Plan-G on laptop, FSX and FSX-SE on network

[OzFlyboy]

Hi, my first post, please be kind ...
I have Plan-G ver 3.2.1.151 running successfully on a fast, modern laptop. All OK. It's wonderful, very clever program, thanks Tim.
My desktop has four boot partitions - Win XP, Win 7, Linux Mint and Win 10 x64.
All OSs have latest service packs and updates and there are plenty of all resources.
The XP partition has FSX Acceleration version with my old favourite scenery and aircraft and it is still my favourite.
The Win 10 partition has FSX Steam, all up to date. Good, works well, no serious complaints.
Everything runs on a LAN with WIFI in one workgroup, and works well.
After some minor hassles solved with the help of this forum, I have Plan-G working via SimConnect on both the XP and Steam versions. Yes, only one at a time <g>.
To change from one version of FSX to the other though, I have to re-set all the Plan-G "Options/Locations" and rebuild the scenery database. Not all that difficult I know, but it would be nice if it could be done via some sort of user-selectable "FSX profile".
Question: The file "user.config" in Win 10 Users/<user name>/Appdata/Local/TA_Software carries all the latest session and profile info and I wonder if anyone has used a script or batch file to swap from an XP to Steam version of this file?   

[frankturley]

I don't know if this will help you, but I share my scenery between FSX, FSX-SE and P3Dv4. The only exception is the UK Scenery Files, they have a different version for P3Dv4 because the 64-bit program doesn't like the old animated objects. The airfields match in each version anyway.

So, I enable all scenery in FSX, then compile the database for FSX. This gives me all the scenery data in Plan-G, for whichever sim I fly. Each sim has its own link to Plan-G, so each sim can use the FSX database.

Good Luck.

[tim arnot]

Hi OzFlyboy,

Sorry for the delay in replying.
Plan-G doesn't maintain a different database for FSX and FSXSE, since it's not something I ever expected people to switch between.
If you have the same addons installed in both sims, you can simply use the same database for everything. If they are significantly different, you could substitute (say) the FSXSE database with (say) the FS9 one - just copy the database files over in My Documents\Plan-G Files\Data while Plan-G isn't running.

Plan-G is agnostic about its data - it just displays the database that's selected, it doesn't much care about what the actual sim is.

[OzFlyboy]

Thanks both, sorry for my my delay too ...

I think I've worked out a solution in the past two weeks, during which I've also reinstalled FSX on a Win 7 partition. So I now have the original MS version of FSX-Acceleration going on XP and Win7 and the Steam version running on Win 10. Only one version of FSX is used at the one time of course, and that usually for several weeks or months at a time.

Changing the scenery database itself in Plan-G is not the main issue, for the reasons stated by Tim.

When Plan-G starts, it apparently uses an XML config file named "user.config" in its AppData folder for many settings, including SimConnect or other comms settings, the location of the "Plan-G Files" folder in the user's "Documents" and the location of both FSX and scenery.cfg on the FSX computer, some of which are version- and OS-specific.

I realise these can all be re-entered each time by the user but it would be nice to be able to do it via some sort of profile. My solution below works but is a bit cludgy and it needs polishing by an expert.

On the laptop (Plan-G machine) I have set up three folders in the "Documents" folder, in addition to the default file "Plan-G Files" :

/Steam_Plan-G Files
/XP_Plan-G Files
/Win7_Plan-G files

In the Users //AppData//TA_Software//3.2.1.151 folder I have saved three copies of each successful version of "user.config" that worked for each of the three FSX versions, renaming them in each case ..

Plan-G-Steam-user.config
Plan-G-XP-user.config
Plan-G-Win7-user.config

In each case I've edited the XML value for "FlightPlanFolder" (about 1/3 down) to the names given to the "Plan-G Files" folders above. Also "FSX_Exe_Location" and  and "FSX_SceneryCfg_Location" get their new values, and the files are saved. This only needs to be done once, e.g. :

...
     <setting name="FSX_Exe_Location" serializeAs="String">
                <value>\\I7DTOP\Win7\FSX7</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="FSX_SceneryCfg_Location" serializeAs="String">
                <value>\\i7DTop\Win7\Users\ozflyboy\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="Sim" serializeAs="String">
                <value>FSX</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="FlightPlanFolder" serializeAs="String">
                <value>C:\Users\ozfb\Documents\Win7_Plan-G Files\Data</value>
            </setting>
...

Now, when running Plan-G, first go to the AppData/////3.2.1.151 folder, select one of either "Plan-G-Steam-user.config", "Plan-G-XP-user.config" or "Plan-G-Win7-user.config" and save it as "user.config". Everything should start up in the correct place.

The whole process takes about two minutes whenever I change FSX versions., not too onerous. The only downside so far seems to be that some (most?) of the stored values and settings etc are constant, i.e. they don't reflect the last-session settings as intended.

What is needed now is for someone more up to date than me to put all this into a script or even an old batch file if they still exist?