Importing custom content.

[Bill Stuntz]

I'm still running RF8. Any chance of DX11 for that?

Manually copying custom aircraft, etc. & manually editing the files with the new locations is PART of the reason I haven't upgraded to Evo. Any chance of an automated "Import custom content from old version of RF" procedure? That's been a PITA problem forever. And I don't do it often enough to remember the details, so I have to figure it out again for every new version.

 

[Ryan Douglas]

I'm still running RF8. Any chance of DX11 for that?

No. This was an enormous undertaking. It is something we can only bring to the latest version of the software.

Any chance of an automated "Import custom content from old version of RF" procedure?

This is something we've been wanting to add for a long time now. We're going to take a fresh look at it as part of this beta. We know a lot of people have a lot of custom content they won't want to leave behind in order to run the beta. I can't promise it, but I hope so.

 

[Bill Stuntz]

No. This was an enormous undertaking. It is something we can only bring to the latest version of the software.

That's what I figured. But I could hope! Maybe DX11 will get me to upgrade.

I haven't had any BIG trouble importing, but it's a PITA. There are only a few files that need to be modified, and they're all text files. The REAL problem with the files is that they have absolute hard-coded paths in the config files instead of paths relative to the RF version's home directory. Search & replace "old path" -> "new path" in a BUNCH of files (about 40 for me) works fine. Use relative addressing and the problems would go away... unless there's something ELSE that will need to be modified for DX11 vs DX9. But I always have to figure out WHICH files need the changes. I think it's the .bse files in the CustomModels directory. And if I remember right, once those files are fixed, there might be problems with a few of them that use custom engines/props or something. But I don't remember for sure. As I said, I have to figure it out again for every new version of RF. But I have always managed to get them to work.
P.S. I think the .colorscheme files need a similar find/replace treatment. There might be a few more, maybe .kex files. But the .kex files aren't pure human-readable text files. But find/replace seemed to work for those, too. Again, the problem is the embedded hard-coded file locations. That might have been sort-of OK back in the dark ages, but certainly isn't now.

 

[Ryan Douglas]

Agreed, that's not ideal.

 

[flightengr]

I think it's the .bse files in the CustomModels directory. And if I remember right, once those files are fixed, there might be problems with a few of them that use custom engines/props or something.

P.S. I think the .colorscheme files need a similar find/replace treatment.

Correct on both counts. I only have a few custom models, and I just went through this to bring them over to the DX11 Beta.

It wasn't mentioned explicitly in the NX 11 Beta announcement, but something else I brought over are the contents of the Radio Profiles folder, for all of the custom controller profiles. If you've spent a lot of time making profiles (especially people using a WS2000 or something else other than InterLink), that's a huge deal.

It's also worth noting that the RealFlight Evolution DX11 Beta folder won't exist until you run the new version at least one time. You can run it, go through the controller calibration, and then close RF. Then you can start copying things over.

 

[Bill Stuntz]

It took me a while to find the problems in a few .kex files - absolute links to C:\... again. I found them because I got errors on RF's main screen while selecting/opening the imported aircraft. Got "can't find (filename)" error messages at the bottom of the screen after I deleted the oldest versions of RF because I never used them anymore. The error messages disappeared too fast to read them. And the text color of the messages kinda disappeared into the background. If I remember correctly, green text on a green grass background is a little hard to read. I had to edit the error message timeout and forground/background error text colors for my old eyes to actually read and understand the messages. And it was a PITA, because they loaded fine while the RF2,3,&5 directories still existed. I decided to keep only the last 2 versions of RF on my PC, so when I deleted the old RF directories, it broke both the RF7 & RF8 custom aircraft.

Again, that's part of the reason I haven't upgraded to RF9 or EVO. it's too darn messy trying to convert all the custom aircraft into a new version. And it's at least as messy to try to re-import them from the original .rfx files again. If I can do it manually using notepad's find/replace function, I find it hard to believe that a competent programmer couldn't develop a procedure to automatically copy all the custom vehicle files & convert all those absolute links to point to the new version for all the custom content in one procedure. All the affected files are in subdirectories under the vehicles subdir. But it wouldn't be necessary at all if the files contained ".\" or "..\" relative file links instead of the fully qualified "C:\Users\Bill\Documents\RealFlight 8\Vehicles\CustomModels\(some aircraft)\" file links.

Using the .bse files as an example, I load (some aircraft).bse into notepad, do a global Find "Realflight 7" Replace with "RealFlight 8" and save the file. Open a different bse file, repeat for all custom aircraft. Then I have to do it again (and again, and again) for all the colorschemes, etc. for each custom aircraft. Mindless, boring repetition that would be an ideal use of a PC's processing power. It takes hours to do it manually for 40+ aircraft. And would take many more hours if notepad didn't remember the last used find & replace strings. My PC could probably do it in seconds, not hours.

 

[flightengr]

Again, that's part of the reason I haven't upgraded to RF9 or EVO. it's too darn messy trying to convert all the custom aircraft into a new version. And it's at least as messy to try to re-import them from the original .rfx files again. If I can do it manually using notepad's find/replace function, I find it hard to believe that a competent programmer couldn't develop a procedure to automatically copy all the custom vehicle files & convert all those absolute links to point to the new version for all the custom content in one procedure. All the affected files are in subdirectories under the vehicles subdir. But it wouldn't be necessary at all if the files contained ".\" or "..\" relative file links instead of the fully qualified "C:\Users\Bill\Documents\RealFlight 8\Vehicles\CustomModels\(some aircraft)\" file links.

You're right... that part would be pretty simple and it has crossed my mind to build such a thing.

I don't have enough experience with all of the various files that could be created by custom models and/or older versions of RF that would need to be copied from point A to point B and adjusted. For example, I haven't run into the .kex file issue, which is good because those look like binary files instead of text. So the string replacement isn't the hard part - knowing everywhere it needs to happen is the hard part. On my setup, several of the folders under the Vehicles folder are empty.

If the process is as simple as copying the entire "Vehicles" folder (including subfolders) and then fixing paths in both Colorschemes\*.colorscheme and CustomModels\*.bse then that's certainly doable. If Notepad can handle it, it can definitely be automated.

But there is one other challenge. Windows Defender and many other anti-virus packages don't trust programs that are not signed with a unique certificate, and especially if they're going to start copying and modifying files. While it wouldn't be hard to create this program, getting it to run on other people's computers may be a new problem. That's why it would be better for professional developers such as the RealFlight team to do it rather than some ordinary person like me who doesn't code sign. I have written other programs that I've shared on the Internet, but none that try to move a bunch of files and then edit some like this would do.

 

[Bill Stuntz]

If the process is as simple as copying the entire "Vehicles" folder (including subfolders) and then fixing paths in both Colorschemes\*.colorscheme and CustomModels\*.bse then that's certainly doable. If Notepad can handle it, it can definitely be automated.

AFAIK, it IS as simple as copying the entire vehicles directory & changing all occurrences of that string. That's exactly how I do it. But I found some of the files by searching for the text "C:\Users\...." in ALL the files in all the subdirectories under vehicles. I've found a LOT of interesting stuff over the years by looking at the contents of files that aren't intended to be human readable. Executable or data files nearly always contain at least some plain text like error messages, links to overlay or congfig files, Easter Eggs, etc. I've been doing stuff like that since I built my first "PC" in 1977 - LONG before what we now call PC's actually existed.