40 replies to this topic

[andysedgley]

Hello

I hope this is the right place to post this query! If inappropriate, I'm sorry in advance!

I have Emma Field installed and working perfectly, first of all. The other partly connected scenery I have is FSAddons Orcas Island. The problem I have is with my third scenery, Georender 4, Darrington.

Everything is fine except I cannot see the Active Scenery "tracks" I would expect to see. Never having seen them I don't know exactly what to expect, but moving aircraft and I think buses should be there... the only animated feature I can find is smoke rising from buildings at wintertime, other than that it is entirely static. I posted a question initially on the Georender forum, but Richard kindly replied stating he thought the issue was with one of the ViMaCore dll files that he didn't design, and cannot assist with.  :cry:

Hence I've tried turning it over to this forum... I've searched all the forums but cannot find anyone else who has reported this particular issue. Very briefly (I do not pretend to understand half of the workings of FS9, I don't even know what a dll file is or what it does!) in the manual I am told to activate the Active Scenery option in the Lago menu that appears when I press ALT and click on Lago, however no such option is there. (I get the feeling that even though I have bought the FS2004 version of Darrington, the manual is still for the FS2002 edition, hence various discrepancies...?) My Lago menu shows entries for Emma Field (with its sub-menus), Georender 4 (the submenus take me to the readme and manual, but that's about it) and Terramesh 2004 (as I have some European mesh). Below that, there is a link to the Lago website, a heading called Change Key Assignments, and a heading About Vistamare. In case it helps to sort this out, clicking that opens a window which says the following:

Vistamare FS Core Interface
Versions of Vistamare modules :
FS Core inf 2.0.11
Intelliscene 2004.0.3
Sound/Dyn player (not present)

I *do* have the relevant dynamic scenery options set up as per the manual, so it's not because a setting is too low. Everything about the scenery works apart from the animations...

The other addon I have for the area is Holger Sandman's North Cascades mesh/landclass (which is excellent BTW) but in case that was the culprit I have tried removing it, but that doesn't do the trick.

How long should I have to wait to see animations at Darrington? I've sat there for 10 minutes at a time waiting to see something happen (at Emma of course it's all instantaneous, as soon as the flight loads).

Apologies for the length of this post, but I was worried I might miss out the important detail! Thanks in advance to anyone who can cast light on this issue  :!:

[Francois Dumas]

Hmmm... as far as I can recall from memory you should see something move within 10 minutes. Season and time may influence things, but am not sure.

Unfortunately after my system crash and subsequent clean install I don't have the LAGO sceneries installed anymore, so I can not test it right now.

Anybody else who can check for Andy please !!??   :shock:  :shock:  8)

[dexthom]

At Darrington, I recall some vehicle movement and some aircraft taxi and take offs.

[PhilC]

I hate to ask this but I didn't see it specifically referred to in your post....

Do you have the dynamic scenery turned on? I read where you had it set up properly but I remember there being an option in the logo menu to turn it on and off.

[chaders]

Hi Andy,

I thought this would be a nice quick one to check for you unfortunately I appear to be having the same problem :(. As Phil said You'll need to check the following setting :-

Attached Files

•  FSMenu.jpg   70.23K   1170 downloads
•  FSmenu2.jpg   78.88K   1169 downloads

[Hywel]

I had a similar problem with Emma Field before and found the dll that is responsible for playing animations and sounds was not installed properly by the installer. Navigate to:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\LAGO\Common

and see if there's a file called "ViMaPlay.dll" there. If not then I have uploaded it to my webspace so you can download it here:

http://www.crestap.f...uk/ViMaPlay.DLL

Put that in the folder named above and let us know if it works  :)

Best regards,

[andysedgley]

First off, I didn't expect to find so many people out there so soon keen to help me, and I thank you all for that!

To deal with the issues

1) I do have the dynamic scenery box ticked, and the slider all the way to the right.

2) I have looked in the FS9/LAGO/Common folder and the ViMaPlay.dll is there after all.

While looking into this folder, I noticed it had a scenery folder and a texture folder, and a little scenery.dat file as well, and I thought, maybe this folder isn't being pointed to by the scenery library? So I started FS9, tried to add it to the scenery library, and it told me it was already added. I couldn't see it so I scrolled down the list, and found an entry called Active Scenery Player nestling somewhere well down the list, so I moved it up to Position 1. I exited FS9 and restarted, and guess what?

Still no active scenery displaying  :cry:

Bummer! My LAGO/Common folder has a lot of stuff in it that seems key to the active scenery which I haven't seen yet. There is a Scenery folder with 2 bgl files in it, a sounds folder with a dozen or so wav clips called Geo4_rural_loud_day and things like that. Windows Media player can play them, so I know I haven't heard them in the program! Then there is a texture folder with lots of bitmap files, but only one of them can be opened by any of my image programs. That is called EDC172Rd and shows a red C172 livery in bits, tail no N1884, and some bits of pictures of bins, birds' heads, and a guitar (maybe the one played at the Emma Field barbie, I'm not sure!) Some of the other files are called Kenworth1, Kenworth2, RCWrangler, and EmmFiat1 (which makes me think these are Emma Field textures perhaps, in which case, if the guitar is the Emma Field guitar, than this whole folder must be working somehow...?)

Then there is a folder called tracks, which contains the files Geo4_car.osc, Geo4_car2.osc, Dep_10.osc and Dep28.osc. It doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to see these are the bits I am lacking, so how do I get them to work??

Finally the LAGO/Common folder contains the scenery.dat and the aforementioned ViMaPlay.dll file.

I'm stumped again... answers on a postcard please... :(  :?  :(

[chaders]

Hi Andy,

Try deleting the scenery.dat file that is in FS9/LAGO/Common and let FS9 rebuild it. That got it working for me again.

[Kiwi(Baz)]

Hi Guys, I am having the same problem, I have all the sounds working but no tracks working at geo 4 or geo 6, they work at emma and the newer fsaddon scenerys, I have no scenery dat file in my lago common folder, do you think this is the problem.
I have searched all of the lago forums and looks like we are the only two people with this problem, hope some one can help us, its just not the same without traffic around.
Thanks in advance :D  :shock:

[andysedgley]

Hywel, I downloaded your version of ViMaPlay.dll and replaced the original one with that one, but that didn't cause the moving vehicles and aircraft to appear.  :cry:

Chaders, I deleted the scenery.dat in the FS9/LAGO/Common folder, and used the FS9 Scenery Library to add that folder again to the list. Restarted FS9, and still no change.  :x

I think since I bought Georender4 a week ago, I have spent 10 minutes flying around it and 2 hours in 10 minute sections looking around in spot view waiting to see if something would happen (which it hasn't)  :evil:

It's a shame really, the scenery is so pretty, I feel I am missing out on some of my 19.99EUR worth here; what is frustrating is I now know the files are there, but for some reason FS9 doesn't know to use the ViMaPlay file to generate the animations... especially strange since Emma Field and Orcas seem to use similar software and both are working fine. I think the next thing to do it delete Emma and Orcas, and try again in case there is a conflict somewhere? Mind you, there must be plenty of folk who have both addons and this would surely have become FAQ by now...

[Francois Dumas]

Still no luck? Weird. Be advised, the Orcas modules are newer and not supported by LAGO. I am not sure if there is a difference, but I know that some of Maurizio's modules were adapted. I am trying to find my copies and have a look, but since my last system crash I 'lost' most of my older add-ons.

If I manage to find it, I'll post later tonight.

Francois

[Francois Dumas]

BUMMER !
I found GeoRender 4 again, but after installing it I keep getting a system crash when trying to position my plane on Darrington. Visualfx.dll seems to have a problem with it.
Have to de-install it again :-(

We had these sort of crashes right in the beginning of FS9.. perhaps I need an update for Geo4? It is too long ago for me to remember...... anyone else !??  :?:  :!:

[andysedgley]

Thanks for trying Francois...

I hope you can enjoy Geo4 soon, but I reckon there must be some incomaptibility somewhere between the Geo4 FS9 version and something else I have added on... I daresay it would work fine with a clean install of Flight Simulator, but who's got one of those???  :lol:

[richardg]

Francois,
You must have a very old version of Geo4.  The dll error was sorted out some years ago!  Its associated with the smoke effect. Remove that bgl and the error will go away (so will the smoke though.  Else you should download the corrected version of Geo4 from LAGO.

Andy,
I'd recommend that you go onto the Lago forum and tell them about your problem.  Don't take no for an answer.   The module you are having difficulty with was licensed by them.  I'd contact them myself by email, but it could take a long time to get a response.   Clearly, yours is a very unusual problem that needs to be resolved directly by the developer/publisher.

Regards,
Richard

[Francois Dumas]

Could well be Richard.... I have thousands of wonderful add-ons, but a bunch are inaccessible becasue of problems with compatibilyt between backup CD's and current CD player/recorder in my PC  :cry:  I might indeed have found an older copy.  :oops:

[richardg]

Francois,

Let me know how it goes.  Accessing the file form the Lago site seemsmore difficult nowadays.  Naturally, I have a backup if you need one.

Regards,
Richard

[Francois Dumas]

Thanks Richard, much appreciated. I am going to the Lelystad FS show now, but will have a look when I get home tonight.

Kind regards,
Francois

[Don Smith]

I also do not get any vehicles showing at Darrington. Smoke effects in winter appear. At Emma Field, stork flies, glider annimations work and glider towing unit annimations work OK.

[andysedgley]

Oh goody, someone else with exactly the same situation  :)  :(

Emma Field and all its glorious aminations works fine, but the only animated feature of Darrington is the winter smoke... I think this is because the smoke is an FS Effect whereas the other animations are relying on this Lago dll module that doesn't appear to be doing its job. Off to the Lago forums we jolly well go then. Thanks to everyone for showing interest in this thing and trying to help  :wink:

[gmazzei]

Hi Andy,
you said that you don't have "Active scenery player" in your Lago menu.
That entry should be there ( checked if you want to use the animations) when the vimaplay.dll is in the Lago\Common\ folder.
I tried to remove vimaplay.dll  from that folder and after that have lost both the menu entry and the animations (cars and planes) at Darrington muni.
In my shot you can see the checked entry in the Lago menu and the Green Cessna that is part of the animation.  
After you put vimaplay.dll in the folder , have you controlled your Lago menu to see if the "Active scenery player"  entry is there and is checked?
Bests

Attached Files

•  Darrington-active-scenery.jpg   68.02K   456 downloads