BIG disappointment with RF Evolution

JTUTTLE11

JTUTTLE11

Well-known member
I just purchased the new Real Flight Evolution at the nearest hobby store to me (Tulsa, Ok. Hobby World) When I got to install it this morning I learned the that the only thing in that Big Empty Box was a paper card with an activation code. I decided to go ahead and download the Steam app and get started. When I was finally able to launch the Real Flight program, I was BITTERLY DISAPPOINTED to find that I had LOST everything I had ever Created or Downloaded from the swap pages.
I must now attempt to recover those files. Is that even possible???
 
RealFlight installs new versions in separate directories so if you start your old version all your swap page planes should still be there. You will have to import your swap page planes again in RF Evolution. There are ways to copy over the swap page planes from your old version to your new version but then you have to edit lots of files by hand to change the directory path in them to the location of the new version. Do a search for moving swap page planes there are several places people give good directions on what needs to be modified.

Here's a post with some good information on how to move and fix the swap page files from your old version to your new version.

https://forums.realflight.com/index...craft-from-9-5-to-evolution.57457/post-356394
 
I opened the program and the aircraft editor is missing as well as the airport editor and even the environment. I don't see any way to import or export color schemes or aircraft. The functionality of this program seems LIMITED to only those planes offered by Horizon. The RF sim. seems to have been reduced to nothing more than a marketing tool.
 
Rather than struggle to find things in the new menus, it's much easier to enable the old menu system as described above. Then you'll be familiar with it immediately.
 
technoid said:
Nothing is missing it has everything that RF 9.5 had but the new menus are different so you have to look around for a while to find it. I'll let others direct you to particular locations they're better at that than me.

Here's a post that tells you how to enable the old menu system

https://forums.realflight.com/index...s-in-evolution-w-windows-11.57573/post-357059
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help. I'm (I think I am) starting to get a handle on this new version. Change for the sake of change is not on of my favorite things. Like we used to say in the military, 'If it ain't broke, Paint it green, set it in the corner and don't mess with it"
 
JTUTTLE11 said:
Thanks for the help. I'm (I think I am) starting to get a handle on this new version. Change for the sake of change is not on of my favorite things. Like we used to say in the military, 'If it ain't broke, Paint it green, set it in the corner and don't mess with it"
Click to expand...
I feel exactly the same about MS Windows. I've used Windows since v1.0. I can still do ALL the same stuff in each new version, but I have to hunt it down in each new version because they moved stuff around for no obvious reason. At least RF left the original menu system pretty much intact when they added the capability of controlling many things from the DX controller. But they hid the old menu system from users who already know how to use it.

What I DON'T understand is why RF hard codes file paths in each custom aircraft's "aircraft.bse" file. Each version of RF knows where its own copy of its custom aircraft files will be located. If the file paths were coded relative to THIS version of RF's vehicles directory rather than hard coding "C:\Users\Bill\Documents\RealFlight 7\Vehicles\CustomModels\Trident\Trident.kex" in the .bse file, simply moving the entire "vehicles" directory into the new version of RF should result in ALL the custom vehicles working in each new version of RF. The way it's done now (or was when I upgraded from RF3->RF5->RF7->RF8) EACH bse file needs to be manually edited to correct the now incorrect file path after moving the files. Is there some reason that this wouldn't work? I spent too much time changing 7's to 8's when I upgraded from RF7 to RF8 to "fix" all my imported models and I had uninstalled/deleted the old unused versions of RF. I haven't bothered to upgrade to RF9 or Evo.
 
Bill Stuntz said:
I feel exactly the same about MS Windows. I've used Windows since v1.0. I can still do ALL the same stuff in each new version, but I have to hunt it down in each new version because they moved stuff around for no obvious reason. At least RF left the original menu system pretty much intact when they added the capability of controlling many things from the DX controller. But they hid the old menu system from users who already know how to use it.

What I DON'T understand is why RF hard codes file paths in each custom aircraft's "aircraft.bse" file. Each version of RF knows where its own copy of its custom aircraft files will be located. If the file paths were coded relative to THIS version of RF's vehicles directory rather than hard coding "C:\Users\Bill\Documents\RealFlight 7\Vehicles\CustomModels\Trident\Trident.kex" in the .bse file, simply moving the entire "vehicles" directory into the new version of RF should result in ALL the custom vehicles working in each new version of RF. The way it's done now (or was when I upgraded from RF3->RF5->RF7->RF8) EACH bse file needs to be manually edited to correct the now incorrect file path after moving the files. Is there some reason that this wouldn't work? I spent too much time changing 7's to 8's when I upgraded from RF7 to RF8 to "fix" all my imported models and I had uninstalled/deleted the old unused versions of RF. I haven't bothered to upgrade to RF9 or Evo.
Click to expand...
I have noticed that in some new versions of the RF sim that earlier color schemes saved will not work with newer versions as the layout for the color scheme has changed. For example the P-51 in the Gen 3 and newer generations is totally rearranged. The results can be comical.
 
I can understand how that could be true if the color scheme doesn't match the current version's updated built-in model. But that shouldn't happen with a downloaded model where the model itself matches the different color schemes.

But it doesn't explain why the file path to the .kex file needs to be hard coded inside the .bse file. The various files for custom models are all in subdirectories that are in predictable locations in relation to the directory that contains the .bse file and could be specified in relation to the location of the .bse file rather than specifying the complete path inside the .bse file.

P.S. The "*.colorscheme" files also contain hard coded links to the corresponding .tga & .dds files, so those links also need to be edited for everything to work right. If ALL the hard coded paths were converted to relative paths, moving an entire library of custom models into a new version of RF would be easy. IMHO, it's unnecessarily difficult.
 
Bill Stuntz said:
I can understand how that could be true if the color scheme doesn't match the current version's updated built-in model. But that shouldn't happen with a downloaded model where the model itself matches the different color schemes.

But it doesn't explain why the file path to the .kex file needs to be hard coded inside the .bse file. The various files for custom models are all in subdirectories that are in predictable locations in relation to the directory that contains the .bse file and could be specified in relation to the location of the .bse file rather than specifying the complete path inside the .bse file.

P.S. The "*.colorscheme" files also contain hard coded links to the corresponding .tga & .dds files, so those links also need to be edited for everything to work right. If ALL the hard coded paths were converted to relative paths, moving an entire library of custom models into a new version of RF would be easy. IMHO, it's unnecessarily difficult.
Click to expand...
I agree a relative path would have been a better way to go. And besides that, they're using your personal information in the file path. Your windows name, which might be your real name.
 
I used to do some programming back in the dark ages (CP/M & early MSDOS days) and IMHO it should be an almost trivial problem to add a "custom content from previous version of RF" option in the import menu to automate editing those absolute links (and any others that I haven't found yet) or simply recode RF to use relative paths so the entire "vehicles" directory could be copied/moved seamlessly. The way it is now, I have to figure it out again for every new version of RF that I choose to install - which is part of the reason I'm still running RF8. I'm tired of manually editing dozens of files for every new version of RF because I don't want to lose my custom content.
 
time they fixed evolution. Interlink dx controller won't calibrate left stick elevator mode 1 but works fine in real flight 9.5s. Stop mucking about and give a fix
 
@jimdale, we can't fix an issue if we are unaware of it, and that is the first I've heard of anybody having a calibration issue like that.

I have a few questions.
  1. What radio profile do you have selected when you begin calibration?
  2. Exactly what happens when you attempt to calibrate? Does RealFlight simply show no movement for the left stick when moved vertically? Does it refuse to save the calibration when you're done? Does it all appear to work as expected, but the stick does not behave as if it's calibrated during flight?
  3. Out of curiosity, what happens if you temporarily rename your RealFlight .ini?
    1. Make sure RealFlight is not running.
    2. Go to your Documents\RealFlight Evolution folder.
    3. Rename your RealFlight64.ini to something else. (When finished with this test, you will be able to delete the new one Evo created and rename this backup to its original name.)
    4. Run RF. All of your settings will be back to defaults, but don't worry about that. Try calibration again. Does anything change?
    5. If that happened to make a difference, I can probably walk you through doing that in a way that will retain all your previous settings.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top