RTMM scenery switcher 3.3 not changing seasons

[Dieter]

Well, just thinking aloud:
Let's assume you've set "Seasonswitcher" to 4-fall before PF56 was installed.
Now the installation is done successfully - but remember the scenery was published with "Klutina_Outfitters_rtmm_winter.bgl" active and not as usually with  "xxxx_rtmm_noseason.bgl".
Could this make the SeasonSwitcher "some kind of confused" causing these problems?
...
What I'm always doing before installing a new "season" scenery: I switch to 5-no season. Then I install the new scenery and check if  "no seaon.bgl" is active. Now I choose the season I wanted.

[jeff3163]

I agree with Jsapair.  My season switcher seems to have no effect, although it reports success when I run it.  The file extensions don't change at all.    

Edit:  Aha!!  I had my switcher "exe" inside its folder.  I took it out, er ... copied it to the addon scenery folder, sitting outside of any folder of its own.  Now it works. 

[jsapair]

Damn. Jeff. I thought that would be the magic elixir here as well. Took the .exe out of the folder and placed it in the man folders. Still won't work.

[ualani]

Make it simple. Put the RTMM Season Switcher v3.3.exe in the root folder of where you keep (or hopefully keep) all of your RTMM scenery sub-folders to make it fool proof. Here's what the bottom part of my folder organization looks like. (I keep all of my RTMM scenery in Addon Scenery/Misty Moorings.) You can keep a shortcut to the RTMM Season Switcher v3.3.exe that points to this location elsewhere if you wish in order to make using it easier.

J.J. I can't figure out why yours isn't working.

If all else fails, open the specific scenery folder you want to change the season for and edit it by hand. To be truthful, that's how I do it 99% of the time anyway, rather than use the switcher and make global changes to everything. You can even do it while FSX, and I assume P3D, is running; just refresh your scenery library after you make the change.

[av8erjm]

I found I had some dup season files in HYL and Halibut Cove got that fix still didn't work so switch everything to no season and then to fall and VIOLA everything worked just like Rod and Steve said. Then I get and read what Steve said so I guess I guessed right. Like Jsapair  said I never used the switcher so I didn't know what I was missing until the PF56 scenery was defaulted to winter. Thanks again for the vectors  Blue Skies n' Tail Winds Jim

[stiletto2]

Hi jsapair,

Narrow down your test of the switcher and do it outside of the simulator files.....just for testing, download Klutina Outfitters, unzip it and  put the switcher .exe inside the klutina outfitters scenery folder alongside the scenery .bgls.   Run the switcher right from there and set to summer.   See if the Klutina_Outfitters_rtmm_winter.bgl file changes to Klutina_Outfitters_rtmm_winter.off and the Klutina_Outfitters_rtmm_summer.off file changes to Klutina_Outfitters_rtmm_summer.bgl.   That verifies if the switcher is working for you.  Then work backwards from that test. 

Rod

[jsapair]

Yeah, that worked, Rod. I put the .exe file in the Klutina scenery folder and ran it as Summer and it changed to Summer. bgl. So now how do I make it work for the rest of the sceneries?

[jsapair]

"If all else fails, open the specific scenery folder you want to change the season for and edit it by hand. To be truthful, that's how I do it 99% of the time anyway, rather than use the switcher and make global changes to everything. You can even do it while FSX, and I assume P3D, is running; just refresh your scenery library after you make the change."

Steve, I think we're all on the same page here but I'm a paragraph short. Are you saying to drop the .exe file into individual folders that I want to change the seasons of?

[jeff3163]

Hi Jsapair,
     All the season switcher does is change the filename extensions from off to bgl.  All are off except the active one, which is the bgl one.  You can manually change the seasons by changing the bgl to off and changing the desired season to bgl.     You don't need the switcher, but it is damned convenient for switching them all at once.  Thanks Rod.   

[ualani]

J.J.,
"Ya, what Jeff said," or "Ya, what you said," or "Ya, like Rod made for us." 

[stiletto2]

"If all else fails, open the specific scenery folder you want to change the season for and edit it by hand. To be truthful, that's how I do it 99% of the time anyway, rather than use the switcher and make global changes to everything. You can even do it while FSX, and I assume P3D, is running; just refresh your scenery library after you make the change."

Steve, I think we're all on the same page here but I'm a paragraph short. Are you saying to drop the .exe file into individual folders that I want to change the seasons of?

Hi Jsapair,

Glad the test worked.  I would not change sceneries by hand.  You can make errors.  Also, if you do change sceneries manually while FSX/P3D is running you can be locked out of the change or cause a duplicate file situation when FSX/P3D refreshes since the simulator loads the initial state of the files when started up and may or may not refresh your files when you make manual changes.   In other words, unpredictable things can happen.  Never good when running FSX/P3D. 

To exactly answer your question on how to make it work for all, requires knowing your folder structure...if it is like many of us, however, where all of the installed RTMM scenery folders are inside a parent folder (e.g. a folder named RTMM Scenery), then you simply put the season switcher executable in that parent folder and it will change all of the child folders when you run it. 

Edit:   The above needs to be clarified.  The installation instructions for the RTMM Season Switcher state that it needs to go in to the Addon Scenery folder.  If you don't have that folder then it should either be created, or the switcher could go into an RTMM Scenery folder as long as that folder has as its direct parent, the main FSX or P3D folder.   

Rod 

[ualani]

Interesting observation about not editing by hand while simulator is running. I've never had any issues with that, however, and apparently I'm no the only person who does it. I'm not sure why it would be any different than adding or editing your scenery library using the scenery library menu while the sim is running. I would think that refreshing the library and building a new one would take care of any conflicts or problems.

[spud]

All my RTMM scenery is located in a sub-folder of the FSX\Addon Scenery.

IE:
FSX\Addon Scnery\RTMM

The Scenery Switcher readme says:

"The "RTMM v3.3 Season Switcher.exe" file that is contained in this release folder needs to be copied into the Addon Scenery folder and not your <Misty Moorings> folder like version 3.2 and before.  After that, you would make a shortcut of the .exe file and move that shortcut to the desktop.  So a typical path for the RTMM Season Switcher v3.3.exe file would be:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Addon Scenery\RTMM Season Switcher v3.3.exe"

That way when the Switcher is run it changes ALL RTMM locations that have seasonal files to the same season.  Makes it easy if your flying from one location to another and both have seasonal files.
 

[ualani]

Hmmm....seems ambiguous since Rod also says in reply #3,

"The Season Switcher exe addresses all sceneries inside the folder it resides in and all child folders below the folder it is in."

So, it should, and does, work if it's in the root of the RTMM scenery folder as well.

[spud]

Hmmm....seems ambiguous since Rod also says in reply #3,

"The Season Switcher exe addresses all sceneries inside the folder it resides in and all child folders below the folder it is in."

So, it should, and does, work if it's in the root of the RTMM scenery folder as well.

I agree I probably should not have said "So a typical path for the RTMM Season Switcher v3.3.exe ....".  In my install the Season Switcher v3.3 is placed in the FSX\Addon Scenery folder because my RTMM folder is a child folder of the Addon Scenery folder and thus the switcher will work on all my RTMM scenery that contain seasonal files.
If your installation is set up this way as recommended the switcher works fine.  However if the user does not follow the recommendations from here:

http://www.return.mistymoorings.com/object_libraries_build/ 
(scroll down to section 1 'Scenery Folder Placement')

Then  the switcher may not function as it should.

If the switcher is placed in a'parent'RTMM folder which contains the RTMM scenery locations then it will indeed change all RTMM locations with seasonal files, but only in the RTMM 'parent' folder.
 
However if the user does not use this method/location for his RTMM scenery the switcher will not function. And unfortunately we do have user's that forego instructions and use a non - standard location for RTMM scenery.