Ultimate Terrain Europe Scenery Compatibility Project

Ultimate Terrain Europe Scenery Compatibility Project

Overview Of The Project

One of our goals at Flight One / Scenery Solutions is to provide our Ultimate Terrain users with custom patches, which will allow better integration between our product and many of the popular scenery addon products that are available for FS2004.

We feel this step is important, in giving our users the best possible scenery environment for FS2004.

Maintaining compatibility with other products is both an unusual and difficult task in this industry. So, we ask for your patience where needed.

As addon scenery products are reviewed by Scenery Solutions for use with Ultimate Terrain Europe, we will determine the appropriate action to take. This action will be one of the following:

Patch is not required or will not improve the environment.
We will create special written instructions for the best integration of products.
We will create a custom patch for the product in question.

What You Can Expect From The Patches

Obviously, we would like every patch to provide a perfect integration between UT Europe and the various addon scenery products. However, this is not possible for several reasons:

Object positioning differences between scenery packages
Cases where Scenery Solutions cannot disable features in the addon scenery package where necessary.

Each patch case is handled differently. In many cases, we will cut a hole in the UT Europe scenery files that allow the addon scenery package to be displayed instead. In other cases, we try to disable scenery files in the addon scenery product that would conflict with UT Europe. The goal is to allow the best features to be used between products.

We will never alter the contents of any addon scenery product !

Generally, the more accurate an addon scenery product is, the better it will integrate with UT Europe.

Some patches will result in a perfect integration between UT Europe and the addon scenery product. In other cases, there may be only moderate improvement.

In general, you should be very pleased with the patch results. And, each patch should be good enough that you won’t notice any visual anomalies during flight.

Support

We fully intend on supporting our addon scenery patches now and in the future. However, we ask that you keep the following things in mind when visiting the Ultimate Terrain support forums for patch assistance:

The patches that we have created are an added benefit for our users. The patches are not actually part of the UT Europe product itself.
Unlike UT Europe, it is impossible for us to test all the patch variations. So, do not expect perfection. Although, we will try are best and not release sloppy work.
The Ultimate Terrain forum is a friendly place with lots of users willing to help with all issues related to Ultimate Terrain and FS2004. However, abrasive criticisms will not get you much help from Scenery Solutions, Flight One or the Ultimate Terrain user base.
Issues that are directly related to the UT Europe product will take precedence over patch issues.

We consider the patch project a cooperative effort between Scenery Solutions/Flight One and the public. So, your feedback and help is appreciated as the process grows and matures.

Initially, all UT Europe patches have been created by Scenery Solutions. Please do not contact the developer of the addon product in question for help with the patch. If needed, we will try and provide you with product support for the patch at our Ultimate Terrain support forum below:

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_topics.asp?FID=19

How To Apply The Patches

Patch Download

From the user’s standpoint, the first step is to locate the desired patch. Initially, the best place to do that is here. Eventually, all the UT Europe patches will be available from the Ultimate Terrain Compatibility Website available here.

If special instructions are available, then a PDF file will help guide you thru the product integration.

The first step in applying the patch is to download it. After downloading the patch, you will extract the compressed ZIP file contents to your hard-drive. Make sure that you preserve the folder/directory structure in the ZIP file.

Disk Directory/Folder Layout For Patches

All UT Europe addon scenery patches will be installed using a common directory structure.

For example:

C:\UTPatch\Patch Name\Release

Where “Patch Name” is the name of the product being patched (abbreviated name).

Inside the “Release” folder, you will find individual instructions for each patch. Initially, these instructions are written in English and are stored in the English.PDF file.

You must read the patch instructions before applying the patch.

Are The Patches Risky ?

There is some risk associated with any scenery product that is installed. We test each patch before uploading it for public use. Also, each patch will backup the original files, so that they can be restored later using the patch utility.

Before installing a patch, you should probably see if you are already satisified with the interaction between UT Europe and the addon scenery product in question.

We make no guarantees as to the success of failure of the patches. One of the problems with supporting addon scenery products, is that the products are often:

Repackaged as part of another package.
Installed to a different directory/folder location and structure.

It is impossible for us to test each addon scenery version that may exist. But, we have tried to make each patch as flexible as possible. Many patches will search multiple locations for the addon scenery product in question. If it still cannot find the product, you can often browse for it yourself.

Advanced flight sim users can often edit our patch files, to make the patch work with different versions of the scenery product. This will be discussed next.

Editing The Patch Files – For Advanced Users

It is a known certainty that some users will have versions of the addon scenery software that will not work with the patches. So, we have made our patch process flexible, by putting all the patch instructions in editable text files.

The “Release” folder described earlier will hold the patch executable and the text files mentioned previously.

Each patch executable will be named UTPatchxxxx.EXE, where xxxx gives the patch a unique name.

Included in the same “Release” folder, you will see several *.UT files. There are a few different versions of the patch executables, so there may be some slight variation in the *.UT file formats:

Filename	Description
Title.UT	Two versions. One with two lines and one with three lines. Two line version: 1^st line contains the addon product name. 2^nd line contains the path to addon scenery folder in question. Three line version (always has an associated PATH.UT file): 1^st line contains the addon product name. 2^nd line will contain a link to a validation file. 3^rd line will contain path to addon scenery folder WHEN it is located by the patch.
Create.UT	Only present if the patch application needs to create a special scenery layer (folder) for object exclusions.
Path.UT	Contains all the possible installation paths for the addon scenery product. You can add an extra line if the product is installed at a location not specified in the previous lines.
Ren.UT	File rename process for disabling scenery files. Each line in the file is related to a unique scenery file. The “From” name starts in column 1. The “To” name starts in Column 81. When a patch is uninstalled, the process is reversed. You may also see the word PATH in this file. If the word PATH is present at the front of the file path, then the PATH word is replaced by one of the locations in the PATH.UT file (or the path selected by the user during a browse).
Bak.UT	Contains 2 columns. Each line in the file is related to a unique scenery file. The path at column 1 is the UT Europe “from” file that is backed up when a patch is applied. The path beginning at column 81 is the “To” location of the backed up file.
Inst.UT	Contains 3 columns used during the patch installation. Each line in the file is related to a unique scenery file. The path starting at column 81 contains the “From” location of the patched UT Europe scenery file. The path starting at column 161 contains the “To” location of the patched UT Europe scenery file. The path starting at column 1 has a special use. It is used to determine the status of the installed scenery file beginning at column 161 (whether the UT Europe file is enabled or disabled).
Rem.UT	Contains a path to files that are deleted when the patch is uninstalled.

If you have helpful information to share regarding the patches, such as alternate *.,UT file configurations, please share your information with others in the UT Europe support forum. The help will be greatly appreciated.