow people to download just the parts of the library they are interested in, speeding up the download process.
I can’t give you any timescales, I’m just fitting in the work when I can, but I would love to get a new version out before Christmas.
We’ve now moved hosting provider. A friend from work kindly offered to host it on his dedicated server, which is supplied by UK Fast, the same provider that provides the servers for my company.
Hopefully this is the end of the hosting woes caused by HostPapa.
There is an important rule about contributions to OpenSceneryX – we never accept models for unique buildings, for example The Eiffel Tower or The Empire State Building. Why? Because OpenSceneryX is a library for general use across many scenery packages, and objects that are unique would only ever be used in one place in the world. The place for unique buildings is inside that scenery package, not inside a general-purpose library.
So what’s the problem? Well, consider this nice model of an airport terminal just contributed by Nick Ward.
CYPA Terminal Building
It is a model of a specific terminal building at a specific airport (CYPA). However, most airport building models are based on specific buildings at specific airports – all the hangars, all the offices, all the sheds – it’s just that those buildings can be described as ‘generic’ while a terminal is becoming rather more ‘specific’. So, does the terminal get added to OpenSceneryX?
I don’t really know the answer to this. I think the best way is to make a judgement on an object-by-object basis. In this case, I would say that the terminal is generic enough that you might find quite a lot of buildings around the world looking “quite similar” so there is a justification for adding it. In other cases – let’s say someone contributed a model of the London Stansted airport terminal building – then this would not be accepted because it is not generic. I think there is a bit of a fuzzy line here that may sometimes be difficult to call.
If you have any suggestions or opinions, please post a comment.
It turns out that the problem people are seeing with the OpenSceneryX installer is due to the security features in Vista (specifically, User Access Control or UAC). This means that a program cannot, by default, create files and folders in areas of your hard disk that Vista thinks it shouldn’t, which can include the “Custom Scenery” folder inside your X-Plane folder. Unfortunately, this causes something of a problem for a program that is meant to install files and folders in there, such as the OpenSceneryX installer.
Run as administrator
While I work on a fix for this, my suggestion to all Vista users is to run the installer by right-clicking it and choosing “Run as administrator”. This gives it elevated privileges that means it can write to your X-Plane folder.
The website is responding very slowly at the moment. I’ve raised this with our hosting provider and they are investigating. Many apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, we will push to get this resolved as soon as possible.
We’ve been a bit quiet lately. Don’t worry, this is due to work commitments and holidays. I’ll be away for a couple of weeks from tomorrow so there won’t be much going on until the end of January.
So, on behalf of OpenSceneryX all the contributors, may I wish you all Season’s Greetings and a (slightly early) Happy New Year!
Here’s the final part of a mini-series on how the OpenSceneryX library is built, covering the whole process from the initial contribution of an object all the way through to the moment it appears on the end user’s machine.
This post will cover the final part of this process – How the library is released for download.
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