Flight Simulator Scenery

12/20/08: CCCFSXR4.ZIP and CCCFSXC.ZIP (that incorporates all revisions) uploaded to Avsim.com and Flightsim.com.

6/12/08:

I've had UTX for over a week now. It's a nice piece of work but my CCC scenery won't be compatible with it unless I trash a lot of what I've done. The biggest problems are roads and coastlines and that's a lot of what UTX and CCCFSX are all about. Therefore, I'm not going to attempt a UTX version of CCCFSX.

I've been disabling UTX when I'm working or flying in the CCC area. This is easy to do with UTX's setup tool by just clicking on quick enable/disable. With UTX installed there is no need to replace the TERRAIN.CFG file as I mention in my CCCFSX Readme.TXT since UTX has incorporated the added functions I used in CCCFSX into the modified version of the file that they install.

When flying in the CCC area with UTX disabled you can continue to use its landclass by going into the FSX scenery library and re-enabling the three UT Landclass files. I am using the Genesis landclass with UTX's by prioritizing the Genesis landclass between their Urban and Vegetation landclass files as described in UTX's Manual (Section 9).

CREATE SHORTCUTS TO FSX FLIGHTS:

I found this to be handy and maybe someone else will also:

• In Windows Explorer (or xplorer2 if you have it) go to the directory containing your .FLT files. This'll probably be the C:\Users\Username\Documents\Flight Simulator X Files directory.
  
  
• Right click, hold and drag a .FLT file to your desktop. The file doesn't move, just the shortcut you're creating.
  
  
• Click on "Create Shortcuts Here". This'll create a shortcut to the .FLT file on the desktop.
  
  
• Right click on the shortcut and select "Open With" and then select "Choose Default Program"
  
  
• Flight Sim X may be shown as the "Recommended Programs". If not Browse to FSX.EXE and select it.
  
  
• Check the box to "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file". Click on OK to complete the association and FSX will open in that flight. You can now drag additional shortcuts to the desktop without the need to repeat this association process.

You've now created shortcuts that will open FSX directly into the desired flights bypassing the opening selection screen. You could leave these shortcuts on the desktop or organize them into folders. The way I use them it to have several shortcuts for flights of a specific purpose in a folder. For example when working on the CCC scenery I frequently needed to hop around to any one of 22 or so locations. I just open the folder with the CCC shortcuts and click on the shortcut for the place I want to go. One other useful feature is that once FSX is open you can just click on one of these shortcuts and it will load the appropriate scenery and go directly to the flight without the need to open the Load pull down box and scroll through the flights for the one you want.

Here's an example of how you can use these shortcuts. This is a folder I use for going to various places within my CCC scenery. I used this a lot when working on the scenery.

On a new subject:

I really don't like Vista's Windows Explorer for several reasons. I am using something called xplorer2. It's available at: http://www.zabkat.com/x2lite.htm and it's free to private and academic users. It really is a gem. It has lots of features and one of them that's my favorite is that after closing and reentering it, it comes back to the same directories you were in before you closed it. It works in Vista and XP. I am in no way affiliated with these guys but I love their work.